Beginning with an exploration of insurance player Ping An's evolution to contrast with HDFC ERGO's strategy adaptation to the Indian market, this case sheds light on HDFC ERGO's strategic shift towards a mindshare-centric ecosystem from its roots as a digitised insurance provider in India. The case starts with Ping An, which is perhaps the best-known successful example of an insurance-based multi-product (and multi-actor) ecosystem. It looks at Ping An's journey, emphasising its digital transformation, ecosystem expansions and technology integration. It then turns to HDFC ERGO, which aimed to create its own ecosystem, and considers the similarities and differences. Drawing parallels and contrasts with India's burgeoning startup ecosystem and the transformative India Stack, HDFC ERGO crafted unique strategic principles. It emphasised avoiding direct competition, offering tangential value, filling market voids and balancing mindshare with value. Utilising internal capabilities and market insights, HDFC ERGO focused on healthcare, leveraging data and digital infrastructure. The development of the 'Here' app exemplifies the company's strategic prowess, aligning healthcare solutions with customer preferences. The case illuminates HDFC ERGO's meticulous approach to tailoring an ecosystem strategy amid shifting market dynamics and technological landscapes, and shows how it built its multi-actor ecosystem in various verticals to support its multi-product ecosystem play. It showcases the company's adeptness in adapting strategies while embracing innovation, resonating with market needs to forge a unique path in the evolving digital insurance realm. This case study stands on its own, offering valuable lessons on strategic planning and execution in the rapidly evolving digital and consumer landscapes. However, when taught in conjunction with its sister case "HDFC ERGO: A product ecosystem built on mindshare" (LBS CS-24-009), students can gain a comprehensive understanding of both the macro-strategic vision and the micro-level steps that underpin HDFC ERGO's ecosystem approach. This complementary perspective enriches the learning experience, illustrating not just the 'why' and 'what' of HDFC ERGO's shift towards ecosystem building but also the 'how' of its implementation, which is what this case focuses on. This case sheds light on two sets of topics that are not covered in the previous case. First, it looks at the choices a firm needs to make as it builds an ecosystem: Which parts of it need to or should be built by itself?

Anuj Tyagi, Joint Managing Director of HDFC ERGO, is facing the challenge of transcending the traditional limitations of insurance interactions and establishing a significant presence in customers' minds beyond annual transactions. The case explores the context of the insurance industry in India before 2019, spans HDFC ERGO's history, exploring the impetus for digital transformation with an emphasis on "multi-product" ecosystems, the evolving regulatory landscape, market shifts, and the inception and strategies behind the Control N vertical - the spearhead of HDFC ERGO's digital innovation. The case delves into HDFC ERGO's pursuit of expanding its market presence beyond traditional insurance through an ecosystem play and illustrates one of the facets of industry convergence and the rise of digitally-enabled broad firms that span several sectors. The case focuses on Anuj, a key decision-maker in HDFC ERGO, as he is confronted with the need to enhance customer engagement (mindshare). The case then analyses HDFC ERGO's assessment of the healthcare and mobility sectors, examining opportunities for ecosystem expansion. This case can be taught independently or paired with its sister case, "From Ping An's inspiration to HDFC ERGO's journey: Building an insurance-based ecosystem" (CS-24-009) for a more in-depth analysis of the sequential steps HDFC ERGO took in this transformation. The present case focuses on the "what" and the linked case focuses on the "how".

This case study critically examines the evolution of the metaverse, interrogating its ascendancy, its perceived decline and the nascent indicators of its resurgence. Beginning with the concept's origins in science fiction, it tracks the metaverse's evolution through advancements in gaming and the growing interest of Big Tech, which saw potential in this convergence of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). The narrative captures the initial exuberance as investors and companies raced to stake their claim, buoyed by forecasts of a new era of digital interaction and economic activity. Looking at the nature of the sector and the ecosystems it fostered, the case considers what drove inflated expectations and subsequent market corrections. It explores the sobering challenges that faced the metaverse: technological limitations, user disillusionment and a harsh economic climate that eroded speculative investments. It discusses the strategic shifts by key players, from pursuit of domination to focused niches and smart partnerships, and the downsizing or redirection of metaverse initiatives in response to the market's reality checks. It also identifies emerging signs of vitality in the sector. It highlights how the integration of generative AI (GenAI) and targeted applications in gaming are rekindling interest, suggesting a potential pathway out of disillusionment. The case also provides the opportunity to track the emergence of multiple partly overlapping ecosystems and allows students to focus on the different roles and monetisation approaches that ecosystem participants take. It further allows us to see the upsides and downsides of more centralised ecosystems (like those driven by Big Tech) and more decentralised ecosystems (such as Web3) and consider how the ecosystem orchestrators try to leverage their strengths. The case can also be used to consider in what ways orchestrators benefit more broadly.

