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Supplement to HBS Case No. 720-454, "Apple Inc. in 2020."

Rain Industries Limited (Rain), through its wholly owned subsidiary Rain Carbon Inc., produced upcycled carbon products from the by-products of steel and petroleum and other industries. The demand- and supply-driven shifts and various sustainability initiatives by industries both downstream and upstream in Rain's existing supply chain could prove to be disruptive, requiring strategizing and future-proofing. When the Government of India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry banned the import of green petroleum coke, also called petcoke, in 2018, Rain's chief financial officer had to decide whether it was the right time to identify and implement different supply chain risk mitigation measures.

By early 2020, Mindee Barham, vice-president of development at the microfinancing organization Grameen America, which focused on empowering low-income female entrepreneurs by offering them microloans to develop and grow their own businesses, had overseen the successful implementation of the first year of Grameen America's ten-year Lifting America campaign for strategic growth. This campaign was intended to increase membership to 400,000 people; to issue loans amounting to $12 billion; to raise $300 million, including $100 million in philanthropy and $200 million in debt capital; and to enter new locations. However, the COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly derailed the funding and implementation of the campaign, and given the pandemic's large impact on Grameen America's vulnerable members, it threatened the existence of Grameen America itself. How should Grameen America respond to the pandemic? What would become of the Lifting America campaign? And what could Grameen America do to support its members through the COVID-19 pandemic without jeopardizing the organization's future plans?

This case explores the accounting treatment for the costs attributable to cloud computing arrangements. The protagonist company is Dexus Diversified Fund (Dexus or the Group, ASX: DXS), one of the largest and most prominent real estate groups in Australia. In April 2021, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) ratified an agenda decision entitled Configuration and Customisation Costs in a Cloud Computing Arrangement. This decision governed the appropriate accounting treatment of cloud computing costs. This update on accounting treatment was added because of the global trend toward technology, data, and connectivity. It was more common for customers to not possess the underlying software. Rather, customers accessed and used the software on an as-needed basis. As the original IFRS did not contain explicit guidance on accounting for cloud computing costs, this update was aimed at clarifying this aspect. Dexus had deployed SaaS in its operations and incurred millions in cloud computing costs. Throughout its latest annual report as of 2021, the Group adopted the update in its accounting treatment and clearly disclosed the financial impacts. This case is developed for use in elementary, intermediate, and advanced accounting courses at bachelor, postgraduate, doctoral, and executive levels. The decision-making tree, accounting treatment, and financial implications for an entity to apply the update should be the key concepts to explore in the case. The issues on how to consider changes in accounting policies and in accounting estimates and errors are also explored in the case.

While COVID-19 has caused significant short-term disruptions in global value chains (GVCs), in the longer run, the pandemic will not be the primary catalyst in GVC evolution. As GVCs recover from the initial shock, managers will make GVC restructuring decisions guided by long-term strategic considerations. This article describes barriers that lead firm managers may encounter when rethinking location/control decisions for value chain activities and suggests that, in addition to structural changes, managerial governance adaptations are instrumental in enhancing GVCs' long-term resilience. Lessons learned from responding to the pandemic can help managers enhance GVC efficiency in the increasingly uncertain global environment.

The case, based on WeLab Bank (WLB), is set in February 2021, following the Chinese New Year holidays in Hong Kong. WLB, one of eight new virtual banks in Hong Kong, began operations in July 2020 amid a global pandemic. The de facto central bank in Hong Kong is the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), which has been gradually implementing measures to support the development of digital banking in Hong Kong, including the introduction of Open Application Programming Interfaces (Open APIs), which, in principle, would allow Third Party Service Providers (TSP), including fintechs, to gain access to banking customers' data and utilize that data to provide more targeted and innovative services to those customers. Traditionally, banks extended their services to customers at their brick-and-mortar outlets, taking in deposits for which they provided interest earnings and generating income on a variety of loan products for which they charged higher interest than on its deposits. Virtual banks, by contrast, extended their services exclusively via digital channels, including mobile banking. With lower overheads, they could provide some services for free or with minimal charges, while offering financial products with higher earnings for customers. With a growing base of customers accessing financial services remotely, the opportunity existed to find new and innovative ways to serve customers through digital-only channels. The challenge facing WLB and its manager for growth operations and strategy, Ms. Janice Chung, was how to firmly establish itself in a nascent virtual banking market in Hong Kong, while competing with strong traditional banks that were also moving to digitize their banking services. In assessing its strategic options, it could leverage its strong technology infrastructure, open APIs, and the examples of predecessor virtual banks and fintechs in other markets, such as Starling Bank in the UK, Tinkoff Bank in Russia, and Grab in Singapore.

