The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital commerce in India, and, in doing so, it exposed serious inadequacies in the country’s e-commerce system. Through outreach programs to small sellers and entities in hyperlocal supply chains, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in India identified a substantial gap between the quantum of online demand and the local retail marketplace’s capability to meet this demand. Established e-commerce giants had developed ways to maintain and increase their dominance and maximize profits, while small and fringe companies struggled to establish a place for themselves in the e-commerce marketplace. The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was a first-of-its-kind initiative to create an open, all-encompassing, and competitive online marketplace in India. The network, which conceptualized itself as offering equal opportunity to all sellers, promised discoverability of digital commerce stores across industries through the use of network-enabled applications. The network was designed to provide a level playing field for sellers and to ultimately democratize digital commerce in India. The benefits of digital commerce would percolate among consumers across socioeconomic strata and even reach remote geographic locations. The intent was to implement ONDC on a population-wide scale and make it a public utility. To truly democratize e-commerce in India, ONDC would be required to incorporate millions of digitally excluded small retailers. For this to happen, the transactions on the network needed to be seamless, customer trust had to be won, and a proper grievance redressal mechanism had to be put in place. Although the initiative had gone through the alpha- and beta-testing phases and was now live in select Indian cities, a certain degree of merchant onboarding and customer involvement was still essential to get the process underway. Many also believed that if the initiative gained the involvement of one or more of the major online platforms, ONDC had the potential to grow much faster, morphing into the “blue ocean” it was envisioned as becoming. However, the cooperation of the digital titans was not guaranteed—they might choose to play the waiting game or refuse to engage with ONDC. This could mean that the company’s ambitions might not succeed. Which strategic initiatives could help ONDC upend the status quo in the Indian e-commerce market?

Ballard Power Systems Inc. (Ballard) was a pioneer and world leader in hydrogen fuel cell power system development and commercialization, employing over 1,100 employees worldwide, with operations in China, Europe, and North America. However, despite its strong revenue growth, Ballard had failed to report positive operating income since 1993. At the end of 2022, a new round of government support for green technologies had the potential to change things for Ballard. The company now faced the question of whether to expand its operations in China, previously its major market, or shift its focus more toward North America and Europe. Factors to consider included geopolitical tensions and government funding. What steps should Ballard take next?

In late 2020, Harman Singh Arora, the chief executive officer of Gtropy Pvt. Ltd. (Gtropy), a logistics technology provider in the logistics and transportation space, was considering the company’s future. Gtropy had disrupted the market with its GPS based fleet management solutions complemented by exhaustive data analytics since it was formed in 2019. The company’s quarterly growth was 40 per cent and they had a network of 350+ partners. However, Arora found in customer satisfaction surveys and feedback, that their clients were looking for centralized platforms for making all payments digitally and seamlessly. Arora sets his eye on big-ticket financial technology segment. However, his senior leadership team were not in the favour of moving so fast on Arora’s risky and difficult plan. But in this digital world of up or out, it was time to focus on the elephant in the room: Where should they invest its time and resources?

The case describes the history of AGENTS.inc. Despite being a small startup, with only four employees, that had never had a funding round, the company boasted an impressive client portfolio including multiple Fortune 500 companies. While AGENTS.inc had been an early mover in the AI agent space, the company faced increased and well-funded competition in 2024. The founders needed to raise a seed funding round, to decide if they should continue their B2B model or change to focus on creating a digital agent store, and if they should release their software to open source. If they did so, they needed to decide what to make open source and what to retain as proprietary.

Anthony (Tony) Pritkzer, Paul Carbone, and the Pritzker Private Capital (PPC) team wondered how to approach the firm's next phase of growth. PPC was a private equity firm that offered a differentiated approach to the family capital market. Back in 2016, the partners had decided to introduce third party capital into their stream of funds, ultimately allowing for bigger and more successful deals. Despite their financial gains, PPC knew that their initial success could easily be forfeited. Much was to be considered: addressing regulation, maintaining PPC's family-first image, and preserving Tony's entrepreneurial spirit were only but a few challenges to be faced. How should the team advance, given the additional obstacles that come with PPC's model?

In July 2023, Tesla, Inc. (Tesla), a global leader in the manufacture and sales of electric vehicles, needed to formulate its entry strategy in India. Tesla’s chief executive officer, Elon Musk, had met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his visit to the United States in June 2023 and expressed optimism about India as a market for Tesla. This development was in sharp contrast to the events of just over a year earlier, when Musk and Tesla had expressed disappointment with the Indian government’s policy of heavily taxing imports of fully assembled Tesla cars and had seemingly abandoned their plans to enter India, at least in the short term. Despite the thaw in the relationship with the Indian government, Tesla’s top management needed to get a number of critical decisions right if the company’s entry into the Indian market was to be successful.

