In 2016, Xavier Lopez Ancona, president and co-founder of KidZania-a Mexican company with international success in developing and operating theme parks where children could play as grown-ups and pretend to be adults assuming the role of countless professions-needed to decide how to continue to differentiate the brand and grow revenue in the very competitive and dynamic entertainment market. Around the world, the revolutionary and innovative edu-tainment concept developed by KidZania was the most copied. Despite the growth, KidZania corporate revenues began to stagnate in 2012 because of the depreciation of the Mexican currency. Four alternatives were being considered: Growth in number of current parks to continue building scale as a defensive strategy, developing smaller park formats to target cities where the current format was not sustainable, developing an interactive platform that could bring together the growing digital market and the role-playing experiential learning, or transforming the company into a content development enterprise. Xavier's team needed to recommend the best alternative to pursue to the Board of Directors.
Russian River Brewing Company's [RRBC] owners and founders, Vinnie and Natalie Cilurzo, grew their business into one of the largest craft breweries in Sonoma County, California, from 2003 to 2016. RRBC's success surpassed the Cilurzos' initial expectations, as they were able to increase production fourfold and RRBC became one of the top five craft beer producers in the region. RRBC won multiple awards for the quality of its beers, in particular for the seasonally produced and allocated cult brand, Pliny the Younger. By 2015, the Cilurzos had paid off all outstanding debt and purchased 100 percent of the firm's equity using internally generated cash flows. However, RRBC's production and consumer retail infrastructure were insufficient to meet spikes in consumer demand. For over a decade, the Cilurzos largely dismissed the idea of expanding, but in spring 2016, discussions between the couple about investing in a second brewpub to expand production got more serious. As the Cilurzos analyzed RRBC's internal and external environment, they searched for ways to find consensus regarding expansion.
In 2016 the chief executive officer (CEO) of Harley-Davidson Inc., the iconic U.S. manufacturer of motorcycles, was facing a constant decline in sales and stock price due to the company's dependence on a mature U.S. market and the natural attrition of its most loyal riders, who were ageing. In May 2017, the CEO needed to determine how to return his global company to growth amid a protectionist agenda and direct business interference from the White House. Should the company expand internationally or not?
The Kanaka Bar Indian Band, a First Nations community in British Columbia, Canada, had realized impressive economic development in the decades since the 1970s. This progress included development of a profitable hydroelectric system backed by strong community governance and the introduction of a five-year community economic development plan. In 2017, the community was executing the plan with some successes and some challenges. As the band council and community members looked to the coming years of the plan and beyond, they wished to continue making progress towards their community vision of self-sufficiency, vibrancy, and sustainability. As they reflected on their successes, took stock of the community's resources, and assessed its challenges, they asked themselves whether the plan needed to evolve. Which of the community's resources could it use to achieve its vision in a way that addressed the challenges at the time and remained consistent with the traditional community values?
In April 2015, the Dharampal Satyapal Group introduced a new hard-boiled candy in three states in India. The candy, named Pulse, had a distinctive raw-mango flavour and a spicy, tangy taste. It quickly became popular. Within two years, Pulse candy surpassed ₹3 billion in sales and became the leader in the hard-boiled candy segment, beating leading national and international brands. The company achieved all of this with a small advertising budget and very little promotion; rather, the candy's success was largely a result of word-of-mouth and interest on social media. Demand exceeded supply, and competitors were beginning to launch similar and poorly imitated products. How could the group sustain the sales momentum of Pulse? Should it extend the Pulse brand to other formats and flavours and into other product categories? Should it take the candy to overseas markets, and if so, which ones?
