The CEO of Coconut Calendar Corporation was dealing with the challenges of managing a growing scheduling software company. After attending a CEO 'boot camp', she realized that the company would be pushed out of the market by aggressive competitors if they did not grow more quickly. She accepted an offer of venture capital funding and mentorship from a well-known investor in Silicon Valley and started scaling the company at a rapid pace. The company served a broad range of business customers, from small businesses to large corporations across several industries, and started to diversify their product offerings to include data analytics and other application services. However, Coconut Calendar had experienced decreasing profitability while trying to grow revenue and serve a diverse customer base, recording their first ever annual loss. The CEO, and students, are faced with the challenge of developing a clear strategic and customer focus in order to be positioned to pursue another round of venture capital funding and successfully grow the business to maturity in a highly competitive marketplace. Issues related to small business growth and diversity issues in the technology industry are also explored.
This case showcases the deliberations of co-founder, Erin Kelly, CEO of Ottawa, Ontario based artificial intelligence (AI) driven market research start-up, Advanced Symbolics Inc. (ASI), along with her co-founder, Kenton White. Kelly and White must decide whether their vision for the firm's culture is the right decision for their growing firm seeking to disrupt the market. Having felt excluded in the technology industry as a female employee by the industry's cultural norms which did not support workforce diversity but rather "bro culture," Kelly and White's vision was to develop a culture of workforce diversity at ASI. They have repeatedly been told by industry experts that their cultural vision - where employees' diverse needs are accommodated - will not work. Tech experts argue that it is too difficult to manage a highly diverse group of employees, and that in order to attract top tech talent, start-ups like ASI need to offer the kind of "fun" environment that tech workers expect - precisely the kind that had made Kelly feel excluded. Experts warn Kelly and White that if they pursue their cultural vision, ASI will be disadvantaged in the tech talent wars - a huge problem for a fast-growing firm with the need for rare skills. Should Kelly and White stick to their vision, or should they heed the experts' advice to make their firm attractive by offering the kind of "fun" culture expected within the industry? Their personal preferences aside, which is the better cultural direction for their firm's long-term business success? Finally, as the firm grows by adding satellite offices and remote workers, how can they develop a plan to achieve a culture that is adaptive for their promising firm?
This case describes a complicated employee decision experienced by entrepreneur, Sana Remekie, in mid-2019 after she opted to mix business and friendship. Sana was the CEO of Conscia Corporation, a tech company focused on knowledge management software solutions (i.e., the integration of disparate content from throughout an organization into a single, useable information hub). Sana recruited Caesar Martinez away from his previous employer to work as one of her Solution Architects. Sana hired Martinez in part because of their previous working relationship and subsequent friendship. Unfortunately, Martinez's performance did not meet Sana's expectations. Consequently, Sana was torn between her need for strong employee performance at her startup firm, and her longstanding friendship and feelings of personal responsibility for Martinez's career and well-being. To resolve this dilemma, students are put into Sana's shoes as they formulate and defend a course of action for deciding how to manage Martinez.
By fourth quarter, 2019, Lisa Sedlar, CEO of Green Zebra turned her attention to revenue and margin growth for the Oregon-based, healthy convenience-store (c-store) chain she founded six years earlier. Feedback from investors convinced her to push her startup closer toward profitability, before expanding her three-store Portland operation. To help with her planning, Sedlar brought on a veteran of the local tech sector, Lenka Jelinek, to evaluate Green Zebra's operational readiness to scale. Jelinek's first assignment involved an evaluation of Zebra Cash, the customer loyalty program launched in 2013. As Sedlar explained, "Frankly, I haven't designed our loyalty card program well. My guess is there's more we could do there." Although LPs had become a growing trend among c-store competitors, Sedlar had nagging concerns about their cost effectiveness. She needed an objective analysis of the Zebra Cash revenue and margin potential, an assessment made more urgent by the fact that she had cash in the bank to fund operations only through Q1, 2020. Although Sedlar realized that an optimized LP wouldn't solve all her cash flow challenges, the question was whether it could relieve some of the short-term financial pressure. Beyond the cash flow impact, there was also the question of whether the Zebra Cash program had strategic value given future expansion plans.
