Leaders must engage with the issue of racism and discrimination, both because of its effect on employees and in order to demonstrate their genuine commitment to diversity and human rights. Here are five actions your organization can take right now to contribute to addressing the national issue of racism and help your employees cope.
The United Nations Development Programme focuses on solving the world's most complex problems, such as poverty and public health crises. Businesses can gain much insight from this sprawling U.N. agency, which has built one of the worlds' largest networks of accelerator labs. Here's what it has learned along the way and how some companies are starting to adopt similar models.
Companies that provide traditional products and services can harness IoT sensors and data to create value and generate new revenue through platforms. Before deciding how to proceed, they must assess their ability to collect sensor data, the data's value, and their ability to orchestrate data exchanges among users.
Data exchanges platforms where individuals and organizations voluntarily share data enable third parties to gain insights they couldn't otherwise access, with downstream benefits for consumers. To enhance and capitalize on the value generated, managers must become familiar with the unique features of data as a factor of production.
Launched in 2010, CredEx Fintech Co. Ltd. (CredEx) operated until 2017 as a mobile credit platform, connecting lenders and borrowers in the Chinese small- and microcredit market. In 2017, the Chinese government introduced a regulation to address misconducts in the credit market. As a result, CredEx needed to transform by utilizing mobile credit technology to enable and support licensed financial institutions to explore mobile credit markets. In 2018, however, this change posed many challenges, such as how to add a new business model that served enterprise consumers as well as how to manage dual business models.
On May 2, 2019, So-Young International Inc. (So-Young) became the first Chinese Internet-based company in the cosmetic surgery sector to be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. With effective use of the Internet and mobile devices, So-Young provided a one-stop resource that allowed consumers to access information about cosmetic treatments, search for and purchase cosmetic surgery services, and benefit from peer and professional support during recovery. With its service, So-Young had positively transformed a fast-growing Chinese cosmetic surgery market that was lacking transparency and trustworthy information. The company had used a process of enterprise business model innovation to build its brand image, expand its audience, and engage the cosmetic surgery industry value chain. While the process had been successful, So-Young faced competitive and internal challenges that it needed to overcome to maintain its leadership position and grow future prospects.
In February 2020, Time Out's chief executive officer Julio Bruno is evaluating the strategic direction of the company. Over the span of five decades, Time Out - the global media and entertainment brand - had gone from a self-published counterculture publication in London to a leading authority on the arts and culture, food and drink, music, and nightlife scenes in hundreds of cities around the world. However, the rise of the internet meant fundamentally rethinking the type of content Time Out offered, and their historical reliance on media-generated revenue put them in a precarious position amidst an industry-wide "media apocalypse." To maintain relevance and diversify their revenue, the company launched Time Out Market, a collection of sleek food halls that housed between 14 and 32 restaurants and quite literally brought the Time Out Magazine to life. As a self-described "platform-agnostic" brand, the move marked Time Out's transition to "phyigital" (physical + digital) business, and promised the possibility of synergies between the Media and Market divisions. They initially opened Markets in six cities, with a long-term plan to expand much further. However, strategic questions loom. How should Time Out manage its global brand? How could they ensure that Media drove customers to the Markets, and vice versa? More existentially, what was the role of their legacy Media division going forward?
Château Lafite Rothschild produces some of the world's most expensive wine, making the product an attractive target for counterfeiters. Fighting these counterfeiters has proven difficult for the Château as the traceability in the wine supply chain is insufficient and stakeholders have different interests and capabilities in identifying fake wine. As traceability is the key to preventing counterfeit wines from entering the wine supply chain, how to use advanced technologies to fight counterfeiters has received increasing attention. Besides existing technologies such as barcodes, Quick Response Codes (QR codes), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), and Electronic Product Codes (EPC), blockchain as an emerging technology has also come into play. The case provides an opportunity for students to understand the benefits and limitations of using different technologies, especially the emerging blockchain technology, to improve traceability in the supply chain. Students will learn how to assess the feasibility of using blockchain in supply chain management and discuss different blockchain strategies.
The case captures the high-profile takeover of KUKA, the German industrial robotics gem, by the world's consumer appliances leader, the Midea Group ("Midea") in 2016. Against China's national agenda of Made In China 2025 ("MIC 2025"), the acquisition plays well to the narrative in the country, but it raised scepticism across Europe and in North America. Discussion will focus on examining the value chain of the two companies to identify areas of new value creation. The objective is to provide a canvas for students to explore strategies for growth, for competitive advantage, and for market leadership. Through the discussion and analysis, students will come to grasp the set of complex challenges facing a Chinese company on a cross-border M&A. The case also exposes the cultural differences between China and the developed economies, particularly in management culture and the culture for innovation, and provides the context for discussions on these issues.
In 2013, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) published the Land Transport Master Plan 2013, where additional foci were placed on improving commuters' experiences in the first and last legs of their travelling journeys. The LTA actively promoted the theme of "active mobility" where the use of bicycles and personal mobility devices (PMDs) were encouraged as a means of transport over short distances. Due to the affordability and conveniences of PMDs, the population of PMD users grew steadily in Singapore over the next three years. The boom also saw an uptake on PMDs in the food delivery service industry as service providers saw PMDs as an efficient and cost-effective means of transport in the area-of-operation. The increased PMD traffic on the shared footpath, however, resulted in a rising trend of accidents between PMD users and pedestrians. Voices of dissent swelled and concerned Members of Parliament (MPs) continuously highlighted the issues on safety and control of PMDs during Parliamentary sittings. Consequentially, the Singapore government announced on 4 November 2019 that PMDs or e-scooters would be banned on all public footpaths. The announcement caught many PMD users by surprise as the campaign of "active mobility" promoted actively by the government barely took off six years prior. What are the change processes that were carried out and what were some of the communication barriers affecting this change in policy?
