Ziwo Agricultural Service Co. Ltd. (Ziwo), located in the city of Shenyang in Liaoning Province in northeastern China, was a market leader in sales of agricultural materials. In 2006, China began changing how cropland was distributed and used. Over the next few years, decentralized, small farm households gave way to larger, more centralized, family farms. The change undermined Ziwo's business, driving it into a sharp decline in market share and income from 2008 to 2011. In December 2011, the company considered integrating the supply chain vertically to survive the decline. Was this move necessary, and if so, which direction should the vertical integration strategy take-forward or backward? How could Ziwo even achieve vertical integration under its current circumstances? Finally, would vertical integration help Ziwo deal with an emerging threat from Chinese Internet retailers that were entering the agricultural supply chain?
Goldman Sachs acquired Imprint Capital Advisors, a small firm that specialized in advising clients on environmental/social/governance (ESG) and impact investments. The founders sold Imprint with the belief that joining a global financial firm would help to scale impact investing, if not bring it into the mainstream. The case is set two years after the acquisition. It describes impact investing, the founding of Imprint, and its evolution from serving foundations and home offices to financial institutions, and its sale to and integration within Goldman Sachs. The founders consider the past two years and whether the acquisition has, in fact, help to scale ESG/impact investing.
In March 2018, international shipping giant Maersk is getting ready to debut a trade digitization platform. Maersk hopes the platform will help streamline global trade since shipping goods internationally is an extraordinarily complicated and inefficient process. Maersk intends for stakeholders throughout the supply chain to utilize the platform, including its competitors. Blockchain, made famous through cryptocurrency, will power part of the project. Executives at Maersk believe that Blockchain technology can provide much needed transparency to the global supply chain. Maersk plans to launch the blockchain trade platform as an independent joint venture with IBM. The team at Maersk wonders if this joint venture is the right organization to operate the blockchain project. What challenges will the project face?
In March 2013, Zalora, a leading online fashion retailer in Asia-Pacific, had diversified it sales channels by launching the Zalora mobile app. Almost three years on, Tito Costa, the Managing Director of Zalora, is faced with some hard-hitting questions, specifically in relation to where he should focus the company's future investments. Although the mobile app was an important channel to draw in customers, conversion rates and retention needed improvement. Tito knew that the question was not whether to have a mobile app or not, it was about getting the best value from it. What investments and incentives were needed to create a large and growing set of loyal customers who would see the Zalora as their go-to app for all their fashion needs? Did Zalora have the resources to execute these plans? And, importantly, would these investments be worthwhile?
Set in early October 2017, this case follows Utz Claassen, the founder and chairman of Syntellix - a medical parts company that specialised in the research, development and sales of bio-absorbable, metallic implants. Syntellix was founded in 2008 as a spin-off from the special research division at the University of Hanover in Germany with the intention of translating the institute's theoretical knowledge of magnesium-based biodegradable implants into viable medical applications. After the successful completion of animal testing in 2010, the company began human clinical studies of its patented MAGNEZIX® alloy used in compression screws, pins and plates for the treatment of bone fractures, which had traditionally relied on steel and titanium parts. After more than five years of meticulous hard work, by 2017 MAGNEZIX® medical screws and pins have met CE-approval for human use in 30 countries. The product officially launched in Germany in September 2013. And by the end of 2016, about 25,000 successful implants had taken place across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In March 2017, Syntellix AG founded Syntellix Asia based in Singapore, where it received venture financing and government support to make inroads into the booming Asian healthcare sector. Despite such success, the biggest operational difficulty Syntellix has is to continue making its way in a market dominated by gigantic players with huge resources, infrastructure and relationship network.
In September 2016, a senior consultant at the Indore campus of the Central Institute of Management and Consulting (CIMC) was busy preparing some documents for a meeting on a transportation problem the organization was facing. CIMC Indore's chief operating officer had requested his assistance to resolve the transport department's issues. Management was incurring substantial yearly costs for maintenance related to the drivers that operated the various vehicles of the organizations. There was also a need to rationalize the workload of the drivers to avoid dissonance among employees. Following his meeting with the chief operating officer, the senior consultant saw an opportunity to reduce the annual cost of drivers, while addressing some of the dissatisfaction that was present among drivers concerning their schedules and workload.