This case is set in the education industry. The President of National Management University (NMU), a fictional university in Singapore, has asked a professor to assume the role of the Dean of Graduate Studies with a mandate to reverse the trend of declining enrollments at the university. The 20-year-old university was among the top five in the nation and had been offering graduate programs for a decade. It had begun to witness a decline in enrollments that was concerning from both a financial sustainability perspective and in view of the lofty growth targets set by the university board. To assist him in getting to the root of the current problem and finding a solution, the new Dean has asked for, and received, a large amount of information on the university's marketing and promotion activities and expenditures, its choice of media and venue for its spends, the speed of student enrollment and the effectiveness of its campaigns. He hopes the data will provide potential answers as to how to better spend university resources to increase student recruitment and achieve the growth targets.
Founded in 2008, Indiahikes provided professionally managed treks to individuals, groups, schools, colleges, and corporations across India. Indiahikes began with the objective to popularize trekking in India by promoting treks and providing essential information. Before long, the organization began organizing treks and developing a community of trekkers. By 2018, Indiahikes had the largest online trekking community and was India’s biggest trekking organization. Having reached a crucial point in its growth, the company needed a strategy to reach its full potential as the top community-led organization. However, it needed to earn adequate profits for continued investment into trek documentation and to develop trekking communities across India. Indiahikes also needed to address capacity constraints, market saturation, the retention of trained staff members, and conflicts with regional trek operators. Its growth path required exploring opportunities and making important decisions.
Launched in 2009, Australian-based Shoes of Prey allowed potential customers to design every detail of a pair of shoes. The co-creation strategy offered customers a sense of ownership and increased their perceived value of the shoes. The company initially focused on niche customers; however, as a result of increased business investment, it decided to scale its business to the mass market. This mass customization and co-creation strategy brought numerous challenges. The company’s inability to succeed in the mass market led to the co-founder suspending business operations in August 2018. Should she reboot the business with substantial changes, or was it time sell out?
In mid-2019, the managing director of Switz Foods Pvt. Ltd. (SFPL), which owned the Mio Amore bakery brand, faced the dilemma of how to tackle its competition. Under a franchise agreement from 1989–2014, the company had manufactured and sold cakes and other food products in Eastern India under the Monginis brand name. Due to the managing director’s innovative and emotion-centric market positioning, Monginis quickly became the number one bakery brand in Eastern India. In 2015, however, the franchise licence was discontinued with a condition that, for a period of three years, Monginis would not enter the territories where SFPL had held the Monginis franchise. In 2015, SFPL created the new bakery brand, Mio Amore. In 2019, the Monginis brand re-entered the East Indian market. The managing director’s dilemma was how to sustain Mio Amore’s leadership position, while countering the competition from a former brand.
In late 2016, the owner of RW Citrus & Juice, a business-to-business fresh juice company in Michigan, asked a management consultant to fill in as the company’s interim general manager. The owner initially brushed aside the management consultant’s early concerns about equipment maintenance, and it soon became apparent that the company lacked a basic structure for operations. In a company lacking operational organization, how could the management consultant make sense of the changes that the company required? How should he separate the “must-haves” in operations management from the “nice-to-haves” and communicate the needed changes to a reluctant owner?
Launched in 2009, Australian-based Shoes of Prey allowed potential customers to design every detail of a pair of shoes. The co-creation strategy offered customers a sense of ownership and increased their perceived value of the shoes. The company initially focused on niche customers; however, as a result of increased business investment, it decided to scale its business to the mass market. This mass customization and co-creation strategy brought numerous challenges. The company's inability to succeed in the mass market led to the co-founder suspending business operations in August 2018. Should she reboot the business with substantial changes, or was it time sell out?
In late 2016, the owner of RW Citrus & Juice, a business-to-business fresh juice company in Michigan, asked a management consultant to fill in as the company's interim general manager. The owner initially brushed aside the management consultant's early concerns about equipment maintenance, and it soon became apparent that the company lacked a basic structure for operations. In a company lacking operational organization, how could the management consultant make sense of the changes that the company required? How should he separate the "must-haves" in operations management from the "nice-to-haves" and communicate the needed changes to a reluctant owner?
In mid-2019, the managing director of Switz Foods Pvt. Ltd. (SFPL), which owned the Mio Amore bakery brand, faced the dilemma of how to tackle its competition. Under a franchise agreement from 1989-2014, the company had manufactured and sold cakes and other food products in Eastern India under the Monginis brand name. Due to the managing director's innovative and emotion-centric market positioning, Monginis quickly became the number one bakery brand in Eastern India. In 2015, however, the franchise licence was discontinued with a condition that, for a period of three years, Monginis would not enter the territories where SFPL had held the Monginis franchise. In 2015, SFPL created the new bakery brand, Mio Amore. In 2019, the Monginis brand re-entered the East Indian market. The managing director's dilemma was how to sustain Mio Amore's leadership position, while countering the competition from a former brand.
