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In January of 2019, Joe Heieck (HBS '14), CEO of gWorks, was deciding whether to proceed with his acquisition of Data Tech, that was a business roughly the same size of gWorks. gWorks, which provided geospatial software to small city and rural county governments, was acquired by Heieck in January 2015 after a 6 month search. While there were potential synergies between gWorks and Data Tech, the acquisition also presented some significant risks including its relatively high price and concerns about the need to modernize its product offerings.

Deloitte Consulting's General Manager Balaji Bondili, head of Pixel, considers how best to grow Deloitte Consulting's use of open (on-demand) talent, as consulting companies and their clients face transformative change in the way client engagements and projects get done. Pixel, started in 2014, helps facilitate open (or on-demand) talent and crowdsourcing for Deloitte Consulting client engagements, to access specific, difficult-to-find expertise, collaborate to develop new products and/or insights, and to design, build, and test new digital assets. Bondili has found some avid users-and evangelists-of Pixel's services among Deloitte Consulting's principals, however uptake across the broader organization has been slow, and in some pockets has met with deep resistance.

This case focuses on the supply chain strategy of Apple Inc. (Apple). Set in early 2020, it provides a detailed description of the company's supply chain network and capabilities. Data in the case allows students to develop an understanding of Apple's source of competitiveness and to gain insights into the management of a large, complex global supply chain network that focused on the intersection of services, hardware and software. Students will obtain an understanding of the supply chain challenges faced by Apple, in the context of supporting its corporate strategy and growth objectives.

IDL Innovation Hong Kong Co. Ltd. (IDL) was a well-known interior design company specializing in commercial retail centres. The design company's goal was to help its partners create more value by presenting effective interior design. However, with the rise of e-commerce, the financial performance of the conventional retail industry had dropped significantly. To help the industry regain customers, the design company developed a new business framework that combined online components with traditional consumer social spaces, based on the common interests, wants, and needs of consumers. In September 2018, the design company transformed a shopping centre in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, that had been losing sales for some time. The shopping mall soon saw a substantial and consistent increase in foot traffic, sales, and revenue. The project was a great success for both the mall and IDL, but could this concept be also effective when applied to other projects?

The case study describes the growth of CI&T, from a start-up in Brazil to a 3,000+ person consulting firm with global reach in 2019. The case describes the stages of growth the company has been through over 25 years, focusing on both the market offering and the internal organisation structure/culture. The case ends in 2019 with the founders facing decisions about their organisational structure, and specifically whether they need to 'pull back' to some degree from the entrepreneurial management model they have created

The case study describes the digital transformation of Enel under the leadership of Francesco Starace from 2014 to 2019. Enel is one of Europe's largest utilities, providing electricity to 71 million customers across Europe and South America. It is also an impressive success story. At the time the case is set (June 2020), its market cap of €75 billion was far higher than that of its competitors, thanks in large part to Starace's push into renewable energy and digital technologies.

The case study describes the digital transformation of Zensar Technologies Ltd. under CEO Sandeep Kishore. Zensar was a mid-tier IT services company based in Pune, India; profitable and successful but without any obvious differentiating features and with relatively weak growth. On his arrival in 2016, Kishore made a series of important strategic shifts, first of all narrowing the company's focus to three country markets and three industry segments, then pushing growth in higher-value-added digital services. The case ends in 2020 with the transformation process still incomplete. Good progress has been made, but there is still a gap between the new positioning and Kishore's strategic intent on the one hand, and the reality of Zensar's performance on the other. Students are asked to assess how successful Kishore has been and what he should do next.

Case B contains a description of the deal between the Trust's original Sponsor (Sterlite Power) and a new set of financial investors led by KKR. The new investors first entered as an additional Sponsor and eventually replaced the original Sponsor to become the IndiGrid Trust's sole Sponsor. Through the deal, the incoming investors and the eventual Sponsor committed to buying five of the original Sponsor's transmission projects as and when they became operational, with two such operational projects to be acquired immediately. The case concludes with a summary of the consequence of this change on the outlook of the Investment Manager, now owned by the incoming Sponsor. The Investment Manager, freed from the limiting interest of the original Sponsor, had to search for investment opportunities from the perspective of incoming financial investors, which included the new Sponsor.

In 2017, Billy McFarland set out to create an immersive music festival in the Bahamas. He spent eight weeks with rapper Ja Rule planning the Fyre Festival, which, in the end, never brought a single act to the stage. The Fyre Festival became one of the most widely documented festivals of the century, and the subject matter of thousands of news articles, parodies, and memes that poked fun at what was an event planning nightmare. What had gone wrong from an organizational standpoint, and what proactive measures could have been taken to avoid the problems?

In April 2018, more than one year after the chief executive officer (CEO) of Danby Appliances Inc. launched a private sponsorship program to support Syrian refugees in their integration into Canada, the CEO and others were starting to raise some questions. Although the program seemed to have had an overall positive impact on Syrian refugees, Danby's board of directors wondered about the impact of the program on the appliance business. The settlement program continued to take up a considerable amount of the CEO's time and may have even been a drain on other Danby resources, such as staff time. With competition intensifying in the appliance manufacturing industry, the board asked the CEO to assess the impact of the settlement program on Danby, the refugees, and the community, and to recommend whether the program should continue. The CEO knew it would be difficult to collect precise numbers and wondered how he should start to quantify the true impact of the settlement program.

