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The 1999 strategic alliance between Renault and Nissan made this partnership the longest ever among large firms in the automotive industry. Together, the alliance partners are active in every important territorial market and in every customer segment worldwide.1 As the alliance was announced, automotive industry experts were very skeptical2 because both companies were having difficulties. The initial alliance partners started from weak positions as the collaboration was formed; however, today the alliance is a leader in electric vehicles,3 ranks among the top-three largest car manufacturers worldwide,4 and sold more than 10.6 million vehicles5 in 2017. Although the alliance encountered a number of challenges and difficulties over the years (e.g., increasing industry competition, pressure to generate synergies, the financial crisis of 2008, and recent trends disrupting the automotive industry), it has been extended over time, most importantly by the inclusion of Mitsubishi in 2016, as Nissan acquired a stake in its Japanese rival. Twenty years after its formation, the Renault-Nissan alliance is a prime example for strategic alliances because of its financial success in the past.

The case discusses the rise of a global chain of hotels that originated in India in 2015/16 and grew to become one of the top five leading hotel chains in the world in about four short years. The story of OYO's meteoric growth illustrates the power of technology to transform emerging markets and disrupt established industries. OYO represents a classic case of an organization that leveraged the fragmentation associated with emerging markets and used technology to bridge gaps across the value delivery model to offer a predictable customer experience. It believes a large part of the value it has created in India relies on its use of predictive analytics, big data analysis capabilities, and the integration of enterprise systems at variable scale to allow even the smallest of operators to be able to utilize valuable insights to take advantage of the boom in travel. Since its inception in India, where it has thoroughly dominated the industry landscape in terms of the number of hotel rooms it controls through its franchise/lease/manchise agreements, it has expanded into other emerging market countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and China. It has been quite successful in these forays, barring some teething troubles that are typical of global expansion. However, as the case closes, the company had entered the developed markets of the UK, Japan, and had just arrived in the U.S., where it had made a large acquisition of a Hooter's hotel in Las Vegas, NV. The second round of expansion covering developed markets raises numerous questions regarding transportability of the model across two very different contexts, namely emerging markets, where the industry is fragmented, versus developed countries, where the industry is already dominated by famous brands.

This case deals with responsible business and the impact of firm actions on different stakeholders. In November 2019, the last operating units of the Navajo Generating Station (NGS) in Page, Arizona, were shut down. The plant was losing money and was no longer economically viable or necessary for Arizona's power grid. As the largest coal-fired power plant west of the Mississippi and one of the largest emitters of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the continental United States, the closure was seen by many environmental groups as a success for sustainability and climate change. For the communities that depended on the plant and associated coal mine for jobs and taxes, the impact of the plant closure was less positive. Although the air would be cleaner and water resources better protected, the plant and mine closures meant that the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe faced large cutbacks in their budgets. The plant and mine workers, almost all Native American, lost their jobs. The closure left a legacy of health issues on the reservations and unknown environmental issues from the abandoned coal mine.

In September 2019, Elliott Management (Elliott), a hedge fund manager and activist investor, disclosed that it had acquired a $3.2 billion position in AT&T and was seeking strategic and operational change. In a letter to the AT&T board, Elliott accused the company of becoming "a sprawling collection of businesses battling well-funded competitors, in new markets, with different regulations, and saddled with the financial repercussions of its choices." Elliott outlined the areas of concern and a set of recommendations, including divestments of non-core businesses and a cessation in acquisitions. AT&T must now decide if the recommendations are valid and what actions, if any, are warranted.

The economic woes of 2008 gave a boost to budget retailers such as Dollar General, Aldi, and these retailers have unleashed significant change in the retailing industry in general and the grocery business sin particular. The case focuses on the hard-discounters from Germany, Aldi and to a lesser extent on Lidl to describe their operating models and their relative impact on the strategies adopted by their US peers. The case provides a rich discussion of the industry environment in the U.S. grocery business and the key trends that were shaping organizational strategies. It follows with an in-depth examination of the cornerstones of the hard-discount model and how the German companies have been successfully implementing this approach in the U.S. As the case closes, the US retailers had started to respond to the new competitors while firms such as Aldi had moved more deliberately into the realm of service innovation to retain an edge over peers. It appeared as if the hard-discounters were trying to reach into the upper tiers of customers by tailoring their choices to suit such an audience. They were locating in richer neighborhoods, providing a more sophisticated product assortment, and some were even rethinking their store layouts. These changes seemed to be going against the grain of conventional budget operators. It remained to be seen whether the sources of competitive advantage built by firms such as Aldi would prove resilient against the much larger peers who enjoyed much greater advantages of scale and resources.