Founded in 2008, Indiahikes provided professionally managed treks to individuals, groups, schools, colleges, and corporations across India. Indiahikes began with the objective to popularize trekking in India by promoting treks and providing essential information. Before long, the organization began organizing treks and developing a community of trekkers. By 2018, Indiahikes had the largest online trekking community and was India's biggest trekking organization. Having reached a crucial point in its growth, the company needed a strategy to reach its full potential as the top community-led organization. However, it needed to earn adequate profits for continued investment into trek documentation and to develop trekking communities across India. Indiahikes also needed to address capacity constraints, market saturation, the retention of trained staff members, and conflicts with regional trek operators. Its growth path required exploring opportunities and making important decisions.
Jingdong (JD), the leading innovation-driven e-commerce company and retail infrastructure service provider in China, had rapidly expanded its enterprise procurement market. In the process, however, it faced major issues related to poor customer experience, the high cost of risk control for the value-added tax (VAT), and inefficient invoice management. In early 2018, JD (the supplier of invoices) collaborated with the China Pacific Insurance (Group) Company Ltd. (the receiver of invoices) to launch China's first electronic VAT special invoice, using blockchain technology to resolve traditional issues associated with paper invoices in the reconciliation of accounts and payments. In the process of developing the electronic VAT special invoice, the president of JD's enterprise business department, considered how to meet the demands of companies and taxation agencies in a safe, confidential, convenient, easy-to-use, and low-cost manner. What potential challenges might JD face in promoting of its electronic VAT special invoices?
In 2017, Dr. Gordon Morewood, chair of anesthesiology at Temple University Health System (Temple Health) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, faced a rapidly changing health care environment. Responsible for training anesthesiology residents and for all anesthesiology patient care across Temple Health's system, Morewood faced rising expectations for improving patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, and financial performance. Communication in health care had long operated in silos, and Morewood knew that significant changes in medical education and a shift toward cross-functional communication in health care were needed. A digital real-time performance feedback application (app) could help with the change process by building a growth feedback culture. The app could also use people analytics to identify the skills, knowledge, and experience most critical to the institution and assess competency development across the organization. The tool could help Morewood achieve the changes needed to meet the expectations in health care. Should he launch the app across the health system? If so, how would he introduce the new feedback culture and its use?
Blacbiblio.com, Inc., an educational materials start-up in Montreal, Canada, launched its first and only product, the ABCs of Canadian Black History Kit, in 2016. The product received strong positive reviews at the time of its launch, but its initial price of CA$2,500 per kit left it out of reach for most of its intended customers. The company founder, a historian and educational content creator, shifted to a flexible pricing strategy, offering the kits for as little as $400-$1,500 each, depending on the status of the buyer. By late 2018, she had sold fewer than 40 kits and held an excess inventory of over 100 unsold kits. Now she needed to decide whether and how to adapt her current approach to become successful in the current market. Should she consider other potential markets instead? Should she perhaps rethink the product design itself?
On January 8, 2017, Ronald Huggins, plant manager at AEL Mining Services Limited (AEL), needed to come up with innovative ways to keep his employees motivated. This need was driven by the downward trend of the local mining market. In 2011 and 2012, AEL had rolled out a major retrenchment, leaving employees with low morale and motivation, which in turn had affected performance levels. It became apparent that plant performance needed to ramp up. This was particularly important given the company's strategic plans to expand internationally and focus 80 per cent of its business, rather than the current 20 per cent, on the international mining market.
Top Cloud-Agri Technology Co., Ltd. (TPYN) was a Chinese high-tech company serving the agricultural industry. By implementing a digital business model, TPYN transformed from a traditional business model to a digital leader in the industry. To achieve further growth and develop an innovative digital business model, the chairman of the company put forward the new concept of "open, share, integrate, and win-win." This concept presented not only a rare opportunity for enterprise development but also a considerable challenge, as the required cross-industry, cross-domain integration meant an increased consumption of resources. Should the company look for collaborators within the government or with other larger platforms, or could TPYN continue implementing the new model alone?