The case discusses how cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin posed a threat to Visa Inc. (Visa). In March 2019, the Kroger Co., a leading retailer in the United States, was planning to accept cryptocurrencies from consumers as a mode of payment. According to Alfred F. Kelly, the chief executive officer of Visa, cryptocurrencies were an inefficient means of retail-related financial transactions, though the company invested in the research and development of cryptocurrency for corporate transaction purposes such as cross-border payments. Should Kelly consider cryptocurrency as a disruptive force in the retail sector? Should she focus more on the retail or the business to business sector for cryptocurrency-based transactions?
This public-sourced case describes the evolution of Facebook monitoring users' activity around what potentially offensive or disturbing material could stay posted and what should be removed. Following intense media and regulatory (e.g., Congressional) scrutiny, the company revised policies and reorganized content-review teams. The case offers an opportunity to debate a key question the company faced: What should platform governance look like? As Facebook faced an exponential growth in the number of user-generated posts daily, posts that contained harmful, inappropriate content also increased, raising the need for Facebook to devise a set of guidelines that were not only applicable across many different types of posts and situations, but were also perceived as acceptable by Facebook users. The tradeoffs a platform business makes between user characteristics, intent, outcome, and norms can be explored as students put themselves in CEO Mark Zuckerberg's shoes to redesign Facebook's platform-governance policies. Students will also have a chance to examine how certain platform-governance policies can subsequently impact Facebook's future strategy: for instance, the more Facebook got involved in curating content for its users-thus serving as arbiter-the more potential to shift Facebook from a tech business to a news publisher increased, thereby subjecting the company to a different set of regulations.
In 2019, Nadine Vogel, founder and CEO of Springboard Consulting, a firm that worked with Fortune 500 companies on issues related to disability and their workforce, faced the decision of the best path forward to grow her small company. Should she build more and better expertise to expand the topics she worked on with her current clientele? Or should she explore the possibility of moving into the new market of smaller businesses?
Bringing service transformation is always a challenge for any organization. this is not anymore dependent upon the bifurcation of business as into product selling or service selling. All successful businesses are finally customer centric and experience centric. Rather They are focused on how and what the customers feel about the organization for them to want to enter into long term relationships with that company. The case of Delhi International Airport discusses the challenges faced by an entrepreneur to bring his business philosophy and values int reality. physical infrastructure is the tangible component ; behavior, attitude, empathy of the people serving the customers are intangible and critical components. Policies, Processes , Structure and Strategies are the part of the organization design. This case revolves around the complexities Rao faced and then addressed service culture issues in the face of socio economic and policy hurdles forms the learning from the case. This case posses important questions about linking the three key factors, i.e. functioning of th airport, involvement of the private player, evolution of PPP policy in India, with the vital aspect of customer service experience in the Indian airports. The case highlights the complexities of the Indian business environment where service thinking and customer centric service design are largely lacking. It focuses on the entrepreneurs decisions to align the various stakeholders to create service experience for airport customers.
In early January 2019, the founders of STMNT (pronounced “statement”) a Canadian peer-to-peer clothing rental platform, were reviewing the performance of their venture. The sisters had formally launched STMNT in November 2018 and wondered whether they had implemented the right business model for their venture or if they needed to pivot. The rental transaction process was taking too long for customers and required too much of the founders' time to make scaling up a possibility. The sisters needed to take stock of their progress to date and chart the next steps for their venture.
In 2007, Trek Bicycles (Trek) entered the Indian market. Although Trek's market share in India was small compared to its global presence, India held an important position in Trek's global aspirations, and the country's potential for growth drove Trek to enter that market. The company strongly believed in innovation and in delivering value to customers through a bundle of services and schemes. Trek operated in the country through a partnership with an Indian distributor and in 2017 set up its Indian subsidiary. The company had a first-mover advantage with respect to the sale of super-premium bicycles in India, but in 2019, after more than a decade, how could the company increase its retail network and grow the community that was connected with cycling?
Nextdoor, striving to solidify its position as the leading global social media platform for neighborhoods, works to scale audience, geography, and revenue.
Opportunity Insights -- a non-profit that researches drivers of economic opportunity and develops policy solutions to help families achieve better life outcomes -- seeks to expand its impact.
Why are companies still so vulnerable to disruptive threats? The problem isn't that they don't have the right playbook. It's that well-intentioned leaders often downplay disruptive threats or overestimate the difficulty of response. In simple terms, they lie to themselves. This means dealing with disruption is not just an innovation challenge; it is a leadership challenge. Here's how to avoid the delusions about disruption and self-sabotage.
