In August 2018, a recent Canadian business school graduate was excited about starting her dream job at a global financial consulting firm headquartered in the United Kingdom. However, on her first day, she learned from discussions with co-workers that newly hired women (including herself) were offered lower salaries than men who were newly hired for the same positions. She later learned, in an onboarding session, that the company had a strict policy prohibiting pay discussions among employees. The new employee faced a difficult decision in considering what to do next: What were her responsibilities and options? How could she expect the human resources department to respond? Could her choices possibly put her or her colleagues at risk?
Ola Auto India (Ola) was the pioneer in cab aggregation services in India. In 2019, Ola needed to ensure that it remained the customer's first choice for autorickshaw (auto) booking. Ola had so far faced moderate competition from small players, but competition was increasing from Uber Technologies Inc. With a service that was traditionally chosen for its low cost and easy availability, customer loyalty remained a challenge for all players in the market. How could Ola ensure customer loyalty and maintain its leadership position when Uber was garnering a higher net promoter score than Ola?
Discusses some issues for instructors to consider when teaching on-line classes. Covers the topics of discussion questions, "blackboard" plan, document sharing, use of spreadsheets and frameworks, the role of teams, and grading.
This case aims to give participants an understanding of how Sterlite Power (Sterlite) successfully differentiated itself using technology in an otherwise traditional sector in an emerging economy. Sterlite deployed technological innovations to reduce inefficiencies in power transmission projects. The major challenges for the Indian power sector are the use of obsolete technology and high cost coupled with a low profit margin model. These make power evacuation difficult and inefficient, resulting in frequent power shortages in a country that actually generates surplus power. Although many private players had entered the power sector, there were no significant changes in the way projects were carried out. Realizing that products alone wouldn't improve its business prospects, Sterlite used technology as a disrupter and a differentiator to provide solutions in the power sector. The case shows how an Indian firm revolutionized project execution to get an edge in the Indian market. Having succeeded in India, the company turned its sights on the Brazilian market. The case invites participants to explore the following questions: What could be the possible challenges that lay ahead for Sterlite and how could it leverage its learning from India in Brazil? How challenging is it for companies to use technology as a point of differentiation and to monetize it in the long run, and in different markets?
This case introduces students to the large Brazilian mobile conglomerate, Movile, and its mobile food delivery subsidiary, iFood. It focuses on the experiences of these companies learning business lessons from Silicon Valley and China. In particular, the case discusses how the executive teams developed relationships with important companies and leaders in these markets to set up an open exchange of information.
PVR Limited (PVR), the largest premium film exhibition company in India, with more than 750 screens, launched its Accessible Cinema Program in December 2018. Supported by its top management, PVR developed a culture of social responsibility that went beyond compliance. The program aimed to make PVR’s cinemas accessible to people with disabilities and focused especially on providing content for people with hearing impairment, and visual impairment. PVR rolled out the program to 50 cinemas in the first phase, and the response from patrons was encouraging. However, rolling out the program to the entire chain would involve redesigning existing cinemas to make them accessible and would be operationally and financially challenging. Additionally, the success of the program was dependent upon the willingness of film producers to provide content suitable for visually- and hearing-impaired audiences. Although laws mandated the production of suitable content for people with disabilities, these laws were not consistently enforced. Making movie producers provide suitable content was not going to be easy. In 2019, now that the first phase of the accessibility program was launched, how could the company meet these continuing challenges going forward?
Harry Miller, the new CEO of a large and growing multinational transportation and logistics company, has asked Allison Freeman, his CHRO, to brief him on the impact that their off-site custom executive education program has had. In turn, the CHRO has enlisted Jack Drake, the program's faculty leader, to collaborate with her in responding to the CEO's request. Students are asked to step into the role of the faculty leader, who has formulated a general framework to do so, and must fill the framework with as many potential ideas regarding the impact as possible.
This note describes how the behaviors of competitive buyers and sellers interact to determine market outcomes-the price at which a product is sold, and the quantity of a product that is exchanged. It begins by defining supply, demand, and market equilibrium. It then derives firms' supply curves from its marginal cost curve, and demonstrates how the firm's optimal production decision depends on the market equilibrium price. Finally, it shows how different factors that affect the market also affect a firm's production decision.