Five years after the debut of his Netflix series - and on the eve of the launch of its sequel - fashion designer Santiago Navarro finds himself and his brand, Artemis, at a critical juncture. Unless he develops a sustainable growth strategy for the business, Artemis is in danger of languishing as an Argentinian niche brand, lacking economies of scale and scope. The case outlines several potential paths for growth in terms of target audiences, price points and product mixes, with each strategic alternative requiring a different business model and all requiring the brand to be more clearly defined and codified.

The case describes the air-taxi industry at the end of 2023 as many companies vied to join the "eVTOL revolution": in January 2022 the Vertical Flight Society listed 600 designs from nearly 350 companies and innovators worldwide, although only about two dozen of the 600 concepts had made it to the flying-prototype stage. The industry was enabled by the convergence of technologies (including advances in electric propulsion, lightweight materials, AI, autonomous flight systems and batteries), propelled by unexpected social and geopolitical events that pushed the boundaries of drone and electric-proportion technologies. As a result of such advances, and fuelled by growing interest in the space on the part of the VC community, the global flying taxi market was valued by one analyst at around $3 billion in 2022 and was expected to be worth around $37 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.9% from 2023 to 2032.

The case, set in 2024, describes the transformation of Digital China, a large IT services company in China that had grown proactively and ambitiously into new digital services, including artificial intelligence (AI). The case briefly describes the company's background so we can see how it has evolved over the years alongside the major technology changes in the broader business environment. It then goes into detail on the shift to data services, cloud computing and AI offerings over the last five years. As well as describing what Digital China does and how it works, the case also showcases the vision and 'theories' of its CEO, Mr Guo Wei. Mr Guo has some interesting and provocative ideas about how the digital revolution is changing the nature of competitive advantage, and the case gives the students exposure to these ideas in a way that should stimulate debate.

From its humble beginnings as a paupers' hospital with a mission to care for the sick and poor, Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) has come a long way to become one of the largest and most important multi-disciplinary teaching hospitals in Singapore. Throughout its storied history spanning almost two centuries, it has stayed steadfast in its mission to serve the community, with a strongly ingrained "kampung" spirit in its staff. The past two years have not been easy for TTSH and the National Centre for Infection Diseases (NCID) which is under its administration. In January 2020, the hospital had been at the vanguard of Singapore's fight against COVID-19. The extra workload, coupled with stress caused by the crisis, meant that ensuring Collective Leadership and the well-being of TTSH's staff to stay the fight was essential. Surviving and thriving in a D-VUCA (Disruptive, Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world sometimes requires a leap of faith. Would collective leadership suffice to bring TTSH from good to great?

This research case study illustrates the change process adopted by r. Eugene Fidelis Soh and team from an Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) led the change in hospital management and practices. From the emergence of COVID-19 to the outbreak of the Delta variant, and to the sudden surge of cases in September 2021. TTSH has had to strike a difficult balance between battling against the unyielding and evolving coronavirus (on top of its high - and growing - caseload of patients in a large and ageing district) and preparing TTSH for massive organisational transformation as part of Singapore's National Healthcare Transformation as well as its own Vision for 2040. Anchoring on three key queastions for this transformation were asked: Why did TTSH need to undertake this transformation? What was the purpose, cause or belief underlying this movement? How might the hospital align its existing shared visions to its Vision for 2040? What would TTSH look like in 2040?

The year was 2021. At his Gurugram office in Haryana, India, Anil Chaudhry, Zone President and Managing Director of Schneider Electric India Private Limited (SEIPL), sat working on his keynote address for a conference. He had been invited to present a globally relevant business case on energy-efficient practices for digital transformation and their application in the larger business ecosystem. SEIPL was a subsidiary of Schneider Electric (SE). The French industrial giant SE was a global leader in energy management and industrial automation and delivered solutions spanning hardware, software, and services. SE was also among the Fortune Global 500. Chaudhry was keen on showcasing the company's success in implementing digital transformation. The SE audit team found that SEIPL's Hyderabad factory (in Telangana) pioneered automated tools in 2016 when terms such as "Industry 4.0" and "digitalization" were thin on the ground. The factory successfully converted a brownfield facility into a smart factory in 2019, implementing EcoStruxure, a platform for accelerating digital transformation.Chaudhry had to address multiple questions based on the learnings and takeaways from the implementation at Hyderabad: Why did the need for creating a smart factory arise? How did this lead to digital transformation across the value chain? Were such implementations scalable? Could other industry players replicate this success by converting their non-IIoT -enabled facilities into smart factories? What aspects did organizations need to focus on while planning for such a transformation?

