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A three-year-old Singapore based start-up, focused on manufacturing and marketing industrial renewable energy storage batteries, is planning to migrate from lab- scale production of storage batteries to industrial- scale production. The company's CEO is facing a major managerial dilemma. Should he outsource the manufacturing of batteries, should he manufacture batteries inhouse or should he take the joint venture (JV) route? The choices he makes in resolving this dilemma can make or break the business he has built so far.

Michel Default, Director of Michelin China's Personnel Department, had been responsible for leading Michelin China, a company that manufactures and sells tires, to transform its personnel function since 2017. The ongoing transformation aimed to optimize the company's personnel function to align with both the outside business environment and the needs of the internal employees, with one goal of better helping manage people's careers at Michelin. In addition to the unavoidable resistance, Michel received an email in 2019 from a key account manager seeking an unexpected promotion. The manager also hinted at possibly quitting if he did not get a convincing reply, for the new practice implemented in Michelin China required him to do additional work. Michel would not want to see the company lose the key account manager, especially when Michelin's turnover rate was increasing. Knowing that he had to achieve the right balance between employee satisfaction and company situation, Michel faced a great challenge in his own career in China.

Being a century-old family business, Li & Fung ("LF") had celebrated its evolution from a small trading company to a well-established, internationally recognized supply chain solution provider. However, the rapid advancement of internet technology and e-commerce development in recent years challenged the company's once-innovative business model. Although LF had aggressively streamlined and transformed its business, the company was still struggling to turn around. However, the recent trade war between the U.S. and China, along with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, triggered the Fung family to consider taking the company private. Case A enables students to take the role of LF's consultant to assess the motives, challenges, pricing, regulatory and financial implications of the going-private offer before making a recommendation to the company. Case B describes the actual outcome and the immediate developments of the company after taking it private. The new hindsight enables students to revisit the company's go-private decision in light of the new developments, offering students an opportunity to understand the agency conflict between the majority and minority shareholders in a listed family business. It also raises the question of whether going private is considered necessary for the Fung family. A moral dilemma would emerge towards the end, stimulating students to think about the issue of ethical leadership.

Supplement to the Li and Fung: Stay Public or Go Private (A). Case B describes the actual outcome and the immediate developments of the company after taking it private. The new hindsight enables students to revisit the company's go-private decision in light of the new developments, offering students an opportunity to understand the agency conflict between the majority and minority shareholders in a listed family business. It also raises the question of whether going private is considered necessary for the Fung family. A moral dilemma would emerge towards the end, stimulating students to think about the issue of ethical leadership.

This note provides an overview of causal inference for an introductory data science course. First, the note discusses observational studies and confounding variables. Next the note describes how randomized experiments can be used to account for the effect of confounding variables. Then it walks through the steps to designing an experiment, including a discussion of how to calculate the power of a test.

In 2021, Amazon announced its market entry into Portugal with a dedicated offer. The dominant local electronics retailer, Worten, had been expecting and preparing for this move for years. The company had driven a digital transformation program and extended its e-commerce offer, which culminated in the building of an online marketplace that sold Worten products and third-party products. Over time, the marketplace extended to new categories, allowing customers to purchase a broad range of products. E-commerce had not been very popular in Portugal compared to other countries, but that changed with the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, during which Worten knew how to serve customers in a safe and quick way, and which boosted e-commerce adoption. Worten also continued to lever its dense network of physical stores across the country to provide fast delivery and service options to customers. They hoped that this high level of service would be a great differentiator against Amazon and protect Worten's leading market position.

In the beginning of the 21st century, the European Union (the EU) had led the global fight against climate change with a wide array of policy measures. The EU's primary approach to climate policy had been taxation via the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), the first carbon cap-and-trade regulation. EU ETS was a market-based solution designed to reduce GHG emissions by setting an upper limit on domestic emissions. However, the effectiveness of EU ETS had been debated since its inception in 2005. Years later in July 2021, the EU proposed implementation of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a carbon border tax intended to address business competition challenges plaguing EU ETS by establishing comparable carbon costs within EU borders for imports and local goods. Nevertheless, the CBAM proposal was also met with considerable skepticism. The potential enforcement of CBAM raised several questions for cement and steel producers around the world. First, what would be the impact on their strategies and financial performance? Second, what actions could they take in response? Stakeholders in other industries that relied on cement and steel to produce their own goods pondered the same questions. In addition, several questions emerged about the potential impact of CBAM on carbon emission reductions both in the EU and in other jurisdictions. Would CBAM be effective at reducing emissions and addressing emissions leakage? How would other countries respond to CBAM and would the response affect those countries' carbon emissions reduction efforts?