China-based Xiaomi entered India's smartphone industry in 2014. In 2015, it had a meagre market share of 3 per cent, which by the first quarter of 2018 had grown to a 31 per cent market share, making it India's number one smartphone player. Xiaomi was set to expand its offerings to additional product categories in an effort to disrupt the electronics market in India. How had Xiaomi achieved its phenomenal growth in India in just a few years? Would it be able to maintain its brand image of product reliability as it extended its offerings to additional product categories and continued selling at low price points? Could the strategies that had made Xiaomi the number one smartphone player in India also help it to disrupt other product categories?

In spring 2018, the chief supply chain officer of Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, was visiting a supplier in in Changzhou, China. He was meeting with the supplier the next day but had not fully decided how to manage the meeting. The supplier was responsible for a large portion of the company's supply of grills but was also positioning itself as a competitor by tooling, designing, and producing knock-off products that were then directly marketed to consumers in the company's strongest market-the United States. Although the supplier denied any involvement in the knock-off grills, the chief supply chain officer knew the tooling and styling were impossibly similar to his company's products and there was no other facility in that supplier's area with the capability to make look-alike grills at that level. The chief supply chain officer had to decide how to deal with the rebellious supplier.

Social and political issues in the US health care system, along with near-record employment levels, had led to a high employee turnover rate throughout the industry in 2019. In October, after Brownspeed Health Care, a consultative service, received numerous requests from its clients for assistance, the chief analytical officer was asked to prepare a report on how the company could help its clients address the problem. The first phase of the plan was to use the Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners and clerical workers as part of a low-risk strategy to enhance employee compensation and deploy wide-scale retention strategies and forecasting services.

M-Lab's founding goals were to infuse an innovation mindset into Mitsubishi Corporation; to catalyze new business opportunities; and to enable a dialogue between Japanese business and Silicon Valley. M-Lab housed representatives from each of Mitsubishi Corporation's verticals who were joined by executives from other prominent Japanese corporations. While M-Lab was still early in its history, its leader, Tsunehiko Yanagihara, was pleased with its progress: the ecosystem was fertile with research on cutting edge technology; resident executives collaborated across industries on a daily basis; several investments and proof of concept projects were underway; staff had launched an innovation learning program; and soon, an on-site retail-tech accelerator would welcome its first participants. As some of the projects born out of M-Lab now evolved to commercial businesses, Yanagihara saw yet a new role for M-Lab - that of startup advisor. How might he harness Silicon Valley insights on scaling technology ventures and feed them back to the young ventures made possible by M-Lab? And how might he help those now responsible for implementing and executing at these new businesses apply these learnings to the hurdles they faced?

In May 2013, TransDigm, a company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and civilian aircraft, announced it was buying Arkwin Industries for $286 million in cash (3 times Arkwin's sales of $91 million). Having acquired more than 40 companies in the past 20 years, TransDigm was an experienced acquirer with a unique business model focused exclusively on value creation. This case describes TransDigm's acquisition, integration, and talent development processes as well as the changes made at Arkwin over the following three years. It serves as a complement to the TransDigm in 2017 case (HBS #720-422). Whereas the TransDigm case provides an overview of the company, its history, its value creation strategy, and its financial performance, the Arkwin Industries case provides a deep dive into a single transaction as a way to illustrate TransDigm's value creation strategy in practice. That strategy consisted of three parts-value-based pricing, cost reductions, and new product development-and had the goal of doubling a target firm's operating margins and cash flows within five years.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 720467.

In January 2019, eBay Inc. (eBay), a California-based e-commerce company, faced an activist campaign centred on its portfolio of businesses. Elliott Management Corporation, the hedge fund leading the campaign, believed that StubHub and Classifieds, two of eBay's companies, did not belong in eBay's portfolio and that their real value was hidden by eBay's ownership. The hedge fund also argued that the lack of focus in eBay's portfolio was distracting the company's senior management from Marketplace, eBay's core business, which was facing stiff competition from other major online retailers. What should the chief executive officer and board chairman do to address these charges about eBay's corporate strategy?

This technical note explains how to account for leases under Accounting Standards Codification 842. This new addition to US generally accepted accounting principles became effective for fiscal years beginning after December 15, 2019. The note provides broad treatment for how a lessee will account for a short-term, operating, and financing lease, and how a lessor will account for short-term and sales-type leases with and without manufacturing profit. The intent is to provide a brief overview of lease accounting. As such, it is most appropriate for MBA or finance students who need to understand the broad effects of leases on the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows.

Café Meteor Bistro was a newly opened bistro-style restaurant in Haileybury, Ontario. The owners of a nearby lodging business for up to 60 guests had developed Café Meteor Bistro to serve the local market, tourists, and their guests. In January 2019, the owners were each working 80 hours per week, and although their first year of operation had seen sales grow, they were behind their projections and not yet breaking even. Understanding that the situation was not sustainable, they were considering options. Should they sell the restaurant or hire an operations manager? If they planned to sell, they needed to come up with a valuation.