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In February 2020, Pan-China Consulting Services Co. Ltd. (Pan-China) was entering its third decade in operation. Pan-China’s founder was reviewing the firm’s evolution and discussing several key opportunities with his team. Over the previous two decades, the company had shown solid performance in providing financial and capital markets advice to over 200 companies. It had generated strong returns for its key investors, who ensured that every deal was financially secured by the company’s auditing, financial, and consulting expertise. However, the founder and his two senior advisers had to make some decisions. Should Pan-China participate in a new round of private placement investment? Should it consider investing in a second opportunity? Which fund issuance would be the best fit for Pan-China? Was its consulting and investment business model sustainable?

In January 2020, Kombi Sports Inc. was at a strategic crossroads in a changing industry. The Montreal-based firm had evolved from a niche provider of alpine performance gloves to a premium Canadian winter apparel brand. Its success could be attributed, at least in part, to its strong collaborative stance and interesting partnerships. However, increasing competition in the industry, particularly among brick-and-mortar retailers, raised questions for Kombi about how and where it should focus its efforts for future growth.

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated long-running retail profitability issues many of which have been plaguing the sector since the early 2000s. New research from Deloitte sheds light on the current consumer-to-business paradigm, the direction in which customer experience trends are headed, and what retailers can do to ensure their sustained success.

In November 2020, Henry Wilde, co-founder and CEO of Acelero, Inc., must decide whether to change his company's program model for delivering early childhood education to low-income children. One of the only for-profit Head Start providers in the United States, Acelero provided direct services through neighborhood childcare centers and operated a consulting arm to improve the services of other Head Start centers. The company had developed a reputation for excellence and was profitable, pleasing its investors. However, Senior Vice President of Family Engagement Lori Levine urged Wilde to change the company's process for interacting with parents. While Levine's preferred model had the potential to drive deeper social impact, it was not yet a proven success and did not have the potential to make Acelero's business more profitable. Further, if the new model failed, Wilde risked losing the credibility that he and his team had build in the early childhood education field over the company's 19-year history. Wilde and Levine had piloted the model at a single Acelero center, and the early results were promising. At the conclusion of the case, the CEO must decide whether to scale the program model to other centers, or whether to stay the course with his company's existing operations.

Global consumer products powerhouse LSP has found enormous savings in a trial run of a new competitive bidding tool for their procurement organization known as a reverse e-auction. But when Jen Baldwin is asked to achieve the same savings from her suppliers for a product used by her own division, things turn out to be much more complex, revealing the benefits and drawbacks of using the tool to reduce prices, maintain supplier relationship and garner savings for the company.

Global consumer products powerhouse LSP has found enormous savings in a trial run of a new competitive bidding tool for their procurement organization known as a reverse e-auction. But when Jen Baldwin is asked to achieve the same savings from her suppliers for a product used by her own division, things turn out to be much more complex, revealing the benefits and drawbacks of using the tool to reduce prices, maintain supplier relationship and garner savings for the company.

Global consumer products powerhouse LSP has found enormous savings in a trial run of a new competitive bidding tool for their procurement organization known as a reverse e-auction. But when Jen Baldwin is asked to achieve the same savings from her suppliers for a product used by her own division, things turn out to be much more complex, revealing the benefits and drawbacks of using the tool to reduce prices, maintain supplier relationship and garner savings for the company.

Global consumer products powerhouse LSP has found enormous savings in a trial run of a new competitive bidding tool for their procurement organization known as a reverse e-auction. But when Jen Baldwin is asked to achieve the same savings from her suppliers for a product used by her own division, things turn out to be much more complex, revealing the benefits and drawbacks of using the tool to reduce prices, maintain supplier relationship and garner savings for the company.

In January 2020, Kombi Sports Inc. was at a strategic crossroads in a changing industry. The Montreal-based firm had evolved from a niche provider of alpine performance gloves to a premium Canadian winter apparel brand. Its success could be attributed, at least in part, to its strong collaborative stance and interesting partnerships. However, increasing competition in the industry, particularly among brick-and-mortar retailers, raised questions for Kombi about how and where it should focus its efforts for future growth.

