This case examines the leadership challenges associated with maintaining a culture of innovation in established organizations. It asks students to step into the shoes of a leader faced with making several tough decisions about when to invest (or to stop investing) in radical innovation projects. Corning CEO Wendell Weeks, who nearly bankrupted the company in the early 2000s when he overinvested in fiber optics, must initially decide if the company should enter a then-risky deal with Steve Jobs to produce the glass covers for the first generation iPhones. The case then asks students to analyze the Corning's 157-year innovation agenda that started with the development of a bulb-shaped glass encasement for Thomas Edison's new incandescent lamp. In the years that followed, Corning made investments that led to products such as PYREX cookware, fiber-optic broadband cable, LCD television screens, Gorilla Glass, and a recent bet on pharmaceuticals. At the end of the case, Weeks must decide if Corning should continue to invest in a new pharmaceutical packaging product that held enormous promise, but had already cost the company $200 million in R&D and might divert resources and attention from other key business lines.
Thierry Breton, chairman and CEO of IT company Atos, faced a pivotal juncture. After spending eight intense years scaling the company globally to over 100,000 employees in 70 countries, he was ready to take the next crucial step. Breton was convinced that rapid digital shockwaves would cause transformative disruption and become key to competitiveness for companies, including his own. To take the digital leap, Breton needed Atos to undergo dual digital transformation - defined as redesigning the underlying processes and competencies of an organization to become more adaptive using digital technology, from artificial intelligence and machine learning to the Internet of Things, while simultaneously guiding customers through the same changes. Breton had also struck a high-profile partnership with Google to deliver cloud design and artificial intelligence to customers. But now that the deal had been announced, Atos had to deliver. The firm's top leadership was split on how to equip Atos' large workforce for its digital transformation. In one view, Atos needed to motivate the majority of its employees to voluntarily complete digital certification programs. In another view, on-the-job learning was the best way to train both technical and non-technical employees in the digital skills relevant to their respective roles. Breton had to determine which approach would be the fastest and most effective way of upskilling his workforce to meet the demands of dual digital transformation.
The case explores Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse's mission to disrupt the global payments industry by leveraging the cryptocurrency XRP. Students will learn about Bitcoin and the blockchain industry, as well as Ripple's unique crypto business model. The case provides an opportunity to navigate the areas of distributed technology, platforms, regulation, and global payments, from the perspective of a San Francisco software startup with over $20 billion in digital assets.
Aperture Investors is a startup investment firm that seeks disrupt the asset management industry through competitive differentiation by charging investors primarily when its portfolio managers outperform the marketplace. Headed by Wall Street veteran Peter Kraus and backed with substantial and patient seed capital, Aperture seeks to attract both star portfolio managers and assets from mutual funds and hedge funds. Kraus believes that his innovative business model addresses the current dysfunctional fee and incentive structures in the industry, which have led to long-term market underperformance, and that Aperture will address the reasons that are motivating investors to shift to cheaper, passively-managed index and exchange-traded funds.
The Coca-Cola Company, founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886, is an iconic American company that sells its products around the world. As the business and financial reporting context has changed over the decades, the company’s financial disclosure practices have also evolved—from its first, two-page, public annual report in 1920 to present-day annual reports that extend to over 150 pages. This note introduces corporate disclosure and the expansion of such disclosures over time. To aid the discussion and contextualize the evolution of corporate disclosure, the note also presents a short history of the Coca-Cola Company and securities legislation in the United States.
Atikameksheng Anishnawbek was a First Nations community near Sudbury, Ontario. The reserve, described in the Robinson-Huron Treaty of 1850, encompassed much of the Sudbury mining camp, which produced an estimated CA$1 trillion of mineral resources. At issue was the boundary of the reserve, which was much smaller than agreed upon, and whether Atikameksheng could claim a share of the value. The reserve had not been surveyed until 34 years after the treaty was signed, which resulted in discrepancies, the most significant being that the surveyed reserve boundaries were much smaller than agreed upon and described in the treaty, thus excluding a great deal of the mineralized land. Atikameksheng did not have any agreements in place, nor was the community receiving compensation from the two largest companies mining the land, despite the high value of extracted minerals. In 2018, in the context of the ongoing boundary and compensation disputes, the chief had to decide how best to focus his energies to facilitate community economic development.
After more than a decade of development, US-based Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Synergy) received marketing approval from the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for its first drug, Trulance, which targeted a large market that had only two other approved competitors. Synergy now needed to scale up from a research-and-development shop to a sales-and-marketing powerhouse. The company had not partnered with a larger pharmaceutical company during the regulatory review process, which was typical for smaller drug development companies, and as a result, it retained 100 per cent of the sales revenue but had virtually no in-house sales or marketing capability. In September 2018, the company was heavily indebted and the stock was priced below US$2; many wondered if Synergy had been right to go it alone or if it should continue that strategy for developing the lucrative North American market. With a new chief executive officer, Trulance sales beginning to accelerate, and other products moving through the FDA approval process, Synergy needed to decide whether to stay the course and become a full-fledged pharmaceutical company or seek a partner and stick to its research and development competency.
