Headspace in 2018 examines the company as it charts a new trajectory. The case follows the point of view of Randhir Vieira, Head of Product at Headspace, and dives into several challenges and opportunities from a Product Manager's perspective. Topics include boosting customer retention rates, finding and testing key metrics, incorporating new technologies, employing the "jobs to be done framework," and evolving the platform.
Bahwan CyberTek (BCT) was an IP-enabled technology company founded in 1999 by Sheikah Hind Bahwan (Hind) and S. Durgaprasad (DP). Over the years, it had grown into a global provider of innovative software products and services and had become a $275 million group with more than 2,950 business and technology professionals. BCT was privately held, based in Chennai, India, with operations in the United States, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia. BCT had worked with more than 1,000 customers, including Fortune 500 companies, and delivered its innovative software solutions to companies in North America, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In 2016, BCT began to seriously ponder how it could carve out an identity for itself in the digital space, thereby leveraging and capitalizing on the great and growing amount of knowledge it had created. "From day one we were building our IP," said Hind, "and that is why we are consolidating all our knowledge in the separate company, and that is the company that will go public or get investors: dt360. It is already registered as a separate company. So we have now restructured and are moving forward." In addition to establishing a home for its growing IP, BCT also wanted to build an entity that could best deliver transformation value to its clients along with the capability to scale fast with state-of-the-art and emerging technologies. And, it wanted to enable its own workforce to embrace these new technologies, thereby keeping them current and relevant in the rapidly evolving market. So, with these multiple potential benefits in mind, BCT officially established dt360 (the name was intended to represent digital transformation across 360 degrees) as a wholly owned subsidiary in late 2017. In 2018, BCT's top management was considering the strategic and organizational challenges they confronted in further developing and leading the newly formed company.
Melinda Ellis Evers, a Bay Area native and Stanford GSB alumna, founded Ellis Partners (Ellis), a commercial real estate investment and development firm in 1993 together with her father and brother. One of Ellis' projects was the redevelopment of an obsolete manufacturing facility located in Emeryville, California into Class A office / R&D space - Emery Tech - in 1998. After a successful nine-year investment period, Evers spotted another development opportunity to convert the remaining unused space into new office space to further take advantage of the vibrant office leasing environment in the Bay Area. Together with its new equity partner CarVal, Ellis successfully closed a recapitalization deal and put in additional new equity to fund the construction. However, just as Emery Tech's new space became ready for tenants in late 2007, the global financial markets collapsed and the demand for office space evaporated. To make things worse, one of Emery Tech's key tenants, Washington Mutual Bank, had gone into receivership and notified Ellis in December 2008 that it was invoking an obscure provision of U.S. banking regulation to terminate its lease. Emery Tech was suddenly underwater. Evers was faced with the decision to walk away from the project and lose the original investment made only two years ago or put in additional capital to bring in a new tenant - Clif Bar - amid a rapidly deepening global financial crisis.
The co-founder of a geological consulting start-up was taking an unconventional approach to employee motivation by using non-salary enticements (e.g. retreats) as tools to drive employees' engagement with the company. The approach ran contrary to not only long-standing human resources practices but also to the preferences of the company's own employees. But that approach had only been tested in a small setting so far. Would it work as the company scaled up in size to become a larger organization?
Phenicoptere Ltd. (Phenicoptere), founded in 2012 by two female entrepreneurs, was a Polish start-up offering a makeup-removal glove called GLOV. Phenicoptere went global at the very early stage of its development. By 2017, the company was present in 44 countries and derived nearly 90 per cent of its revenues from foreign markets. The chief executive officer and vice-president of Phenicoptere must now decide whether and how the company should incorporate e-commerce into its internationalization strategy.
On July 4, 2016, the president of Pathfinder Career System Inc. (PCS), based in Montreal, Canada, was preparing to meet with his company's advisory board to present a comprehensive plan mapping out the growth and financing strategy for the business, which he acquired in 2011. PCS was a career assessment system that used 85 behavioural attributes and 35 career themes to predict potential job performance. The company had sales of approximately $1.4 million at the end of 2015, and the president aimed to attain revenue of $22 million by the end of 2021; however, the company faced several challenges. PCS had limited organizational structures and resources. The company needed to raise investment capital; develop a marketing plan; instill a sales culture; define its customers; and establish a brand name, vision, and mission. PCS's president needed to finalize a plan to overcome these challenges by the launch date of September 2016.
