GoSports Foundation was a non-profit venture that developed India's emerging athletic talent through athletic scholarships and other supports that helped the athletes achieve sports excellence. The foundation had limited funding and numerous applicants, requiring that it carefully choose the athletes it would support. Nandan Kamath, a co-founder of the organization, has to choose one athlete from several applicants for support. He also has to decide whether the foundation should start supporting the development of coaches and trainers and how it should balance its support with a desire to advance the profile of athletes competing in the Paralympics.
In early 2021, an investor wanted to invest in Bitcoin. However, because of the high volatility of the currency, she wanted to know when to buy and sell Bitcoin to avoid the price fluctuations caused by various short-term phenomena. Her main objective was to generate the maximum profit possible based on the moving average strategy. How could she use this strategy to profit from Bitcoin's price movement?
GoSports Foundation was a non-profit venture that developed India’s emerging athletic talent through athletic scholarships and other supports that helped the athletes achieve sports excellence. The foundation had limited funding and numerous applicants, requiring that it carefully choose the athletes it would support. Nandan Kamath, a co-founder of the organization, has to choose one athlete from several applicants for support. He also has to decide whether the foundation should start supporting the development of coaches and trainers and how it should balance its support with a desire to advance the profile of athletes competing in the Paralympics.
In 2019, after completing her postgraduate work in dentistry in Mangalore, India, an entrepreneur decided to set up a chain of clinics in Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka. She was not considering any partnerships for her venture, which she planned to fund with personal capital and a bank loan. The entrepreneur consulted her long-time friend, an independent business consultant, who introduced her to the manager of the Indian government-owned Syndicate Bank. The bank agreed to review her detailed financial and marketing plans, and consider funding the venture. The independent business consultant offered to help with the task of financial forecasting for the development of a marketing plan to increase foot traffic to the proposed clinics.
Group Business Services (GBS), a shared services organization predominantly based in India, provided support services to Koninklijke DSM NV (Royal DSM), a multinational corporation headquartered in the Netherlands, which produced nutrition- and health-related products. When the COVID-19 pandemic created a set of “new normal” circumstances for business organizations, GBS India, like many businesses, introduced remote working for all of its employees during the pandemic lockdown. The company experienced a series of challenges from March to July 2020. While some employees and managers offered positive feedback, many expressed doubts and misgivings about remote working. The challenges they reported compelled the GBS leaders to debate whether or not to continue remote working in the post-lockdown period. More importantly, they had to decide how best to establish a balance between employees’ concerns related to remote working and the need to maintain business continuity in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. They needed to design the optimum working model for GBS India in this new-normal era.
In early 2021, an investor wanted to invest in Bitcoin. However, because of the high volatility of the currency, she wanted to know when to buy and sell Bitcoin to avoid the price fluctuations caused by various short-term phenomena. Her main objective was to generate the maximum profit possible based on the moving average strategy. How could she use this strategy to profit from Bitcoin’s price movement?
In the summer of 2019, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada’s largest mental health teaching hospital, found itself at the centre of a high-profile media crisis after three patients absconded from care at its forensic mental health unit. The events had led to public concern from the community, the media, and the government, putting CAMH’s reputation at risk. Much of the concern manifested through stigmatizing statements due to a common misunderstanding and ignorance towards mental health, especially in the forensic area. CAMH’s chief executive officer, Dr. Catherine Zahn, and her team had to decide how they would address the crisis both externally with the public and internally in their own organization.
In the phygital realm, the customer experience can be enhanced using the best of the physical and digital worlds. Unfortunately, digital transformation projects are often limited to the incorporation of various digital devices at different stages of the purchase experience. As a result, many companies are failing to seize the opportunities presented by this new hybrid world. While the physical-realm experience stems from sensory interactions between individuals and a distinct form of the bricks-and-mortar environment, the digital customer experience tends to relate to the integration of technologies that help consumers control, customize, optimize, and monitor their actions. Although physical experiences generate emotions, and digital ones are mostly functional, the phygital realm engages consumers by being both emotional and functional. When the concept of phygital is recognized as a hybrid realm with both functional and emotional components, companies can break free of existing customer experience constraints. Phygital-world competition is about an enhanced customer experience, not showcasing digital bells and whistles. To ensure a successful digital transformation, companies need a consumer-centric strategy that utilizes technologies to combine valuable experiences from the physical and digital realms to create something new and superior that consumers appreciate and don’t reject because it doesn’t fit with customer needs or expectations.
This case explores incentives for rare disease drug development by chronicling the role of the Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Foundation in forming strategic partnerships with the scientific research community and pharmaceutical developers to transform the trajectory of innovation for the disease. In the 17 years since its inception, the Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Foundation has helped transform SMA from an underfunded and poorly researched disease with no available treatments to one with three novel drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While these therapies greatly improved the quality of life for many newly diagnosed patients, there was still a substantial portion of existing patients with unmet medical needs. Though many in the medical community, and even at the FDA, felt that SMA had been all but cured, the Foundation could not accept that their work was done until every patient had a treatment option.
