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As the COVID pandemic spread in early 2020, global travel ground to a halt. For Airbnb, the San Francisco-based platform for renting accommodations, the impact was both swift and severe as revenues plummeted more than 70% over the prior year. Responding to the sudden downturn was a challenge for CEO Brian Chesky and his leadership team because the firm had adopted a stakeholder model with five key constituents: guests (renters), hosts (landlords), employees, communities and shareholders. While all five groups could benefit in the long-term if the firm succeeded, it was less clear how they should balance the potentially conflicting demands in the short-term particularly given the mounting losses. For example, in the face of travel restrictions, Airbnb could support guests by requiring hosts to refund deposits or could support hosts by allowing them to keep deposits. Similarly, should Airbnb use existing cash to maintain employment levels or downsize to protect capital providers? In the highly uncertain environment that existed in April 2020, Chesky and his team had to make many critical decisions with little precedent and limited information to guide them. As one of the first Silicon Valley "unicorns" to adopt a stakeholder business model, the world would be watching to see what they did, how they did it, and why.

Niya Jones, a Partner at a major management consulting firm, must review the work of two of her mentees--Joseph Park and Elena Ramírez--for their first end-of-year performance review as new Project Leaders. Both have produced strong results in their new roles, but neither Park nor Ramírez could be more different in how they went about leading their respective teams. How should Jones evaluate these Project Leaders according to the criteria developed by her firm?

The Hospital de la Misericordia (HM), today HOMI Foundation, is a children's hospital located in Bogotá (Colombia). It was founded by José Ignacio Barberi, Great Grandfather Barberi, in fulfillment of his wife's last wish: to build a hospital for children. It officially opened its doors in 1906. Great Grandfather Barberi conceived HM as a non-profit organization to be led by the members of the Barberi family. After the founder, three generations of Barberi family members have assumed the direction of HM: Rafael Barberi Cualla (Grandfather Barberi), Rafael Barberi Zamorano (Father Barberi), and Mauricio Barberi Abadía. Mauricio Barberi (appointed Director of HM in 1992) had to face a demand-based health system, under which HM was paid according to the amount of patients treated and there were not more subsidies from the State. Therefore, Mauricio had to begin a process of reengineering in HM, in order to become a competitive organization within the health market. HOMI was later impacted by the health system crisis, which delayed the payments it had to receive for its services. The case is established in April of 2014, in the midst of the health sector crisis. Despite the situation, Mauricio Barberi decided to analyze two options to expand the services: to build a Pedatric Center to expand the facilities outward in the north of Bogotá, or to build a Childhood cancer center in the current location. The risky context that surrounds this decision begs for multiple questions about his persistence on this idea and the suitability of said decision for HOMI Foundation. Even more, although Mauricio does not consider to do nothing, as a third option, the case invites to consider it in the last step in the discussion of the case, because this option is also viable from a perspective that does not consider family issues. The answers to these questions lie in the power of the family firm's legacy and entrepreneurial legacy, which is the focus of the case.

Short videos are the new trend in entertainment and social networking. TikTok/Douyin is the undisputed leader of short video-sharing apps. Less than four years after it launched in China, TikTok shot to global prominence thanks to an addictive user experience. In 2020-21, despite a challenging geopolitical context, it maintained strong growth momentum to become the world's most-downloaded, best-rated, highest-earning app. Kuaishou, TikTok's strongest domestic competitor, dominated the Chinese market until 2018. Like TikTok, it began to expand overseas in mid-2017, but stumbled. With backing from Tencent (one of China's pioneering internet giants), Kuaishou gained fresh momentum in China and global markets and took steps to going public in February 2021. As the two companies go head-to-head in China and globally, their products and strategies are converging. The case compares their respective strategic positions, operations and development. It reveals the success story behind TikTok's exponential growth and expansion, the emergence of the short-video industry, the parent company ByteDance, and its current and future challenges.

Set in September 2020, the case talks about marketing an accessible (affordable) luxury watch brand, 'August Berg', by a luxury-product distribution company, Norbreeze, based in Singapore. The company's founder, Anders Peter Juel Sauerberg, was sceptical about the launch of a new collection of the watch brand, as it had seen limited sales in one year since its inception. Sauerberg had set up a kiosk store of the brand in an iconic luxury mall in the city and adopted social media platforms and influencer marketing to promote the brand with little success. The brand represented the ethos of Danish design - minimalism and high quality and targeted a niche category of millennials, i.e. young parents and professionals. The brand was also attached to a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative that supported the education of children from low-income families. While Norbreeze had seen success in the Singapore market with the distribution of other accessible luxury watches and jewellery from Danish brands like Skagen and Pandora, it had failed to see similar results for its own in-house brand, August Berg. The 'lipstick effect' of the market due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lack of brand awareness for the new watch brand were identified as the key reasons for low sales. Given the financial constraints of operating as a start-up, how could Sauerberg enhance the brand awareness of August Berg? What digital and social media marketing strategies could he implement to promote his brand?

