The three caselets in the series "Strategies for Firm Positioning" draw the reader's attention to the concept of firm positioning using Porter's Productivity Frontier. For any firm to stay ahead of the competition and build a product or service portfolio, it needs a clear strategic positioning that distinguishes it from its peers. Strategy literature recommends two generic positioning strategies, namely, cost leadership and differentiation, to achieve competitive advantage. These two strategies are very different from one another. Each strategy requires the firm to make choices about quality, operational excellence, innovation, customer centricity, and so on, which are often orthogonal to the choices made under the other strategy. This case series highlights the contrasts between the two generic strategies. Further, the case series shows what happens when a firm selects a hybrid of the two generic strategies.
Set in the year 2019, this case looks at the development of Basic Healthcare Services (BHS), a primary healthcare organization in India based out of Udaipur, Rajasthan, and its efforts to achieve sustainability. This case sheds light on the state of primary healthcare in India and, in doing so, unravels the underlying challenges of setting up and running a privately-led primary healthcare delivery organization in rural India catering to people at the bottom of the pyramid. It shows how building physical infrastructure alone is not enough to provide last-mile primary healthcare coverage to people living in the rural hinterlands. BHS, under the leadership of its Founder-Director Dr. Pavitra Mohan, engaged with rural communities to build their trust in allopathic healthcare and wean them away from pseudo-practitioners, and created systems that would address their health needs. This case gives readers a glimpse of Mohan's formative years and the many challenges he had to overcome to realize his vision of providing affordable and accessible last-mile healthcare. One of BHS's successful strategies was to engage with the communities it served and forge meaningful collaborations. A small but dedicated team of healthcare professionals and community workers delivered compassionate care and conducted outreach in poor rural communities. It relied on grant aid to finance its operations. The primary issue confronting BHS in 2019 was how to achieve financial viability and catalyze the growth of the organization.
The case traces the entrepreneurial journey of Indian media baron Subhash Chandra. It starts with his entry into a struggling family business in 1967 and observes his evolution from a young, aspiring entrepreneur to the chairman of Essel Group, one of India's largest business entities with interests in diversified sectors such as media, entertainment, education and infrastructure. Chandra entered his family's agricultural commodities business in 1967 when it was in dire straits. In the 1970s and 80s, he forayed into entirely new sectors such as packaging and amusement parks. In 1991, he set up Zee Telefilms (later Zee Entertainment) and launched Zee TV, India's first non-public service television channel. By creating and broadcasting content in local Indian languages, Zee reached a wide audience of viewers across the country. Due to a first-mover advantage, Zee instantly became a huge success. Over the next three decades, Chandra pursued new business opportunities in the media industry, with considerable success. In 2018, Zee was a thriving enterprise, with a global viewership of 1.3 billion and business segments spanning broadcasting, music, film production, and digital over-the-top (OTT) media. In 2007, to create a long-lasting legacy and diversify his personal wealth, Chandra entered the Indian infrastructure industry and bid for multiple projects in a short span of five years, winning several of them. However, unable to convert the infrastructure projects into profitable ventures due to unprofitable bids and execution mistakes, he started to accumulate significant debt. His personal financial situation deteriorated to such an extent that he resorted to offering the shares of the listed companies he owned (including Zee) as collateral to banks to take additional debt to save his infrastructure business. The case ends with Chandra, and indeed his whole business empire, in a precarious situation due to indebtedness and facing some tough decisions.
Case B of the two-part series "Zee Entertainment and Essel Group: A Quest for Legacy and Beyond" describes the evolution and eventual resolution of the personal crisis that looms in front of Subhash Chandra, Chairman of Zee Entertainment Limited, in Case A. Chandra was very well-known in India as a successful entrepreneur who brought entertainment to the masses in the 1990s through his television channel Zee. Although Zee had performed very well over three decades, Chandra found himself under significant debt stress due to failures associated with his infrastructure business, which he had founded in 2007. By January 2019, Chandra had offered most of the shares of the listed firms he owned as collateral to banks to borrow additional debt to sustain his infrastructure business. Several developments had occurred by this time that deepened Chandra's predicament, including the tightening of credit by financial institutions, a statutory body investigation into a firm that he owned, and an investigative report outlining his personal indebtedness. These factors contributed to a dip in the stock price of many listed Essel Group companies, and banks threatened to sell the shares of companies of Chandra's thriving media business to recover the debt. Chandra had to sell assets of his infrastructure business and most of his stake in Zee to pay off his debt. Corporate governance lapses at Zee also emerged at the time of the stake sale by Chandra, particularly around related party transactions with other companies that he and his brothers owned. Although his son Punit Goenka continued as the CEO of Zee, Chandra had to resign his chairmanship of the company and was left with a measly 5% stake in Zee, with the dominant shareholders now being institutional investors.
