This case delves into the entrepreneurial journey of Madhav Krishna and his company, Vahan. Initially focused on providing speech recognition tools for English learning in skilling centers, Vahan undergoes several pivots as a platform for blue-collar employment. The case underscores iterative venture development, learning and pivoting, user-data responsiveness, platform adoption (like WhatsApp), distribution partners for scaling, and the nuances of business-model fit in India's evolving internet landscape in a blue-collar space.
STEPN was a one-year-old lifestyle app designed to incentivize routine physical activities like walking, jogging, and running by providing individual financial rewards for participants. The app was part of the move-to-earn (M2E) category of blockchain games. Within a short time, STEPN had established an exceptional track record of both financial performance and enterprise valuation and had achieved unicorn status. However, by January 2023, the Web 3 app was on the verge of being caught in what was known in the world of blockchain games as a death spiral. The prices of its flagship product and its exchange medium were both dropping, and the company's net profits were also in decline. The co-founders needed to determine not only how to head off a death spiral in the short run but also how to sustain the business in the long run.
Ghost Tree Invitational (Ghost Tree) was established in 2007 as a non-profit organization. In the past, Ryan Chackel, the president of Ghost Tree, had organized a yearly two-day event in Bend, Oregon, to raise funds for donations to local non-profit organizations. The event included a golf tournament on the first day and a large outdoor dinner event on the second day. Ghost Tree had relied on sponsor dollars, donations, and ticket sales in a business model that had worked well until a recent change with the participating venue. In all previous years, the venue was donated free of charge to Ghost Tree, but this changed in 2022; Green Links Golf Resort would no longer be able to support the tournament, and the venue would now be an additional expense. Chackel needed to develop a new business model that would make financial sense while also staying true to the non-profit organization's values. Was there a way to address the financial burden while also maintaining the ability to continuously donate to other non-profit organizations? How could Ghost Tree overcome these financial difficulties?
Zakir Khan, a celebrated Indian comedian, commanded an impressive and vast fan base. Khan's unreserved exhibition of his authentic nature had earned him acclaim not only from his fans but also from fellow artists and the media. It had also allowed him to build a personal brand, leading to widespread appeal that had, in turn, unlocked diverse creative avenues for him that typically remained beyond the reach of conventional comedians. What else had contributed to Khan's personal brand, and what would enhance and sustain that brand identity?
While Microsoft and its allies received immense praise from industry insiders for creating GitHub Copilot, a tool that greatly improved programming accessibility, it faced scrutiny from regulators and ethicists shortly after its launch. A class action suit was filed against them for using the publicly available codes to develop Copilot without informed consent. Ethicists raised concerns about their commitment to ethical and responsible innovation. While Microsoft and allies were being questioned they and several other big technology firms terminated a large numbers of AI ethics personnel. This raised several concerns about ethical and legal oversights in design, development, and deployment of AI-powered innovations like GitHub Copilot.
Established in August 2011 in India, Frontier Markets (FM) was one of the largest social commerce platforms working with women influencers and with a strong following of rural customers. Starting out as a clean-energy product company, FM adopted a gender-smart strategy to bring rural-based women entrepreneurs on board as the company's representatives in rural villages. The company leveraged an extensive network of women entrepreneurs, known as Sahelis, through the Meri Saheli e-commerce app. Using the app, the company delivered products and services in finance, agriculture, health care, climate, digital, and essential services. In 2022, FM had over 20,000 Sahelis working with 432,000 rural families, implementing over 25 million solutions through direct sales and doorstep delivery. The firm's founders considered expanding geographically to become India's largest women-led commerce platform. They wondered how they could add 10 million new customers and generate over US$54.16 million in revenue in the next two years. What was the best option for achieving this ambitious growth: expanding in new markets; adding new product categories; or adding new strategic partners?
Outland provided a global communication and exhibition platform for artists and collectors. Outland conducted art transactions in the form of cryptocurrencies, addressing challenges prevalent in the traditional creator economy. Renowned artist James Jean collaborated with Outland in 2022 to release a new hand-drawn digital art series called Fragments. The series received widespread acclaim. The fans had high expectations for Fragments' narrative derivative work, "Adrift," set to launch in 2023. The platform aimed to establish a fan community centred around Jean and his work. However, fans wanted to interact with the artist and participate in the secondary creation of his work, while also receiving better financial returns. How would Outland establish an intellectual property licensing mechanism to increase non-fungible token (NFT) creators and holders an enhanced financial return?