The year was 2021. At his Gurugram office in Haryana, India, Anil Chaudhry, Zone President and Managing Director of Schneider Electric India Private Limited (SEIPL), sat working on his keynote address for a conference. He had been invited to present a globally relevant business case on energy-efficient practices for digital transformation and their application in the larger business ecosystem. SEIPL was a subsidiary of Schneider Electric (SE). The French industrial giant SE was a global leader in energy management and industrial automation and delivered solutions spanning hardware, software, and services. SE was also among the Fortune Global 500. Chaudhry was keen on showcasing the company's success in implementing digital transformation. The SE audit team found that SEIPL's Hyderabad factory (in Telangana) pioneered automated tools in 2016 when terms such as "Industry 4.0" and "digitalization" were thin on the ground. The factory successfully converted a brownfield facility into a smart factory in 2019, implementing EcoStruxure, a platform for accelerating digital transformation.Chaudhry had to address multiple questions based on the learnings and takeaways from the implementation at Hyderabad: Why did the need for creating a smart factory arise? How did this lead to digital transformation across the value chain? Were such implementations scalable? Could other industry players replicate this success by converting their non-IIoT -enabled facilities into smart factories? What aspects did organizations need to focus on while planning for such a transformation?

The case is set in September 2023, and talks about the energy transition of the oil and gas industry in context to ExxonMobil (Exxon), which has seen continued backlash from media and climate activists on its stance on climate change, strategies towards pivoting its core business towards more sustainable practices and moving away from fossil fuel energy that contributes significantly to global warming. While many oil and gas companies have increasingly opted to investing in renewable forms of energy, Exxon has instead focused on investing in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, and other alternate forms of energy like hydrogen and biofuels. Exxon had also introduced Net Zero pledges, but industry analysts continued to question the company's stance and strategies and its persistent focus on oil and gas. Was chasing Net Zero the right strategy for Exxon moving forward? Given its predominant involvement in oil and natural gas, was it strategic to persist in prioritizing oil demand alongside lower emission initiatives and transition investments? Was its existing strategy sufficient to help the conglomerate reinvent itself in a competitive and rapidly changing energy market?

The case traces the roots of culture at Ganga Hospital, a trauma care center in Coimbatore, an industrial hub in South India. The hospital was founded by an anesthetist with his resourceful wife. Their sons trained overseas with legends in plastic and orthopedic surgery, and returned home. Given the triad of specialties within the family, trauma care emerged as a focus for the hospital. As directors and expert surgeons, the brothers established a core team, and carefully built a sustaining culture at the hospital. Culture emerges in a hospital setting from the attitudes of employees towards each other, their shared values, and governance structures. This culture impacts patient safety and outcomes. The case begins by contrasting the transactional principal-agent model of culture with that of pro-organizational stewardship. The RBV framework helps administrators who wish to make their staff valuable and inimitable. The case provides examples of stewardship by the directors of Ganga Hospital as well as its senior leadership. A few tenets form the threads of shared thinking at Ganga: a spirit of Ubuntu, collective patient ownership, a healthy hierarchy based on mentorship, delegated decision making, and so on. In the natural progression of the hospital, Ganga has gone beyond its focus on clinical excellence to establish academic and research pillars. This has helped the hospital nurture its homegrown talent, as well as train doctors in the streams of anesthesia, plastic, and orthopedic surgery, the triad of disciplines constituting trauma care. The case concludes by highlighting the societal orientation of the hospital with numerous examples.

Supplements the (A) case, 824020. Following on the negotiations detailed in the Miracle Therapeutics (A) case, Beth Sharp and Jennifer Brilliant from Miracle Therapeutics face new challenges with their company's funding and intellectual property (IP) after several missteps. The company and its young CEO are at a crossroads and must solve the challenges faced by many early-stage life science companies. The case follows how they navigate these issues to set Miracle on the right course.

In January 2024, Kara Nortman, Julie Uhrman, and Natalie Portman, the founders of Angel City Football Club (ACFC) were developing the club's first three-year strategic plan. Founded in 2020, ACFC had a star-studded investor group, including Portman and celebrities such as Eva Longoria, Jennifer Garner, Billie Jean King, and 13 former players from the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (USWNT). As outsiders to professional sports, the all-female founding team had rewritten the playbook for how to build a sports franchise by applying lessons from the tech and entertainment industries. They had harnessed digital platforms to establish and cultivate a global brand. Unlike typical sports franchises that built their teams and track records over many years before extending their brand beyond a local base, Angel City had inverted the model, generating as much global as local interest in the club within the first three years. ACFC's success was reflected in its estimated private market valuation of $180 million, the highest in the league. But perhaps equally important to ACFC, the club had made a positive impact on its local community and had started to bend the curve toward greater pay equity in women's sports-the club's ultimate goal. The founders knew there was much more to do to capitalize on the club's momentum. There were opportunities to build the brand further globally and to build out fan engagement and membership in the mobile app, but these would require investments in digital content and production, CRM systems, and e-commerce. There were also opportunities to build the "on-field product" (team and facilities) that would demand budget allocation to training facilities, the field, coaching staff, and medical rehabilitation facilities and staff. The founders weighed the most effective ways to build value for the franchise. Was it better to allocate the incremental budget dollar to investments in digital brand building or to investments in the on-field product?

