The case details the challenges faced by Lisa Thomas of LaMont Engineering after the company is acquired by Munday Consultants, Inc. Thomas, who supported the acquisition, was asked to chair a team charged with implementing the changes necessary to make the acquisition a success. This case illustrates the ever-present challenge of finding professionals who can serve in more strategic roles, and provides an opportunity to diagnose, analyze, and suggest an action plan to address Thomas's situation. This case also illustrates the challenges of post-acquisition integration in the acquired firm while retaining the elements that made the firm a desirable target.
The founders of Flytenow, Inc. (Flytenow), a tech start-up dubbed the Uber of the skies, faced a crisis when the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration determined that Flytenow's customers, namely private pilots, would be violating holding out regulations if they used the service. Flytenow had just completed a three-month mentorship program at Y Combinator, the most prestigious Silicon Valley-based new venture accelerator, which had already helped start Airbnb Inc., Reddit, and Dropbox. The news came on the eve of the company's most important funding round. Should the founders go ahead with their planned funding pitch, or develop a new strategy to address the sudden regulatory barriers?
Knowledge, creativity, adaptability, and the ability to learn are critical necessities in a world in which the pace of change is accelerating. Many of us will choose to or be required to make a career pivot, in which we must reassess our aptitudes, interests, and priorities. It is in these junctures that significant, positive change is possible. This is where transformational learning can occur. This note offers a framework that encourages the deep learning required for transformational change. Specifically, this note argues for a holistic approach that explicitly focuses on the four aspects of being: body, mind, heart, and soul. Learning typically follows one of four modalities: lecture/discussion, physical/recreational, experiential/relational, and reflective/meditative. This note proposes a two-dimensional transformational learning matrix for generating ideas about the kinds of topics, issues, and activities to be considered in a holistic learning approach.
In early 2018, the KP board had expressed enthusiasm for creating a grants initiative in India. However, as KP Portfolio Director Cindy Chen and her team started doing diligence on organizations in India, they found a number of challenges when it came to the pipeline of potential grantees. Indeed, the vast majority of organizations were small, working in only a few communities across just one or two of India's 29 states and 7 union territories. Equally problematic, few of the organizations they looked at in India had a demonstrated capacity to scale across the country, or even interventions that were scalable. This mattered because KP, for reasons both practical and philosophical, focused on organizations that could scale their impact. Additional concerns from the KP board regarded the extent of corruption in India, and the impact this might have on philanthropic endeavors. There were also some questions as to need. India, at that moment in time, had more people living in extreme poverty than any other country in the world. But this number was declining rapidly even as the number of extreme poor in sub-Saharan Africa rose. These discussions were crucial for a highly intentional, mission-driven philanthropy. But they also created something of a quandary for Chen, who had joined KP as a consultant in 2016 and become portfolio director in September 2017. The choice she faced seemed to be two-fold. She could recommend that KP forego investing in India and instead expand its investment in Africa, or she could continue the search for high-impact, scalable organizations in India. This case tracks Chen's thought processes as she reflected on KP, its mission, and its existing portfolio; considered the options; and decided which option to recommend to the KP board when it met to make this critical funding decision that could impact the lives of millions of people.
As a result of Mexico's pension industry deregulation, pension funds were able to invest in energy and infrastructure projects through a variety of financial instruments, particularly through Capital Development Certificates (CKDs), an asset class that served as a vehicle for investing in unlisted companies. By the end of 2017, pension funds had invested more than $16 billion in infrastructure, with CKDs as the primary investment vehicle for this sector. Motivated by increased domestic liquidity and opportunities for investment, Rodrigo Jair launched Jair Infrastructure Investments, a specialized fund with the majority of its capital raised from pension funds. Jair was approached by Felipe Duarte, head of Banorte´s Infrastructure and Energy Group, who offered him a short-term credit line to increase the fund´s liquidity during its investment phase. Jair had to decide whether he should deploy this line or rely exclusively on capital calls from his investors to fund his pipeline. Was it worth paying the commitment fees to achieve increased liquidity? What risks should he consider when making this decision? What are the upsides and downsides of relying on equity or debt for a fund like Jair Infrastructure Investments? Will techniques like this bring significantly more capital into infrastructure investing?
In April 2003, entrepreneur and MBA student Christy Jones was planning a new venture to help women preserve their fertility. Her company, Extend Fertility, would commercialize a technique known as egg freezing, in which a woman's eggs were extracted and stored at low temperatures until she was ready to become a mother. To date, the emerging technology had mostly been used to preserve the fertility of cancer patients whose treatment course could damage their eggs. Jones's business would target a massively broader population: healthy women wishing to postpone motherhood. Before Jones could launch Extend Fertility, she needed to answer two pressing questions. What, exactly, would an egg-freezing service be selling? And to whom?
The case provides a strategic overview of one of the UK's fastest-growing household goods companies, Dyson Ltd. Starting out in the early 1990s as sole vendor of bagless vacuum cleaners in the UK market, Dyson would ultimately become the market leader before its competitors finally woke up. The case tracks founder James Dyson's global ambitions over an 18-year period until his entry into the electric vehicle market, and a move of corporate headquarters to Singapore (2019), with Asia now accounting for the majority of revenues. It offers insights into the multi-faceted vision of the founder, who combines inventiveness and a love of engineering and design with a rigid respect for lawful business practice.
Scortex, a young start-up based in Paris, has developed an applied artificial intelligent (AI) solution for an industrial setting, combining hardware and machine learning. Its CEO is wondering how best to deploy the €1.8 million C-round financing it has raised. While the market is potentially huge, he is aware that IBM - with which he has collaborated in the past - has just launched a direct competitive offering.