GSH Conserves was an artisanal jam producer in Singapore that specialised in using tropical fruits, such as dragon fruit, lychee, mango, etc., to handcraft high-quality jam in small batches. Founded in 2013 in a home kitchen, the demand for GSH Conserves jam and bottled fruits had grown organically through word-of-mouth over the years. In 2016, GSH Conserves moved to a new factory that could cater to a larger production capacity in order to meet growing demand. However, Edwin Lim, a partner at GSH Conserves, observed that his workers and equipment were often idle. He had to examine the company's current operations, identify inefficiencies and suggest improvements. How would the increase in demand and production batch sizes affect production capacity? Would adding resources help to eliminate bottlenecks? How can he redesign the production process to enhance efficiency without affecting product quality?

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case SMU960

Front-line employees can offer essential insights to be used in strategic decision-making, yet top management teams rarely ask these employees about strategic issues. In so doing, leaders are depriving themselves of new information that could improve their analyses, and they risk making decisions in isolation within the C-suite echo chamber. But the right tools and training can equip employees to better understand forecasting and teach executives to recognize their insights.

In 2018, the owner of a Sasol Limited (Sasol) fuel retail franchise in Pretoria, South Africa, was facing the challenge of how to continue growing her business by retaining her existing customers and offering the products and services they expected. A woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, the franchisee had worked her way up the corporate ladder in the financial services industry and, after being retrenched from her position at a bank, had purchased a fuelling station. She now wanted to gather information on her customers' needs in order to make an informed decision about how to scale the service offerings at her site to increase revenue, but she was unsure as to how to go about gathering this information. Various brands in the service station industry had seen decreased customer visits, and in this competitive environment, it was important to increase her efforts in building loyalty among her service station's customers.

This exercise provides the financial data of eight major companies operating in Pakistan in 2019 and listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. It also provides a list of eight of the country's main industries. Identify which company operated within which industry to test your understanding of how a company's financial data can be specific to a particular industry. Using only financial figures, can you identify within which industry each company operated?

VCayr was a not-for-profit social service organization that connected individuals through its social media platforms and community events. In January 2019, an organizational member and an active project manager at VCayr reported to a friend and board director that she was sexually harassed by another board director at VCayr. The friend and director had to decide how to manage the situation. He was aware of the severity of sexual harassment and the significant harm that it could have on all VCayr members and on the overall organization. Another sexual harassment incident was reported to him one year later by another member of VCayr. The board director had a second chance to rethink his strategies and to weigh in other options in light of the emerging information.

In 2019, Michael Whan, commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA), a non-profit organization that ran the world's most prestigious women's golf circuit, was preparing for the tour's 70th anniversary. Throughout its history, the LPGA had broken many social barriers, from the inclusion of African American players in the 1960s to the acceptance of transgender players in 2010. It had also reached important economic and athletic milestones. For example, the LPGA had the largest purses of any women's sports association, a wide range of international sponsors, tournaments broadcast in over 170 countries, and the highest concentration of international professional women golf stars. These achievements were due largely to the internationalization process launched in the late 1990s that had helped transform the LPGA from a U.S.-based to an international tour. But the internationalization of the LPGA had come with challenges.

This case details the challenges Kiana Nelson faced at Central Valley Towing, a fictional towing company Nelson acquired. In the case, Nelson must decide whether to overrule a direct report's decision regarding firing an employee, determine what to do about a talented but abrasive employee, and respond to a top performer who wants a promotion and another top performer who has decided to leave the company.

Using the example of the acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina in 2016/17, the case highlights the credit, legal and regulatory risks associated with a complex cross border acquisition finance transaction from a lenders point of view. The case focuses on the credit risk of a short-term bridge loan that is established to enable the borrowing group and its financial advisors to structure a long-term financing solution. Such transactions are typically structured using various special purpose vehicles (SPVs) in different jurisdictions. The complex structure of the transaction, crossing several jurisdictions and regulatory environments, requires the credit analysts to consider not only financial risks but also non-financial risks such as the questions of enforceability of the lender's claims.