Huluwa Technology Co. Ltd. (Huluwa) was a small manufacturer of children’s smart watches in China. The company’s smart watches could be monitored by parents in real time through an application installed on their phones. The product design, application development, raw material procurement, and cloud service were all operated by Huluwa, while production was outsourced to a factory. Huluwa mainly relied on its offline channels to sell products. In April 2016, looking back at the first-quarter data for the year, the company’s operations director noted that Huluwa had sold and delivered 150,000 units to its distributors while it had produced 200,000 units. Puzzled by that gap, he was also worried about the production capacity stretch imposed on the contract manufacturer. How could the company manage continuing growth for the product?
In 2015, the management of Haier Group (Haier), a Chinese company that designed, developed, manufactured, marketed, and serviced home appliances, faced a dilemma. Established in 2007, Casarte, Haier’s high-end sub-brand, had sustained only a mediocre performance from 2007 to 2014, and its sales revenue had remained low. Had brand cannibalization occurred between Haier’s mid-range to high-end products and Casarte’s high-end offerings? Should Haier continue to develop Casarte, which would require more risk and investment? Or should it cut its losses and discontinue the business, which could hurt Haier’s ability to compete in the high-end market?
In early July 2020, the US government was considering banning TikTok, a social media platform for creating and sharing short videos, because its Chinese ownership had led to national security concerns. The founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, had taken several measures to distance TikTok from China, including hiring an American CEO and establishing offices in Los Angeles, California, and London, England. However, ByteDance investors expressed concerns that the company's Chinese ownership would still remain a liability. How could the founder and CEO prevent a possible ban on TikTok in the United States? Should he sell ByteDance's stake in TikTok to American investors? Did he have other options?
Wes Hall founded Kingsdale Advisors and built it into one of Canada's leading shareholder services and advisory firms. Influenced by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and a series of social injustices-specifically the death of George Floyd in police custody-Hall had an idea to use his privilege, power, and position to make a social impact. He decided to risk his financial security and potentially jeopardize his reputation to launch a new venture, BlackNorth Initiative (BNI), to combat systemic racism. After an initial burst of positive reactions to the BNI, Hall was left with the questions that confront every entrepreneur: What problem am I addressing? What solution should I pursue? Am I the right person to take on this challenge? Who do I need on my team? Hall wants BlackNorth Initiative to have lasting impact after the momentum of the BLM fades. Just two months after launching BNI, Hall faced a dilemma: a leading Canadian businessman and philanthropist offered to donate $1,000,000 to the BNI if they would establish a cultural center for Black Canadians. As Founder and Chairman of the BlackNorth Initiative, Hall had a decision: should he accept the funds and build the center? Could a cultural center help dismantle anti-Black systemic barriers from the bottom up and help legitimize BNI with community activist groups? Or would the costs of establishing and running a center ultimately dilute his focus and diffuse the power of his initial idea?
While open innovation ecosystems allow a firm to harness external sources of value creation, these external ties can also constrain its ability to adapt its innovation strategy to pursue new opportunities. This article looks at how an incumbent firm approached such constraints, and used cognitive artifacts to transform its value chain into a collaborative ecosystem. It examines the case of a 3D printing-enabled shift to mass customization of orthopedic medical implants. The results demonstrate how firms can use artifacts to build a shared understanding across heterogeneous stakeholders as they explore and develop new open innovation models, and how this process can be managed flexibly to avoid adopting a locally (rather than globally) optimal strategy.
The conditions that exist during a crisis, including a sense of urgency, a focus on fewer priorities, and more latitude for experimentation, make it easier for organizations to innovate. Leaders can build and sustain a more innovative culture by fostering similar conditions even in the absence of a crisis.