The senior director of supply chain management for Colberts Inc. (Colberts) had made tremendous strides. She had been among a select few senior directors chosen to lead an initiative to integrate a new supply chain management system. Although a costly investment, the new information technology infrastructure had helped increase operational efficiency at the store level. While the initiative had initially not received support from everyone at Colberts, the director was now receiving congratulations as the benefits of the new system had become apparent. She was invited to meet with the chief operating officer to discuss a possible promotion to vice-president of Technology Operations. She thought things were going well until the system began to deteriorate that morning. She needed to address the short-term replenishment issue and the longer-term information system issues.
In 2015, nine black Americans were killed in a racially motivated shooting spree. The incident fuelled ongoing racial tensions in the United States and launched a conflict over the presence of Confederate memorials in public spaces. When the push to remove Confederate memorials began, the task for Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, was to deal with the city's notable Confederate monuments and the conflict they engendered in a city divided along racial lines demographically, economically, and historically. On May 19, 2017, Landrieu addressed the public. Students have the opportunity to evaluate the speech, consider why Landrieu chose this occasion to address the public, and determine what the speech reveals about his leadership character.
The senior director of supply chain management for Colberts Inc. (Colberts) had made tremendous strides. She had been among a select few senior directors chosen to lead an initiative to integrate a new supply chain management system. Although a costly investment, the new information technology infrastructure had helped increase operational efficiency at the store level. While the initiative had initially not received support from everyone at Colberts, the director was now receiving congratulations as the benefits of the new system had become apparent. She was invited to meet with the chief operating officer to discuss a possible promotion to vice-president of Technology Operations. She thought things were going well until the system began to deteriorate that morning. She needed to address the short-term replenishment issue and the longer-term information system issues.
Over the fall of 2017, Filecoin, a blockchain-based cloud storage startup, raised more than US$233 million from more than 2,000 investors. It achieved this largely through the novel funding mechanism, initial coin offering (ICO) and in the absence of an actual product or service. This case chronicles the genesis and development of Filecoin, with a focus on the background and mechanics of its ICO. It also introduces students to the technical core of its storage protocol and how blockchain technology, through Filecoin tokens, could monetise that feature. The case also highlights the regulatory implications concerning ICOs. This case could be used as an illustration of the application of blockchain technology to an existing business (e.g., cloud storage) and its consequences. It may also be used to discuss the dynamics of a "token economy", (i.e., creating and developing a market based on tokens) and the issues confronting organisations that employ blockchain technology. The issues may also include, but are not limited to, those concerning ICOs, such as regulations, incentives, and disincentives. Instructors may also find this case useful to discuss the IT strategy and viability of a blockchain-based, file-sharing business.
It was early 2015 and executives in iShares' Factor Strategies Group were considering the launch of a new class of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) called smart beta funds. Specifically, the group was considering smart beta multifactor ETFs that would provide investors with simultaneous exposure to four fundamental factors that had shown themselves historically to be significant in driving stock returns: the stock market value of a firm, the relative value of a firm's financial position, the quality of a firm's financial position, and the momentum of a firm's stock price. The executives at iShares were unsure whether there would be demand in the marketplace for such multifactor ETFs, since their value added from an investor's portfolio perspective was unknown. Students will act as researchers for iShares' Factor Strategies Group and conduct detailed analysis of Fama and French's five-factor model and the momentum effect, smart beta ETFs including multifactor ETFs, and factor investing with smart beta ETFs to help iShares make its decision.
The global population is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, of which 70% will be living in cities. Over the past 40 years, however, 30% of the world's arable land has become unproductive. Given the scarcity of land and rising demand for food, there is an urgent need for solutions that require less land and labour yet produce higher yields. Vertical farming uses three-dimensional space to achieve more than a hundred-fold increase in crop production over traditional agriculture. However, such farms involve extremely high capital and operating costs. The case study reviews the the technologies on which vertical farms depend and the conditions under which they can become economically viable.
