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Spreadsheet supplement for case W21270.

Drop Technologies Inc. was a major success in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada technology community. Having raised its initial pre-seed funding with only a slide deck, it grew to become a popular loyalty mobile application across North America. In 2017, the company was featured in LinkedIn's top 25 start-ups in Canada, and it closed CA$58 million in a series B funding round. In 2018, the marketing manager had to decide which marketing channel was most effective based on the goals of the company. Traditionally, Drop Technologies Inc. used paid social advertising and referrals to generate user growth. However, the rise of influencer marketing was on the marketing manager's radar, who had previously tested this channel, but had yet to decide whether or not to allocate more of the marketing budget to it. While this channel had many potential benefits, it was still a new concept and held many potential risks.

Student spreadsheet to case W21265

In May 2020, Chinese state-owned Shandong Gold Group was attempting to acquire the Canadian gold mining company TMAC Resources, whose gold mines were located in the High Arctic. If this acquisition took place, it would be the first time Shandong Gold Group would operate a gold mine outside of China. However, it would be a challenge for Shandong Gold Group to operate a mine in such a hard-to-navigate polar environment. As well, there were other lingering questions: How would the company handle the relationships with the indigenous Inuit people during the development stage of the project? Would Shandong Gold Group's potential acquisition of TMAC Resources be successful, considering the Canadian government's recent strengthening of its reviews of foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies? Would Shandong Gold Group's state-owned identity increase the uncertainty of this potential transaction?

Investors had lost confidence in Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. It was once one of the world's most valuable private technology companies, valued at USD45bn after four years of operation. With Xiaomi, founder Lei Jun had created an internet company with an online business model that made tech-driven products with minimal margins. It focused on building value around the phone with products and services. Consumers quickly became fans. In 2014, Xiaomi became China's best-selling smartphone brand and also the world's third largest. Investors anticipated continued growth. But the excitement around the company did not last long. In 2016, Xiaomi's overall smartphone shipments fell 36% from the previous year after a series of supply chain issues. To revive investor confidence, Lei adjusted the company's strategic direction and led a series of internal restructurings. Its long-awaited IPO in 2018 was priced at the bottom of the range and raised USD4.7bn, less than half of its initial target. Worse, six months after the IPO, the company's market capitalization had dropped by half. According to some analysts, the company had been "overhyped" and Xiaomi was "just a hardware company." But the image of Xiaomi as a value-for-money brand stuck. Some even gave it the nickname "assembly house." What could Xiaomi do to revive the confidence of investors?

In 2018, after ten years at the helm of the Festival Aix-en-Provence, Bernard Foccroulle had passed the reins to Pierre Audi, leaving behind him a uniquely positioned festival with a distinctive artistic vision renowned for its policy of accessibility and audience diversification. It was also distinguished by being firmly anchored both in its region and in the Mediterranean. In addition to the artistic and economic objectives that generally characterize such organizations, the Festival also had societal objectives. This case unfolds a few months before the passing of the torch.

Behaviors that spark organizational learning and growth also require a great deal of courage often because they involve speaking truth to power or challenging one's sense of self. Since they feel so risky, they don't happen nearly as frequently as they should day to day. In this article, the authors offer a framework for encouraging the behaviors and making them safer for employees to exhibit.

FinVolution Group, previously known as PPDAI (PaiPaiDai), was the first P2P (peer-to-peer) lending company in China. With more than a decade's experience in the online consumer financial industry, the group has developed its core capabilities and a business model that is working well in China. It has gained extensive knowledge and experience in credit risk assessment, fraud detection, big data and artificial intelligence. Its online platform links underserved individual borrowers with financial institutions. By showing how FinVolution has developed its competitive advantages and built a successful online lending business model in China, this case provides an opportunity for students to discuss what factors have led to the success of a fintech company. It raises the question of whether a successful fintech business model developed in one country can be ported to another country. It also highlights the regulatory change challenges facing fintech companies, especially P2P lending companies.

