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CEOs often talk about wanting to create a high-performance culture--but many go about it ineffectively. New research from Gartner, based on surveys and interviews with HR leaders around the globe, identifies three common pitfalls. Instead of using single buzzwords to describe the culture they aspire to--collaborative, innovative, and so on--leaders should illustrate it by acknowledging the tension between the ideal and the present reality. They should avoid measuring culture with data alone and seek unfiltered feedback from open-response survey questions and by encouraging employees to speak up at any time. And they shouldn't forget to alter policies to support the desired cultural change. The article includes a Q&A with Oscar Rivera, the chief culture officer of the Guatemalan conglomerate CMI.

The case highlights the differing trajectories of two, contemporaneous models of microfinance in India. The well-known Grameen MFI Model made inroads in the mid-90s, primarily in the four southern states of India. This was in a setting where there was an extensive network of a pre-existing indigenously developed group lending model, called the Self-Help Group Bank Linkage (SHG Bank Linkage) model. Today, the Indian microfinance story stands at a crucial juncture with respect to these two models. The SHG model, while being recognized as a key player in changing the financial inclusion discourse in India, is no longer salient in the current financial inclusion narratives. Grameen MFIs on the other hand, are on their way to being "mainstreamed" as banks, pretty much along the lines of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Using the dramaturgical approach of the sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982), the case differentiates the two models based on the front-stage (borrower-groups) and back-stage (organizations, investors, and the State). This distinction is useful for our microfinance narrative because while the front-stage is steeped in discourses of community, and poverty alleviation; the back-stage revolves around the hard-nosed financial ratios, fund disbursement and recovery pressures, break-even analyses around lender-borrower relations - which are unrelated or even detrimental to the front-stage discourse. Differentiating between the front-stage and back-stage interactions thus allows us to reveal processes that played out very differently for both these microfinance models. It helps us parse out a key question: did the more globally attuned model Grameen Model end up gobbling the clunkier and local SHG Bank Linkage Model?

The case follows social entrepreneur Wilma Rodriguez's journey of three decades as she creates and grows Saahas Zero Waste. Wilma wants to address the social issue and seeks various forms of solutioning, partnership, and organizational structure to take advantage of whatever opportunities arise along the way. The case spotlights Saahas when it faces the challenges of increasing scale as part of achieving product market fit. Saahas delivers value that cannot easily be quantified, to first-time large customers who do not understand the quantum and impact of the waste they generate. Saahas needs to communicate the value it delivers. It also needs to determine how to scale further.

The case narrates the inception and operationalization of a public, private partnership (PPP) between the Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP) and Apollo Tele Health Services - the tele-medicine arm of one of the largest hospital chains in India, to provide free Tele-Ophthalmology services to rural population residing in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) using technology. The PPP is called "Mukhyamantri e-Eye Kendram (MeEK)", and its objectives are to provide (i) ophthalmic diagnosis and (ii) free spectacles, to the needy citizens of the state. As part of the PPP, Apollo refurbished 115 vision centers across 13 districts of the state and launched the MeEK project in February 2018. Apollo created a pool of 30 ophthalmologists to provide tele-diagnosis from a remote location; contracted a vendor to manufacture and deliver spectacles; and designed and developed an electronic medical record (EMR) software to integrate all stakeholders in a seamless fashion during the delivery of these services. However, after the launch of MeEK, Apollo began to face various challenges in terms of both software customization and integration, as well as delivery of spectacles, as the demand far outweighed supplier's capacity. As a result, Apollo could not meet the key performance indicators (KPIs) put in place by the government, and began to incur penalties. The case provides the students with an opportunity to analyze various operational trade-offs such as cost, quality, variety and speed in a capacity constrained environment and identify opportunities for improvement without sacrificing one performance indicator for another.

Eureka Forbes, part of the conglomerate Shapoorji Pallonji Group, is currently one of the world's largest direct sales company known for its water purifier brand Aquaguard with a turnover of more than INR 30 billion. The company is estimated to have a customer base of 20 million across 53 countries. The company's distribution channel includes a direct sales force of dealers, institutional channels, business partner network and a rural channel across 1500 cities and towns in India. The company's previous customer acquisition model ensured that interested customers were individually visited for demonstration of the product and for completion of purchase. While this made the company a household name, it kept the acquisition costs on the higher side. With the imminence of online retailing, the brand had been taking steps to establish their digital presence and build a stable online sales channel. The company website (www.eurekaforbes.com) attracts online traffic from various sources such as organic searches, google ads, email campaigns, etc. The company has started to use this click stream data to build a rich database of visitor acquisition factors and behavioral variables such as session duration, device category, pages visited, lead forms filled, etc. using the Google Analytics Reporting API. The company identifies these visitors as potential customers and is actively deploying remarketing campaigns with optimism to convert them. While these campaigns have shown some success, they have resulted in substantially high retention costs. The business goal is clearly defined for the company - they want to target potential customers while keeping the cost per lead (CPL) as low as possible. For Kashif Kudalkar, the Deputy General Manager for Digital Marketing and Analytics, the task is to achieve better conversion at lower costs. This is achievable when the target audience is narrowed down to a sizeable number for remarketing campaigns.

Fantasy sports is the fastest growing online gaming industry worth several billion dollars. An important debate associated with fantasy sports across the world is whether it is a game of skill or chance. In India, the online gaming laws are not very well defined and hence there is always a threat to fantasy sports companies of getting into legal battles. While the game of skill is permitted by Indian laws, game of chance is strictly prohibited. Indian courts have recognized that no game is a game of pure skill or game of pure chance. When there is a chance involved, the Indian courts decide based on the dominant factor test that requires determining whether skill is dominant, or chance is dominant factor for a given instance. Ramasubramanian Sundararajan (Ramsu), the head of AI at the Cartesian Consulting was convinced that the debate around whether the dominant factor is skill or chance should be settled using data. With this objective, Ramsu approached Dream 11, one of the largest fantasy sports companies in India. Dream 11 has created fantasy games for sports such as cricket, football, hockey, kabaddi, and the National Basketball Association (NBA). Being a cricket fanatic, Ramsu wanted to check whether fantasy games played in cricket involves skill or not. Ramsu was convinced that several hypotheses can be designed and tested to check whether fantasy sports is skill dominant or chance dominant.

