Employee overload is costly for organizations and individuals alike. But dual-agenda work redesign - which helps people work more effectively and in ways they can sustain - can reduce burnout, deterioration in performance, employee turnover, and other problems associated with overload, delivering benefits to both companies and their workers.
Pamela Jeffery, founder and chief executive officer of The Pamela Jeffery Group and the Canadian Board Diversity Council (CBDC), had worked diligently for nine years to improve diversity at the board level. While the CBDC aimed at improving diversity in general at the board level, its key focus was to improve the representation of women on corporate boards in Canada. Jeffery and the CBDC methodically carried out plans to involve stakeholders, establish processes, and deliver progress on their goals. Yet they faced a new set of challenges in 2019: while Canadian boards now included more women overall, and most board directors felt that their boards were diverse enough, men and women were still not equally represented at the board level. Jeffery’s challenge was to determine what the next steps could be in what seemed like a long journey of transformation at the board level.
In April 2019, the chief executive officer of Dubai-based Diamond Developers, reflected on his company’s progress in developing a business model based on sustainable living. In December 2015, The Sustainable City in Dubai had welcomed its first residents. The project had become a success story, both commercially and in terms of building a vibrant community of 3,000 residents from 60 countries, who were living a lifestyle characterized by social, environmental, and economic sustainability. After this initial and significant success, the chief executive officer wondered how to replicate the concept, both locally and internationally, to grow the company and to maximize the company's contribution to sustainability and to the fight against climate change.
In mid-2018, the president and chief executive officer of Siemens Canada was examining his options in executing Vision 2020+, a growth plan developed by the company's headquarters in Germany. One of the cornerstones of the plan was digitalization, both internally, among the company's sprawling manufacturing operations, and externally, among the company's industrial customers. How could Siemens Canada, as a North American subsidiary of a large multinational enterprise, add value to the global plan? And to do so, what skills and competencies would Siemens Canada need to acquire locally?
Following the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the US government set out to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement, threatening to revoke it if a new favourable deal was not reached with Canada and Mexico. Among other demands, the United States wanted to increase its access to Canada’s protected dairy markets and was calling for the Canadian dairy supply management system to be dismantled. But the health of the Canadian dairy industry depended on supply management. In negotiating the new agreement, Chrystia Freeland, the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Canada, needed to consider the balance of domestic interests in supply management with Canada’s international trade priorities.
In mid 2019, Mobiuspace, a Chinese Internet company, faced a new challenge. As a result of declining revenues from domestic mobile Internet markets, overseas markets offered new opportunities. In 2009, Snaptube, a short video aggregation and distribution platform that Mobiuspace offered as its main product, seized the opportunity to grow in emerging markets by creating localized and personalized video content. Despite the company’s initial success with its expansion strategy, Mobiuspace’s chief executive officer still needed to figure out how to achieve sustainable profitability and long term growth. In particular, he had to enhance users’ engagement and diversify the company’s sources of revenue. How would he achieve all of his objectives?
Collaborations between established firms and startups are increasingly considered an ingredient of corporate strategy. This article describes a startup collaboration model that has emerged in practice, a model that complements today's predominantly used engagement vehicles of corporate accelerators and corporate venture capital. Startup supplier programs are outside-in programs that enable firms to get access to innovations that increase competitiveness of products or productivity of processes by engaging with startups based upon supplier relationships. This article presents empirical data from companies that have run successful startup supplier programs, and it explores the firms' reasons for implementing these programs, identifies key elements of startup supplier programs, and determines how firms can run them effectively.
To stay ahead of the competition, firms must continuously learn from their customers and swiftly adopt those lessons to improve their products. A unit at Ubisoft, a leading game publisher headquartered in Paris, has established a three-pronged approach to drive product innovation based on three practices: data-driven exploration, data-augmented ideation, and data-informed validation. By establishing processes and capabilities for these practices and blending them in a portfolio approach to product design, they maximize the value generation potential of the data at their disposal. Product development in a variety of industries can benefit from the lessons of these data-oriented innovation practices.