Kapila Krishi Udyog Limited, a Kanpur-based cattle feed manufacturer, was the market leader in the organised cattle feed market in North India. The organised cattle feed market was estimated at around 17-18% of India's cattle feed market. The product was commodity type and had demand mainly in rural and semiurban areas. Traditionally, Kapila Krishi had a market presence in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, but later, it moved to Punjab and Haryana. It faced competition from national and international brands in the cattle feed market besides competing with many unorganised players. Kapila Krishi saw a decline in its year-on-year revenue growth in 2018-19, but it simultaneously witnessed a massive increase in promotional expenses. The decline in Kapila's revenue growth could be traced to a changing competitive market scenario and unawareness among customers towards market-based cattle feed, besides a lack of strategic fit between market segmentation and marketing mix and a shift in the promotional and distribution strategy. Sameer Shivhare, Director, Kapila Krishi, was concerned with this development and was pondering to prepare a business plan to bring a reversal in declining revenue growth and ensure a steady growth in the business. He had to present the plan in the next board meeting.

This case describes the aggressive growth of Luckin Coffee since its inception in 2017. In merely two years, Luckin established a coffee network in China, surpassing Starbucks despite the US giant's 20 years of experience in the country. The case concludes with Luckin's announcement of accounting fraud in April 2020, followed by the immediate stock market and investor reaction. The case's epilogue also enables students to consider the spillover implications of accounting scandals for other stakeholders. This case exposes students to several business-related, accounting, and finance issues that lay the foundation for further examination in specific accounting and finance topics.

In building the International Space Station (ISS), NASA opened the door to the development of a robust in-space economy in low-Earth Orbit, and yet the decision to build the station, and continue to extend its lifetime, placed a huge burden on NASA's Human Spaceflight budget. Should NASA continue to invest in the ISS? Or is it possible for the agency to facilitate the commercialization of the Station and move beyond low-Earth Orbit?

In March 2020, the director of Shikshaa Public School (SPS), a privately owned school with 785 students, located in Chennai, India, and his wife and co-founder were reviewing the school's performance and deciding its strategy going forward. The Indian education sector was highly regulated and competitive. Government schools, government-aided schools, and private schools all competed for new student enrolments to obtain a portion of the US$101.1 billion (in fiscal year 2019) Indian education sector. Having recently taken out a bank loan to construct a school building that increased SPS's capacity to 3,000 students, the cofounders were considering ways to increase SPS's revenue and profitability. The options considered were (1) more effective marketing to attract an increased enrolment of new students; (2) relocation of SPS to an upmarket location, where families had the potential to pay higher fees; and (3) acquisition of another school to expand rapidly and leverage the SPS brand.

Massachusetts General Brigham (MGB) Chief Innovation Officer Christopher Coburn had overseen a period of exciting transformation and growth in healthcare innovation at MGB. In November 2019, the health system was the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding in the world. The Innovation Office sought to capitalize on that funding. Their team aimed to help the organization's 3,505 Principal Investigators translate and commercialize their research, with the goal of both producing revenue and improving patient care. Despite the success of Coburn and the Innovation Office over the last decade, MGB CEO Anne Klibanski and other key stakeholders had a serious concern. Although women comprised approximately 40% of the medical researchers and physicians it employed, the percentage of women participating in innovation activities lagged behind--in some categories, by a ratio of 4:1. Coburn knew that change would require an understanding of the main sources of disparities, the right strategy to address those disparities, and an equally robust execution. How could MGB expand and diversify its community of innovators?

In October 2020, Melissa Wood-Tepperberg, founder of the digital subscription wellness platform Melissa Wood Health (MWH) and creator of 'The MWH Method,' was evaluating the strategic directions of her company. What had started as a way to share workouts and wellness tips via Instagram only five years ago, today was a growing business enterprise. The MWH membership was reaching 92,000 paying subscribers who accessed the content in her platform. Wood's base of Instagram followers was also growing, now totaling more than 650,000, along with the number of brands who sought her attention and endorsement to promote their brands via her Instagram account. As the business grew, new opportunities arose. Today Wood was meeting with executives of a large fashion retailer who had proposed a partnership to create, launch, and sell Wood's own collection of apparel-an important step for MWH towards becoming a lifestyle brand. How should Wood approach the negotiations about the deal terms? What would this partnership mean to her members and followers? And how could she ensure this new partnership would help propel the other parts of her business?

