As late as 2020, the supply chain of the global chocolate industry was characterized by modern slavery and child labour, poverty, dire living conditions and deforestation. While players in the cocoa industry had launched certification and in-house sustainability programmes, experts claimed that these have had limited impact. This failing prompted alternative efforts to change the sector from within. One of them, Tony's Chocolonely, a Dutch brand, set out to challenge the industry and demonstrate that cocoa could be sourced differently. Created in 2005 after an investigative journalist exposed the "dark side" of the industry, Tony's became one of the market leaders in the Netherlands. It operated a fully segregated supply chain "from bean to bar" for all cocoa components in its chocolate, and paid farmers in Africa a higher price for their cocoa beans to help them earn a living income. It described itself as "an impact company that sells chocolate; not a chocolate company trying to make an impact". Its vision - "a cocoa industry with 100% slave-free chocolate" - went beyond its own operations and applied to the global industry, urging the big chocolate players to take responsibility along the entire supply chain. The size of Tony's Chocolonely compared to the global chocolate industry brings an analogy to mind: Could this David defy Goliath? Could a start-up with a social mission change an entire industry from within? To achieve 100% slave-free chocolate meant tackling a host of strategic, tactical and operational issues, many linked with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Following the 2008 China milk scandal, Chinese infant milk formula products were regarded as unsafe, and Chinese consumers were preferring to pay high prices for the products of foreign brands. As one of the few companies not involved in the milk scandal, China Feihe Limited (Feihe) was able to maintain steady growth in product sales in the medium- and low-end market, but it did not have a differentiation advantage over foreign brands; therefore, its sales results in the high-end market were poor. In 2015, Feihe carried out a strategic transformation and repositioned its brand proposition, which led to increased customer value. The company also launched a new product series, which allowed it to create a competitive advantage. In 2019, Feihe was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. However, other brands started to imitate Feihe in developing products that were suitable for Chinese babies, which made investors doubt whether or not Feihe could maintain its competitive advantage. What action should Feihe take to maintain its competitive advantage and its position in the market?
In 2017, the chief executive officer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CFO) of Swiss-based BauZentral, a privately owned family business, faced a restructuring challenge. BauZentral produced and sold electrical systems, plumbing systems, and smart security and energy solutions. In 2014, when the current CEO took over from his father, the company needed to address the growth associated with its successful international acquisition strategy. However, the firm’s historical structure maintained tight family control, which needed to change to address the realities of the international expansion. The CEO and CFO recognized that the firm had too many different regions with different market conditions, products, and competitive environments to be effectively run from the head office. The CEO and CFO planned to use the family constitution and the firm’s financial targets as criteria to devise a governance system to align the interests of management with the interests of the family owners. Their aim was to restructure the organization to achieve the firm’s goal of becoming a global supplier while also respecting the family’s values. What type of new governance and compensation structure should they design for the firm?
The Sunshine Foundation of Canada (Sunshine) was a national, Canadian-focused, self-funded charity established in 1987 and headquartered in London, Ontario. In the second half of 2020, the chief executive officer (CEO) and president was deciding how to create an effective email template that would serve the larger organization as the first point of contact for potential donors. Sunshine’s relationships and donor pipeline were the organization’s lifeline, and with strong competition in the non-profit milieu, the CEO knew securing funds in the individual-giving category would be difficult. How could she outline Sunshine’s differences and highlight why the prospective client would be interested in becoming a donor? How could she convert these prospects into new Sunshine donors?
As 2019 ended, the founder and chief executive officer of Nudestix Inc. (Nudestix) had overseen phenomenal growth during the firm’s five years of operation. However, the company was about to encounter a series of issues as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, and closures of non-essential businesses around the world. Nudestix, like many companies, suffered a severe decline in revenue. How could the company respond to this crisis in a way that would minimize its losses?
Executive Chris Ernst uses a unique personal strategy to define his six life roles (spiritual explorer, natural being, development pioneer, global/local citizen, thriving family, true friend) and achieve harmony among them.