In July 2019, Pfizer announced that it would spin off its Upjohn division and merge it with Mylan, a specialty and generic drugs firm. Within Pfizer, the Upjohn business unit was a conduit for Pfizer drugs going off-patent. Divesting the Upjohn business would allow Pfizer to focus on innovative drugs and exit the generics sector. Combining Upjohn with Mylan would create a new company that would compete in branded prescription drugs, generics, biosimilars, and over-the-counter medicines. Cost synergies from the merger of $1 billion were projected. Under the terms of the agreement, each Mylan share would be converted into one share of the new company. Pfizer shareholders would own 57% of the combined new company and Mylan shareholders would own 43%.

Many of the changes seemed to occur at the confluence of three major trends that characterized the industry; namely, (1) the advent of extremely cheap computing power and ubiquitous connectivity; (2) the increasing impact of customer centricity, and (3) the rising influence of wide-ranging new technology tools such as predictive data analytics, artificial intelligence, and neural networks that promised to reduce operating costs while at the same time making a quantum leap in product design and customization. Loosely referred to as the 4thIR (4th Industrial Revolution), these technologies were a small subset of fundamental shifts that were reshaping the industrial world. The financial services industry in the United States was dominated by a handful of very large players who dominated both the active management as well as the passive fund management sides of the business. Most of the industry revenues originated from the fee income for investment advisory services and active fund management services that the companies provided through its legions of financial advisors and branch networks that spread across the country. Black Rock, Vanguard, State Street, JP Morgan, and Fidelity managed approximately $23 trillion. However, life at the top was far from secure. The advent of distributed payment systems, new investment opportunities and approaches such as blockchain-powered Bitcoin and Ethereum, along with the rise of chat bots and digitally enabled user-friendly advisory interfaces, threatened to upset the balance in this once staid industry. The case discusses attempts by Fidelity Investments to navigate the changing landscape through the establishment of Fidelity Labs, an in-house innovation engine that was chartered to experiment, validate, and develop new technological solutions that would allow Fidelity to retain its edge in the changing world of financial services.

This case study focuses on enterprise considerations when entering into new sales modalities. Retail shopping models had long been considered binary - either e-commerce or brick and mortar. In practice the retail industry involved a long spectrum with pure e-commerce on one end and pure brick and mortar on the other end. In between, many different models were emerging like ordering online and picking up in-store (Walmart's Grocery Pickup), shopping in-store and ordering online (Warby Parker and Bonobos made their name in this space - largely facilitating the showroom behavior of consumers), digitally-enhanced physical shopping (several companies hold patents in this space with virtual reality promising to push this model), and many others. By 2019 Amazon, was the world's most valuable online retailer at around $1 trillion (USD). So, when the company announced the purchase of Whole Foods and further committed to the expansion of Amazon Go store locations many questioned the strategic value. Why would a company so clearly successful in the digital realm seek to enter the more traditional brick and mortar space?

The case focuses on the efforts of Helena Borenius, an Executive Director of Scandinavian Building Group (SBG) Sweden who is in-charge of the company's civil engineering and construction work in Sweden. SBG is the disguised name of a major global construction and engineering company that was dealing with similar issues described in the case study. Borenius is under pressure to bid on work for a major expansion of the Arlanda Airport in Stockholm. However, she feels that the project is inconsistent with the company's as well as her own values.

This case examines General Motors' (GM) global strategy. From a manufacturing presence in 34 countries in 2007 to only eight countries in 2020, GM has dramatically changed its global strategy. GM has withdrawn from many regions and countries, including Europe, India, Australia, and Indonesia. Many assembly plants have been closed and sales are now heavily concentrated in the United States. Was GM retreating to its profit sanctuary in the United States and giving up on global business? How would GM's strategy fare against more global competitors such as Toyota, Volkswagen, and growing Chinese companies like Geely and Great Wall?