Popular Japanese fast-food chain Saizeriya operates affordable family-style Italian restaurants in Japan with subsidiaries in a number of Asian locations. Since the company's Australian suppliers require payments to be made in Australian dollars (AUD) instead of Japanese yen (JPY), volatile currency exchange rates continue to be a serious risk to Saizeriya's operations. The company's president, Issei Horino, believes foreign currency hedging could reduce the costs associated with exchange rates. But an earlier attempt to use foreign currency coupon swap contracts from BNP Paribas went horribly wrong- it cost the company JPY15bn to break those contracts. As the JPY continued to depreciate, together with declining restaurant sales and a falling share price, Horino decided to revisit the company's previous use of foreign currency hedging to investigate whether Saizeriya could adopt an appropriate foreign currency hedge.

What does it take to build the infrastructure to recycle plastic bottles that is economically viable? The case looks at the economics of the circular economy, focusing on the development of a business case for a beverage producer to create a closed-loop PET bottle recycling facility on the island of Malta.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case IN1771

The case provides an opportunity to formulate a late entrant's response to the competitive dynamics set in motion by its repositioning as a low-cost airline. It presents the dilemma before Tony Fernandes-the chief executive officer of AirAsia Sdn Bhd (AAB)-about how he should respond to the competitive retaliation from Malaysia Airlines (MA), the incumbent national carrier of Malaysia. Fernandes entered the Malaysian aviation industry in December 2001 by acquiring an ailing AAB. After acquiring the airline, he repositioned it as a "low-fare, no-frills" airline with the tagline "Now everyone can fly". He focused on all possible avenues to reduce the operations and maintenance costs and maximise the capacity utilisation of the planes. The initiatives yielded results, and AAB became debt-free within eight months of its renewed operations and reported a monthly cash flow of RM 18 million. With the utilisation of 4,000 seats daily and a passenger load factor of 70%, the airline repaid the loan of RM 100 million and earned a monthly profit of RM 2 million. In August 2002, MA retaliated by announcing its super saver offer that provided a full-service flight experience at 50% of the original fare. The tariff reduction resulted in a drop of 40% in AAB's bookings and threatened its survival. Fernandes had to respond to the new development.

This case focuses on the entrepreneurial journey of Sino Suisse Pte Ltd, an external asset manager (EAM) in Singapore. This case is motivated by three observations: (1) the ability of Sino Suisse to rise rapidly from failure in a short span of 3 years to achieve an asset under management (AUM) of US$ 4 billion, (2) the strong conviction of the founder in the "triple-wins" positioning of the EAM business model, and (3) the use of technology to maintain a lean organizational structure. The case examines the motivations of Mr Albert Liu, founder of Sino Suisse, in switching from a salaried employee in private banking to an entrepreneur in 2017. It goes on to explore the entrepreneurship lessons learnt by Liu. The case further presents the business and revenue models of a typical EAM and the value propositions of the EAM model to high net worth clients. It illustrates the "three-win" positioning of an EAM espoused by Liu and continues with the differentiating value propositions of Sino Suisse to clients, which includes, • an open architecture with access to products, pricings and markets from multiple private banks and investment banks, • an aggregator platform called the "Happy Alliance" which allows other EAMs to participate in idea generation and sharing of best practices, new products and ideas via various channels including seminars, online forum, and events, • an exclusive business network called the "Hippo Club" where ultra-high net worth clients of Sino Suisse can source for direct investment deals and philanthropic ideas, among the members. Finally, the case prompts the reader to analyze a key concern of Liu, namely the risk of a negative externality on Sino Suisse from a reputational loss in the broader EAM industry, and brainstorm ways to mitigate this risk for Sino Suisse and the broader EAM sector.

This case explores the tradeoffs between product personalization and simplicity as companies grow. The case presents an opportunity to understand whether and how each of these approaches enables and/or limits companies' abilities to provide customer satisfaction while being efficient in their operations. In October 2018, Allianz was one of the world's leading insurers and asset managers with 103 million retail and corporate customers in 70 countries. It was one of only two insurers to rank amongst the world's 50 strongest brands in 2017, a sign that the company's customer-centricity approach drove value and resonated with clients. Allianz's ambition was to reach the top 25 brands in Interbrand's ranking by 2025. For the insurer, the key to success was to focus on simplicity-reducing the complexity of products and processes in order to create a more unified customer experience. However, such a move did not align with current trends in insurance markets, where Allianz's main competitors had opted for hyper-personalization. Furthermore, a strategy focused on simplicity implied a radical move in certain key markets where Allianz had traditionally offered a large diversity of products. Was simplicity the right strategy? Would Allianz be able to embrace customer needs successfully within and across markets while simultaneously growing its business?