In the summer of 2019, Mike Klingensmith, CEO of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Twin Cities metro region's largest newspaper, reviewed subscription trends and plans for future experimentation. The newspaper industry across the U.S. had suffered a steep decline for the previous several decades as digital offerings supplanted print subscriptions. Under Klingensmith's leadership, the Star Tribune had fared better than many papers, emerging from bankruptcy with a robust newsroom and with print profitable and digital growing. But given ongoing shifts in consumer media habits, flat EBITDA was still the best-case scenario that the Tribune could reach for. To meet this goal, Klingensmith and his team had put in place new digital offerings and had developed a number of creative additions to the print paper to offset subscription declines and print ad losses. Klingensmith believed that the plans they had put in place would allow the paper to survive in the new news landscape of the 21st century, but as he prepared to meet with the paper's owner, a local, family-owned holding company, he wondered how confident he could be in his forecasts.
This case, set in May 2019, details the launch strategy of the German automobile company AUDI AG (Audi) for its model A8 sedan, the world's first Level 3 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) conditional automated vehicle. A Level 3 vehicle uses technology and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms derived from advanced programming to control itself under specific conditions, enabling the human driver to take their eyes off the road and their hands off the steering wheel. Given the fast-paced nature of technology development and the emerging status of the autonomous vehicle industry, this case provides several class discussion points, including first-mover advantage and influencing technological standards in an emerging industry, the ethical implications of technology development and the programming of autonomous vehicles to make decisions, and the role of government regulations and customers in autonomous vehicle programming. Further discussions could address the development of smart cities and related technology, the data privacy issues of autonomous vehicles, the decisions of an established company to develop a risky technology, and future international market entries with these vehicles.
La Maison Simons was a successful 178-year-old, family-run fashion retailer with 15 locations across Canada and over CA$500 million in sales in 2018. On September 6, 2018, the president and chief executive officer (CEO), supported and approved the launch of a new marketing campaign featuring brassieres named after historic Canadian women. One of those women was the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Beverley McLachlin. Within hours of the launch of the marketing campaign, La Maison Simons's social media feed erupted with comments from angry users who viewed the campaign as objectifying and sexualizing iconic Canadian women. McLachlin was also upset, the company having named one of the bras after her with her permission. Following a phone conversation with McLachlin, the CEO issued a formal apology and destroyed all materials related to the campaign. At McLachlin's request, the company also became involved with fundraising for a women's shelter. The CEO, who was embarrassed by the marketing campaign and quickly took responsibility for his mistake, was concerned that he had tarnished the company's brand. Had he done enough to redeem it? What more could he do in the short and long term to improve the company's reputation? What had he learned from this disastrous marketing campaign?
Mindtree Limited (Mindtree) was promoted by a group of first generation entrepreneurs and had established itself as a successful digital business company. Larsen & Toubro Limited (L&T), a successful conglomerate primarily in the business domains of construction and engineering, was looking to increase its footprint in information technology services. In 2019, L&T acquired more than 20 per cent stake in Mindtree and sought to increase its stake to 66 per cent by acquiring shares in the open market and making open offers to shareholders. Though Mindtree's management and promoters were very much opposed to this takeover attempt, the company's ability to keep a determined acquirer with deep pockets at bay would not come easy. The promoters of Mindtree, who had nurtured the company for the last two decades, faced the real threat of losing management control to L&T, the large and aggressive corporate group.
Ronds Science & Technology Incorporated Company (Ronds) was a leading smart solutions provider in China's machine condition monitoring market. Since its establishment, 10 years earlier, the high-tech company's monitoring and diagnostic solutions have been implemented across various industries, with the strongest foothold in the wind energy industry. However, the co-founder and chairman of Ronds observed that most Chinese industrial enterprises were slow in adopting technology in the area of maintenance and repair, and long sales cycles had led to Ronds missing its 2016 sales target. News of the Chinese central government's plans to redistribute wind energy projects across China to new provinces also followed. Given Ronds's weak profitability performance and the recent change in government policies, the company had to consider whether it should focus on further penetrating the wind energy market or expand to other industries. As either approach had its own challenges, the cofounder and his senior management looked to identify the best growth strategy for Ronds to remain competitive in the industry 4.0 era.
Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy's founders faced a series of decisions. Handy was an online platform business that enabled customers to book appointments with cleaners at a convenient time and check the cleaner's ratings. Started in 2012 after the founders struggled to find trustworthy, affordable cleaning services while MBA students, by 2015, Handy enjoyed considerable success. Handy was one of the emerging platform companies in the gig economy that connected customers to service providers and sought to disrupt everything from transportation to grocery shopping to deliveries. Like many of these companies, Handy classified service providers as 1099 independent contractors, rather than hiring them as W-2 employees. Doing so often meant lower labor costs for companies and greater flexibility for workers. The companies' reliance on contractors was controversial. Workers, some argued, displayed all the marks of employees - they performed work that was integral to the companies' business and companies exercised control by telling them which jobs to accept and where and by using ratings systems to influence behavior. Facing two misclassification lawsuits of their own while still pushing toward profitability, Handy's founders must decide how to respond.