The objective of this case study (in two parts, A and B) is to provide a systematic methodology for capturing metrics crucial for patient experience and hospital performance, defining a framework to design an enterprise technology strategy map, and examining the readiness, deployment, and sustainability of technology solutions to help achieve superior patient satisfaction. Part A (Identification and Prioritization of Key Focus Areas) of this two-part case study takes the reader through the exploration of Avantika Raghu, Chief Experience and Technology Officer at the KG hospital, where she uncovers various pain points. It describes Raghu's observations during her Gemba walks covering key departments at the hospital, learnings from her focus group meetings with stakeholders, and insights from examining the hospital's quality and performance parameters. The case concludes with Raghu identifying patient satisfaction as a core challenge in the current setup and considering technological solutions that can help improve patient satisfaction while enabling hospital expansion to meet the goals of Vision 2025.

The objective of this case study (in two parts, A and B) is to provide a systematic methodology for capturing metrics crucial for patient experience and hospital performance, defining a framework to design an enterprise technology strategy map, and examining the readiness, deployment, and sustainability of technology solutions to help achieve superior patient satisfaction. Part B (Tech Strategy Design and Implementation ) of this two-part case study is a follow-up to Part A, and it takes the reader through Avantika Raghu's journey of solving the problems identified in Part A. Part B of the case study describes her efforts to address prioritized metrics by identifying technology solutions (both in-house and external vendors). It follows her as she assesses candidate solutions on a host of parameters: need, desired outcome from the implementation, staff awareness, availability of technology, investment opportunity, ease of implementation, product features, vendor engagement, time to market, end-user experience, and barriers to adoption. The case study closes with an unexpected twist, as her grandfather challenges her robust proposals with a series of pointed questions on how an enterprise technology strategy and an effective change management framework for championing organizational and individual change should be designed.

This case traces the rise of Leonard Bernstein from a middle-class family in Boston to the conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The case describes how he studied music intensely as a young man and developed mentors to open doors for him. As his fame grew, he wrote widely acclaimed musicals such as West Side Story and introduced classical music to worldwide audiences through his popular television shows. Students will learn how Leonard Bernstein navigated life's choices to leave a lasting impact on the world.

This article examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on resilience. Resilience is not a one-dimensional concept but has different meanings at the levels of the firm (operational efficiency), the global value chain (appropriate governance), and the nation- state (national security). It illustrates resilience dynamics through lessons from case studies of four medical supply products - rubber gloves, face masks, ventilators, and vaccines. It explores how each adjusted to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and presents key strategies that can guide managers and policymakers in building resilience for future supply chain disruptions.

The pandemic crisis caused a severe shock to global value chains and led to supply shortages for complex medical goods such as respiratory ventilators. What followed were calls to reshore production for security, and the loss of efficiencies from foreign global value chain (GVC) operations for the multinational enterprise. This article merges internalization and GVC theory to demonstrate a dynamic hierarchy managerial response to these crisis conditions. An optimally configured GVC under hierarchy governance can resiliently eliminate global supply line ruptures yet maintain the benefits of global efficiency.

On June 30, 2021, ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing (Didi) raised $4.4 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the largest IPO of a Chinese company listed on an American exchange since Alibaba raised $25 billion in 2014. Celebration was short-lived. Two days after its IPO, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), a government agency that regulates China's internet platforms, launched a national security probe into Didi's network security and ordered a comprehensive cybersecurity review. Didi did not just end Uber's presence in China. With Uber gone, Didi's growth skyrocketed to become the largest online ride-hailing platform globally. How did everything change? Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, private companies faced emboldened regulators and increased government oversight. Was Didi's decision to move ahead with its IPO the correct business decision but the wrong political decision? What lessons could other Chinese tech companies learn from Didi's experience? How could Didi maintain its market position and rehabilitate its relationship with the Chinese government while local competitors tasted blood in the water?

In November 2021, Girish Nadkarni, the head of TotalEnergies' corporate venture capital arm (TEV) was considering whether, and on what terms, to exit an investment in Hyzon Motors, a start-up supplier of hydrogen-powered trucks. TEV had invested $4 million in Hyzon, which had gone public in July 2021 with a $2.7 billion valuation. Nadkarni was now eager to take TEV's gains, but recognized the potential harm that selling TEV's Hyzon shares could cause. Market observers might interpret TEV's exit not as profit-taking but as an early investor's lack of confidence in Hyzon's prospects. Further, TotalEnergies had signed an MOU with Hyzon to bring 80 trucks to Europe-the goal was to demonstrate for its truck fleet customers the viability of hydrogen as a viable replacement fuel for the diesel it already supplied. Selling the Hyzon shares might convey the opposite message.

