On July 15, 2022, the senior marketing manager of Prabhu Murthy Industries Limited participated in a high-priority meeting attended by all of the company’s executives to discuss a pressing issue. The company’s unstable financial position and disappointing results had tarnished its reputation among investors. The company had to quickly raise funds by promoting itself as a favourable investment option for the public and investors, and the senior marketing manager was entrusted with developing an advertisement that would fulfill this purpose. As he contemplated the challenging week ahead, the senior marketing manager grappled with determining the most effective course of action to achieve the company’s objective. How would he convey the right advertising concept to effectively inspire confidence in investors and stakeholders? His contemplation would also underscore the importance of ethical communication in the financial services industry.
To activate the first wind turbines in the ocean off Martha's Vineyard eventually supplying clean energy to 400,000 households, Vineyard Wind's leaders had to navigate the permitting process, numerous delays, and objections from stakeholders in three communities: Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket islands near where power originated; Cape Cod where cables reached land and power stations; and mainland New Bedford where a new green industry was part of its economic development plan. Issues included marine mammals, birds, fishing grounds, sacred Indigenous People's areas, views, beach disruption, worker training, and union jobs. Solutions included new technology, community investments, settlements with unions, community meetings, and relationships with government officials, but there were financial costs as well as delays. Significant as the first commercial-sized offshore wind farm in North America, Vineyard Wind I was co-owned by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, a financial fund, and Avangrid, an energy supplier and main venture operator. Pedro Azagra, Avangrid CEO, spent a great deal of time with government officials seeking support. How effective were the actions, and would they help the next projects achieve the goal of more clean energy for Massachusetts and New England?
This exercise presents common size financial information, from which students identify seven anonymized major US companies in the following business areas: railway services, meat product processor, telecommunications service provider, technology consulting provider, aerospace engineering, natural resources mining, and retail drug and convenience store. Students identify the companies using their skills in interpreting financial statement data.
An investment proposal reached the offices of Brookfield Renewable Partners (BRP) that outlined an opportunity for BRP to invest $300 million in Entropy Inc., a carbon capture and storage (CCS) company based in Calgary, Alberta. A subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, BRP specialized in clean power investments and invested with clear environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria and company culture principles. As the investment team reviewed the materials, two key questions were at the top of mind. First, did Entropy's business model align with BRP's ESG investment criteria? Second, would the investment generate sufficient financial returns, and how would changes to Canada's carbon pricing regulation impact the viability of CCS?
In October 2022, Licious, the market leader in India's meat industry, launched its new brand UnCrave in the plant-based meat market segment. The launch was aligned with the company's portfolio diversification strategy, leveraging its strong core brand equity. Unlike typical plant-meat brands that sold to vegan and vegetarian customers, Licious wanted to offer UnCrave to its core meat-consuming customers as an occasional alternative to meat options. However, several new competitors soon entered the market, while some people questioned the health benefits of plant-based meat. Was it a mistake for Licious to enter the plant-based industry at a time when a sizable portion of the organized meat business was still unexplored. Was the consumer segment Licious had targeted the right choice? Was it a good decision to increase the company's product mix by including plant-based meat?
Hopeworks Camden (Hopeworks), a small non-profit organization based in Camden, New Jersey, with a $4.7 million annual budget in 2022, was looking ahead to 2024. It was mid-July 2023, and the board of directors tasked Don Rhoton, Hopeworks' chief executive officer, and Onome Pela-Emore, their chief operating officer, to develop an expansion plan that is financially viable and increases their geographic reach, beginning as early as the second quarter 2024. Rhoton and Pela-Emore believed in their mission and knew that to grow they would need to increase in spatial geography, obtain new business opportunities, increase recruitment and training, and be competitive in the marketplace. They also knew that to make this all happen they would have to question how they market, determine who they would market to, and how the market will recognize them as a competitor.
A year had passed since implementing digitalization of the direct lending process at Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), and the committee gathered on January 2, 2023, to reflect on its success and identify any issues. During the meeting, the team discovered that some businesses faced issues with loan sanctioning due to the need for relaxation of certain policies. Because the system-driven processes were based on standard procedures, the committee faced a dilemma in how to handle these relaxations. Although the system was automated, there were still certain areas that required manual interventions. As a result, the team deliberated whether SIDBI should move toward hyperautomation.
