This case, which has been taught successfully in a Darden online class, allows for an introductory application of the Tableau analytics platform. In 2012, Carvana Co., an e-commerce platform for buying used cars, hosted a competition called "Don't Get Kicked!" wherein 570 teams competed to predict if a car purchased at auction was a "kick" (i.e., a bad buy)-a vehicle with a major defect. To compete, teams downloaded Carvana's data from Kaggle's website. At the time of the competition, data science was a burgeoning field, and industry watchers wondered if machine learning could help a company such as Carvana develop a competitive advantage. This case analyzes the US used-car market, Carvana's history and Kaggle's role in its development, and the viability of data science-particularly visual analytics-in guiding business and consumer decisions.
TikTok was a short-video sharing app based in China. On November 9, 2017, TikTok’s parent company, the Chinese tech company Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. (ByteDance), announced a strategic acquisition of Musical.ly, a popular short-video sharing app based in the United States. With more than 100 million users and similar features to TikTok, Musical.ly was a powerful competitor for TikTok’s international expansion into the North American markets. For ByteDance and TikTok, the closing of the Musical.ly acquisition in August 2018 was not the end goal, as it would create another new challenge. Would it be better to keep Musical.ly as a separate platform, as Musical.ly had achieved a good reputation and millions of users in the United States? Or should Musical.ly be replaced to create a global app under the TikTok brand, which was relatively new to the US market?
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?
In early December 2016, a student member of the Philippine Fund of the finance lab at the Asian Institute of Management was wondering whether to invest in the initial public offering (IPO) of Shakey’s Pizza Asia Ventures Inc. (Shakey’s). Shakey’s was the market leader in the full-service chain restaurants industry in the Philippines and would be the fourth company to be listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange. The IPO period was from December 2 to December 8, 2016, and the company was offering a total of 306 million shares. The student member must decide whether to buy Shakey’s stock based on her estimate of the intrinsic value of Shakey’s relative to the IPO price, Shakey’s strategy and prior performance, and the attractiveness of the food service and restaurant industry.
In early December 2016, a student member of the Philippine Fund of the finance lab at the Asian Institute of Management was wondering whether to invest in the initial public offering (IPO) of Shakey's Pizza Asia Ventures Inc. (Shakey's). Shakey's was the market leader in the full-service chain restaurants industry in the Philippines and would be the fourth company to be listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange. The IPO period was from December 2 to December 8, 2016, and the company was offering a total of 306 million shares. The student member must decide whether to buy Shakey's stock based on her estimate of the intrinsic value of Shakey's relative to the IPO price, Shakey's strategy and prior performance, and the attractiveness of the food service and restaurant industry.
TikTok was a short-video sharing app based in China. On November 9, 2017, TikTok's parent company, the Chinese tech company Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. (ByteDance), announced a strategic acquisition of Musical.ly, a popular short-video sharing app based in the United States. With more than 100 million users and similar features to TikTok, Musical.ly was a powerful competitor for TikTok's international expansion into the North American markets. For ByteDance and TikTok, the closing of the Musical.ly acquisition in August 2018 was not the end goal, as it would create another new challenge. Would it be better to keep Musical.ly as a separate platform, as Musical.ly had achieved a good reputation and millions of users in the United States? Or should Musical.ly be replaced to create a global app under the TikTok brand, which was relatively new to the US market?
In 2019, CEO Jim Snee is weighing how to shape the image of Hormel Foods, one of the largest U.S. meat and food companies, at a time when the industry faces unprecedented scrutiny. Based in the small town of Austin, Minnesota, the nearly 130-year-old firm is best known for its legacy meat-based brands such as Hormel Pepperoni and Spam. It also owns brands (many acquired recently) that consumers might not associate with Hormel, such as Wholly Guacamole, Justin's nut butters, and Applegate Farms deli meats. This diversity of products reflects Snee's effort to reduce Hormel's commodity exposure and balance its portfolio across raw materials, consumer segments, price points, food trends, and channels. In pork, for example, Hormel's range extends from low-price Hormel-brand products made from conventionally raised animals to pricier Applegate Farms-brand products made from animals raised in organic and humane-centric conditions. To Snee, these differences embody Hormel's strategy of offering choices to consumers. Hormel is 48% owned by a foundation created by the founding family, which has allowed its leadership to manage with a long-term view and worry less about Wall Street scrutiny. Indeed, for such a large firm-$10 billion in sales, penetration in 80% of U.S. households-Hormel has historically been relatively "under the radar." But in the social media era, Snee knows how quickly companies can lose control over their reputations, and that the animal protein space is particularly sensitive. What risks does Hormel face, and how can Snee preserve and convey the qualities that set the company apart?
In 2019, TripAdvisor was one of the best known online travel brands and for nearly 20 years founder and CEO Steve Kaufer had steered TripAdvisor to growth and profitability, but recently the company's pace of growth had started to slow. Most of the company's revenue was generated by users clicking from its site to hotel booking sites. TripAdvisor relied on Google for both free and paid traffic. As Google began to build up and promote its own travel search services, the company sought to diversify by offering bookings for vacation rentals, restaurants and experiences. In addition, Kaufer created a new team called Core Experience (CoreX) to coordinate TripAdvisor's branding and create a coherent product strategy across its business units. Could Kaufer and his executive team turn TripAdvisor's overcome the Google threat and reinvigorate growth?
