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Many companies are embedding processes like providing recommendations, taking orders, upselling and delivering services, with minimal customer contact. Key features of this approach, called product-led growth, or PLG, include free or very low-cost introductory pricing, with higher prices for more functionality (like what's offered by Zoom) and overall ease of use. The authors discuss successful PLG strategies and PLG's potential for both software and non technology firms.

This case study is set in June 2022, two and a half years since Raffles Quay Asset Management (RQAM) had rolled out its new vision in preparation for positioning itself for the workplace of the future. RQAM had been established in 2001 to manage and market the commercial properties developed by Asia's leading developers. The new vision provided the 'north star' for the whole organisation and transformed how RQAM managed tenant relationships. It also revolutionised RQAM's approach to commercial real estate management. The new vision leveraged technology opportunities and addressed the needs of RQAM's various stakeholders from its tenants to the community. The RQAM leaders crafted a strategy to deliver the vision within five years. To support the implementation of the vision, the leaders drove significant interventions, of which, one intervention was to align employees across the whole organisation with the 'strategy on a page'.

Innovation is critical for success in the healthcare industry. A key step to that success is the evaluation of new therapies. Managers need to understand the commercial potential of ideas and invest with this in mind. This case helps students understand the challenge of evaluating therapies and tools that can help. Two questions face Clemence Shiffrin, senior vice president for business development at Oakdale Pharmaceuticals, and her business development team in January 2020: First, how valuable is Palforzia, a new preventive drug from Aimmune Therapeutics? Second, what would be the financial value of a cure for peanut allergy? To answer these questions, students must consider market sizing, motivation of patients and physicians, and how to consider the value of preventive treatments and cures. The case is compelling to teach because peanut allergies are common and sometimes very serious; students are engaged from the start, as they understand the issue and quickly see the value in finding a treatment. The challenge is then determining the worth of that value.

Design thinking offers a way to make business decisions that is especially suited to exploring uncharted territory and solving complex problems. But leaders need to know when to apply it, and they have to prepare both their employees and managers to do so. The authors have identified the characteristics that make an organization "design thinking-ready" along with a strategic approach to adopting it.

In August 2017, Concentrix Corporation (CNX) partnered with Photon Life Insurance Company (PLI), a leading insurance provider in India, to support PLI's customer management service. On February 1, 2018, Mohit Khanna, global operations manager at CNX, undertook a promising task to improve PLI'S customer persistency at minimal operational cost. If all policyholders with an approaching due date were to be called, then the number of service agents required would be very high, leading to significant operational cost increases. Khanna's challenge was to design a contact prioritization strategy that could be implemented at minimal cost and improve persistency.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case W25821

This case illustrates the founding philosophy and continuous improvement of Spark Education Limited ("Spark Education") and analyzes challenges in the online education industry. Since its inception, Spark Education has been committed to reshaping foundational learning and promoting education equality. Powered by technology and innovation, Spark Education delivered online small classes and AI courses. Based on the operating model of "courses + teaching + service," rounds of innovation and exploration have been conducted. After three years of development, Spark Education has grown into China's largest small-class online platform in mathematics thinking education. However, this young startup's pursuit for further excellence became a big question after the Chinese government introduced the "Double Reduction" policy in July 2021. Affected by this policy, many capital-fueled online and offline education companies, including Spark Education, have been hit hard. The "Double Reduction" policy wrecked Spark Education's IPO plans (the company had submitted its application in the US two months earlier) and imposed significant uncertainty on its future. These market players are in dire need of a way out of the crisis. Looking ahead, Spark Education needs to re-examine its business model and core strengths or build a second growth curve. In August 2021, Spark Education held an executive meeting on its transformation and future business direction. First, Spark Education has to review the value of its online education model, especially the small-class-based adaptive learning model. Second, can Spark Education follow Outschool's model of providing small online classes that were well-received in the US? And if so, what should Spark Education teach? The final question throws it back to the nature of education-What should Spark Education do to provide considerate education services and ensure students enjoy adaptive learning featuring technological innovation? How can children's

The brief case 'Donna Wilde and the Weathermen' sets the stage for a discussion of how to lead teams in an environment undergoing exponential change. The team has spent years working on a project about which they are passionate, but the CEO is skeptical and it gets put on ice. Wilde is left pondering if and how they can exert the leadership needed to bring the project back to life. The case is based on the experiences of a real team and company (whose identities are disguised).