Hoshin kanri (HK), or strategy deployment, has been an integral part of the company management practices of some of the most successful Lean-practicing organizations. The purpose of this note is to give a very quick introduction to how it has been successfully used in small and medium-sized value streams to inject strategic meaning and tactical understanding to operational strategies and improvement plans. Done well, HK is an extraordinary tool to help a team develop, adjust, and communicate strategy to meet robust, long-term goals.
N95 masks are an important aspect in the fight to prevent the spread of COVID-19 due to the virus's contagious nature. Coronavirus is a flu disease. It affects the respiratory tract of a person's body and causes difficulties in breathing. COVID-19 is a new strain of coronavirus that had not been previously identified in humans. Most people infected with the COVID-19 virus who are symptomatic experience mild to moderate respiratory illness, fever, and fatigue, and recover without needing to be hospitalized. However, there are cases wherein people are asymptomatic (i.e., not showing any symptoms) but still test positive for the virus and complicate attempts to stop its spread. This case introduces students to critical issues that occurred in the supply chain for N95 masks during the global pandemic. While many students will be familiar with the fact that supply chain disruptions occurred during the crisis, many will not know the specific details or why these disruptions occurred. The case can be used to illustrate the fundamental operational issues that occurred throughout the N95 masks' supply chain, discuss where improvements should be made, and emphasize the concept of supply chain resiliency.
Marco Marketing Consultants was a company based in Argentina with activities in several Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Mexico) and China, specialized in field marketing services mainly in the technology retail industry called 3C: computer, communication, and electronic consumption items. Dated at the end of 2014 and from the perspective of its president and founder Pablo Ceballos, the central question posed by the case is, what direction should Marco Marketing Consultants take? In order to do so, it is necessary to evaluate if the strategy developed by Marco since its inception was still competitive or if it should face drastic changes and start generating another type of strategic profile. The case describes the initial growth of the company since its creation in 1995, its subsequent international expansion, and the challenges that arose as the company grew, became more professional, and - simultaneously - the industry transformed and matured.
Founded in 1989, the Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Corporation Beijing (Ameco), the earliest and largest civil aircraft maintenance enterprise in China, was a joint venture between two of the world's largest airlines: Air China Limited (Air China) and Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Lufthansa). In response to a crisis in the domestic market after 2012, Ameco decided to enter the international market. After Ameco had considered several methods for implementing this strategy, it eventually formed a successful alliance with the Lufthansa subsidiary Lufthansa Technik AG (LHT). Ameco and LHT communicated with each other to solve existing problems and produced a successful design collaboration. In 2019, while this partnership was proceeding smoothly, the general manager of the business aviation modification department needed to decide on a strategy that would help the company also succeed in the areas of market development and technical capability.
Stitch Fix Inc. (Stich Fix), started by Katrina Lake in 2011, combined modern technology and online shopping with a retail clothing shopping experience. Customers subscribed to Stitch Fix and received boxes of clothing, shoes, and accessories based on individual style and preferences; a personal stylist was matched with each customer to personalize each box prior to shipping. A significant part of the company's value came from its unique value chain elements, including sophisticated algorithms that permeated all aspects of the company's value chain. However, in early 2020, the company was facing a significant challenge, with both Amazon Prime Wardrobe and Nordstrom Trunk Club entering the industry. How should Stitch Fix modify its business model to stay ahead of the competition and possibly expand its boundaries to other customer segments?
The Mahindra Truck and Bus Division (MTBD) is one of India's leading auto industries. Commercial truck brands such as Tata and Ashok Leyland capture a significant portion of the market share. In the case, we discuss the challenges faced by new commercial vehicle (CV) players such as the MTBD in synchronising supply with demand. The case brings out the supply chain nuances associated with truck manufacturing business, especially from a new entrant's perspective.
Founded in 1989, the Aircraft Maintenance and Engineering Corporation Beijing (Ameco), the earliest and largest civil aircraft maintenance enterprise in China, was a joint venture between two of the world's largest airlines: Air China Limited (Air China) and Deutsche Lufthansa AG (Lufthansa). In response to a crisis in the domestic market after 2012, Ameco decided to enter the international market. After Ameco had considered several methods for implementing this strategy, it eventually formed a successful alliance with the Lufthansa subsidiary Lufthansa Technik AG (LHT). Ameco and LHT communicated with each other to solve existing problems and produced a successful design collaboration. In 2019, while this partnership was proceeding smoothly, the general manager of the business aviation modification department needed to decide on a strategy that would help the company also succeed in the areas of market development and technical capability.