In March 2021, Amnon Shashua, co-founder and CEO of Israel-based Mobileye, was preparing to meet with Intel's new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, to review plans for the future. Mobileye had been acquired by California-based Intel in 2017, but still operated independently. Mobileye was the global leader in vision technology for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) with a 70% market share and $1 billion in revenue. However, for Shashua, ADAS was just the first step towards his dream of leading the autonomous vehicle (AV) revolution. It was this vision that led Intel to acquire Mobileye for $15.3 billion. Shashua's challenge was that consumer AVs were still years away due to concerns over safety, regulation, cost, and consumer acceptance. A nearer term use case for AVs was the robotaxi market-fully autonomous, driverless taxis. Shashua and his team were excited about the potential of robotaxis to change the future of mobility, projecting that the market would grow to $160 billion globally by 2030. Mobileye believed that it could generate at least $15 billion in annual robotaxi revenue by the end of the decade. Equally important, Shashua viewed robotaxis as a necessary first step toward consumer AVs. Mobileye could use its experience in robotaxis to improve AV technology, address regulatory challenges, and build high definition maps. The long-term question facing Mobileye was whether to: 1) invest billions of dollars to build-out a global, vertically integrated robotaxi business; 2) use robotaxis as an opportunity to learn and then revert back to a horizontal supplier of AV chips and software; and/or 3) do both? During most of Intel's history, the company had been a horizontal semiconductor company which avoided vertically integrating into its customers' businesses.
This case explores how a creative agency in Southeast Asia created the region's first virtual influencer. The client, a prominent global sports and lifestyle brand, wanted someone to run a campaign to promote its new line of sneakers. Because Southeast Asia is an incredibly diverse region, the agency struggled to find an influencer who would appeal across all markets. Eventually, it decided to create its own influencer, using artificial intelligence and the latest 3D-rendering techniques. Through the case, students will study the factors that led the agency to make such a decision, and examine how virtual influencers compare with traditional flesh-and-blood ones, in terms of marketing appeal, cost, and other factors. They will also consider the question of how sustainable virtual influencers are as a marketing tool for future campaigns.
Where should leaders focus when managing multiple, simultaneous change initiatives? Recent research by the authors explores the experiences of a global technology company that attempted two concurrent large-scale change initiatives. In this scenario, consistency around content, procedure, and normative expectations as perceived by employees stood out as the pivotal success factor.
The core of every great strategy is a valid argument. The authors have developed a flexible system of three activities constructive debate, iterative visualization, and logical formalization to help leaders arrive at such arguments. They offer tips to help savvy leaders conduct strategic conversations, analyze potential options via strategy maps, and test the logic of strategic arguments in order to make sound decisions that will result in sustainable success.
This note provides an introduction to corporate governance from a managerial perspective, covering key aspects of board responsibilities and board composition, the regulatory environment and legal duties of directors, and changes in governance systems over time, with a focus on publicly traded firms in the United States.
Just before Warren Buffett's company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, acquired H. J. Heinz Company on February 14, 2013, rumors had been circulating that the Omaha investing oracle had set eyes on the condiment giant. By the time the official acquisition was announced, questions had arisen about some unusual trading activity in financial markets. A very profitable trade was made on the option market just a few days before the announcement: a $90,000 trade that resulted in profits of around $1.8 million. The case puts students in the shoes of a fictional SEC analyst in charge of investigating rumors of insider trading in the context of Berkshire Hathaway's acquisition of Heinz. Which market would an informed investor with limited capital choose? Which option contract would the insider choose, and why? The case allows the instructor to introduce option "Greeks," measures of sensitivity of option contracts to underlying risk factors. The Greeks are presented in an intuitive fashion, and the analysis provides an applied, true-to-life setting to a topic that students often consider very abstract.
The Peerless Potato Chip Company (Peerless) is a private-label, family-owned-and-operated, national potato chip manufacturer specializing in organic chips. The CEO, Kate Kelly, had been with the company from the beginning-since her uncle had first started making chips more than 25 years earlier on his farm in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. In fact, she'd been the primary architect of its growth and expansion. For the first time since its founding, the company's profit margin had been declining steadily-to almost one-third of what it had been just seven years earlier. Kelly admitted that much of the downturn stemmed from her lax, even absentee management. As she came to grips with the situation, Kelly identified an array of missing or incomplete metrics, unquantified performance indicators, and uncontrolled variable costs that were severely impacting the company's bottom line. The case, designed for an MBA or non-MBA audience, is about management, especially of performance-indicating metrics and operating data. Students are asked to consider a number of options Kelly is looking at: determining key manufacturing data, making cuts to the product line, ""going green,"" and other potential cost-cutting and profit-generating possibilities to reverse the downtrend in profits and regain control of the company's finances.