The case tells the story of Chris Freund, the co-founder of Mekong Capital, a Vietnam-based private equity firm established in 2001 when the country began its transition to a market-based economic model. Mekong initially focused its investment strategy on small and medium enterprises in the export manufacturing sector. However, over the first five years of the company's history, the investment strategy shifted to a greater focus on rapidly expanding consumer businesses to take advantage of the broad economic prosperity arising in the Vietnamese marketplace. Where most private capital firms added value through financial engineering or operational expertise, Mekong had taken a different tack, choosing to employ what it called Vision Driven Investing (VDI). At the core of the vision driven approach was what Mekong and its consulting partner, the Vanto Group, describe as "transformation." As Freund explained, "Where other PE firms choose to be really good at transactional stuff and deal making, that's not inspiring to us. It's fulfilling to add value to companies and see them empowered. It's adding value through transformation." Transformation describes a framework intended to foster high-performance leadership and organizational cultures in investee companies intended to produce breakthrough results. The case presents several examples of the transformational approach and opens opportunities to discuss its efficacy and broader applicability for organizational management and leadership.

The European Union rarely saw hostile corporate takeovers. The structure of corporate ownership and governance across most of Western Europe made gaining control - without the cooperation of the target firm - exceedingly difficult. Despite the challenge, Mittal Steel, the world's largest steel producer, was determined to acquire Arcelor, the world's second largest steel maker. The very public hostile acquisition of Arcelor by Mittal Steel in 2006 was a study in the complexity of crossborder acquisitions. The fight-and it may be best described as a fight-involved Arcelor, a Luxembourg-based multinational steel company, deploying nearly every known defense mechanism to stave off Mittal Steel's hostile acquisition. Legal, societal, political, strategic, national, and even possibly ethnic differences and issues were deployed. In the end, despite larger-than-life personalities and the differences in corporate takeover law across countries, the outcome was driven by shareholder rights and returns.

The case deals with the challenges faced by Anglo American mining corporation in managing local community relations where it has mining operations. The issues are complex and threaten the ability of the company to operate and even the viability of mining operations directly. The complexity is primarily due to the government policies that require mining companies to take on responsibilities for infrastructure and service delivery as a condition for obtaining a mining license. At the same time, the government does not actively support either local communities or the mines and is largely a passive observer. And, there are historical problems concerning land ownership (by individuals or by communities) as well as the challenge of resettling the people displaced by mining operations.

In 2020 TRX Industrial (TRX) was close to finalizing its acquisition of Wilson Technology Group (Wiltec). Brad Hunter, TRX Chief Operating Officer and head of the acquisition integration steering committee, was planning for a one-day team session to examine the post-merger structure for TRX and Wiltec. One of Hunter's objectives for the session was a decision about how much organizational autonomy, if any, would be retained by Wiltec. Hunter saw various options for Wiltec that ran along a spectrum. Wiltec could retain its independence and continue to operate much as it had before the acquisition. At the other end of the spectrum was absorption - Wiltec would be folded into TRX culture and operating processes and give up its autonomy. Wiltec and TRX could also seek to take the best of both firms in terms of culture, processes, and people and create something new.

The Desertec Foundation was established in 2009 to pursue a lofty vision: to power Europe by harnessing the renewable energy of the deserts of North Africa. The Foundation hoped to organize governments and organizations throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa (EUMENA), to create a structure that would use both wind and solar power to generate electricity which would then be transmitted to Europe for distribution across multiple countries and markets. It was an extremely ambitious vision based on advances in technology in energy production and cooperation across many countries. It seemed a very good idea.

The case presents the history of a socially innovative start-up restaurant business, Pixza, that was created as a mixed-motive firm with both internal business objectives and external economic, social and environmental objectives. Founded by the entrepreneur and case protagonist Alejandro Souza, Pixza planned to sell an original style of pizzas produced with locally grown, organic, and traditionally Mexican ingredients and flavors. At the same time, Pixza had a social purpose and was designed as a social reinsertion vehicle for the economically disadvantaged, providing psychological support and job training that permitted formerly homeless men to obtain an income, a residence and an opportunity to achieve personal independence. Alejandro Souza is one of the outstanding examples of social entrepreneurship in Mexico, with experience in designing and implementing projects around the world on issues of impact evaluation, international development and social innovation. The case catches up with Souza in 2017, when Pixza is running two locations in Mexico City and is putting in place a new iteration of its social empowerment program. The restaurants are a hit with locals and are seeing a huge demand and acceptance of the new pizza recipes like blue corn, huitlacoche and epazote. However, running the pizza business and managing the social reinsertion programs is taking a toll on the physical and emotional well-being of Alejandro. Despite the obvious success of the enterprise, the case begins with Alejandro confessing to a close friend that he intends to close the business.