How should a venture capital firm divide compensation and decision rights between its founders and its next-generation partners? Platinum Capital faced this decision in July 2020. Platinum's younger partners had just requested a piece of the firm's highly lucrative Management Company from Platinum's founders. The founders felt they were owed compensation for the risk and "lean" years they had faced when founding the firm. Yet, the high-performing new partners had other career opportunities and wanted to be "real" partners in the business. Should the founders grant the next generation access to the management company? If so, how should the firm's decision rights work in this new scenario?

Founded in Montreal in 2015 by three friends, Poches & Fils enjoyed huge success from the beginning, fuelled largely by its quirky and humorous positioning in the highly competitive fashion industry. Initially marketed directly on the Web, the brand has been on the shelves of Quebec retailers since 2016. Its distribution partnerships generated sustained revenue growth until 2017, prompting the company to diversify its offering and attempt internationalization. However, eroding margins and declining sales in 2018 and 2019 imposed some tough decisions. The following year would be pivotal: Poches & Fils had to strengthen its profitability and increase its online sales. Questions arose: How could the partners jumpstart the growth of this DNVB? How could P&F do better? Which performance indicators should it use?

As one of the largest banks in Hong Kong and worldwide, HSBC faced unprecedented challenges from mobile payment platforms (e.g., Alipay and WeChat Pay). In response, HSBC quickly launched its first e-wallet PayMe, a fee-free, user-friendly mobile app that targeted people and businesses in Hong Kong. Within five years of launch, PayMe had 2.6 million users in Hong Kong. The success of PayMe is attributed to its user-friendly design and its initial targeting of the peer-to-peer (P2P) market. Unlike its competitors, PayMe focused on the P2P market by solving consumers' difficulty in transferring money among friends without cash or the many steps of online transfer. As the payment between friends naturally had a social network effect, PayMe's customer base grew exponentially with only minimum marketing expenses. However, when expanding to the fee-charging P2M market, PayMe experienced more challenges as merchants were reluctant to pay for an additional payment method. With 2.6 million users and their HKD8mn in the e-wallet, PayMe's executives were exploring ways to trigger a virtuous cycle in the two-sided market, i.e., P2P and P2M markets. How can PayMe expand its customer base while becoming a profitable payment platform?

PrideBites is a case that highlights the entrepreneurial journey of four young graduates who witnessed the dearth of cheap, good quality, and customizable pet products in the market and decided to make these customizable pet products. These founders also had to seek funds to grow their business. The case walks readers through the decisions investors make and the roles of entrepreneurs in successfully getting funds from venture capitalists. This case also provides an opportunity for students to understand Mises and Rothbard's emergence and function of entrepreneurial profit and loss, and how this informs everyday business life and experiences. It presents rich material to understand that funding a venture is more a result of a negotiation process between the venture capital firm and the entrepreneurial firm and more an art than science.

The case describes the start-up and evolution of UK-based digital bank Starling. Founded in 2014, Starling offered personal and business accounts, and lending products, promising a better customer-service experience, faster approvals and a more digital-friendly approach than traditional banks. By 2022, a European expansion was underway, along with plans to provide the bank's proprietary technology as software-as-a-service outside Europe and prepare for an IPO. The case analyses the leadership style of Starling's founder and highly atypical leader, Anne Boden, and the corporate culture established under her leadership.

In July 2020, the founder and manager of Montreal Community Contact (Contact), a bimonthly community newspaper, was considering strategies to ensure the survival of his business. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that he was sixty-three years old, he worried about what the future of the newspaper would look like if anything were to happen to him. Contact had been running for almost thirty years and had a loyal readership within the Black community in Montreal and a loyal cadre of advertisers, but online media was threatening the newspaper industry, and each year the business just managed to break even. The business's owner now felt it was important to secure the long-term survival of the newspaper. How should he improve the stability of Contact while evaluating future avenues for the business?

