GLAMI was launched in October 2013 in the Czech Republic as a fashion search engine with a focus on providing consumers with an accessible platform. It operated a neatly organized online fashion catalogue that consisted of combined products from fashion e-shops that functioned throughout various countries. Through its five years of existence, GLAMI had expanded throughout Europe and Asia. Fashion retailers and e-shops partnered with GLAMI as free or priority members, and had their items placed throughout GLAMI’s website. The company’s business model functioned through a cost-per-click (CPC) model, where GLAMI would charge priority members according to how much they were willing to pay per click. In August 2018, due to its success and the increasing size of the fashion industry and the online retail space, GLAMI was looking to expand beyond its current boundaries to a high-growth area—Latin America. However, considering the vast differences among Latin American countries, GLAMI was finding it difficult to narrow down the list of countries in which to explore international expansion.
Asahi Glass Co., Ltd. in 2014 was the world's largest glass company, but the company faced flat revenues and increased global competition. Several of its flagship businesses projected few prospects for growth unless the company could develop new products and identify competitive strengths to compete within the rapidly changing global economy. AGC held leading global market shares in four major products: architectural glass, automotive glass, quartz glass, as well as fluorinated resins. The case study details the new CEO's plans to revitalize the thinking and workforce at AGC, and shift to an outward-looking focus that embraced change and could lead the company forward into new areas of business.
A new environmental regulation known as IMO 2020 was creating what one industry analyst called "the biggest shakeup for the oil and shipping industries in decades." According to the new regulation, all ocean-going ships would have to limit their sulfur emissions by January 1, 2020. Senior leaders at Hapag-Lloyd, one of the world's largest shipping companies, were evaluating three ways their ships could comply with the new regulation: use low sulfur fuel, use high-sulfur fuel but install scrubbers to clean the exhaust, or convert ships to use liquid natural gas (LNG) as fuel. Each of the options had its advantages and disadvantages, and the most attractive option depended on not only the values of key parameters (e.g., future fuel prices and equipment costs), but also the strategies adopted by the owners of the other 60,000 ocean-going ships subject to the regulation. For the industry as a whole, annual compliance could cost as much as $60 billion; for Hapag-Lloyd, annual compliance might cost as much as $1 billion or more. For a company with net income of $34 million (€28 million) in the prior year, and losses in two of the past four years, getting this decision right was of the utmost importance. Senior executives at Hapag-Lloyd had created a proposed compliance plan and were scheduled to present it to the firm's supervisory board for approval in June 2018. Whether the team had the right plan and whether the board would approve it are the key questions in the case.
Five years on from the 2008 financial crisis, Goldman Sachs remained wounded. Revenues at the global investment bank had stagnated below pre-crisis levels, and the firm had yet to rebound from a substantial decline in securities-trading revenues. Marcus by Goldman Sachs was one response-an effort that operated as a start-up but was sponsored by senior Goldman executives-to grow the firm's revenues by entering consumer banking with digital-only offerings. The move marked a dramatic cultural as well as product shift: the 150-year-old institution historically served only businesses and the wealthiest of individuals. In 2016, Marcus launched unsecured personal loans for the mass market; it rolled out high-yield deposits in 2017 and a credit card in partnership with Apple in 2019. By autumn of that year, Marcus had $5 billion in loans outstanding and $55 billion in deposits. It also faced a dilemma-ceaseless and rapid expansion had strained its people and infrastructure, yet Goldman expected Marcus to generate $1 billion in revenues in 2020. What now was the better bet, to pause to allow performance to catch up with growth or to seize the additional opportunities that beckoned for Marcus to diversify into consumer finance products?
Indigo Agriculture used a digital-enabled research and development (R&D) process to launch its initial product, microbial coatings for agricultural seeds, which increase crop yields while reducing the need for fertilizers. In doing so, the company developed direct relationships with farmers, in contrast to typical agricultural supply chains that use intermediaries. The company then launched a marketplace platform to link growers directly to crop buyers, again disintermediating the market. Indigo Agriculture is now considering launching an initiative to incentivize farmers to engage in regenerative agricultural practices by setting up a carbon market that could pay them for sequestering carbon into their soils. If scaled globally, the idea could sequester as much as one trillion tons (a teraton) of carbon dioxide from the earth's atmosphere into agricultural soils, but pursing the idea has many risks.
In 2015, a Shanghai businessman contacted the director of ObiSoft, an American software company, to request becoming the company’s partner in China. Over the next two years, they proceeded to develop the partnership and grow ObiSoft's business in China. The Shanghai businessman became ObiSoft’s partner and master reseller in China. In 2018, the Shanghai businessman proposed moving the company's research and development on software to China, and ObiSoft scheduled an August 2018 board meeting to discuss this issue. What should ObiSoft’s board decide regarding the company’s software development and future in China?
WittyFeed, an emerging digital content and technology company, was launched in September 2014 by three friends in the small Indian town of Indore. Within four years, the company had become one of the world’s largest creators and distributors of content that was followed and circulated online. In the process of scaling up and becoming larger, WittyFeed’s founders faced many challenges in areas like technology, distribution, and talent. These internal and external market issues interacted in a constantly changing environment. In January 2018, the founders were in the process of finding strategic solutions that would help their company double its existing number of monthly impressions to achieve 1 billion touchpoints, while becoming independent of its dominant revenue source, Facebook. What strategies could the founders deploy to reach this target?