While some cases may focus on using social media to advance the interests of a business or brand, this case is best positioned as a springboard for exploring social media as it may coexist with or be embedded in organizational life. The case depicts a challenge for a young direct report, a relatively inexperienced manager, and the manager's supervisor when the direct report reveals a passionate political opinion on Facebook and unwittingly links it to sensitive company information. The case discussion can (1) surface diverse student views on the uses of social media as they relate to work life; (2) encourage analysis of and decision-making in the context of a tricky multilevel managerial situation involving social media use, company nondisclosure policies, and communicating guidelines; and (3) consider how issues raised in the discussion may inform students' own choices as users of social media and as managers of people who use these channels. Larger managerial, organizational, and corporate communication issues that are complicated by employee social media use may arise in this class discussion, including: managing professional boundaries between levels of employees in an organization; the porous boundaries that exist between internal and external communication; and gray areas among private, personal, professional, political, and public speech.
Start-up Evisort was cofounded by two law students seeking to create AI-enhanced software providing contract management and processing solutions for attorneys and business professionals. For a small software start-up like Evisort with a single product in the marketplace, there was a relatively narrow spectrum of options for future development and tapping new sources of revenue: On one end of that spectrum was pure, client-driven development, i.e., the product could evolve based solely on feature requests from Evisort's current and future customers. On the other end was what the founders thought of as the "vision" approach, i.e., the product could evolve based on their conception of the ideal client solution for managing and processing contract data. While still considering the best path forward, the founders learn of an opportunity to work with a big life sciences company with headquarters in the Boston area-a client that would require a number of custom modifications to accommodate its desired workflows. The sale would be significant, perhaps Evisort's largest to date. There was no doubt that Evisort could customize the software for this client. The real question was whether to do so.
In 2015, National Hockey League (NHL) commissioner Gary Bettman was weighing two major decisions: whether to expand the league to a new city, and whether to conclude a digital media rights deal with Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM). Expansion required a careful balance between the needs of existing teams, and of parallel fan bases in the U.S. and Canada. Between two candidate expansion cities, Las Vegas, NV and Quebec, QC, Bettman would have to decide to expand to either, neither, or both. If the NHL accepted MLBAM's offer, it would be one of sports' first digital media rights deals, and the first time one major sport had outsourced its digital media production to another. This case also explores the history of the National Hockey League and labor relations between the league and its players.
As one of the few female entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia, Lateefa Alwaalan had been trying to produce the perfect cup of Arabic coffee for over a decade. In 2007, she began testing various coffee blends, which she later branded Yatooq, the Arabic word for "craving" or "longing". She soon realized that the brewing process was just as important as the blend in consistently producing a great cup of Arabic coffee. Therefore, she developed the world's first Arabic coffee machine in 2013 to complement her blend. Sales of the Yatooq coffee machines grew rapidly in Saudi Arabia, exceeding $2 million in sales in 2014. However, an increase in competition combined with an economic slowdown in the country led to declining sales and increasing costs for Yatooq. Alwaalan reflected on the decisions she made to date, wondering if the revenue decline could have been avoided. She also contemplated on the path forward, specifically whether she should iterate on her go-to-market strategy with her existing product or pivot to an entirely different product.
In the fall of 2018, Rohima Begum considered her options as the small island, or "char," on which her family's house rested slowly but inescapably eroded into the mighty Brahmaputra River in northern Bangladesh. The country, once unceremoniously dubbed a "basket case" by then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, had since emerged according to many economic metrics. At the same time, it remained faced with a unique set of political, economic, international, and climactic concerns. For while most of the world saw climate change as a future threat to be mitigated, Bangladesh faced the immediate challenge of adaptation. Indeed, "climate refugees" from the country had become the single largest group of immigrants to Europe in 2017, and some observers recognized the country as a proverbial canary in the coalmine. Might Bangladesh's challenges be owned by the world?