In January 2020 South Africa was once again suffering an electrical power crisis as a series of rolling blackouts, load-shedding, crippled the people and the economy. This was the latest in a series of power crises dating back to 2007. These chronic shortages were the result of failures on the part of the national electrical power producer, Eskom, and its owner, the South African government. The costs to the people of South Africa and the South African economy were enormous. Eskom was now suffering what many termed a death spiral. Its failure to produce sufficient and reliable electricity was causing its financial performance to deteriorate, calling for higher and higher electrical power rates, leading to more and more customers reducing demand and even leaving the grid. Now in the throes of leadership change, corruption investigations, and potential insolvency, it and the country was in trouble. The people of South Africa wondered when their never-ending power crisis - now in its thirteenth year - would end.

In May 2019 Memphis-based pharmacist and social entrepreneur Phil Baker hopes coding will start soon on blockchain software and related applications that will enable efficient and secure collection of usable drugs from individual donors and redistribution to needy authorized patients. To reach this point, he founded the subscription-based Good Shepherd charitable pharmacy, which bypasses pharmacy industry middlemen to sell medications at low prices, and distribute free donated drugs. Next, he successfully lobbied for passage of a Tennessee law that allows medications to be donated by individuals from anywhere in the US, to be redispensed to Tennessee patients, prioritized by need. After forming RemediChain LLC, recruiting a software development team, conducting some pilot tests to verify how to attract willing donors and needy patients, and launching the design phase for the blockchain system architecture, he formed a small consortium of pharmacy schools and other health-care organizations, in anticipation of further pilot-testing. Now, he wants to identify and plan how to mitigate foreseeable blockchain system project challenges before the system architecture and key elements are designed and software development begins. Since his two organizations (RemediChain LLC and Good Shepherd Pharmacy) are under financial pressure, and he wants to move forward quickly on building a scalable solution.

Anna and Jack Oleson, long-time owners of a bridal and formal wear shop in a small community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (U.P.), are contemplating making an offer to buy the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge (KML) property, located in Copper Harbor on the Keweenaw Peninsula. The property has been owned and operated by Keweenaw County since its beginnings in 1933, constructed under the Civil Works Administration and the Work Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Situated on 167 heavily-wooded acres in the northernmost part of Michigan, the facility includes a 6,000 square foot lodge built from logs and rough-cut stone, a banquet room and conference center, 24 rustic cabins, an eight-room motel, a nine-hole golf course, mountain biking and hiking trails, a tennis court, and disc golf. In 1970, the lodge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1976, it was designated as a Michigan State Historic Site. Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, however, has not produced profits in several years. A consultant noted that while some repairs were needed (e.g., roof replacement/repairs, replacement of carpeting, installation of Wi-Fi), it has been a utilized for both hosting wedding receptions and as family vacation destination for Michiganders and other Midwesterners. The asking price for the property is $1.5 million. The Olesons, who are in their 70's in age, are considering selling the bridal shop and using proceeds towards purchasing the KML. The case provides a general overview of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and its unique culture, and the considerations involved in making a purchase decision - i.e., marketing, location and local demographics, marketing positioning, operations and management, succession planning, and financial valuation. It requires the reader to utilize the planning, analytical, and decision-making techniques of an entrepreneur investigating a new business opportunity.

AlloVoisins, a web platform founded in 2013, had reached its 2018 enrolment goals seven months ahead of schedule. Because of a large new competitor entering the market, Edouard Dumortier, CEO, was evaluating a list of partners for his planned Business-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C) strategy. These partnerships aimed to drive further enrolment. AlloVoisins allowed people within communities to post needs (e.g. babysitting, borrowing tools, house checking, etc.) for other members to fulfill for a mutually agreed upon fee. The company had previously used paid media but did not find that such channels resulted in the enrolment figures Dumortier believed he needed to compete. This type of advertising and promotion also required a lot of cash, which as a start-up AlloVoisins did not have. Therefore Dumortier opted for B2B2C strategies, which required less cash on hand. AlloVoisins was considering partnering with other businesses and selling to them, or getting them to promote his company, rather than communicating directly with customers. The question, though, involved selecting partners from a list he came up with after some research to best achieve his goals. In order to maximize AlloVoisins' opportunities, partners would need to provide access to the largest database of customers possible but also fit well with the value offered by AlloVoisins.