Beginning in 2017, technology (tech) company Google faced a series of employee-relations issues that threatened its unique culture of innovation and open communication. Issues included protests surrounding Google's contracts with the U.S. government, restrictions of employee speech, mistreatment of contract and temporary workers, allegations of sexual misconduct and gender inequality, and claims of retaliation against labor organizing. While Google employees felt an obligation to dissent against morally questionable practices, embodying the company's informal motto "don't be evil," the company struggled to respond to employees' concerns while preserving its unique culture.
This is a supplement to the People Analytics at Teach For America (A) case. In this supplement, situated one year after the A case, Managing Director Michael Metzger must decide how to apply his team's predictive models generated from the previous year's data.
For years, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz - a small, New York City law firm - has consistently boasted the highest profits per partner and one of the highest "prestige" ratings among U.S.-based law firms. The firm has remained loyal to a distinctive strategy ever since its founding in 1965. Whereas most law firms have multiple offices, seek long-term retainer relationships with clients, operate across multiple services, and bill by the hour, Wachtell Lipton operates from a single location, offers legal services on a matter-by-matter basis, focuses on transactional work (primarily M&A advisory), and value bills for its services. Despite its extraordinary success, as the legal services market evolves and the firm's name partners, 87-year-old Herbert Wachtell and 88-year-old Marty Lipton, approach retirement, questions arise about whether Wachtell Lipton's magic formula will continue to yield extraordinary results in coming years.
In early 2018, the chairman and chief executive officer of FOTILE, based in Ningbo, China, announced a change in the company’s mission statement from “Enable people to feel better about their homes” to “For the happiness of millions of families.” The previous year had seen impressive growth, with sales exceeding ¥10 billion. After only 22 years in operation, FOTILE had become a leading brand, comparable to such prestigious names as Siemens, in the high-end sector of kitchen appliances in China. More importantly FOTILE was hailed as a distinct enterprise, driven by a grand vision, a unique mission statement, and core values based on Confucianism. The FOTILE Confucian Way was embraced with enthusiasm by its employees and close business partners, and was broadly recognized by the Chinese business communities and the general public. However, the chairman understood that FOTILE was still a long way from being a great company, not only in terms of business success but also in transferring positive energy to society and helping people become morally admirable. Although he was deeply absorbed in FOTILE’s past achievements, he was also wondering about FOTILE’s future international expansion, to North America in particular. Would FOTILE’s products be competitive in North America? Would that continent adopt the FOTILE Confucian Way?
This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. After joining an international environmental consultancy firm, Ma Jun, a journalist in the People's Republic of China, was increasingly interested in environmental issues. Wanting to do more than report on these issues, he started to consider founding a nongovernmental organization (NGO) focusing on environmental protection and relying on public participation to keep companies accountable. This idea became the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). In the course of establishing the IPE, Ma encountered so many crucial problems and challenges that he wondered if he could still go on, and how he could do so effectively.
B case to case UV8005 This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. After joining an international environmental consultancy firm, Ma Jun, a journalist in the People's Republic of China, was increasingly interested in environmental issues. Wanting to do more than report on these issues, he started to consider founding a nongovernmental organization (NGO) focusing on environmental protection and relying on public participation to keep companies accountable. This idea became the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). In the course of establishing the IPE, Ma encountered so many crucial problems and challenges that he wondered if he could still go on, and how he could do so effectively.
C case to case UV8005 This case is part of the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) curriculum. To see other material in the GVV curriculum, please visit http://store.darden.virginia.edu/giving-voice-to-values. After joining an international environmental consultancy firm, Ma Jun, a journalist in the People's Republic of China, was increasingly interested in environmental issues. Wanting to do more than report on these issues, he started to consider founding a nongovernmental organization (NGO) focusing on environmental protection and relying on public participation to keep companies accountable. This idea became the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE). In the course of establishing the IPE, Ma encountered so many crucial problems and challenges that he wondered if he could still go on, and how he could do so effectively.
Collisions between innovators and established players are forcing leaders of existing companies to reexamine how they do business in settings where new players follow radically different rules. For many, making small or incremental changes won't be enough. They will need to fundamentally alter their operating models, including how they gather and respond to information and how they interact with their customers.
Can a "set your own salary" system boost employee happiness and motivation? Spiber made synthetic silk built from proteins mimicking the proteins found in spider silk, the world's toughest known material by weight. Kazuhide Sekiyama and Junichi Sugahara established Spiber to create protein materials that would eventually compete effectively with petrochemical-based materials widely used in apparel, auto parts, and airplane components, among many other applications. From the beginning, they envisioned a team built on mutual respect and a common purpose. The executive team wanted the company's compensation system to match the organization's values. Thus, the company had implemented a unique salary-setting process designed to inspire autonomy and responsibility among employees: each employee retained the ultimate authority to choose his or her own salary. The members of the executive team were excited about the "set your own salary" system, but was it having the intended effect?