In October 2018, Christie's auction house sold an artwork called Portrait of Edmond Belamy produced by an artificial intelligence (AI) model built to generate new works after being trained on upward of thousands of paintings. Three years later, Jason Allen submitted an art piece to the "digital art/digitally manipulated photography" division of an art competition associated with the 2022 Colorado State Fair. The submission relied heavily on a generative AI program called Midjourney. Instead of collecting works of art or fine-tuning an AI model, Midjourney and other modern text-to-image generators simply accepted a text description (or prompt) of an image and produced an image reflective of that description. These examples point toward the capabilities of AI image generators but also raise several questions: How do these image generators even work? And how did the system used to create Portrait of Edmond Belamy evolve into text-to-image AI art generators like Midjourney? Given the rise of these tools, what are some of the artistic, societal, and legal implications of AI art generators? Regardless of one's perspective on the previous questions, it is hard to argue that art-generating AI models will not find their way into our lives to some degree. By understanding more about the technology of image generating tools and the different perspectives on them, managers can be better prepared to navigate these tools' uses and effects-including risks. This preparation will prove helpful as innovative ideas and technological advancements are introduced to more industries, sparking more conversations between decision-makers with a range of perspectives. While AI art and the questions it raises are interesting, the money is in the tools. That means instead of programs like AI art generators designed to process certain inputs and produce certain outputs, business managers across industries will look toward tools for which generative AI art has laid a foundation, and they'll
On July 15, 2022, the senior marketing manager of Prabhu Murthy Industries Limited participated in a high-priority meeting attended by all of the company's executives to discuss a pressing issue. The company's unstable financial position and disappointing results had tarnished its reputation among investors. The company had to quickly raise funds by promoting itself as a favourable investment option for the public and investors, and the senior marketing manager was entrusted with developing an advertisement that would fulfill this purpose. As he contemplated the challenging week ahead, the senior marketing manager grappled with determining the most effective course of action to achieve the company's objective. How would he convey the right advertising concept to effectively inspire confidence in investors and stakeholders? His contemplation would also underscore the importance of ethical communication in the financial services industry.
By 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in Santa Clara, California, had been successfully providing financial services to venture capitalists and private equity firms for 40 years. The bank, which catered to clients from the innovation and technology sectors, ran into problems and was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on March 10, 2023, becoming the second largest US bank to fail after Washington Mutual collapsed in 2008. The US Federal Reserve System (FRS), while being criticized for having lax standards that contributed to the catastrophe, maintained that it had provided several warnings. The United States Senate Banking Committee planned to organize a formal congressional hearing to investigate the nature of SVB's failures and flaws and to question the FRS and evaluate the regulator's response to the same. Everyone involved was shocked by the collapse of a large bank like SVB. Was it an erroneous business model that concentrated on sector-specific clients that had led to SVB's downfall? Or was the failure due to lax banking rules? Could a poor regulatory environment be held responsible? Another possibility was that SVB's weak risk management oversights and controls could be blamed. What could SVB have done to avoid the disaster? What lessons could the banking sector learn to avoid such collapses in the future?
This exercise presents common size financial information, from which students identify seven anonymized major US companies in the following business areas: railway services, meat product processor, telecommunications service provider, technology consulting provider, aerospace engineering, natural resources mining, and retail drug and convenience store. Students identify the companies using their skills in interpreting financial statement data.
This case descibes the journey of a social entrepreneur as she establishes a new venture in the garment manufacturing business. It explores how she chose to become an entrepreneur, how she utilized her ecosystem to establish her venture and the choices and challenges she faced creating and financing a new venture. At the end she is faced with strategic decisions about how to grow the venture and its impact. This case provides an excellent illustration of the challenges faced by early stage entrepreneurs, as well as the value of using a hypothesis driven approach to evolving a new venture.
This case explores the formation and growth of an innovative nonprofit venture that provides human milk banking services. It describes the challenges faced by the founder getting medical buy in, establishing operations and adressing intial challenges. This case enables an exploration of the challenges of entering a new and untested market. This case demonstrates the value of using a business model canvas to evolve a new venture as well as the way an entreprenur can utilize key marketing frameworks (5 P and 5 C) to evolve a new venture.
This case presents a challenge facing Trilliam Asset Management around wheter to continue advancing ESG issues with Facebook or divest. The case provides a window into corporate goverance and hard choices that must be made with incomplete information.
Part A of this case introduces students to a US AID/India initiative accelerating the pandemic response while building equitable health systems in India. A modular approach with public and privater partners is degined to accomplish together what they can't do separately. This is an excellent case for exploring financial system innovation and social impact in India, a leading global setting.
Part B of this case provides initial results from to a US AID/India initiative accelerating the pandemic response while building equitable health systems in India. Innovative financial approaches are outlined and emergent challenges are identified. This case is excellent for raising issues around the sustainability of financial innovations designed to have a social impact.
This case explores the work of leaders and staff at Hopewell, an innovative social services nonprofit, to evolve its services and achieve organizational alignment. It includes an in-depth discussion of the use of theory of change and logic models to support transformative change. It also discusses how Hopewell aligned its transformation to organizational values and leveraged and aligned staff to create consensus. This is an excellent case for exploring transformational leadership or organizational change in a nonprofit setting. use a logic model to evolve its services. It includes an in-depth discussion of the use of theory of change and logic models to support transformative change. It also discusses how it aligned its transformation to organizational values and leveraged and aligned staff to create consensus. This case enables instructors to illustrate the value of using a theory of change and logic model to articulate the strategy of and drive change in a high-performance social venture.
This case builds on the Tufts Medicine Health Care System (A) case by exploring the barriers and challenges Tufts Medicine faced aligning operations and stakeholders. It discusses the challenges the leaders experienced bringing together an academic medical center with a community hospital system while meeting its goals of maintaining its competitive position while providing high quality care. A discussion of this case will enable instructors to explore the challenges and opportunities of health care mergers in depth.