Industria de Diseño Textil, SA (Inditex), primarily through its flagship brand Zara, had grown to be the world’s number-one fashion manufacturer and retailer with the introduction of what many considered a disruptive fast-fashion business model. However, Inditex’s chief executive officer insisted that this term failed to describe the company’s business model accurately. Like other successful business model innovators, Inditex in 2019 was faced both with new competitors who had successfully copied and enhanced key components of its approach and with the growing desire of fashion conscious consumers to shop online. Inditex needed to find a way to continue to differentiate Zara in this evolving industry while capturing more than its share of the tremendous market growth anticipated for the future.
Peter Alkema, chief information officer of Business Banking at First National Bank in Johannesburg, was puzzling over ways to ensure that codeFest, the event he had inaugurated, would continue to thrive beyond 2018 without his direct involvement. His brainchild had begun in 2015 as a one-day hackathon with 100 participants. Three years later, it had grown to become a six-day coding and innovation extravaganza. Now, in May 2018, Alkema wondered what features of codeFest should continue into the future. What should be improved upon? And what novelties should be injected to take the event to the next level?
From quitting a stable post-MBA job and starting FINDMINE, a start-up in the retail technology space, to finally negotiating venture capital investment offers, Michelle Bacharach-and FINDMINE-had come a long way. Two years of uncertainty with virtually no outside capital raised, a pivot from B2C to B2B, two accelerator programs, and numerous meetings with potential investors and customers had made her an entrepreneur who was comfortable with difficult times and choices. However, none of that had prepared her for the decision she faced in March 2016. After over two years of scraping by, Bacharach had finally found investors interested in putting in much-needed funding to help move FINDMINE forward. Just hours before signing the deal, however, one of the investors had requested additional terms at the last minute: he asked for advisory shares and, most importantly, he wanted to add pernicious terms that seemed very unusual. Bacharach's decision was bound to define the future of FINDMINE and, ultimately, her own career as an entrepreneur.
Nimit Sawhney scrolled through the tweet stream on his phone, unsure of what to make of it on August 6, 2018 or how to respond. Voatz, the Boston-based startup he co-founded and led, provided a mobile-voting platform. In March of 2018, had successfully piloted the new technology to enable U.S. servicemembers stationed abroad to vote securely in West Virginia's primary election. Two West Virginia counties had participated in the first test. Thirteen people voted from their mobile phones, a much more convenient alternative than the other options available to service members abroad. The very first West Virginia voter to use the app called it "slick." Two dozen West Virginia counties were preparing to make mobile-voting via Voatz an option for their citizens living abroad in the general elections slated for November. But the August tweets threw this plan into question. Kevin Beaumont tweeting as @GossiTheDog retweeted a CNN article about Voatz and the upcoming November election with his own commentary: "This is going to backfire." He accused Voatz of operating with out-of-date security for remote logins. It would get worse from there. And Sawhney's task was to figure out how to make it better.
The Coca-Cola Company, founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886, is an iconic American company that sells its products around the world. As the business and financial reporting context has changed over the decades, the company's financial disclosure practices have also evolved-from its first, two-page, public annual report in 1920 to present-day annual reports that extend to over 150 pages. This note introduces corporate disclosure and the expansion of such disclosures over time. To aid the discussion and contextualize the evolution of corporate disclosure, the note also presents a short history of the Coca-Cola Company and securities legislation in the United States.
Peter Alkema, chief information officer of Business Banking at First National Bank in Johannesburg, was puzzling over ways to ensure that codeFest, the event he had inaugurated, would continue to thrive beyond 2018 without his direct involvement. His brainchild had begun in 2015 as a one-day hackathon with 100 participants. Three years later, it had grown to become a six-day coding and innovation extravaganza. Now, in May 2018, Alkema wondered what features of codeFest should continue into the future. What should be improved upon? And what novelties should be injected to take the event to the next level?
After more than a decade of development, US-based Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Synergy) received marketing approval from the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for its first drug, Trulance, which targeted a large market that had only two other approved competitors. Synergy now needed to scale up from a research-and-development shop to a sales-and-marketing powerhouse. The company had not partnered with a larger pharmaceutical company during the regulatory review process, which was typical for smaller drug development companies, and as a result, it retained 100 per cent of the sales revenue but had virtually no in-house sales or marketing capability. In September 2018, the company was heavily indebted and the stock was priced below US$2; many wondered if Synergy had been right to go it alone or if it should continue that strategy for developing the lucrative North American market. With a new chief executive officer, Trulance sales beginning to accelerate, and other products moving through the FDA approval process, Synergy needed to decide whether to stay the course and become a full-fledged pharmaceutical company or seek a partner and stick to its research and development competency.