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In February 2022, Spotify Technology SA (Spotify), a global music and podcast enterprise headquartered in Sweden, reached an inflection point. Six weeks prior, the company had uploaded a routine podcast by Joe Rogan, one of its celebrity content creators. During that podcast, a virologist Rogan had invited to the show made controversial remarks on the way policy-makers worldwide had been handling the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The virologist also made medically false statements about COVID-19 vaccines. Outrage from the scientific community followed in the form of an open letter, with multiple battlefronts quickly unfolding thereafter. How would Spotify deal with the situation in the immediate term and plan a strategy for the long term? Could Spotify convert the crisis into an opportunity?

The case on KNOLSKAPE traces the firm's evolution from a service provider of simulation games for academia to becoming a full-stack provider of customized products and learning journeys for corporations around the world. Through its growth journey, KNOLSKAPE had transformed from a typical pipeline business to a platform business model that integrates the value propositions provided by providers of technology, content, and service. The case is set in 2019-2020 when the business and learning worlds were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resultant shift to online learning. This case allows students to analyze KNOLSKAPE's platform architecture, including open-closed and proprietary-shared architectures, and globalization opportunities.

A people experience platform, entomo delivers a digital experience for all customers' employees to revamp talent development, performance, and engagement through hyper-personalized insights and nudges for each employee. The entomo talent experience suite provides a solution for all facets required for enhanced talent development and people performance. Recognizing that 'enterprises of tomorrow' require hyper-personalized experiences of relevant upskilling, the entomo platform enables an individualized skill gap analysis, learning journey, and nudges for self-development. At an aggregate level, the platform also indicated skill repository analysis, which enabled strategic investment in talent acquisition and/or development. entomo is increasingly receiving recognition and awards as a leader in digital performance management. However, a myopic view by some industry practitioners, who preferred to use the subjective assessment of organizational skills or focus on other HR initiatives rather than getting the organization future-ready, presented some challenges to entomo. Employees, those experiencing technology and digital fatigue, were further challenged by yet another platform, thus reducing the stickiness of the offering.

The SpeedServe exercise presents a brief scenario which puts the student in the role of a human resources team member who needs to respond to their boss, Maria Martinez, the number two executive in a rapidly growing firm of 500 employees. The boss is looking for the employee's thoughts on how to prioritize spending for the human resources budget, particularly given emerging talent trends since the global pandemic and the desire to create high employee engagement. Martinez has a list of possible areas for focus and wants the employee to rank order them prior to a taskforce meeting later in the day. This exercise is designed to have individual students put themselves in the role of the human resources team member, to rank order the potential areas of focus. Following that individual prioritization, students are put into groups which serve as the taskforce. Each student group needs to discuss and compare individual thinking and develop a final consensus ranking for their taskforce group. Taskforce results can then be discussed across the student teams. The instructor can use the exercise to discuss team dynamics as well as the employee engagement topics of the exercise. This exercise can be conducted in a physical or virtual classroom environment. While similarly structured to popular "survival" experiential learning activities, this exercise is different because the content of the ranking process is relevant to organizational issues and worthy of discussion in addition to the topic of team process.

Part One: Ipsen, a global pharmaceutical firm headquartered in France, was facing significant challenges, including regulatory setbacks and fierce competition, when David Loew assumed the role of CEO in 2020. The loss of exclusivity for Somatuline, Ipsen's flagship cancer drug, added to the complexities. Tasked by the board, Loew aimed to lead Ipsen into a new era of profitable growth amid escalating competition. After thorough review during the Covid-19 pandemic, Loew and the executive team recognized the critical importance of the upcoming strategy. Ipsen Investors' Day became the platform to unveil ""Focus. Together. For Patients and Society,"" the strategy shaping Ipsen's trajectory toward ambitious 2025 targets. Despite pandemic disruptions, Loew was confident that Ipsen possessed the essential elements to embark on a new path of profitable growth. Part Two: Three years after launching the new strategy, David Loew concluded a meeting with the head of legal affairs, reflecting on the strategy's journey. Structured around four pillars, the strategy prioritized patient-centricity, a sustainable pipeline, improved efficiency and operational excellence through collaboration and a diverse workforce. Ipsen's ambition was to be an adaptable force, creating lasting value. While Ipsen made significant strides in executing the strategy, recognizing market acknowledgment, critical questions persisted. These revolved around geographic footprint, digital integration, ongoing cultural transformation and the accelerated development of key products alongside acquisitions to fortify the pipeline. Loew prepared for a two-day session with the executive team to capitalize on successes and chart the way forward to future-proof the company.