This case describes the evolution of Lenovo from its origins in China in 1984 through the onset of the coronavirus crisis in early 2020. It focuses on four phases of growth, each bringing massive change and risk. Its most recent change puts the company at the intersection of globalization and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As challenging as these developments have been, the coronavirus, with its origins in China and worldwide spread, represents a huge new threat to Lenovo and potentially undermines the company's commitment to globalization. The company's supply chain was disrupted, and its exposure to Chinese suppliers raised important questions about the risks of such a base when trying to reach and compete globally. The case raises interesting questions: what does it mean to be a truly global company and are the benefits worth the costs? How can companies fully manage the complexities that emanate from the dual imperatives of globalization and technological change? More specifically, can Chinese technology companies flourish as insiders in the U.S. and Europe? At the same time, does globalization mean that the company is too American to thrive in China? And by extension, what are the longer term implications for Western companies?
In July 2019, the owner of Basmati House Supermart (BHS), a grocery store, entered into a six-month agreement to become a partner outlet of a large online grocery retailer in India. During the first two months, BHS acquired many new customers and also increased its customers' monthly purchase. However, the steep discounts and promotions used to attract customers to the business drove down the margins, while the customer churn rate increased. The store owner was particularly concerned about the continued use of discounts to attract new consumers, which could potentially transform his own loyal customer base into deal-seeking, less loyal, and online-promotion-driven buyers, thereby leaving BHS terminally dependent on the large online retailer to maintain its sales. The owner wondered whether he should renew his contract with the online retailer in January 2020, and if he did not, what his best course of action would be.
B case to case W13062 In March 2016, the associate finance director at Bevaco China (Bevaco), an American multinational firm in China, faced a tough decision. Over the past four years, she had worked diligently to shift her focus from managing work to leading people. She was assigned to work in a joint venture between Bevaco and Mask, a leading Chinese private enterprise, where she faced numerous challenges. A year later, she moved back to Bevaco and worked with a charismatic and visionary leader, who inspired her to further develop her leadership as she built a 50-member team. However, as the associate finance director was enjoying her progress in leadership development, the leader resigned and the team's work was to be outsourced. Amid this upheaval, she received an offer to work in a globalizing high-tech Chinese firm with the opportunity to work overseas. Was she ready for this opportunity? Could she overcome the challenge of a new company and lead others in a global context?
It was mid-March 2019 and General Mills had just announced its commitment to advance regenerative agriculture practices on one million acres of farmland by 2030. It was an ambitious initiative but Kevin O'Donnell, General Mills' global director for sourcing & operations sustainability, was focused on advancing this holistic method of farming in order to protect and enhance the world's natural resources. Still, he wondered if his company could do more. He kept thinking about the 2018 Responsible Business Summit in New York City where he heard former Unilever CEO Paul Polman speak about a novel concept called pre-competitive collaboration. O'Donnell thought this notion had the potential to enable an even more sustainable agricultural supply chain, not only for General Mills, but the entire cereal industry. Could he and his team successfully integrate pre-competitive collaboration into the regenerative agriculture initiative?
In July 2019, the owner of Basmati House Supermart (BHS), a grocery store, entered into a six-month agreement to become a partner outlet of a large online grocery retailer in India. During the first two months, BHS acquired many new customers and also increased its customers’ monthly purchase. However, the steep discounts and promotions used to attract customers to the business drove down the margins, while the customer churn rate increased. The store owner was particularly concerned about the continued use of discounts to attract new consumers, which could potentially transform his own loyal customer base into deal-seeking, less loyal, and online-promotion-driven buyers, thereby leaving BHS terminally dependent on the large online retailer to maintain its sales. The owner wondered whether he should renew his contract with the online retailer in January 2020, and if he did not, what his best course of action would be.
In March 2016, the associate finance director at Bevaco China (Bevaco), an American multinational firm in China, faced a tough decision. Over the past four years, she had worked diligently to shift her focus from managing work to leading people. She was assigned to work in a joint venture between Bevaco and Mask, a leading Chinese private enterprise, where she faced numerous challenges. A year later, she moved back to Bevaco and worked with a charismatic and visionary leader, who inspired her to further develop her leadership as she built a 50-member team. However, as the associate finance director was enjoying her progress in leadership development, the leader resigned and the team’s work was to be outsourced. Amid this upheaval, she received an offer to work in a globalizing high-tech Chinese firm with the opportunity to work overseas. Was she ready for this opportunity? Could she overcome the challenge of a new company and lead others in a global context?