Long before Spotify had become a household name, and when Netflix was still mailing off DVDs to customers' homes, Tien Tzuo had foreseen a major transformation in the business world: from one-off sales to subscription business models. He realized that no one was making billing software to serve the complex needs of such companies, so he founded Zuora in 2007 to automate billing, commerce, and finance operations for companies built on a recurring revenue model. Initially, Zuora catered mostly to start-ups, but the world rapidly evolved. By 2017 its customers included companies such as Box, the Financial Times, Ford, GM, GE, Caterpillar, and Zendesk. In 2016, Zuora had crossed a major threshold: $100 million in annual recurring revenue. In 2017, Tzuo could see that Zuora was positioned to hit $300 million, and before then, he believed he would take Zuora public. The company was growing rapidly, and Tzuo had begun that he needed to approach this next phase of scaling more deliberately than he had with Zuora's early growth. "A company that is going from $100 million to $300 million has to be different than a company going from $30 million to $100 million," said Tzuo. "That $30 million to $100 million was a sprint; making the transition from $30 million, we were not so thoughtful. I wanted to be more thoughtful this time." In 2014, Tzuo had identified four major areas in which the company needed to transform: sales, finance, products, and people. Tzuo knew the transformation plan meant he would have to make a wave of leadership changes, managing hirings and terminations. And he would have to change his own leadership style to match the company's increasing size. Meanwhile, he had to think strategically about how Zuora could fend off challenges both from software behemoths like Salesforce.com and Oracle, and nimble upstarts. To successfully IPO, and satisfy investors over the long term, Tzuo knew that Zuora had to deliver consistency and predictability.
François Pugliese acquired Elite Beds in Etoy in a small buy-in in 2006 and then proceeded to re-invent completely its business, first by pivoting its business model and introducing Smart Leases and then by digitizing it, turning the mattress into a true technology platform, with dozens of innovative projects in the pipeline. As he proceeded to the conference room for the Board meeting in April 2017, François wondered whether it would help to prioritize the projects, and if so how? Did these projects effectively represent another pivot for the company again? Was it time to force change again? Learning objective: Managing growth, engineering a buy-in, financing deals, strategic pivots, business model changes, innovation management, digitalization of the mattress, technology platforms, growth management, innovation portfolio management.
Shaun Abrahamson and Stonly Baptiste aimed to invest in what they called "urbantech superheroes." At Urban Us, the seed-stage urban technology-focussed venture capital firm the two started in 2012, they looked for startups innovating around the future of cities. By 2017, they had assessed over 700 potential deals. Each one required a go/no-go decision, and four along the way were no different in that regrad. Of Remix, SeamlessDocs, Starcity, and One Concern, which ones to back? Setting aside the question for the moment of why urbantech startups needed superpowers, which of these possessed them?
Kate Moran, CEO and cofounder of Sagacity Tea, a small, Vermont-based ready-to-drink tea brand, is considering a consumer-product group (CPG) broker's proposal for the product's launch in several cities along the East Coast of the United States. The commitments in the proposal include various forms of trade promotion, including discounts, coupons, and slotting fees (SFs), the latter being upfront payments to retailers in the form of free goods in return for shelf space. Moran must decide whether to accept the proposal or to pursue another expansion options such as online sales and a pop-up store.
In April 2017, a third year student at Western University was contemplating launching a new business, Backyard Pub. The company would rent inflatable pubs and party supplies to individuals planning outdoor summer gatherings across Southwestern Ontario. This start-up enthusiast needed to evaluate his product offering and marketing strategy in addition to projecting the new venture's financial performance for the first three years of operations. Was there a market for this product? What target demographic would buy into this product? Where was the best place to market Backyard Pub?
In April 2017, a third year student at Western University was contemplating launching a new business, Backyard Pub. The company would rent inflatable pubs and party supplies to individuals planning outdoor summer gatherings across Southwestern Ontario. This start-up enthusiast needed to evaluate his product offering and marketing strategy in addition to projecting the new venture’s financial performance for the first three years of operations. Was there a market for this product? What target demographic would buy into this product? Where was the best place to market Backyard Pub?