Blockchain technology has been gaining popularity in recent years and has inspired both innovation and skepticism. Written for business decision makers and students, this text provides an overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency. Strengths, weaknesses, growing opportunities, and potential threats are all discussed. This book keeps a business context in mind when introducing technical frameworks, helping strategists understand both risks and rewards of various blockchain implementation approaches as well as factors that influence whether or not this is a practical solution for current problems. Chapter 1 discusses the emergence of blockchain along with some of its potential successes and challenges. Blockchain and its potential contributions have created skepticism, mostly due to its link to Bitcoin. Just like any new technology, blockchain-technically a subset of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)-has its own jargon to explain its features; several of these terms are described. The chapter goes on to compare the emergence of blockchain to that of the internet. Just as the internet disrupted the current world and delivered unexpected change so too can blockchain. But the reputation of cryptocurrency has been one of criminality; however, it is a natural evolution of the money system, which relies on mutual trust. While commonly misunderstood, blockchain is a database holding strings of encrypted information. It cannot be tampered with because each block has a fixed position in the chain: Changing the data in one block means changing the data in all those that follow it. Utilizing blockchain can streamline processes, cut out costs, improve lives, and reduce risk.
Blockchain technology has been gaining popularity in recent years and has inspired both innovation and skepticism. Written for business decision makers and students, this text provides an overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency. Strengths, weaknesses, growing opportunities, and potential threats are all discussed. This book keeps a business context in mind when introducing technical frameworks, helping strategists understand both risks and rewards of various blockchain implementation approaches as well as factors that influence whether or not this is a practical solution for current problems. Chapter 2 begins by discussing challenges of digital currency: knowing that a transaction has been completed correctly and being accepted as a symbol of value without recourse to traditional physical reserves. David Chaum's original ideas and principles of cryptography are described. An overview of the Cypherpunk movement is given. Satoshi Nakamoto's blockchain proof of concept finally put into place a working decentralized mechanism for the prevention of double spending via Bitcoin; features of Bitcoin are discussed. The chapter then explores Ethereum, the first blockchain infrastructure purpose-built for distributed computing. "Smart contracts" are rules for a transaction laid out in ledger's code and are essential to Ethereum. Cryptokitties is used as an example of smart contracts managing digital asset transactions. Past infighting within the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities is described. The expanding of blockchain technology into enterprise has a few unique challenges, especially privacy and verification. Permissioned blockchain solves those problems, replicating all the benefits of blockchain as a transparent, immutable record but eliminating the anonymity of users and open viewing of transactions and smart contracts.
Blockchain technology has been gaining popularity in recent years and has inspired both innovation and skepticism. Written for business decision makers and students, this text provides an overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency. Strengths, weaknesses, growing opportunities, and potential threats are all discussed. This book keeps a business context in mind when introducing technical frameworks, helping strategists understand both risks and rewards of various blockchain implementation approaches as well as factors that influence whether or not this is a practical solution for current problems. This chapter describes the rise in the number of cryptocurrencies, how some of them have been innovative, but how most are not good business projects and are often scams. This gave Bitcoin and blockchain a bad reputation. However, this chapter argues that cryptocurrency was thrown into an already broken system. When it comes to token fundraising, new ideas are constantly being proposed, some of which people should be wary of. The importance of and differences between utility and security with tokens are discussed. Legislative issues surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrency are also described for several countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and some smaller states. Various types and classes of cryptocurrencies and their different features are described, including Monero, stablecoin, and XRP. Cryptocurrency is gaining popularity in many countries, especially where it has utility for users. It could in a sense "bank the unbanked." Cryptocurrency started with the intention of being money for the people, decentralized and unfettered by agency or authority, but users have made it into de facto banks. Ultimately, if cryptocurrency is truly going to be embraced, there must be a real advantage over the status quo.
Blockchain technology has been gaining popularity in recent years and has inspired both innovation and skepticism. Written for business decision makers and students, this text provides an overview of the history, current applications, and future potential of distributed ledgers and cryptocurrency. Strengths, weaknesses, growing opportunities, and potential threats are all discussed. This book keeps a business context in mind when introducing technical frameworks, helping strategists understand both risks and rewards of various blockchain implementation approaches as well as factors that influence whether or not this is a practical solution for current problems. Chapter 4 explores the potential future and value of blockchain. Blockchain is a great tool to solve many problems in the most appropriate way; however, a major threat to distributed ledger technology is using blockchain as the default, manipulating the solution to fit, and forgetting the original problem in the process. This chapter looks at when blockchain is truly needed as well as its real-world applications and addresses the misunderstanding that blockchain is a repository of absolute truth. The relationship between supply chain and distributed ledger technology is discussed. Case studies and examples are given. When it comes to the traditional centralized banking system, blockchain-based systems can deliver greater transparency, confidence in records, and long-term savings. Blockchain technology can also help overlay confidential data repositories with a layer of encryption and enable access for only those parties with the right key. This could also be helpful in areas such as medical records. Infrastructure management can also benefit from blockchain and distributed ledgers; management of energy distribution and addressing the full lifecycle of large capital projects are specifically explored.