Global health and wellness industries worldwide have been changing rapidly. In China, traditional Chinese supplements brand Guanzhan was founded in 2014 with the aim to provide younger consumers with new types of supplements that would satisfy their changing needs. The company employed a "New Retail" model to best serve the targeted consumer groups, who, compared to their older counterparts, knew little about traditional medicine and had higher taste and convenience requirements for supplement products. As of when the case was written, Guanzhan's ready-to-eat fish maw products had become one of the leading supplement product categories in the Chinese market. Looking into the future, the company sought to expand their footprint offline and develop new products that would satisfy the offline markets.
The production supervisor of Gupta Furniture was tasked with selecting a mode of production that not only met the demand for the company's best-selling product, the office interior chair, but also minimized the overall cost of production. The firm's operations manager had stressed that the chosen production strategy should enable the company to meet demand at the lowest possible cost. As such, the brief was to prepare a comprehensive aggregate plan based on the forecasted demand scenario, considering how much to produce and when to produce in addition to determining which strategy among those traditionally applied would give the best results. The major challenge lay in planning and scheduling inventory, and determining regular production, overtime production, subcontracting, and employment levels over a medium term of 9 to 15 months, though both the short-term and long-term implications of these quantitative decisions also had to be taken into account.
The implementation of the OKR-based Performance Management System (PMS) in Quick Heal, an Indian cybersecurity company came about because of Ms. Reetu Raina, the CHRO's revelation about loopholes in the existing PMS that needed to be addressed. The old PMS had a rigid top-to-bottom approach without any mechanism for frequent feedback. Moreover, not every individual goal was tangible or aligned with the organizational strategy. As a result, it had become challenging to differentiate between high and low performers, and Quick Heal was missing out on a chance to grow as a company. The organization faced several challenges during the implementation process of the new OKR-based PMS, such as employees' resistance to change, slow transformation of the traditional goal-setting process to a more agile approach and other barriers towards the new system's adoption. Employees questioned the need and relevance of the new PMS amidst the uncertainties of the post-pandemic work norms and strongly resisted the transition. Mixed reviews from the department heads left Raina puzzled and wondering about the pitfalls of the transition, the implementation process and overall the potential of the new OKR-based PMS as a tool to create a performance-based culture at Quick Heal.
NSGC Information Technology Co., Ltd. (NSGC Technology) is both a cybersecurity enterprise engaged in technological innovation and a software firm focusing on cyber range construction and cybersecurity talent cultivation. It boasts a long history of doing business with the military industry, and it has produced a wide range of competitive cyber range products. At its inception in 2014, NSGC Technology initiated XCTF, a CTF (capture the flag) competition ranking first in Asia and second in the world, which earned the company a strong international reputation. NSGC Technology started to tap the global market in 2017 and has fostered an international outlook over many years of overseas practices. Its products and services are now available in more than twenty countries. While competing with leading global manufacturers, it has developed insights into the cyber range sector and become the only internationally competitive Chinese enterprise in this field. However, as the company marched from the military industry into non-military fields, it became trapped in low-level industry competition in 2021. In addition, the company's overseas business has been severely impacted since 2020 by the COVID-19 outbreak. At the beginning of 2022, facing challenges at home and abroad, NSGC Technology had to carefully examine the relationship between domestic and global markets and formulate a new corporate development strategy.
The case looks at an organisation called CSG Group (CSG), which successfully diversified over the span of several years to become an integrated facilities management and talent services provider. Along their journey of diversification, they acquired a business which had misrepresented its finances - however this was only discovered after the sale had gone through. The financially distressed acquisition threatened the future viability of the company and required a swift turnaround in order for the organisation to remain afloat. Many varying turnaround strategies were implemented, and the division ended up successful. During the turnaround, the protagonist took the opportunity to restructure the divisions and merge multiple businesses inside.