This case compares leadership and team dynamics between the cockpit crews in two renown passenger airline crashes, twenty years apart: Air France 447 in 2009 and United 232 in 1989. The key dimensions of difference across the cases include organization and task sharing in the cockpit, leadership, the application of established procedures, ability to improvise to create new procedures, the type and quality of team communication, and the outcomes. Both flights encountered unexpected malfunctions; in one, teamwork and problem solving failed badly; in the other, the team collaborated extraordinarily well to try to solve the problem. The case discussion will focus on factors that enable effective teamwork under stress, the organizational conditions that lay the foundation for such teamwork, and the conditions under which dissent is vital to effective performance.
This case describes the history of Oriental Land Co. Ltd.'s (OLC's) Tokyo Disney Resort (TDR), its operations, the extent of vertical integration, and the challenges it faced in 2018 as OLC's chairman and CEO, Toshio Kagami, contemplated how best to deal with congestion in the park. As of 2018, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, the two parks that comprised TDR, were the only Disney parks not owned and operated by Disney. Instead, OLC paid royalties to Disney based on the parks' revenue (in yen). The parks were immensely popular, but OLC had begun to see lower customer satisfaction ratings in recent years as high attendance led to long wait times. Although it continuously added new attractions to TDR, the company now faced a dilemma regarding how to expand further, given the limited land available around the parks. Kagami also considered whether to focus on OLC's other businesses, such as hotels, and even its nascent agriculture business, which it used to grow food served in the two parks.
Detroit, Michigan, aka "The Motor City," is most known as the birthplace of most of the American classic automotive brands. It is a city filled with the rich history of the industrial age, the pride of American manufacturing, and of the soulful sounds of Motown music. It is also a place that more recently has become synonymous worldwide with rustbelt urban decay, characterized by abandoned factories, commercial buildings, and homes, soaring unemployment and homelessness, and a sense of despair since the city's declaration of bankruptcy in 2013, which led to its other nickname, "America's Warzone". It was a surprising place to find the headquarters of a new luxury brand. Shinola, a luxury watchmaker and purveyor of stylized, retro-chic, and hipster-cool products, had aggressive goals to grow to 75-100 stores and consumers and store employees, many of whom had never been to Detroit, would need to become familiar with the Shinola brand narrative. Recent expansions of the brand into lower price point timepieces and the hospitality sector would have to be monitored, and future brand extensions and brand partnership opportunities evaluated to support an evolving new luxury lifestyle brand positioning. As they continued to expand the Shinola brand into international markets, the brand's story, rooted in Detroit's imagery, history, and lore, might have to be reconsidered to appeal to non-American audiences. Finally, the company found itself the subject of legal and cultural critique. A "RETHINK SHINOLA" artist movement was questioning its commitment to Detroit. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission had recently fined Shinola for unfairly claiming that its products were "made in Detroit," putting its brand storytelling under the microscope.
Amazon has been unsuccessful in its efforts to develop a business in China. Even though Amazon was an early entrant into China's e-commerce space, its domestic rivals, especially Alibaba, created innovative business models uniquely suited for the conditions in China. Amazon's failure to adapt to the local conditions in China ultimately led to its exit from the country. Determined to learn lessons from this experience as it developed its business in India, Amazon made a number of innovations in its business model in India. By 2020, Amazon established a strong presence in India. However, the company faces a number of challenges because of changes in regulation that challenge its hybrid business model of both being a seller of its own goods and a marketplace for third party sellers, the rise of strong local rivals, and its own ambition to expand beyond top tier cities and upper middle class customers in India.
In this case, the CEO of A.P. Moller - Maersk, one of the world's largest container shipping companies, considers whether competition or collaboration is the right solution to tackle the industry-wide challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. While the shipping industry plays a significant positive role in global trade, it also has a negative impact on the environment due to immense greenhouse gas emissions. Should Maersk collaborate with other industry players through the Getting to Zero Coalition? If so, could Maersk maintain its leading position in the industry? This case study reviews the history, regulation, and impacts of the global ocean freight market and asks students to weigh the costs and benefits of competing versus collaborating to solve the industry-wide emissions problem. In the context of market-transformation, this case provides a unique example of a mature industry adapting to evolving environmental requirements.