In October 2018, Yehuda Katzman, vice-president of marketing and business development at design house Inbal Dror, was attending the 2018 New York Bridal Fashion Week event, where Inbal Dror and its direct competitors revealed their spring lines to distinct buyers. As in previous years, Katzman had lined up meetings with interested retailers and wanted to make sure they appreciated the unique nature of Inbal Dror's designs and the quality of its craftsmanship and the raw materials it used. Katzman also wanted to ensure that the couture brand was recognized for its dependability, sincerity, and understanding of different cultures. Travelling from Israel to participate in international bridal shows was a costly undertaking, and it was critical for Katzman to identify new retailers to continue expanding Inbal Dror's global reach. His challenge this time was to successfully penetrate the vast markets of China and the Far East-a challenge that could, if successful, generate incredible growth.

This case presents the development trajectory of Meizu, a well-known smartphone brand in China, including its inception, rapid rise, and gradual decline, as well as how the leadership characteristics of J. Wong, its founder, precipitated both its success and failure. High school dropout Wong founded the company in 2002. As a result of the company's superb product quality, Meizu became the leading company in China's MP3 player market. In 2006, Wong realized that MP3 players would gradually give way to smartphones and decided to switch production to the latter. He had a perfectionist approach to product development. After three years of R&D and rejecting two versions he deemed unsatisfactory, he finally launched the M8, Meizu's first mobile phone. To craft a comfortable wooden back cover for the MX3, he even made 31 models using a woodworking plane. He was also one of the first people to ride the wave of the fan economy and internet marketing, and frequently discussed technological topics with users on the Meizu BBS forum. In the past, when copycat mobile phones inundated the market, Wong's geeky personality garnered attention and a vast fan base for Meizu. However, as the market gradually matured and competition intensified, Meizu slowly fell behind. It only launched one smartphone model per year, and its excessive perfectionism meant it could not keep up with the competition. What kind of person was Wong? How should we evaluate the successes and crises he has brought to the company? This case sheds light on how the personality traits of a company's leader could affect the development of both the leader himself and the company.

Supplement for product #CB0224

The case captures the experience of a customer in a service failure incident when ordering a Porsche Taycan, and the recovery process managed by the local dealer. It outlines in detail the customer's journey from first contact in a test-drive to placing the order, and finally, taking ownership of the new car. Descriptions include the negotiations and interactions between the customer and the salesperson in addressing the service failure and its recovery. The case unfolds with the head of Customer Relations at Porsche learning about the incident from a routine customer satisfaction report. Key decisions faced by the manager involve conducting a root cause analysis of the incident as well as finding recommendations to improve internal processes in handling customer complaint and in recovery. The case covers concepts of root cause analysis, double deviation in service failure, theories of justice in service recovery, customer satisfaction management, and on a secondary level, dealership management.

The case tells the story of Sami Arpa a young entrepreneur with a passion for the movie industry. Sami Arpa and his start-up Largo leverage technology to improve the movie industry. Largo launched in 2018 with the platform for short films called Sofy.tv. In 2020 Largo launches its own SaaS B2B platform providing an AI algorithm for the film-making industry. The algorithms support scriptwriters, producers, and artists with insights on the genre, content, and dramaturgy of their film, a character analysis, casting propositions, and a financial forecast. Largo's early success is confirmed by awards from the San Sebastian and Berlin Film Festival. It is central to evaluate geographical markets which could be attractive for Largo to play in such as Europe, the US, Latin America, India, and China. Facing in addition different new opportunities from a variety of industry segments such as advertising, broadcasting, scripts, and social media, the challenge is how to strategically focus given the resources at hand. Largo must position itself within the different geographical markets and the various industry segments to gain a competitive advantage against strong competitors like StoryFit and Cinelytic.

In October 2020, the Inspector General of the United States Postal Service (USPS) conducted a survey of the American public and found that despite service challenges largely due to the COVID-19 pandemic-employee absenteeism, mail and package delays-91% of respondents held a positive opinion of the agency. Indeed, the percentage of respondents who said that the USPS provided excellent customer service rose seven points between 2019 and 2020, from 68% to 75%. But even as the public expressed its pride, support and satisfaction with the USPS, the agency posted a $9.2 billion loss in 2020. The General Accountability Office noted that USPS had lost $69 billion over the previous 11 fiscal years. This, despite steady revenue increases; in 2020, the USPS increased revenues by $2 billion over 2019, to $73 billion, which included new revenue from an 18.8% rise in package delivery. This case details the history of the USPS and its unique role as an independent agency of the US Federal government, with a focus on the financial, management and policy decisions that have contributed to its precarious position.