In October 2012, the chief executive officer of Focus Brand Management (Focus), a consulting and advertising company based in mainland China, was preparing to meet with Jiangzhong Pharmaceuticals (Jiangzhong). Focus had been working with Jiangzhong on an annual analysis of brand tracking. Based on that analysis, executives at Jiangzhong believed that it was time to expand their business to the functional food industry. Their first product would be a line of biscuits featuring a core ingredient known as hou tou gu, an ingredient that was considered beneficial to stomach care according to traditional Chinese medicine. For her meeting, Focus's chief executive officer needed to resolve some key questions about the most appropriate branding, packaging design, advertising and promotion strategy, and the choice of a suitable brand ambassador for this product.

In October 2012, the chief executive officer of Focus Brand Management (Focus), a consulting and advertising company based in mainland China, was preparing to meet with Jiangzhong Pharmaceuticals (Jiangzhong). Focus had been working with Jiangzhong on an annual analysis of brand tracking. Based on that analysis, executives at Jiangzhong believed that it was time to expand their business to the functional food industry. Their first product would be a line of biscuits featuring a core ingredient known as hou tou gu, an ingredient that was considered beneficial to stomach care according to traditional Chinese medicine. For her meeting, Focus’s chief executive officer needed to resolve some key questions about the most appropriate branding, packaging design, advertising and promotion strategy, and the choice of a suitable brand ambassador for this product.

As a middle manager at a biotechnology company, Sandra Brown harnessed digital tools and social media to engage others and build campaigns for change in the company. This case follows her career at the company, and describes the challenges she faced as a change agent, working to promote gender equality within the company, and a new drug developed to fight cancer externally.

Sandra Brown, a middle manager at a biotech company who has led internal and external movements for change over the last few years, faces a decision. Whether to continue to work for change at the company, or move on to pursue new opportunities elsewhere, where her new ideas and innovative approach might be better received.

Sandra Brown, a middle manager at a biotech company who has led internal and external movements for change over the last few years, faces a decision. Whether to continue to work for change at the company, or move on to pursue new opportunities elsewhere, where her new ideas and innovative approach might be better received.

In 2018, City Year was a 30 year old nonprofit that recruited and organized teams of young-adult "volunteers" (corps teams) to provide a year of citizen service. It had 3,100 corps members serving in 327 schools located in 28 U.S. cities. In its early decades, City Year provided a variety of services to a variety of organizations in need. Over its most recent decade, City Year had pivoted to having all corps members serve in low-income public schools to keep students on track to graduation in an effort to reduce the nation's high school dropout rate. City Year also worked with partners to help schools transform themselves to better meet the needs of low-income students, and worked with policy makers and elected officials to promote the value of national citizen service. In 2012, City Year launched a Long Term Impact strategy (LTI) aimed at making a substantial improvement in high school graduation rates. The LTI required City Year to transform itself over time to create an organization capable of delivering its ambitious impact strategy. The case explores City Year's history and its efforts to align its organization with its strategy. In March 2018, City Year CEO Michael Brown must examine the state of his organization and its strategy to determine next steps to achieving its LTI goals.

At the end of 2017, Morgan Stanley's firm performance - the strongest since the financial crisis - is linked to the overall success of its corporate strategy set out in 2015. Following several years of development and integration of a sustainability strategy in sync with overall firm strategy, the case asks the question of what "version 2.0" of a sustainability strategy should look like for the firm. The question is posed by Audrey Choi (HBS MBA 2004), Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer, and CEO of the Morgan Stanley Institution for Sustainable Development. Since joining the firm in 2007, Choi worked with senior management and key individuals in each of the firm's business segments to transition sustainability from being a niche initiative to being part of the broad firm-wide strategy, embedded across Morgan Stanley's core businesses. The case recounts the process of integrating sustainability into each of the firm's three business units and examines the challenges, the product development, and the outcomes of the integration strategy in order to pose the question of what should Morgan Stanley do to further embed and grow its sustainability strategy.

Essence, the first magazine aimed at African-American women, was created by four, young, Black entrepreneurs in the aftermath of massive racial and political upheaval in the United States in 1968. The venture was a financial, branding and cultural success. By 2005, the company was sold to Time Warner, Inc, the largest magazine publisher in the world at that time, for the highest price ever paid for a single-title magazine company. However, there is still debate about whether the last remaining co-founder, Edward Lewis, jeopardized the iconic Black brand by selling it to a white-owned company.

This case follows up on the competition between Kmart and Walmart as discussed in the A case. It summarizes the companies' positions in the early 2000s, and discusses events between 1990 and Kmart's declaration of bankruptcy in 2002. Walmart grew significantly, expanded internationally, and became a leading player in groceries. However, it also faced criticism regarding its wage and labor practices. Meanwhile, Kmart faced an identity crisis, falling between the cracks while customers sought lower prices at Walmart and higher-end goods at Target. In the 1990s, its growth stemmed mainly from acquisitions, not all of which proved beneficial in the long term.

Comparison of the U.S. Government response, using the $700 billion TARP fund, to downturns in the banking and auto industries during the global financial crisis.

The case looks at the enormous disruption affecting the entire automotive industry through the eyes of a recently hired CRM expert at the British premium car maker Jaguar Land Rover who keeps the marketing team grounded by taking a customer-centric approach. The case provides a clear sense of purpose about the typical customer journey and the touchpoints where the car maker can reach out to the customer with relevant and timely information. The case reveals the way in which JLR collects data and customer intelligence during the product lifecycle in clear and easy-to-understand terms. One of the highlights of the case is the use of ethnographic research to strengthen the relationship between the target customer and the brand. The case also examines the creative use of smart-data analytics for decision making and the innovative deployment of conjoint analysis for simulating output volumes against price points.