Chengdu Jwell Co. Ltd. (Jwell) was established in July 2013 as a subsidiary of Pangang Group Investment Co. Ltd., a prominent state-owned enterprise. Jwell served as a comprehensive service platform, facilitating transactions, payments, and billing for various commodities, including steel, vanadium, titanium, and chemicals. Its digital transformation journey began in 2015 with the launch of its e-commerce platforms, and currently, its warehouse management relied on a smart warehouse chain based on digital warehouse technology. However, this approach faced challenges with respect to the real-time sharing of information about cargo and financial data and the lack of adequate support for security in e-commerce transactions, which hindered Jwell's further development.

In September 2022, inspired by personal experiences, marketing executive Nicole Bezinski decided to set up GirlsTakeOver.org (GTO) after recognizing that teenage girls and young women in high schools and colleges in the United States were lacking coping mechanisms to help them manage increased stress and performance pressures. While schools received numerous new education program ideas annually, they were highly selective about which programs met the stringent criteria and were accepted. Consequently, Bezinski found herself with the challenge of proving that non-profit GTO offered students the self-management and coping benefits they needed. A high-impact proof-of-concept model was critical for GTO to receive serious consideration and acceptance by schools. Acceptance would lead to support, advocacy, and critical financial sponsorship from numerous stakeholders to enable GTO to launch and run operations in the first year. Bezinski had to finalize her proposal including the proof of concept before schools began accepting new education program applications.

Royal Enfield has maintained its dominance in the 250–750 cubic centimetre mid-size motorcycle segment in India. After a COVID-19-induced lean patch, the company’s unit sales have skyrocketed to an all-time high of 834,895 units in fiscal year 2022–23. The demand for premium motorcycles is growing significantly, which bodes well for Royal Enfield. However, the market leader has been confronted with a big challenge. The alliance between Hero MotoCorp Ltd. and Harley-Davidson Inc. has launched the Harley-Davidson X440—the most affordable Harley—to take on Royal Enfield. Meanwhile, the alliance between Bajaj Auto Ltd. and Triumph Motorcycles Ltd. has unveiled the competitively priced Speed 400. The initial response to the new motorcycles has been overwhelming. What strategic options are available to Royal Enfield to maintain its market lead amid intensified competitive rivalry?

This case explores the unique challenges social entrepreneurs face in balancing social impact and growing their market reach. Jane Bloom, founder of Caring Caps, is passionate about this social cause and built a culture of giving back into the mission and vision of the organization. But operating a non-profit with the goal of growing can create significant strain on a founder and volunteers. The organization in this case provides knitted caps for cancer patients and fully embraces the inclusion of social mission, purpose, and vision into its everyday operations to create a significant social impact of individuals battling cancer.<br><br>Caring Caps has had minimal awareness since its inception in 2013 and is looking to evolve into something beyond a community within a synagogue and to provide its “comfy” caps to more hospitals and cancer centers to reach those in need. One of the biggest challenges is to identify a growth model for Caring Caps to stay sustainable. What should Bloom do to position Caring Caps for future growth? What marketing should she consider?

Past research into enterprise collaboration tools suggests they suffer because not enough people contribute. The authors point to the opposite problem: Too many people mimic consumer social media and post mainly to enhance their reputation, while too few are willing to engage with the contributions of others. The authors identify four types of participants and propose strategies for encouraging more social interaction and less self-promotion.

Even well-meaning organizations too often come up short in investigating sexual harassment complaints, implementing preventive measures, and imposing penalties against harassers. The result? Companies leave themselves vulnerable to liability for harassers’ actions and losing valuable talent. What’s essential are a credible training program, a solid process for investigating complaints and looking for patterns, and a uniformly applied disciplinary policy for violators.

In 2022, Emtec Inc., an information technology and digital services firm located in Florida, was at a critical juncture. The company had seen immense success as a hardware reseller and managed services provider to government agencies and midmarket companies in the US. But Dinesh Desai, the founder and former chief executive officer, was concerned about decreasing profit margins and intensifying competition in the current reseller and managed services business. Low barriers to entry were adding new entrants and competition on pricing as well as affecting the ability to acquire and keep talent. Furthermore, the pace of technological change influencing newer offerings such as cloud and custom development was creating significant uncertainty. For Desai, the question came down to the following: Stay the course and build upon established services or pivot to a different mix of offerings? The pressure to chart a new path was very important, given the uncertainty about the future and the cutthroat price-based competition in the market.

AbhiCure was an online health care platform facilitating consultation between patients and doctors. It enabled individuals to be treated by doctors from their own homes by phone call, online chat, or video consultation with doctors supported by AbhiCure's team of paramedics. The company aimed to simplify the entire health-care ecosystem and add value for all stakeholders, including patients, doctors, pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals. However, with competition intensifying in the telemedicine sector, the company's senior management was concerned about which growth strategy to adopt for the future and was considering product diversification, product development, market penetration, and market development strategies.