At the end of March 2018, the director of the Barcelona office of Street Child, a charity organization with headquarters in the United Kingdom, was looking back at the changes he had introduced in 2017. The Barcelona office was responsible for growing Street Child in continental Europe, so it was internally known as Street Child Europe. Since January 2018, the office had added a paid employee. This employee was also the director of Street Child Netherlands and a former program support officer in Sierra Leone. The office could now employ up to eight interns, twice as many as before. However, Street Child Europe still needed to accomplish five key tasks: address its governance structure, clarify its brand positioning, consolidate its fundraising strategy, increase the appeal of its international volunteer program, and sett up an internal system to use its network effectively. The director needed concrete and executable strategies to ensure stable and sustainable growth of the charity across Europe.
The Dot autonomous agricultural platform, manufactured by SeedMaster Manufacturing, an innovative farm equipment manufacturer in White City, Saskatchewan, was a driver-less vehicle designed to replace the farm tractor. This vehicle allowed large-scale farmers to spend more time focusing on the farm business while the Dot platform planted, sprayed, or conducted other farm-field activities. In late 2019, the reliability and safety of the disruptive Dot technology when left unattended was not yet fully tested. Issues of sales, training, and servicing were yet to be determined. The company had identified three potential commercialization paths for consideration: Should it focus on retailing Dot and Dot-ready implements through a network of farm dealerships in a traditional manner? Should it create a Dot showroom and sales-and-service team, selling primarily online in a virtual showroom, like Tesla? Or should it create a “pop-up” custom seeding and spraying business to further revise the technology while promoting it?
The case describes how Lemonade, a notable insurance technology (insurtech) startup, created and developed a novel business model with social impact. The case also explains how entrepreneurs leverage their experience, creativity, and more importantly, knowledge from behavioral science to tackle challenges in a century-old industry. For undergraduate or master's students, the instructor can stimulate discussion on how to develop creative business ideas and how to improve the robustness of a novel business with scientific knowledge, especially social sciences such as social psychology. Another fascinating aspect of this case is that Lemonade organically integrates social impact into its core business model without engaging in public relations-like campaigns. For a deeper discussion, the instructor can introduce a few fundamentally debated topics in business schools. For example, can a business be scientifically guided? Simply put: is running a business art or science?
At the end of March 2018, the director of the Barcelona office of Street Child, a charity organization with headquarters in the United Kingdom, was looking back at the changes he had introduced in 2017. The Barcelona office was responsible for growing Street Child in continental Europe, so it was internally known as Street Child Europe. Since January 2018, the office had added a paid employee. This employee was also the director of Street Child Netherlands and a former program support officer in Sierra Leone. The office could now employ up to eight interns, twice as many as before. However, Street Child Europe still needed to accomplish five key tasks: address its governance structure, clarify its brand positioning, consolidate its fundraising strategy, increase the appeal of its international volunteer program, and sett up an internal system to use its network effectively. The director needed concrete and executable strategies to ensure stable and sustainable growth of the charity across Europe.
WittyFeed, an emerging digital content and technology company, was launched in September 2014 by three friends in the small Indian town of Indore. Within four years, the company had become one of the world's largest creators and distributors of content that was followed and circulated online. In the process of scaling up and becoming larger, WittyFeed's founders faced many challenges in areas like technology, distribution, and talent. These internal and external market issues interacted in a constantly changing environment. In January 2018, the founders were in the process of finding strategic solutions that would help their company double its existing number of monthly impressions to achieve 1 billion touchpoints, while becoming independent of its dominant revenue source, Facebook. What strategies could the founders deploy to reach this target?
In 2015, a Shanghai businessman contacted the director of ObiSoft, an American software company, to request becoming the company's partner in China. Over the next two years, they proceeded to develop the partnership and grow ObiSoft's business in China. The Shanghai businessman became ObiSoft's partner and master reseller in China. In 2018, the Shanghai businessman proposed moving the company's research and development on software to China, and ObiSoft scheduled an August 2018 board meeting to discuss this issue. What should ObiSoft's board decide regarding the company's software development and future in China?
In 2018, iQmetrix Software Development Corp. (iQmetrix), a software development corporation headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, had experienced exponential growth and success over the past two decades. To preserve its innovative culture, iQmetrix restructured using the increasingly popular self-management system holacracy, which was intended to empower individual employees to plan, monitor, and regulate their own work tasks. One year later, iQmetrix's head of People and Culture wanted to examine the outcomes of this implementation. To do so, she conducted a company-wide survey of employee perceptions of holacracy and several important indicators. The survey also collected qualitative feedback about the holacracy implementation. What would the survey responses tell her about employees' perceptions of holacracy and about the effectiveness of its implementation at iQmetrix?
The Dot autonomous agricultural platform, manufactured by SeedMaster Manufacturing, an innovative farm equipment manufacturer in White City, Saskatchewan, was a driver-less vehicle designed to replace the farm tractor. This vehicle allowed large-scale farmers to spend more time focusing on the farm business while the Dot platform planted, sprayed, or conducted other farm-field activities. In late 2019, the reliability and safety of the disruptive Dot technology when left unattended was not yet fully tested. Issues of sales, training, and servicing were yet to be determined. The company had identified three potential commercialization paths for consideration: Should it focus on retailing Dot and Dot-ready implements through a network of farm dealerships in a traditional manner? Should it create a Dot showroom and sales-and-service team, selling primarily online in a virtual showroom, like Tesla? Or should it create a "pop-up" custom seeding and spraying business to further revise the technology while promoting it?