Case Supplement for Case IN1847

In the pandemic, financial inclusion icon BancoSol faces a government-mandated year-long deferral of all loan payments, followed by the sudden Covid death of its CEO. In a Bolivia mired in political turmoil following a failed presidential election, with clients not obligated to pay either interest or principal from March to the end of 2020, the bank faces a severe cash deficit. This is exacerbated by the regulatory determination that, as the deferrals are mandated, loans must be deemed current and performing and resulting profits continue subject to income taxes that must be paid. BancoSol management must decide how to respond to this crisis. When the mandated deferrals come to an end, the bank regulators issue instructions as to how the restructuring must take place. As the total deferred amounts add up to 85% of its loan portfolio, this is a critical matter for BancoSol. Prior to the regulatory instructions, management had painstakingly designed its own restructuring program. Convinced that it is the optimal way to proceed, management strongly recommends its implementation regardless of contradicting the regulatory instructions. The deteriorating financial condition of the bank adds urgency to the decision. In the midst of these issues, in February 2021, Covid suddenly claims the life of the bank's longtime CEO, Kurt Koenigsfest, the architect of the modern BancoSol. With the bank's very existence at stake, Esteban Altschul, the chair of the board of directors, must come to grips with how the restructuring of the deferred loans will take place and how the various management gaps exposed by Koenigsfest's death will be filled. At the same time, convinced that the future leadership of BancoSol is linked to its adaptation to the digital age, Altschul must assess the efforts of the bank to-date in this area and how it should proceed in the future.

This case illustrates the efforts of the Mahindra Group's Agri Business and Farm Equipment divisions to drive sustainability-oriented action aimed at improving the lives of rural communities and preparing them to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It briefly describes the far-reaching consequences of climate-related disasters in terms of loss of food and nutrition security; livelihood; crop production; and losses in manufacturing, especially in developing countries such as India that are highly reliant on agriculture. The approach adopted by the Mahindra Group to tackle challenges in agriculture, such as water scarcity, food wastage, and energy-intensive practices, through affordable and energy- and resource-efficient technology is discussed. There are intense deliberations among the leaders of the Mahindra Group businesses about the way forward and concerns regarding climate-friendly innovations, which, from the perspective of the Chairman, ultimately translates into creatively reconciling the conflict between environmental goals and profitability goals. The Chairman and the Chief Sustainability Officer are firm in their belief that there are immense business opportunities in aggressively implementing sustainable practices. The leadership of the Mahindra Group is deliberating on how they can collaborate with rural communities and devise ways to improve farm-to-market linkages, reduce the costs of farm inputs, and scale up energy-efficient technology.

Thirty-five years after its founding, the Red Bull energy drinks business continued to show strong growth globally. Over the years, the company had expanded its product line with different variants, such as sugar-free and flavoured Editions. More recently, the company had launched a sub-branded The Organics by Red Bull range that sat outside the energy-drinks category, and the AlphaTauri functional-fashion brand. The company had renamed one of its two F1 teams Scuderia AlphaTauri to provide a unique promotional platform for the fledgling fashion brand; one that was overtly endorsed by Red Bull. The case provides a basis for discussing the (dis)synergies between Red Bull and these extensions from a brand, consumer, and marketing perspective. An extensive set of PowerPoint (PPT) teaching slides that include 7 different videos - a Red Bull brand purpose video, cartoon medley, Flugtag commercial, Soap Box Race commercial, Backyard Digger (BMX), former UK CMO interview, the AlphaTauri launch - are available to Educators by request.

Haier had come a long way since Zhang Ruimin took it over as a failing Chinese Collective-Owned Enterprise in 1984. Since then, he'd been able to transform it into one of the world's leading appliance manufacturers, known for quality and innovation. Haier was also noted for its bold geographical expansion, which had included buying iconic European brands, such as Candy, and, in 2016, the venerable General Electric Appliances (GEA), one of the world's most established white-goods firms. Along the way, Haier pioneered a new managerial philosophy: RenDanHeYi, a policy of staying close to the user (a term Haier preferred to "customer") where employees were encouraged to act as entrepreneurs and held accountable for their actions. More recently, it had put the digital agenda at the heart of its approach, leading a revolution in household appliances and aspiring to be the leading ecosystem brand in the Internet of Things (IoT) - a distinction duly conferred on it by BrandZTM in 2019.