David Pong, co-founder and CEO of a water technology start-up, had good news to share with his team: after several rounds of pitching and evaluation, they had raised seed funding for their social enterprise, Wateroam. David had started Wateroam as a fresh university graduate with two younger co-founders in August 2014. The trio's mission was to tackle the global problem of water scarcity by providing water filtration systems to the rural poor. As a new start-up, Wateroam faced challenges in funding, product innovation, sales and distribution. Wateroam broke even in its second year of operation. In the four years since its formation, the social enterprise, which is based in Singapore, has provided people in 14 countries with access to clean water. Now, with this round of seed funding, Wateroam was poised to enter its next phase of growth and reach out to more underserved communities that were in dire need of clean water. As CEO, David had many important decisions to make. Chief among them was how he should scale up Wateroam, bearing in mind the latter's double bottom line of profitability and social impact.

Virtual working became the norm for most organizations since March 2020, and it brings well-recognized challenges. But we know little about the impact of virtual working on managerial behavior. This article presents the results of three surveys conducted before and during lockdown to understand what changed. It shows how managers became more blinkered: turning inward, becoming task-focused at the expense of relationship-building, and finding few opportunities to develop new skills. The article offers practical suggestions for how the evolution of managerial work might be accelerated, so that managers can become more effective in this changing environment.

The production of tea increased by 10% and the Indian economy experienced an inflation of 5.24% in 2018; the average auction price for tea had been stagnant at Rs. 140 per kg since 2013. The existing auction system was built on an archaic technology and the auction rules were constraining the system. This was triggering the buyers to move away from the auction to private sales, and thus stifling price discovery. The Tea Board of India hired consultants to redesign the auction system based on the principles of design simplicity, ease of use, and sustainability. Three areas for auction design improvement related to the type, closure, and transparency of auctions, were identified. But would they have the desired effect? The case provides an opportunity for students to discuss if the proposed interventions will work from the lens of auction as a pricing mechanism. With increase in adoption of auctions from selling search words, ad-spaces, to surplus inventory, this case should be interesting for students intending to build different pricing/business models. It is also useful for students to understand the mechanism in order to improve the existing auction systems.

For a telecom regulatory authority in a developing country, reducing the digital divide is an important goal, while it maintains net neutrality through the mechanisms it implements or allows to be implemented. The case "The Question of Net Neutrality" presents the dilemma that the Indian telecom regulator, the TRAI, faces while it decides whether to allow a private firm, Facebook, to launch a zero-rating service. The case is set at the time when Facebook Inc. came up with an offer of launching Internet.org as a zero-rating service. Under this plan, Internet.org (later rebranded as Free Basics) would act as a platform to connect a range of content providers (CPs) through which the hitherto unconnected populations would have access to the internet. However, this access would be limited to the content provided by CPs, who tied up with the Free Basics platform. Presenting a comprehensive history of the net neutrality debate, the case offers views of all the stakeholders called by the regulatory authority to present their perspectives. The stakeholders include the ISPs (internet service providers), CPs, end consumers represented by civil society, the regulatory body itself, and the government. The case brings up the issues related to the digital divide, privacy of consumers, competition, freedom of expression, etc., from the perspective of all the stakeholders.