Foodics aimed to develop a point-of-sale system that offered food and beverage establishments an all-in-one workflow solution, providing a digital menu system to replace outdated analog systems and paper stickers to update menu prices. The case study discusses the hurdles and complexities of bringing what appeared to be a logical and simple digital solution to market, as well as plan for strategic expansion across multiple countries. Integrating Foodics' digital meus into existing point-of-sale systems would involve unexpected challenges, as the founders soon realized restaurants and coffee shops in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East relied on proprietary technology platforms for many of their business operations. Further complicating matters, the highly individualized rules, laws, and ways of doing business in different cities would require local staff and expertise, and a large field sales organization.

BreadTalk Group, based in Singapore, has grown into a food and beverage powerhouse in the region. Mention BreadTalk and images of delicious, fluffy bread with unorthodox designs and creative names comes to mind. Despite its successes, BreadTalk is experiencing a period of stagnation and underperformance in its key markets. How can BreadTalk Group improve the competitiveness of its BreadTalk brand in Singapore and China? What key factors should BreadTalk consider when prioritising which international markets to allocate more resources to? This case challenges readers to assess the external environment and capabilities of BreadTalk to recommend strategic actions to improve performance.

Atal Indore City Transport Service Limited operated Indore Bus Rapid Transit System, the main public transport system in the city of Indore, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Indore Bus Rapid Transit System ran through an important section of the city, along a corridor 11.57 kilometres long with 21 bus stops. Operating the system involved meeting hourly demand for bus service-a task that required scheduling buses and their deployment to achieve the desired frequency. Indore Bus Rapid Transit System used modern technologies to identify passenger demand and the location of vehicles at all times during operation, and it used the data to plan and execute bus operations. Demand varied considerably between bus stops; therefore, management science techniques were needed for optimal planning. How could passenger service be maximized while optimizing the use of buses?

Student spreadsheet to case W21259

Clarke Building and Supplies Limited was a multi-generational family-owned building supply and contracting company headquartered in the western region of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. After the death of the company's founder and chief executive officer, it fell to the founder's son to take the helm of the company. With his engineering background, this son noticed inefficiencies and lax controls within the company. He was especially worried about the possibility of a more tightly run national store entering the market and outcompeting his family's business. Complicating any decision to tighten operations was the community culture of the business, which included many long-time employees, friends, and family members. He could see that there were issues in the company, but he lacked the business acumen and distance to separate symptoms from causes and develop a plan to keep the company healthy and strong for generations to come. He knew he needed to achieve buy-in from the managers so he could implement any solutions he devised.

Since its inception in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) has provided a blueprint for shared prosperity in a sustainable world - a world where all people live productive, vibrant, and peaceful lives on a healthy planet. With less than a decade to go, we need to ask if we are laying the right foundation to achieve the SDGs. How "SDG-smart" are we? How aware are we of the production, trade and financing of commodities that are widely consumed? This case provides an overview of the cocoa sector, its supply chain and structural abuses, challenging the audience to reflect upon their SDG awareness and how they - be they consumers or producers - can do better and how the leaders of tomorrow can bring about sustainable change. The case uses a novel format using a slide set only. The slide set has six parts, starting with introducing the cocoa sector and the issues of poverty, child labour and deforestation. It is followed by the current practices to tackle these issues, namely industry sustainability initiatives and third-party certification programs. It concludes with different components that allow for further in-depth discussion. The final discussion question is about what you as a leader of tomorrow would do differently to bring about true impact. This should prompt the audience to think critically about what they would do. Here, many different components can be considered and the case handles some of them: • Responsible consumption and production. • How can governments and legislation play a role? • How can emerging technologies help? • What role can be played by social impact companies? Can they drive change in the sector?