In January 2020, the proprietor of Basmati House Supermart (BHS), a large grocery retail outlet in India, terminated a partner retailer contract with Springers, an online retail platform. The proprietor had an ancestral property, located in a high-footfall area of the wholesale market, that could be developed into a retail outlet. In the new outlet, the broad options were to replicate the current retail business, focus selectively on staples and do more wholesale, or only focus on rice and develop it as a brand for larger distribution. Alternatively, the proprietor could rent the new property, wind down the grocery business, and invest the money in a fitness centre. Each option required its own particular investments, competence, and marketing strategy, and all options entailed considerable uncertainty and risk. BHS was steadily losing money; therefore, the decision had to be made quickly.
In August 2019, Fair Trade Jewellery Co., a mid-size jewellery retailer based in Toronto, Canada, was wondering how to ensure that its customers received responsibly sourced gold and diamond jewellery. The company had already devoted considerable amounts of time, energy, and expense to develop a responsible supply chain. Its activities toward that goal had included various initiatives beyond jewellery retail, such as providing inventory financing for artisanal miners in the Democratic of Congo. After discovering that a key US partner along the supply chain may have not been following a clear chain-of-custody system in its refinery, the company was unsure how to proceed. Responsibly sourced gold was potentially being contaminated by other gold at the refinery, which led Fair Trade Jewellery Co. to consider opening its own local small-scale refinery. However, that initiative could mean considerable strategic risk and financial burden for the company. It could also have potential effects on its employees, who relied on the company for their livelihood. Did the company's ethical mission require vertically integrating to such a considerable extent?
The release of Tesla Inc. (Tesla)'s financial results in early 2019 made it clear that significant challenges lay ahead for the firm. While Tesla remained the market leader for electric vehicles in the global automobile industry, sales had dropped dramatically, and Tesla was once again losing money. Its recent launch of the Model 3 held great promise and added a key vehicle to its growing product portfolio, but customer complaints about late delivery were on the rise. As a leader of electric vehicles in the global automobile industry, which capabilities are most important for Tesla to further develop, and how broadly should the firm stretch its supply chain and service network? Were changes to the firm's strategy required in order to advance its mission to accelerate the world's transition to clean energy?
This case introduces students to Sandy Kurtzig, the founder and CEO of the ASK software company, and the first woman to take a Silicon Valley tech company public. It gives a brief background of the protagonist and then presents students with 4 different dilemmas from Kurtzig's experiences as an entrepreneur and investor.
The diffusion of digital technologies has enabled a notable transformation in the firms' boundaries, processes, structures, roles, and interactions. It is now clear that digital transformation is not just a traditional IT back-end process; rather it affects the organization as a whole, redefining strategies, entrepreneurial processes, innovation, and governance mechanisms. This permeation has led to the emergence of new ways of organizing firms' value chains and interfirm relationships, which now increasingly occur in digital ecosystems and marketplaces. The scope of transformation as well as the modalities of value co-generation and delivery are here used to introduce the content of this Special Issue of California Management Review on Digital Transformation.
Founded in 2012, Skillz offered a platform for mobile app developers to monetize skill-based games via prized tournaments. Skillz had over 20,000 registered developers that had created thousands of Skillz-powered games played by over 30 million registered users (gamers). A successful gamer could make hundreds of thousands of dollars playing competitive games of skill. The company had a gross marketplace volume of almost $1 billion in 2019 and over 250 employees primarily in San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon. CEO Andrew Paradise challenged his leadership team to explore options for accelerating growth.
In March 2017, the American fast food giant McDonald’s Corporation (McDonald's) launched an ambitious strategic plan, named the Velocity Growth Plan, with the intention of maintaining its dominance over competitors. As part of this strategy, McDonald’s wanted to retain its current customers, regain lost customers, and convert casual customers into more committed customers. To help accomplish these objectives, McDonald’s introduced delivery and mobile ordering services. The company also announced that it would remodel its stores, as part the Velocity Growth Plan. Two years later, in March 2019, McDonald’s acquired Dynamic Yield, a digital personalization platform that could be integrated into McDonald’s drive-through service, in-store kiosks, and mobile application. By early 2019, McDonald’s was the largest fast food company in the world, with approximately 37,855 restaurants across 120 countries, largely seen as the premiere fast food company in the industry. However, Dynamic Yield’s software provided McDonald’s with the ability to offer customers immediate recommendations, one-to-one messaging, and customer data management. How could McDonald’s best use Dynamic Yield to meet its ambitious growth objectives?