At a time when many traditional retailers are closing their physical stores, digitally native vertical brands such as Bonobos, which specializes in men's apparel, and Warby Parker, which specializes in eyeglasses, are aggressively expanding into offline locations. In this article, the authors explore two related trends: (1) the expansion of online-first retailers into offline stores that "supercharge"customer value and (2) the transformation of stores run by traditional, offline-first retailers from fulfillment-dominant centers into experience-dominant centers. As authors David R. Bell, Santiago Gallino, and Antonio Moreno note, as digitally native vertical brands have learned to build relationships with customers, traditional retailers have been reducing their store sizes and inventories and are attempting to improve and elevate the customer experience. "Showroom experiences," they write, "create better customers." When customers are exposed to the brand in a showroom, "they are better able to resolve any uncertainty about the nondigital attributes of the retailer's product."Similarly, the authors say, "showrooms create better retailers: When customers are physically present in the retail environment, observation of their behaviors can lead to meaningful insights." The authors developed their early insights into what customers value while working closely with Bonobos and Warby Parker. Through simulations, they saw that stores with smaller footprints and a higher level of service led to better results economically -improved margins, smoother logistics, and better control of inventory. They found that, rather than being dead, physical retail stores were very much alive with a profound shift in focus -from fulfillment to experience-oriented environments. The authors conclude that online-first retailers and traditional retailers have something to learn from each other.
New emotion-sensing technologies can help employees make better decisions, improve concentration, alleviate stress, and adopt healthier and more productive work styles. But companies must address important privacy issues.
Today's retailers need to adopt a data-driven view -with the goal of understanding how website features and advances in AI will affect consumer behavior.
It's common practice to develop a handful of strategic priorities to focus strategy -but formulated correctly, they're also useful communication tools for both internal and external stakeholders. Clear, credible priorities linked to explicit metrics offer a framework for assessing progress toward the company's goals, in a way that abstractions like vision or mission cannot.
As the effects of climate change become more prominent, business needs to grapple with its own attitudes toward government. A more destructive physical environment requires a more nuanced relationship in which government is viewed as a partner in enabling and supporting markets rather than as a regulator that needs to be managed.
Most CEOs have detailed long-term plans, which are often closely held secrets out of concern that competitive advantage may be undermined by detailed disclosure. Yet disclosing a long-term plan provides an opportunity to identify financially material sustainability issues and demonstrate how the company manages business-critical issues -information that's valuable to investors.
Meeting the recommendations for disclosure put forth by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures might seem like a tough job. But if the oil & gas industry is any example, it's not as difficult as some might imagine -and there are excellent reasons for corporate boards to consider it.
As sexy as it is to speculate about new technologies such as AI, robots, and the internet of things, the focus on technology can steer the conversation in a dangerous direction. Because when it comes to digital transformation, digital is not the answer. Transformation is. In various industries, including banking, paint, and shipbuilding, digital leaders are finding that technology's value comes from doing business differently because technology makes it possible.
New studies show that companies can derive significant value from free digital goods such as open source software, especially when they pay their own employees to contribute to their creation -even if these assets become available to competitors.
"Investments in scale used to make a lot of sense,"argues author Hemant Taneja. They supported the development of cars, airplanes, radio, and television, and built out the electric grid and telephone system. But with the emergence of mobile, social, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence in recent years, Taneja argues that business logic has shifted toward what he describes as "the economics of unscale,"which allows for mass customization for increasingly narrow markets. Because companies can stay nimble and focused by easily and instantly renting scale, they can adjust quickly to changing demand and conditions with little cost and relatively little effort. According to Taneja, large corporations are taking note. Traditionally, Procter & Gamble Co. invented most of its new products in-house. But in recent years it has started to tap into ideas from outside inventors who submit ideas via the internet. Other large companies, including General Electric Co. and Walmart Stores Inc., are tapping into new, unscaled businesses as well. Taneja presents three recommendations to large companies seeking to remain relevant. His first recommendation is to become a platform. Operating a platform can be enormously profitable because the companies that operate on the platforms come to depend on them for their success. The author's second recommendation is to instill a product focus. Big companies, he argues, get sidetracked on issues that have little to do with making great products. But in an unscaled era, this can create openings for focused small competitors. His third recommendation is to find growth opportunities through what he calls "dynamic rebundling."The winners in the unscaled economy, he writes, "make every customer feel like a market of one."Products and services that are tailored to individuals will often have an advantage over mass-market products and services, Taneja says.
Considering the increasing pace of technological change and volatility in many industries, the need for corporate transformation is rising. Unfortunately, the chance of successfully achieving it is falling.