Jake Lisby, co-founder and CEO of Simplifyy, a property technology startup in Kansas City, Missouri, was both exhausted and exhilarated by the flurry of activity surrounding the pivot of the business model in late 2021. Simplifyy, a venture-backed PropTech company, was transforming from a full-service property management company to a pure SaaS player, selling end-to-end software to "simplify" the labor-intensive property management industry. Lisby, a Missouri native, knew that the change was not without its challenges. Running a software business in the Midwest, which lacked the entrepreneurial ecosystem of other well-known tech hubs, made it challenging to attract the necessary talent, customers, and fundraising. But the upside of pure SaaS company was attractive, and his team knew that not only to survive but to thrive, they had to get this right.

This case study is set in November 2021. It describes how Amanda Khoo, Director of Nipo International (Nipo), had been exploring ways to innovate and expand the company's core product that was bitumen-based coatings. Khoo had led Nipo to embark on its innovation journey for more than 20 years. In the last 10 years, Khoo had been collaborating with several research institutes in Singapore including the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and National University of Singapore (NUS) on four innovation projects. After a multi-year journey of research and development (R&D), Nipo had a few promising products to show. However, these products were still undergoing field trials as at November 2021. The outlook for Nipo's focused industry - the construction industry, was predicted to be promising for the next 30 years. What should Khoo do to further drive innovation and commercialise the products?

The case chronicles the challenges of a consulting team charged with developing and executing a negotiation strategy designed to help a large retailer cut costs by renegotiating their contract with their largest supplier. The disguised case begins by describing the market conditions that led BizCo, a publicly traded office supply retailer, to invite DMB, a top consulting company, to help them restore their price competitiveness. It then describes the interactions between DMB's consultants and BizCo's executives as they developed a joint strategy and prepared together for various negotiations. The case focuses specifically on the processes and outcomes of BizCo's negotiation with TQS, their largest supplier. The case is written from the perspective of Elizabeth, a member of the consulting team. The suboptimal outcome in BizCo's negotiation with TQS led Elizabeth to reflect on several issues related to designing and executing high-stakes negotiations. These issues include setting goals, managing relationships, establishing a division of labor within the negotiation team, choosing communication technologies for negotiation, setting the stage for the negotiation, and coping with time pressure and strategic surprises in high-stakes negotiations. The gaps that the BizCo - TQS negotiation revealed also led Elizabeth to reflect on strategies for influencing organizational leaders from a low power position.

The case describes the culture-building journey at Diageo India, formerly United Spirits Limited (USL). Diageo plc, a global leader in premium alcohol beverages, acquired a majority stake in Indian spirits company USL in 2013-14. The company manufactured, sold, and distributed a portfolio of premium alcohol beverage brands, some imported and others locally manufactured such as Johnnie Walker, Black Dog, Antiquity, Signature, Royal Challenge, McDowell's No.1, Smirnoff, and Captain Morgan. On taking over USL, Diageo made culture change one of its top strategic priorities. This was a challenging task since USL's close to 200-year-old history was marked by frequent cultural shifts resulting from a series of mergers and acquisitions. Anand Kripalu, the CEO of Diageo India, worked closely with Ivan Menezes, the chief executive of global Diageo, the HR function, and the leadership team to identify the four cultural pillars of the organization: breaking hierarchies, celebrating life, ensuring complete compliance, and fostering cross-company collaboration. Kripalu and Aarif Aziz, chief human resources officer of Diageo India, worked programmatically with other functions to deepen and institutionalize each of the four culture pillars. This case outlines Diageo India's initiatives and efforts in each of the pillars. Set in 2020, the case also looks at the extraordinary circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted the company to accelerate its culture-building efforts. The case closes with Kripalu and Aziz discussing how the gains made at Diageo India thus far could be institutionalized and how to sustain the cultural transformation they had initiated.

In 2015, the co-founders of Dating Ring, an online dating startup that relied on human matchmakers to arrange dates between its members, were deciding whether to either shut down the service or instead manage Dating Ring as a "lifestyle company," ramping down growth expectations, abandoning plans to raise more venture capital, and keeping tight control over costs. Dating Ring's founders originally aimed to achieve a billion dollar valuation, and their participation in the elite Y Combinator accelerator has stoked their ambitions. However, growth had subsequently sputtered and the founders had not been able to raise more venture capital.

This note reviews the evidence that the world is undergoing an era of de-globalization. It shows that available metrics show some support for this theory. However there is also evidence that what is happening might be better described as regionalization. The nature of globalization is also changing with digitalization and a de-linking of globalization and Americanization. The note continues by an examination of four factors which have slowed or else redefined global economic integration in recent years: terrorism, the global financial crisis of 2008/9, the growth of populism; and geopolitical rivalty between China and the United States. The note ends by outlining four alternative future scenarios. They are a return to globalization as known in the past; widespread national autarky as in the 1930s; intensified regionalization with each regional block anchored by a major economic power; and full-scale military conflict replicating the first half of the twentieth century.