Ashok Leyland (AL) has been a good performer in the commercial vehicle (CV) industry in India, and has emerged as a leading player in the global CV industry. It has done well to survive and grow in a cyclical industry and has overcome many recessions and downturns in the nearly 70 years of its existence. The case describes the efforts of AL in conceptualizing and launching a new initiative called ServiceMandi to garner a greater share of the aftersales service part of the value chain, thus taking AL into a market that was historically dominated by the unorganized sector. The SM initiative comes with its own set of rewards and challenges and confronts AL with tradeoffs whose resolutions are not so obvious. This case presents an insight into the conceptualization of the SM initiative, the approach followed by AL in converting the SM concept into reality, and the progress made so far with this initiative. The case also presents the potential directions that this initiative can take in the future and provides an opportunity for students to think through the various options in terms of the pros and cons and recommend a course of action for AL

The case follows President Linda Oubré (HBS MBA Class of 1984) as she seeks to move Whittier College towards a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive campus. In 2020, the student body of Whittier, a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles County, California, is slowly evolving to represent the growing diversity of the surrounding area. Roughly 70 percent of Whittier students are non-white, and 59 percent are female. The college's leadership, however, remains largely white and male. Oubré, who had spent most of her previous career in business, was selected as the college's president in 2018-the first black woman to serve in that role. Almost immediately upon stepping into the role, Oubré set her sights on diversifying the college's staff, administration, and board of trustees; in 2020, the racial reckoning that swept across the United States only heightened the urgency of her task. Oubré knows that sweeping change is needed at Whittier. But change, of course, is hard. How can she continue to push for diversity among faculty, staff, board members, and students? And how can she galvanize support among all of the college's many constituents?

The case follows President Linda Oubré (HBS MBA Class of 1984) as she seeks to move Whittier College towards a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive campus. In 2020, the student body of Whittier, a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles County, California, is slowly evolving to represent the growing diversity of the surrounding area. Roughly 70 percent of Whittier students are non-white, and 59 percent are female. The college's leadership, however, remains largely white and male. Oubré, who had spent most of previous career in business, was selected as the college's president in 2018 - the first black woman to serve in that role. Almost immediately upon stepping into the role, Oubre set her sights on diversifying the college's staff, administration, and board of trustees; in 2020, the racial reckoning that swept across the United States only heightened the urgency of her task. Oubré knows that sweeping change is needed at Whittier. But change, of course, is hard. How can she continue to push for diversity among faculty, staff, board members, and students? And how can she galvanize support among all of the college's many constituents?

The case follows President Linda Oubré (HBS MBA Class of 1984) as she seeks to move Whittier College towards a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive campus. In 2020, the student body of Whittier, a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles County, California, is slowly evolving to represent the growing diversity of the surrounding area. Roughly 70 percent of Whittier students are non-white, and 59 percent are female. The college's leadership, however, remains largely white and male. Oubré, who had spent most of previous career in business, was selected as the college's president in 2018 - the first black woman to serve in that role. Almost immediately upon stepping into the role, Oubre set her sights on diversifying the college's staff, administration, and board of trustees; in 2020, the racial reckoning that swept across the United States only heightened the urgency of her task. Oubré knows that sweeping change is needed at Whittier. But change, of course, is hard. How can she continue to push for diversity among faculty, staff, board members, and students? And how can she galvanize support among all of the college's many constituents?

This case profiles the career of Ghana-based chef and entrepreneur, Selassie Atadika. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, she faced many questions about the future, such as: How could she convince Ghanaian consumers to view their native cuisine in a fresh, compelling way? How could she sustain the fine dining arm of Midunu, Atadika's food and lifestyle company, in a nation where the average annual income hovered at USD5,000? Should she expand her chocolate business internationally? As Atadika became an important player on the culinary world stage, what were the best ways to promote her business and capitalize on her increasingly high international profile?

Based in Bengaluru, India, Invento Robotics (Invento) was a start-up that manufactured humanoid robots. In October 2017, Invento received a mandate to develop a humanoid robot to welcome India's prime minister and the US president's senior adviser at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit that year in Hyderabad. It was a high-stakes event for Invento; a positive reception to the robots would mean many leads for the company, while a negative response could mar Invento's reputation. While Invento's time had hitherto been spent on research and development, there was pressure for it to now determine an overall marketing strategy. It was imperative that Invento quickly crystallize ideas about its customers, product positioning, branding, pricing, distribution channels, and promotions.