Shrikant Patel was the manager of Sabar Aart Farmer Enterprise Producer Company Ltd (SAFE), located at Khedbrahma, in the Sabarkantha district of Gujarat. Patel knew that members of the farmer producer organization (FPO) were working laboriously but were still not able to generate high incomes. Organic cultivation of only a single crop in fertile land once a year did not boost their incomes. Passionate about agriculture and social work, he wanted to encourage the FPO members to adopt multicropping and increase their incomes. He identified turmeric as one of the crops that was not grown in the Sabarkantha region. Thus, growing turmeric along with creeper vegetables would not only ensure a steady income for the FPO members but would also provide the FPO with first-mover advantage in organic turmeric cultivation in the region. Patel, not being an expert in accounting, needed support from advisers to determine an accurate price for the turmeric powder from one kilogram (kg) of raw turmeric input.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital commerce in India, and, in doing so, it exposed serious inadequacies in the country's e-commerce system. Through outreach programs to small sellers and entities in hyperlocal supply chains, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade in India identified a substantial gap between the quantum of online demand and the local retail marketplace's capability to meet this demand. Established e-commerce giants had developed ways to maintain and increase their dominance and maximize profits, while small and fringe companies struggled to establish a place for themselves in the e-commerce marketplace. The Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) was a first-of-its-kind initiative to create an open, all-encompassing, and competitive online marketplace in India. The network, which conceptualized itself as offering equal opportunity to all sellers, promised discoverability of digital commerce stores across industries through the use of network-enabled applications. The network was designed to provide a level playing field for sellers and to ultimately democratize digital commerce in India. The benefits of digital commerce would percolate among consumers across socioeconomic strata and even reach remote geographic locations. The intent was to implement ONDC on a population-wide scale and make it a public utility. To truly democratize e-commerce in India, ONDC would be required to incorporate millions of digitally excluded small retailers. For this to happen, the transactions on the network needed to be seamless, customer trust had to be won, and a proper grievance redressal mechanism had to be put in place. Although the initiative had gone through the alpha- and beta-testing phases and was now live in select Indian cities, a certain degree of merchant onboarding and customer involvement was still essential to get the process underway.

Ballard Power Systems Inc. (Ballard) was a pioneer and world leader in hydrogen fuel cell power system development and commercialization, employing over 1,100 employees worldwide, with operations in China, Europe, and North America. However, despite its strong revenue growth, Ballard had failed to report positive operating income since 1993. At the end of 2022, a new round of government support for green technologies had the potential to change things for Ballard. The company now faced the question of whether to expand its operations in China, previously its major market, or shift its focus more toward North America and Europe. Factors to consider included geopolitical tensions and government funding. What steps should Ballard take next?

In July 2023, Tesla, Inc. (Tesla), a global leader in the manufacture and sales of electric vehicles, needed to formulate its entry strategy in India. Tesla's chief executive officer, Elon Musk, had met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his visit to the United States in June 2023 and expressed optimism about India as a market for Tesla. This development was in sharp contrast to the events of just over a year earlier, when Musk and Tesla had expressed disappointment with the Indian government's policy of heavily taxing imports of fully assembled Tesla cars and had seemingly abandoned their plans to enter India, at least in the short term. Despite the thaw in the relationship with the Indian government, Tesla's top management needed to get a number of critical decisions right if the company's entry into the Indian market was to be successful.

Chengdu Jwell Co. Ltd. (Jwell) was established in July 2013 as a subsidiary of Pangang Group Investment Co. Ltd., a prominent state-owned enterprise. Jwell served as a comprehensive service platform, facilitating transactions, payments, and billing for various commodities, including steel, vanadium, titanium, and chemicals. Its digital transformation journey began in 2015 with the launch of its e-commerce platforms, and currently, its warehouse management relied on a smart warehouse chain based on digital warehouse technology. However, this approach faced challenges with respect to the real-time sharing of information about cargo and financial data and the lack of adequate support for security in e-commerce transactions, which hindered Jwell's further development.

In September 2022, inspired by personal experiences, marketing executive Nicole Bezinski decided to set up GirlsTakeOver.org (GTO) after recognizing that teenage girls and young women in high schools and colleges in the United States were lacking coping mechanisms to help them manage increased stress and performance pressures. While schools received numerous new education program ideas annually, they were highly selective about which programs met the stringent criteria and were accepted. Consequently, Bezinski found herself with the challenge of proving that non-profit GTO offered students the self-management and coping benefits they needed. A high-impact proof-of-concept model was critical for GTO to receive serious consideration and acceptance by schools. Acceptance would lead to support, advocacy, and critical financial sponsorship from numerous stakeholders to enable GTO to launch and run operations in the first year. Bezinski had to finalize her proposal including the proof of concept before schools began accepting new education program applications.