Ecosystems offer a new way to bring multiple firms together in order to deliver new value propositions. By working together, the hub firm and its complementors can create innovative 'product plus service' bundles that span traditionally separate industries to offer an experience that simply wasn't available before. Such experiences can delight customers and give firms a powerful point of differentiation against competitors.

In the 1990s most coffee beans were still commodity products, cheaply priced, undifferentiated by quality, often blended, and sold through an exchange. Suppliers were underpaid not only because they sat at the bottom of the value chain but also because margins were very thin. Francesco Illy founded his eponymous coffee company in 1933 with higher ambitions, intending to create an institution respected for both its products and its contributions to society. His son, Ernesto, and grandson, Andrea, pressed on in that tradition--first by implementing better quality-management systems and pioneering direct trade with growers, and then by adopting their new production model at scale. The idea was to incentivize farmers to cultivate more-flavorful beans, thereby generating bigger profits to be shared among all stakeholders and reinvested in further improvement and growth: a virtuous circle of increasing returns. Over the past two decades illy has been accomplishing what it set out to do. Its annual revenue is currently €500 million, with earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation of nearly €60 million and a compound annual growth rate of 10%. And it pays its growers an average of 30% more than market price for coffee beans and is consistently recognized as one of the world's most socially responsible companies.

In the traditional strategic-planning model, managers attempt to forecast how markets will evolve and competitors will respond, and then define a multiyear plan to position their company to win in this future state. That worked well when markets were more stable and the primary factors influencing future growth and profitability were easier to forecast. But the world is now changing so quickly that no business can plan for every eventuality. And fewer than a quarter of large organizations employ the most notable tools and frameworks for strategy development under uncertainty: scenario planning, Monte Carlo simulation, and real options analysis. Executives say that those tools require data that is impractical to gather and analysis that is too expensive to execute routinely and that their output can be counterintuitive and complicated to explain to senior leadership and the board. In this article the authors offer a new approach and mindset for making strategic decisions, along with a new model for managing strategy development and performance monitoring. They describe what it takes to produce great results in uncertain times and propose a practical model for strategy development that they have seen succeed at several leading companies.

Some company cultures are marked by mistrust and paranoia, which leads to a slew of negative outcomes: poor performance, burnout, turnover, and cheating. People who worry about the behavior of others spread gossip and are prone to backstabbing. That brings out the worst in their colleagues, leading cynics' suspicion and distrust to become self-fulfilling prophecies. The good news is that cynicism has antidotes, according to the author, who shares research findings--his and those of others--to help leaders understand how people fall into a "cynicism trap," how their organizations' policies and practices may be pushing them into it, and what they can do to escape it. Tactics include redirecting the organizational culture toward collaboration and trust and making sure that all managers--not just those at the top--are modeling trusting behaviors and combating cynicism in their interactions.

#MeToo and Black Lives Matter have inspired many companies to announce commitments to combating discrimination and racism. Commitments alone won't dismantle systemic inequities, however. In this article two professors who have studied that problem present their solution: the Shared Sisterhood framework. It's based on a set of practices they call Dig, Bridge, and Collectively Act, and though it initially was designed to help Black and white women connect and overcome their mutual challenges by working together, it can help strengthen relationships between other identity groups as well. The first practice, dig, entails identifying your social identities (which might include, say, "woman" or "man" or "nonbinary" and "Hispanic" or "Black" or "Chinese") and researching the power dynamics associated with each one. Some identities are imbued with social power; some have been historically marginalized. You need to recognize your blind spots about those dynamics in order to succeed at the second practice: bridging, or building authentic, trusting connections with others across your differences. In the third practice, collectively act, you and the people who share your values turn those bridges into channels for positive change, mobilizing to make organizations more welcoming and equitable.

Companies have traditionally emphasized leadership competencies, not team competencies. But the transformation of an organization must begin with the transformation of its teams; team leaders and members must commit to new behaviors to escape mediocre or even merely good performance, accelerate innovation, and unleash growth. Drawing on more than a thousand assessments of teams conducted over two decades of research and coaching, the author presents a simple diagnostic that enables leaders to evaluate their teams on critical dimensions that relate to performance. He describes several practices designed to move members away from outdated behaviors and facilitate lasting, positive change: collaborative problem solving, "bulletproofing," candor breaks, red-flag replays, safe words, and open 360s. Although the examples often involve leadership teams, the practices outlined can be used at any level. They can be implemented in any context but are especially effective in virtual environments, where tools permit a broader range of collaborative practices than strictly in-person formats allow.