In late November 2023, OpenAI's new board of directors took stock of the situation. The company, which sought to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI)-computer systems with capabilities exceeding human abilities-was looking to regain its footing after a chaotic leadership and governance crisis that played out a week earlier. The previous board had stunned observers by firing CEO Sam Altman and removing him from the board for unspecified reasons. Days later, Altman was back as CEO, directors resigned, and a new three-person board formed with Bret Taylor, Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo, the only continuing director. The new board of directors faced an urgent set of issues-around OpenAI's governance, how to build out the board, AI ethics and safety, and their relationship with a CEO one of them had helped fire. Their quandary was complicated by OpenAI's unique mission to create AGI to benefit all of humanity and by its unusual structure as a non-profit controlling a for-profit entity. The AI it sought to develop had the potential to be world-changing-for better, or for worse-and the world was watching closely as the board sought a path forward.

Founded in Hyderabad, India in 2019, Inkpothub is India’s first digital media platform to offer researchers, scholars, and academics a forum for sharing success and experience stories. The platform allows users to share their journeys to promote research as a career, help researchers make informed career choices, and avoid common pitfalls. Inkpothub also creates, curates, and shares content, information, and knowledge to promote management scholarship and research. The platform connects users with scholars in major Indian academic institutions through content, mentorship programs, courses, and workshops. Inkpothub facilitates high-quality research output and works closely with institutions across the country to promote their doctoral programs to prospective students.<br><br>Inkpothub’s co-founder and current sole owner is Anita Sharma, India’s first woman skydiver with a disability, who is also an entrepreneur with a doctorate from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore. Sharma has worked as professor at IIM, Amritsar and has been a keynote speaker, among other roles she has held. In April 2020, Inkpothub’s co-founder Nishan Singh left the company for personal reasons, leaving Sharma to lead the company alone and face the impact from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. With a difficult business environment for all businesses across all countries, Sharma was considering three potential options for the future: sell the business to regain her investment in the company, find a new partner to grow the business and share the risks and revenues, or continue to run the business on her own.

This classroom exercise is designed to guide students through the steps of launching a successful project team. It is ideally implemented at the beginning of a team project to help students get to know their teammates; build a better understanding of the knowledge, skills, and experiences that each team member brings to the project; and set the ground rules for effective team functioning over the course of the project. This exercise provides practical tools for building strong, cohesive project teams, helping to set the stage for collaborative success in real-world scenarios.

In June 2023, the director of corporate communication and digital services for Khalil Fattal et Fils SAL (a subsidiary of Fattal Group) was tasked with presenting a strategy for the company’s online activities. The family business was a fourth-generation diversified distributor of a large variety of products and many other items by well-known brands headquartered near Beirut, Lebanon. The director had started to explore online sales platforms after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, which was soon followed by a major political and economic crisis in Lebanon. The director was wondering which of two potential strategies she should present to the board of directors. She could recommend a B2C strategy to strengthen the company’s retail business or a B2B strategy to avoid potential conflicts among the company’s various independent retailers. The director had to make a decision before the next board meeting.

Founded in Hyderabad, India in 2019, Inkpothub is India's first digital media platform to offer researchers, scholars, and academics a forum for sharing success and experience stories. The platform allows users to share their journeys to promote research as a career, help researchers make informed career choices, and avoid common pitfalls. Inkpothub also creates, curates, and shares content, information, and knowledge to promote management scholarship and research. The platform connects users with scholars in major Indian academic institutions through content, mentorship programs, courses, and workshops. Inkpothub facilitates high-quality research output and works closely with institutions across the country to promote their doctoral programs to prospective students.<br><br>Inkpothub's co-founder and current sole owner is Anita Sharma, India's first woman skydiver with a disability, who is also an entrepreneur with a doctorate from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore. Sharma has worked as professor at IIM, Amritsar and has been a keynote speaker, among other roles she has held. In April 2020, Inkpothub's co-founder Nishan Singh left the company for personal reasons, leaving Sharma to lead the company alone and face the impact from the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. With a difficult business environment for all businesses across all countries, Sharma was considering three potential options for the future: sell the business to regain her investment in the company, find a new partner to grow the business and share the risks and revenues, or continue to run the business on her own.