Steven Erickson, cofounder of the hedge fund Anbec Partners, is trying to determine whether the all-cash offer D.R. Horton has just made for Vidler Water Resources, Inc. (Vidler) is a fair value for Vidler. Vidler's most valuable project is the Fish Springs Ranch pipeline, which was developed to supply water to fast-growing Reno, Nevada. Reno is in Washoe County, which shares water from the Honey Lake aquifer with Lassen County, California. This case presents a history of Reno's water projects, an overview of water regulation and the prior appropriation system in the western United States, and the development of Vidler. There is significant opposition to the Fish Springs Ranch pipeline from California and the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. The case delves into the legal battles and the financial risks and rewards of Vidler's investments, and ultimately is a discussion of the challenges of investing in water. At the Darden School of Business, this case is taught in the second-year elective, "Global Economics of Water." It fits in the policy module that deals with pricing water, which is a necessary condition for addressing the current water scarcity challenges, at least in water-scarce industrialized countries. The discussion of Reno follows a session on water markets in Australia, and how these have been installed in response to the ongoing droughts there. Needless to say, the case can be taught on its own; it is especially suitable for classes about the water rights system of the western United States, and more broadly, for those about investing in water.
In 2018, artisanal Italian vineyard Frank Cornelissen was one of the world's leading natural wine vineyards. Its founder, Frank Cornelissen, faced weather related conditions that forced him to have to decide between staying true to the tenets of the natural wine community or breaking with his public beliefs to save that year's wines.
In 2018, artisanal Italian vineyard Frank Cornelissen was one of the world's leading natural wine vineyards. Its founder, Frank Cornelissen, faced weather related conditions that forced him to have to decide between staying true to the tenants of the natural wine community or breaking with his public beliefs to save that year's wines.
The founders of SENS Foods (SENS), a Czech sustainable-food small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), wanted to expand the business beyond their home market. SENS was operating in the rapidly growing alternative-protein market using products derived from edible crickets. Due to its increasing profitability and international expansion potential, SENS saw an opportunity to expand into one of more Nordic markets—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. SENS had to explore the possible modes of entry and evaluate the most suitable ones. In the short term, SENS had a sustained competitive advantage with its Thailand-based Cricket Lab Ltd. farm and its brand name. SENS’s intangible resources—business positioning and messaging, innovation, and research—represented a temporary competitive advantage. For market selection purposes, five cluster criteria were proposed to assess the attractiveness of the identified markets: estimating the level of primary competition, market maturity, market size, country environmental performance, and transportation costs. The founders needed to evaluate the four Nordic countries using these five selection criteria to identify the top two countries for further examination regarding mode of entry and level of competition.
Rijul Jain, the operations supervisor at Grooves Distillery Records (Grooves), is trying to decide if and how to address capacity issues at this boutique vinyl record production facility after receiving a large contract that increased demand significantly. Based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the small business was started by Josephine “Fina” Leite and her wife, Theresa, to produce vinyl records of modern indie music for vinyl record enthusiasts. Jain must figure out where a bottleneck exists, balance Grooves' line of production workers, and increase production to meet demand.
The case study revolves around Amir Hashem El Dandarawy, the leader of the El Amara tribe in Upper Egypt, who faces two pressing conflicts. El Dandarawy must navigate these conflicts, mediate between the embattled families, and assert his tribe's rights while maintaining neutrality and integrity. The case examines El Dandarawy's leadership style; prominent Western leadership models such as servant leadership, transformational leadership, situational leadership, and ethical leadership; and different approaches to conflict resolution in Arab culture, including mediation, negotiation, consultation, and consensus-building. Students are challenged to compare and contrast Western and Eastern approaches to leadership and conflict resolution.
In late 2022, a difficult period for the cryptocurrency industry persisted, marking the middle of what many considered a “crypto winter.” Popular tokens and currencies like Bitcoin and Solana lost over 50 per cent of their value, with other Web 3.0 adjacent technologies following the same path. Debate surrounded the industry at large, and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) flexed its regulatory muscle on a “poster boy” non-fungible token (NFT), Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), in efforts to provide more structure to the NFT market. The chairman of the SEC, Gary Gensler, who was extremely knowledgeable in the crypto space and also considered a tough regulator among the community, had to determine how to classify BAYC. Ultimately, questions surrounding BAYC’s legal interpretation were being posed in the SEC's investigation: Should BAYC be regulated as a security? Were investors protected? Should NFTs be considered art? Did BAYC violate security regulations? As one of the leading representatives of the entire $2 trillion crypto industry, the potential regulation of BAYC had major implications for its peers, the underlying technology, and a spectrum of investors.