One of the biggest obstacles to effective problem-solving is not defining the problem well. Invoking the power of a? narrative and a simple story structure can help ensure that you're solving the right problem. The authors suggest that any problem can be articulated as a quest in which the key elements are hero (protagonist), dragon (obstacle), and treasure (the desired outcome). Expressing a challenge in these simple terms can make it easier to see whether a problem has been framed incorrectly.

Early in February 2022, the board of Peloton Interactive faced some knotty challenges. Immense pandemic demand for its stationary exercise bicycles and treadmills had prompted the firm to scale up production rapidly. But as gyms reopened and the virulence of the virus ebbed, demand had ebbed too, leaving Peloton with unsold inventory, an unsustainable cost structure, and Nasdaq's worst-performing stock for 2021. Activist shareholders were calling on the board to remove the founder CEO, who was board chair and a controlling shareholder through a dual-class share structure, and sell the company to a strategic investor. Complicating external pressure for change was a dual-class share structure that gave insiders a high degree of control over governance.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Technical note UV7432

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case UV8660

As companies increasingly rely on data and analytics to make decisions and improve their operations, it becomes clear that data quality can be a major issue. The insights gleaned from data analytics are useful only if the data is of high quality. This note summarizes some common issues that can result in low-quality data and explores the crucial task of data engineering. This note is taught at Darden in the second-year elective, "Digital Operations." It would also be suitable in a course or module covering data analytics.

In June 2021, the chief executive officer of Hallmark Cards Inc., a leading US greeting cards and gifts company, faced challenges as the digitalization of cards was gaining pace. This growing trend forced the company to overhaul its operations. Although it tried to cope with the changing business environment, the company suffered both in revenue and profit marking. The chief executive officer took efficiency-increasing measures and laid off employees from the greeting cards division, retail business, and corporate support functions. He also invested in greeting card digitalization and innovation efforts, but was wondering if he should focus more on efficiency or innovation measures to achieve turnaround for the company's operations. What innovation strategies should he pursue to make Hallmark Cards Inc. relevant to changing consumer preferences?

In 2021, the US grocery industry had been undergoing several changes. The competitive landscape had changed significantly since the first decade of the twenty-first century. Walmart Inc. (Walmart) had emerged as the dominant retailer in all markets leading to bankruptcies and mergers with erstwhile market leaders. However, mistakes made by Walmart in that same period allowed ALDI SÃœD Dienstleistungs-SE & Co. (Aldi) to make its presence felt with Walmart's customers. Aldi was gaining its advantage through rapid expansion, with an increasingly broader assortment of products meant to attract upscale customers. Walmart initially tried to respond by opening small-format stores. Walmart had to decide whether this was the right approach to use to fight Aldi, or whether it was even a worthwhile fight. On the other hand, Aldi needed to be careful with how fast and far it should deviate from the core business model that had been instrumental in its success. Finally, the grocery business model had a growing online component that became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, Aldi and Walmart also had essential decisions to incorporate these online aspects into their respective business models.

Bhagwati Steel Centre, a family-owned trading firm located in Ghaziabad, India, was facing a short-term decline in revenue from its core business, trading iron and steel components, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company's four partners felt that this was the right time to diversify and expand their business to establish more sources of revenue and income; they were considering diversifying and expanding their business using a business integration strategy and had to choose between two options: backward or forward integration. However, the partners had several financial factors to consider before making the final choice. What factors would influence and determine the better option for the company's cash flow? What effect would a potential boom or bust in the market have on the two proposed expansion strategies and on cash flow? What financial techniques were available to evaluate the two proposals and which should be the preferred technique? Finally, should the company opt for backward or forward integration?

Weekly check-in meetings between managers and their teams or direct reports can feel like a waste of time without an agenda or a shared set of goals and expectations, but they are key opportunities to build trusting manager-employee relationships. The author shares five science-backed steps to help managers structure their one-on-ones with direct reports and team members, along with five key questions managers can focus on when meeting with a direct report.

Set in 2021, this case describes how Amazon and Walmart have been two of the most successful retailers in history and are responsible for changing the rules of the game in the retail industry in the US. Over the years, the two firms had perfected contrasting business models to enable their dominance on the respective offline and online retailing. Walmart's model of low prices and strategic partnerships with suppliers had redefined supply chain practices and lowered system costs through the adoption of information technology. Amazon's online model of convenience of shopping from anywhere, anytime comprised a high-quality user-friendly platform with a large product catalogue, and a widespread and reliable fulfilment infrastructure to deliver the orders quickly to the shopper. In recent years, the growing customer preference for omni-channel retailing, an integrated experience that seamlessly comprised digital and physical retail, had compelled the two companies to make substantive investments in developing capabilities and acquiring resources in what was hitherto the other's domain. This leads to several questions that engage students. With Walmart and Amazon racing to add online and offline retail respectively, would their distinctive business models morph to become similar to each other? Or should each focus on its core strength, while offering the other service (online for Walmart and offline for Amazon) as complementary? Were online and offline retail more suited to different customers and product categories? And did their respective future prospects truly justify the dramatic difference in market capitalisation between the two retailers?