The case focuses on China's 'furious five' smartphone makers - Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, and OPPO/Vivo, charting the history of the industry and the changing dynamics of the global market. It explains the emerging market context in which these companies operate, its distinctive features, opportunities and challenges, and the various ways they have triumphed over established global brands. The case provides a detailed introduction to the respective Chinese smartphone makers and their products. It discusses their current strategies and how they were influenced at the formative stage by the background and experience of the respective founders. It examines their development trajectories to shed light on their global strategies in the future. Given its dynamic growth and intense competition, China's smartphone market offers an ideal setting to analyse the competitive heterogeneity of firms in an emerging market context.

Plans for a $3.5 billion crude oil pipeline in 2014-17 from the Bakken formation of North Sakota and Canada to a transfer point near Chicago, linked to an existing pipeline to the major refining and export faculities on the US Gulf Coast, run into trouble when the developer, Energy Transfer Partners, encounters a "roadblock" on a section of federal land that is within a reservation of the Flat Rock Sioux tribe of Native Americans. The case charts how the conflict escalated from the local to the global level.

The case goes back in time to the 'golden age' of Absolut when contemporary artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring painted the unusual bottle to the amazement of the global arts community. The nearly accidental collaboration with artists in the glorious years turned the brand into a must-have aspirational drink to be consumed at chic bars and art fairs. Based on the vivid recollections of Vadim Grigorian (INSEAD MBA '00J), the case uncovers the awakening of new paradigm, the brand as acultural agent of contemporary art in consumer society. In his retelling of these events, hitherto unknown, the marketing executive recaptures the essence of Absolut during its hey day from the mid-1980s to 2011 in an exquisitely told and unusual account of cultural engagement.

The case explores the murky world of tax havens and hidden wealth. The so-called 'Panama Papers', 'Paradise Papers', 'Swiss Leaks' and 'LuxLeaks' are essentially digital dumps that exposed where the the ultra-rich had for decades stashed their billions to evade paying taxes. Academics such as Gabriel Zucman have mined these revelations for insights about global wealth inequality. Their research and that of investigative journalists have put public policymakers under pressure to make laws to "regain control over globalized financial capitalism" as economist Thomas Piketty calls it, arguing that the continued legality of tax havens puts at stake the basic social contract on which democracies are founded, and that the resulting shortfall in tax revenues deprives advanced economies of resources for nation building for future generations.

Inspired by C.K. Prahalad's "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid", Novartis was exploring ways to build a sustainable business for the BOP in India that would improve access to healthcare for the poor while being financially profitable, unlike Novartis's traditional philanthropic and corporate social responsibility approaches. To succeed, it had to answer a series of strategic questions: Which BOP patients should be targeted to best achieve the social and financial goals of the programme? Which diseases should it cover, and with what types of products (patent-protected, generics, OTC)? Which stages of the patient journey should the programme address? Which stakeholders should be targeted? What communication channels should be used? What should be the programme scale? Where to 'house' the social business group in the Novartis organization?

To support a new digital strategy launched in 2014 in response to multiple sources of disruption, ING Netherlands restructured in 2015 into an agile organization. Agility is based on speed, flat, collaborative and customer-centric design principles. In October 2017, ING was considering rolling the agile organization to Belgium in view of a merger of the two countries operations. On the one hand, agility was proving very effective to respond to disruption. But on the other hand, there were signs of tensions in the organization, some resulting from agility, some from the change process itself. The case puts participants in the shoes of Herman Tange, a tribe leader, in October 2017 as he ponders his recommendations about the future of the agile organization model to his new CEO. Herman wants to discuss three options.

In late 2013, Ryan Cohen, cofounder and CEO of the fast growing online pet food and pet products retailer Chewy.com, has to make a "bet the company decision"-whether to keep working with Chewy's third-party logistics (3PL) provider to fulfill customer orders, or whether to take this critical function in-house. Cohen worries that the company's 3PL will not be able to serve Chewy's customers as it continues to grow, and reaching scale is essential to making the company's business model work, and to hitting the aggressive growth target that he has set of becoming a $500 million revenue company by 2018. However, some board members are concerned, and have suggested that Cohen slow growth and leave order fulfillment to the 3PL, as Cohen and the executive team are not operations experts; they are customer service experts, and that should be their focus. Cohen sees four possible paths for Chewy: stick with its current 3PL and slow down growth; add another 3PL to the mix to support Chewy as it scales; stay with its current 3PL and build out a fulfillment center in a new market to "test it out"; or fully "insource" order fulfilment, and open a fulfilment center as quickly as possible. Which path should Cohen and Chewy's board choose?

Cohen and Chewy's other board members decided to fully insource order fulfilment, and commenced building an order fulfilment center near its 3PL partner's facility. As soon as the 3PL learned that Chewy would be managing its own order fulfilment, however, it decided to triple what it charged Chewy to fulfill each order. What should Chewy do?

This case elucidates the need for water for businesses, with a focus on beverage companies. The global scarcity of water as a resource and the conflicts that surround its usage is elaborated. The water footprint of the cola companies and two other major companies of Nestle and Unilever are highlighted along with the strategies they have used to try and circumvent the problem, since they rely extensively on water as it is the main ingredient in their final products. The case also provides rich data to discuss and analyze the risks associated with water usage be it financial social, reputational etc.