This case continues the story of Dr. Robert Pearl, who had guided the Permanente Group of Northern California through challenging years in the health care industry. While Kaiser Permanente had a long history and well-established reputation on the West Coast, creating a profitable health care system in the mid-Atlantic region proved difficult for a number of reasons. For one, Kaiser Permanente had not made a mindful transfer of the history, culture, and mission from Northern California to the operations of its Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States. And market dynamics were different on the East Coast, making it difficult for Kaiser Permanente to compete on its core strength: care delivery. To address these problems, Dr. Pearl dispatched seasoned physician leaders from Northern California, assigning them help transform the mid-Atlantic operations. He focused on a strategic and operational plan to provide 15 to 20 percent better quality and service and 10 percent lower price compared to the competition, and on recruiting dedicated primary care physicians willing to be more flexible about their scheduling and the specific hours they worked.
In the decades following 2005, China faced significant financial challenges. Inflation spiraled upwards and China's economy stagnated in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. The country's leaders took an interventionist approach to weather the storm, controlling capital and exchange rates. These actions raised criticism from other nations, and in 2017 the U.S. initiated the U.S.-China Trade Wars, which enforced tariffs and requirements for increased transparency. As implications of the trade wars remained uncertain, many wondered whether the central bank would introduce further discreet steps to change the yuan. Would China's currency appreciate as substantially against the U.S. dollar as predicted by economists? And when would further change occur? The stakes were high; a freer yuan float would impact groups within and outside of China very differently. Would China's currency then be allowed to depreciate or appreciate if fundamentals required it?
The case describes the unique leadership model and organizational culture in the Nordic high-tech company named Vincit. This case covers the development of the company's culture from its creation in 2007 up until July 2019. The case ends by describing a recent public crisis caused by its recruitment advertisement and the founder's confusion about the causes and solutions of this crisis. By highlighting the responsibility of the founders and leaders in developing Vincit's culture, the case narratively unfolds the procedure of the formation of organizational culture in an entrepreneurial firm. Moreover, due to the self-managing nature of Vincit, the case also raises questions about what the responsibilities of the CEO/leaders are in a self-managing company, as well as the dynamic interaction between leadership and organization culture in an entrepreneurial firm.
The CEO of Eco Tasar, a socially responsible company based in India has to decide how to deal with a customer request that may jeopardize his corporate values.
The case is set in September 2019 and the protagonist is Tim Cook, the CEO at Apple, Inc. In 2019, Apple had revenues of $260 billion; yet, net revenues were down by 7 percent over the same period. Much of the decline in Apple's revenues is a result of decreased sales of the iPhone, which contributed 62 (!) percent of Apple's total revenues in 2018, and declined to 54 percent in 2019. The case highlights the problems Tim Cook faces as demand of the iPhone slows, and Apple has failed to introduce any major new product since the iconic iPhone was launched in 2007. Trade tensions between the United States and China, moreover, are also negatively impacting the company. Over the past few years, the Chinese market accounted for 25 percent of Apple's total revenues. Apple is exposed to the trade tensions in two ways in particular. Moreover, the threatened imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods by the United States would further hurt Apple by raising the effective cost of Apple products in the United States because almost all of their manufacturing is done in China by Foxconn. Finally, Apple recently entered the video-streaming market, with its Apple TV+ service, which will develop original programming as well as act as a pipeline for other channels. This is a crowded market with strong existing players such as Netflix, Hulu (controlled by Disney), and AT&T's HBO. Other notable new entrants into the content streaming market include Disney+.
In March 2013, Apple Computer has a very large cash balance, and is under pressure to return cash to shareholders. Hedge fund manager David Einhorn thinks Apple can "unlock value" by issuing perpetual preferred stock, dubbed iPrefs. Henry Blodget, CEO of Business Insider, disagrees, saying "you can't just wave your magic wand and make something of nothing." This short case is designed to support a discussion of "perfect" markets and the Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevance propositions. The case focuses on two questions: (1) From a shareholder's perspective, how is Apple's cash different from cash in a bank or money market account? (2) Can Apple create significant value for shareholders by splitting each common share into an iPref plus a common share?
The collapse of central authority in the Soviet Union in 1991 ushered in a period of revolutionary transformations for the states that emerged in its wake. The leaders of Russia, the USSR's successor, struggled to reestablish central authority while also seeking to avoid further disintegration, establish a democratic polity, and institute a market economy across the next several years. Russia would navigate further economic crisis and a swiftly evolving geopolitical order as it returned to the world stage. The case examines the different governance approaches adopted by Presidents Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin, and concludes with a discussion of Russia's strategic challenges and opportunities in 2019. The case focuses on problems of state authority; fiscal capacity; institutionalization of political parties; relations between the federal center and provincial governments; relations between the state and big business; economic policy; international relations; and models of economic development.