This case describes packaging supplier and equipment vendor Tetra Pak and their Digital Transformation Program, detailing why Tetra Pak undertook this effort, how they organized the program, identified and selected which technologies to implement and the steps they took to overcome implementation challenges. The case structures Tetra Pak's voyage around their priorities: Connected Solutions, Advanced Analytics and a Connected Workforce. The emphasis is on the value proposition of Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Digitalization for both Tetra Pak and their customers. Learning objective: The learning objective to illustrate an effective and successful effort develop Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Digitalization capabilities. focusing on the process of identifying technology priorities, establishing the business case in a B2B context, and successfully implementing innovative solutions. The case provides a general introduction to the definition of Industry 4.0 and the key technologies associated with the term.
The case presents the impact of the digital disruption coming from the sharing economy from the perspective of the largest American auto manufacturer, General Motors (GM). ?The car-sharing business led by Uber has been forcing a change to the traditional model by introducing the for-hire transport business especially in densely populated urban settings. At the same time, technology innovation has allowed non-traditional competitors making serious advancements. For GM, despite its history of innovations, these forces represent uncertainty and perhaps even an existential challenge. At the beginning of 2016, GM failed to acquire Lyft, the most promising competitor of Uber and ended up in an investment of $500 million corresponding to only 9% of the company. This investment, together with other two (Maven and Cruise Automation) are the proof that GM and its CEO Mary Barra, realized how difficult would be - for a company of the size and structure like GM - to compete with agile and innovative start-up companies leveraging on data and digital technologies. Despite being the pioneer of the technology of the connected cars with its OnStar® technology, GM finds itself desperately looking for insights and customer data that would allow better understanding the changing preference of the urban customers shifting their consumption behaviour from car-ownership to shared mobility services. With declining market share in the traditional automotive space, Mary Barra is called to make a tough strategic call that should attempt to steer this giant and iconic American company into a new ecosystem where value creation is much more delocalized and where GM should attempt to take a large part in order to avoid the risk of irrelevance that the new competitors and the digitally enabled service-based economy are posing. What should Mary Barra do with Lyft and how should Lyft be integrated in the future offering of General Motors?
In September 2014 Leyth Jamal, a transgender woman, filed suit against her employer, luxury retailer Saks Fifth Avenue. Jamal alleged that she experienced harassment from managers and other employees because of her gender identity while employed by Saks, including verbal abuse and threats of violence. At the time she filed suit, no federal, state, or local laws protected transgender employees from discrimination. However, some federal district courts had recently begun to allow such suits on the premise that discrimination based on gender identity was a form of sex discrimination. Other suits and amicus briefs brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) furthered this trend. The EEOC is the federal agency charged with investigating and supporting claims of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, so district and appellate courts watched the EEOC's position on the application of Title VII. Socio-culturally, many Americans supported transgender rights, even as they voiced anxiety about transgender men in women's bathrooms. This case has students assume the role of a trusted member of the executive team of Hudson's Bay Company, which owns Saks Fifth Avenue. One Friday afternoon in late December 2014, the Hudson's Bay CEO sends an email to his executive team notifying them that he has approved corporate counsel's motion to dismiss Jamal's case based on the argument that transgender people are not a protected class according to Title VII. The motion will be filed in federal court on Monday. The CEO shares that he personally believes it is preposterous for anyone to think that Saks Fifth Avenue is anything but a strong advocate for LGBT rights, but he invites executive team members to call him if they have any concerns. Members of the executive team have a responsibility to consider the broader strategic implications for the company, so students must decide if and how to respond to the CEO.
This case is used in Darden's second-year "Financial Institutions and Capital Markets," elective. Using Invesco Ltd. (Invesco) as an example, the case examines the strategic challenges facing the asset management industry. Marty Flanagan, Invesco's CEO, must position Invesco to compete in an industry undergoing systemic change, including active and passive products and flows, lower levels of organic growth, fee compression, softening revenues and profitability, shifting profit pools, channel dynamics and preferences, and legacy operating models.