Founded in 2016, Cobalt Robotics, based in Fremont, California, was a Robot-as-a-Service (RaaS) company that built autonomous workplace robots that were designed to replace or supplement human security guards. Outfitted with over 60 sensors, Cobalt robots patrolled workplaces, leveraging AI and machine learning to identify an array of security risks. Security was of critical importance to companies, and yet human security guards were expensive, exhibited high turnover, and were prone to discipline lapses due to the isolated and repetitive nature of the job. Recruiting suitable talent was also increasingly challenging in the wake of the pandemic and the "great resignation." Cobalt's robots could work around the clock, did not resent repetitive work, and were accurate in their work. By 2022, Cobalt had deployed hundreds of security robots at companies around the world, including DoorDash, Yelp, and Slack. As a Series C venture-backed company which had raised over $90 million to date, Cobalt was under pressure to scale quickly. Yet the company faced a series of challenges and decisions around how to scale, including how to overcome the human-veto factor, which verticals to target, and which distribution channel to use. As Cobalt looked to its future, it envisioned entering into other workplace robotic functions beyond security. The company wondered how this would impact its go-to-market strategy as well.

Founded in 2013, OhmConnect was a free consumer web app that alerted customers about peak hours of electricity demand, and paid them to lower their energy use at home during these periods. The company sold the aggregated reductions generated by thousands of households to the electricity market as "negawatt" hours. For each kilowatt-hour of electricity reduced, OhmConnect was paid the same as if a fossil fuel-powered "peaker plant" had generated that kilowatt-hour of electricity. OhmConnect shared a portion of this revenue with its customers in the form of rewards and prizes. By lowering energy demand when the electric grid was stressed, OhmConnect reduced the need for peaker plants to be fired up, saving money and reducing pollution. As of 2022, the company operated in three states in the U.S. with approximately 215,000 users. As a Series D venture that had raised more than $95 million in VC, OhmConnect was under pressure to grow. Yet regulatory hurdles and long lead times on electricity capacity procurement contracts had created significant challenges to scaling. OhmConnect needed to decide whether to continue to expand into new markets one-by-one with its existing business model or pursue a new national product that could attract national marketing partners, possibly lowering OhmConnect's customer acquisition cost. Establishing a national footprint could also enable OhmConnect to build a national data hub on home electricity usage, which, in turn, might open doors to alternative monetization opportunities down the road and allow the company to access broader funding sources, including from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The Pay As You Go solar power company in East Africa had sales of $71 million in 2019. It wished to grow to $300 million by 2025. M-KOPA, founded by three entrepreneurs in 2011, had grown nicely in Kenya and Uganda to reach nearly 750,000 households with an innovative direct sales force model. Jesse Moore, the founder, wished to scale the company through organic growth as well as geographical expansion into Nigeria. The strategy called for decisions on product/service offerings and go-to-market options. On the product side the company had increasingly migrated to larger in-home connected electronic and electrical devices. It had to decide how much further to go. On the go-to-market side its innovative Direct Service Representative network was hard to create and manage, and it had to think if there were viable alternatives.

This case illustrates how a strong culture, founder-led SME designed and used a unique performance metric-the job security index-to manage through periods of economic uncertainty. The case centers specifically on how the job security index was used in an interactive control process to focus the organization on identifying strategic uncertainties and developing related action plans to survive the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. The case explores how the design and use of this metric both influenced, and was influenced by, the firm's broad-based employee ownership incentives.

Machine learning has been used to create value in various ways across a broad swath of industries. In this case, students will explore uses for machine learning in the context of the launch of the Disney+ streaming service in November 2019. At the time of the case, Disney already operated two streaming platforms, Hulu and ESPN+. Its new streaming service would launch with an archive of roughly 7,500 TV episodes and 500 films, including wildly popular titles from Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar. Yet Disney+ would be entering an increasingly competitive industry dominated by Netflix. Since its pivot from mail-order video to streaming in the early 2000s, Netflix had extensively used machine-learning algorithms to optimize customer experience and retention. In this case, students will assume the (fictitious) role of Margaret Gupta, a senior data scientist, as she ideates machine-learning use cases for Disney's management team. In addition to background information on Disney and Netflix, the case provides students with basic information on use cases and data sources for machine learning. The overarching goal is to give students a general understanding of how machine learning works, learn to recognize potential use cases from a managerial lens, the data required to fuel it, and the possible sources of bias that can arise from that data.