When faced with deep uncertainty, organizations often develop a habit of controlling for internal, known variables and fail to track external factors as potential disrupters. This practice lures decision-makers into a false sense of security, and it forces a narrow framing of the future. As a result, even the most successful businesses become vulnerable to disruptive forces that appear to come out of nowhere.
Technology innovation has created a new ethical paradigm. As companies specialize in delivering single components of complex systems, value chains are being reshaped across industries. Product interfaces are becoming standardized, and companies are profiting by perfecting narrow slices of the value chain. This rapid modularization has magnified the ethical implications of every business decision. As businesses work to delight consumers, they must also protect the public trust.
Capital markets facilitate the appropriate exchange of money. For lenders and borrowers, the interest rate is the primary pricing mechanism that markets use in this exchange. For borrowers deemed to have higher credit risk, lenders add a risk premium to the interest rate to compensate for higher risk. Credit risk is the risk that the borrower will default on (not pay) the payments agreed upon in the loan. Such risk-based interest rates ensure that money flows appropriately between lenders and borrowers. Credit analysis is the process of determining a potential borrower's credit risk. This note explores credit analysis and its relation to the credit-risk premium in interest rates.
As a strategist, you must decide for your firm what products to produce, what customers to serve, what geographies to operate in, and what activities to perform. This note on Corporate Strategy, which introduces the fifth module of the RC Strategy course, offers a perspective for thinking about how these questions can be addressed so that you can determine the scope of your firm across three dimensions (horizontal, vertical, and geographic), and, given the scope, manage it in the most effective manner.
In the first of three mini-cases on workplace mistreatment, "Casual Fridays Gone Wrong," the vice-president of compliance for a collections company faced the dilemma of how to deal with a complaint about a manager's comments. The incident raised challenges for maintaining a respectful and inclusive workplace environment. In the second mini-case, "Dial 911—Health Care in Distress," a nurses' union representative at a mid-sized urban hospital needed to respond to a patient's threat to take his complaints about negligence to the media; he planned to identify the individual nurses he claimed had provided negligent care, in part due to his race. In the third mini-case, "A Toxic Academic Environment," formal harassment actions have been taken against Professor Marybeth Gasman, holder of an endowed chair at the University of Pennsylvania.
This annually updated exercise assesses one’s exposure to the rest of the world’s peoples. A series of worksheets require the respondents to check off the number and names of countries they have visited whether for business, family or tourism reasons, and the corresponding percentage of world population which each country represents. The summary of a group’s collective exposure to the world’s people will inevitably be the recognition that together they have seen much, even if individually some have seen little. The teaching note provides assignments and discussion questions which look at: why there is such a high variability in individual profiles; the implications of each profile for one’s business career; and, what it would take for the respondent to change his/her profile.<br><br>For marketers, it underscores the need to gather greater base knowledge about opportunities in 211 countries spread across 8 regions: Africa; North America and Caribbean; South America; Western Europe; Eastern Europe; Central Asia and Indian Subcontinent; Middle East; Asia Pacific.
Eye-controlled communication device startup EyeControl was founded in Tel Aviv, Israel in 2016 by cofounders with a shared personal connection to locked-in syndrome-a neurological disorder that left sufferers cognitively sound, yet paralyzed, with the exception of eye movement. The team was committed to addressing the frustrations that accompanied the loss of communication associated with the condition. The EyeControl device was reasonably priced, required minimal set-up, and was the first screen-free solution available-thus easy to use around the clock and in any setting, compared with the costly, cumbersome, and complex to use existing solutions. EyeControl initially targeted the home-care segment of permanently locked-in individuals, estimated at more than 850,000 patients worldwide. Seeing the efficacy of their device, the cofounders contemplated targeting the hospital facilities segment, a far larger market. So far, EyeControl had raised $5 million from startup competitions, accelerator awards, grants, and angel and impact investors. Yet they also realized that their cash needs would be far greater if they were to now pursue the facilities market opportunity, requiring them to conduct costly clinical trials. They would have to seek funding outside of grants and impact funds, tapping traditional VC funds who would be interested in the $ 5 billion potential of the facilities market. The cofounders also wondered whether a strategic corporate partner was a potential alternative solution. As they were about to start clinical trials for their facilities product, they were still unsure whether they should start penetrating the facilities market or if they should concentrate all their efforts in the home-care market. Would it be possible to do both?
Karin Vardaman, a lifelong conservationist now committed to protecting wolves in the American West, finds herself unexpectedly allied with the one of the species' most fervent opponents: cattle ranchers.