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?
Bang Si-Hyuk ('Hitman Bang') is the founder and co-chief executive officer of Big Hit Entertainment, the company behind BTS, a 'K-pop' band that has found unparalleled success around the globe-a remarkable feat given that most of their songs are in Korean. It is March 1, 2020. With its latest album, the band has now scored its fourth chart-topping album in the U.S. in less than two years. The band's popularity has been extremely lucrative: by some estimates, the BTS ecosystem accounts for a staggering $4.9 billion of South Korea's GDP. While K-pop has been dominated by three large companies-SM, YG, and JYP-since the mid-1990s, BTS Bang arguably has created a K-pop phenomenon that is more global than any act the 'big three' have ever overseen. And whereas K-pop is traditionally associated with long-term, exclusive contracts between companies and their acts that pay the talent relatively modestly and give them little control, Bang seeks to foster a more balanced relationship with his superstar act. Is BTS well-positioned to sustain its success? Can Big Hit replicate that success with the select few other acts in its portfolio? And what does that say about the future of K-pop, and the manner in which music companies will manage the relationships with their talent?
This is an abridged version of "MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?" HBS Case No. 416-004. Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015 to 200 stores by the end of 2016, and while the two believed that MOD could manage this growth from an operational standpoint, they wanted to make sure that MOD's culture was sufficiently strong to survive this rollout. The company had developed a strong culture, and the Svensons did not want MOD's core values and philosophies to be compromised as it rapidly expanded. To that end, they considered what the company needed to do in order to protect its core culture. Should it put rigid safeguards in place or trust that MOD could successfully scale its culture by hiring the right people and helping them develop as employees? The Svensons also discussed the possibility of an IPO at some point in the near future; what would this mean for its ability to stay true to its core values?
By 2020, Umesh Shah could rightly be proud of what he and his team had accomplished over the last eight years to capture white space consumers, i.e. those consumers that Unilever operating units had progressively labelled non-core or new groups created by emerging megatrends, such as globalization and digitalization. Unilever International UI was created with the mandate to create the capabilities to reach out to these consumers and re capture them for the Group. It quickly proved its case when it doubled the turnover it had inherited in less than four years. In a second phase, it doubled it again, reaching a turnover of €1 billion in 2019, ahead of plans. UI's strong performance was acknowledged within Unilever when it won the prestigious Unilever Global Compass Award in 2019. UI was now preparing to embark on the next phase of its journey, labelled UI 3.0, with the goal of again doubling its turnover to €2 billion. Three areas were singled out for attention:(1)making a strong business case for the market potential;(2)building the capabilities to scale by investing further in digital marketing and the partner network; and(3)maintaining and even enhancing the unit's entrepreneurial culture, ensuring motivation and proper compensation for its intrapreneurs. Getting to €1 billion in sales had not been easy but doubling it again would increase UI's complexity by an order of magnitude. How could UI keep pace and remain entrepreneurial while at the same time maintaining its strong governance and control systems? intaining double digit annual growth would require focusing on ever-larger opportunities and their inherent complexities, and placing larger bets, some of which would definitely fail. Was UI ready to cope with larger failures? And what about the Unilever mothership? It relished the unit's success, but would it still be there in difficult times? Umesh knew that UI's past achievements only earned it additional runway; he and his colleagues could not be
Managerial and academic literature provide only limited guidance on how to drive the digital transformation of sales. This article presents a model for in-depth analysis of sales processes, goals for each process in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, and a structured set of digital responses. For managers, it provides actionable guidelines on how to drive the digital transformation of sales, a large set of inspiring examples, and an international benchmarking opportunity.
In December 2019, a member of a fantasy hockey league had to decide whether to trade away his top talent in exchange for draft picks in the following year’s fantasy draft or to continue to compete for a position in the playoffs. If he traded his top players, he would forfeit his chances at competing for a championship; however, this move might put his team in a better position for the following year’s fantasy hockey season. He had access to the league’s historical data to help determine the likelihood of his team making the playoffs. He wanted to conduct an analysis to make an informed decision grounded by numbers.
India’s Economic Survey 2016–17 proposed a gradual implementation of the concept of universal basic income (UBI) as the fastest way of providing a long-term solution to poverty. Large-scale inequality and poverty, along with huge misallocation and wastages in the existing welfare schemes, made India a perfect ground for experimenting with UBI. Though the rapid expansion of Jan Dhan–Aadhaar–Mobile infrastructure was expected to smoothen the execution of UBI in India, there were looming concerns about implementation of the program, fiscal feasibility, and the questionable effectiveness of UBI’s impact on poverty alleviation.
Tea Connect, a chain of five tea cafés in India, had ended 2019 with sales revenues of ₹48.1 million. The co-founder of Tea Connect had the ambitious target of opening 20 cafés and achieving sales revenues of ₹200 million by 2020. The co-founder planned the renovation of the cafés to improve the speed of service, but he also wanted to launch Tea Connect–branded consumer packaged products. Three franchising offers for stores in Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Mount Abu were also under consideration. He was wondering whether renovation would help to enhance the customer experience and whether this was the right time to launch consumer packaged goods. Also, was it the right time to explore the franchise route of expansion?