Friends of the Children was founded by Duncan Campbell in 1991. Campbell grew up in extremely challenging circumstances and wanted to use his good fortune to make an impact on the lives of children who faced the same sort of circumstances he once had. The Friends of the Children model entailed pairing a salaried, professional mentor, called a Friend, with each child for a minimum of 12 years. It worked-83 percent of Friends of the Children youth earned a high school diploma or the equivalent GED certificate; 92 percent enrolled in post-secondary education, served the country, or entered the workforce; 93 percent remained free from juvenile justice system involvement; and 98 percent waited to become parents until out of their teen years. This case explains the Friends of the Children model as it has evolved over the years and explores its capacity to scale (even as a comparatively expensive intervention). It also highlights the organization's response to the racial equity movement.
The case is about Krishna, who has just started his professional career and is wondering what strategy to follow to maximize his after-tax wealth. He did not have any experience in managing his finances and wanted to plan for his taxes and increase his after-tax wealth. The case includes Krishna's income statement, balance sheet, profile, goals, assumptions, and tax rules. The tax rates are standard in structure but differ in important ways such as age and income and thus require careful analysis and scenario analysis of the proposed calculations.
In the summer of 2019, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada's largest mental health teaching hospital, found itself at the centre of a high-profile media crisis after three patients absconded from care at its forensic mental health unit. The events had led to public concern from the community, the media, and the government, putting CAMH's reputation at risk. Much of the concern manifested through stigmatizing statements due to a common misunderstanding and ignorance towards mental health, especially in the forensic area. CAMH's chief executive officer, Dr. Catherine Zahn, and her team had to decide how they would address the crisis both externally with the public and internally in their own organization.
In February 2017, four co-founders were deciding whether or not to launch their new custom suit business, Hudson St. Clair. The company would manufacture made-to-measure suits in Detroit, Michigan, and sell them online, across the United States. The co-founders approached Hulin Partners, a private equity company to see if it would be interested in investing in the idea, but the company offered instead to buy the business. The four founders need to determine whether they would infuse their own equity and grow the business or sell the business plan and existing contracts to Hulin Partners. To decide what to do, the team first needed to understand the current business environment, evaluate the product and marketing strategy, and project the new venture's financial performance for the first three years of operations.
Storytelling is a crucial skill that leaders use in a variety of business situations. Accomplished leaders employ storytelling to improve interpersonal relationships, communicate strategy, and build culture. From an operations perspective, storytelling is a skill that empowers leaders to create common ground among teams, unleash the drive and passion of their people, and share a vision for the future. Likewise, storytelling plays a vital role in engaging external stakeholders. To raise capital and acquire investors, you need to tell a compelling story about how your company will create value and why your strategy will be a winning one. If you want the media and other influencers to spread positive news about your products and services, you must articulate a story detailing the unique benefits you provide. The ability to tell a convincing story about your company's purpose and the social good you generate is essential to recruiting the next generation of top talent to your organization. This technical note helps MBA students improve the storytelling skills that they will employ throughout their careers.
This mini case study focuses on one of the building blocks of a circular economy - design-for-circularity - either of an entire product or its components and materials. Rather than ending up as landfill, they are sent back to the production system to be re-made (into a copy of the original, for the same intended use). Students explore to what extent it makes sense to do so in different circumstances, using as an illustration a VHS tape to simulate a circularity transformation process through design.
During a strategic planning process in early 2018, the chief executive officer of St. Joseph's Health Care in London, Ontario, Canada encountered various challenges that tested her values-based leadership style and innovative approach to stakeholder engagement. She had not anticipated the skepticism from the senior management team that surfaced when she attempted to finalize the strategic plan for presentation to the board of directors. Although she faced resistance to the detailed wording of the proposed aims, she was opposed to diluting the language in the strategic plan. She found it important for all engaged stakeholders to see that their input had shaped the resulting plan. However, successful implementation of the strategic plan would depend on the support of her team members, who were accountable for its implementation. Overruling a management recommendation could potentially jeopardize the good working relationship she had established, but failing to deliver a plan to stakeholders that reflected their input posed a reputational risk for the organization. The chief executive officer had to decide how to move forward.
Founded in 2010, 111 Inc. was a leading online, direct-sales pharmacy in China. As an early entrant to China's online health care market, 111 Inc. developed various operational capabilities to support and expand its businesses, including a smart supply chain, big-data technologies, omnichannel capabilities, and operation on both business-to-consumer and business-to-business models. The online health care market in China had been growing rapidly in recent years, especially with the support of new government policies. Therefore, many companies were showing great interest in the industry's new opportunities, including Alibaba Group Holding Limited, JD.com Inc., Pingduoduo Inc., and Tencent Holdings Ltd. Considering the imminent market entry of these technology giants, with their vast customer bases and extensive amounts of capital, 111 Inc. was wondering what it should do to sustain and grow its competitive advantage.