This case mainly illustrates how Freshippo created an innovative business model to cross the online-offline boundary by means of big data and emerging technologies. The reason why Freshippo could cross the boundary was that it combined technologies like mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence to create a new business model based on "omni-channel supermarkets" as well as mobile e-commerce. In this way, it strengthened online and offline interaction anytime, anywhere between consumers and stores. With the arrival of the 5G era, how should Freshippo leverage emerging technologies to evolve into a more sustainable and profitable platform?

This case explores the challenges and opportunities of practicing venture philanthropy in an emerging market. Jaff Shen, a serial social entrepreneur and Founder/General Secretary of Leping Social Entrepreneur Foundation ("Leping"), brought the international venture philanthropy network Social Venture Partners ("SVP") to China in 2012 to help build China's overall civil society and proclivity for social entrepreneurship. SVP's Beijing branch, which launched as a non-profit in 2013, made fast progress in attracting partners and investing in multiple mission-driven organizations. SVP Shanghai followed in 2016, registering as a for-profit for greater flexibility of operations, but was making slow progress. Students are asked to explain the reasons for Shanghai's slow growth, and then critically evaluate a strategy suggested to Shen for accelerating the progress. They must take a stand in Shen's internal debate about whether to push a fast top-down strategy or tolerate a slower-paced bottom-up trajectory. Students also have the opportunity to compare four different SPO investment opportunities shortlisted by SVP Shanghai's partners for their initial investment, and to propose an evaluative framework for screening the potential targets and subsequently monitoring the investment outcomes.

This case is essentially about economic growth and development in general, and about China in particular. It makes the topic of growth more interesting by discussing the triggering factors of the MIT through comparing the differences between a trapped and an escaped province, i.e., Shaanxi and Jiangsu, respectively. To alleviate the regional development gap, Shaanxi and Jiangsu became paired poverty alleviation partners in 1996 under the guidance of the Chinese central government. However, 20 years have passed and a huge gap still exists between the two provinces in many fields. Jiangsu's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has surpassed the MIT range, while Shaanxi's has not, and the province is very likely to be trapped with the continuing slowdown of its economic growth. The key difference between the two provinces is not resources, but development policies.

This case explores the opportunities and challenges of building a sustainable social enterprise in China. It traces the development in Shenzhen, China, of Shenzhen Xihaner Car Wash Center ("Xihaner Car Wash"), founded in August 2015 by Mr. Jun Cao, the father of a Xihaner child. Cao's goal was to provide gainful employment and continuing care for Xihaners. From the start, he was determined to build a social enterprise that could generate enough profits to become sustainable over the long term and not a charitable organization that relied on donations. With a carefully designed business model, Xihaner Car Wash made good progress in its first two years. Its achievements won the enterprise the Gold Award at the Sixth China Charity Fair on September 24, 2017. Despite these achievements, Xihaner Car Wash still faces many challenges. Cao wonders: "Do we have a sustainable business model for our social enterprise? How can we grow Xihaner Car Wash further to benefit more Xihaners in China?"

This case discusses the phenomenon of high-ratio stock splits in China's capital market. Unlike in the U.S. capital market, where cash dividends are common, high-ratio stock splits in China are often associated with sharp stock price fluctuations and attract close attention from investors, listed companies, and regulators alike. In April 2018, the two Chinese stock exchanges released the most stringent regulations to date to prohibit ineligible companies from carrying out such practices. Nonetheless, there were still many cases where companies found ways to circumvent the rules to continue high-ratio stock splits. In the first half of 2018, Profit Cultural & Creative Group (PCCG) and Zhejiang Wolwo Bio-Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (WolwoPharma) announced a 1.8-for-1 stock split together with a cash dividend of ¥0.25 per share and a 1.8-for-1 stock split together with a cash dividend of ¥0.4 per share, respectively. Although the stock prices of both companies went up initially after the announcement, the prices moved in the opposite direction after the ex-rights date. What were the motivations behind the listed companies' high-ratio stock splits? Why did the stock prices of the two companies show different patterns after the stock split? How should investors respond to high-ratio stock splits?

This case presents an overview of China's FMCG industry in the early 2010s from the perspective of WinChannel, an information service provider to major FMCG companies in China. It describes the three major distribution channels (i.e., Routes-to-Market) and focuses on the challenges facing the traditional trade channel through which FMCG companies provide their products to millions of "mom-and-pop" stores (i.e., small, independently owned and operated convenience stores), especially in rural parts of China. In early 2015, Zhen (Andrew) Cui, Founder and CEO of WinChannel, is exploring how he can help improve the reach and efficiency of the traditional trade channel and wonders if the emerging online/mobile B2B FMCG platforms offer the best solution for the increasingly digitized FMCG retail industry in China.

This case aims to help students understand how digitization is enabling and shaping the transformation of the traditional FMCG industry in China. It introduces Andrew Cui's response to the challenges posed in Case (A)-i.e., how WinChannel could improve the reach and efficiency of the traditional trade channel when online/mobile B2B FMCG platforms were emerging in the market. In May 2015, Cui launched Huixiadan, a mobile-based B2B FMCG ordering platform, connecting a select group of leading FMCG companies and their numerous distributors and wholesalers with potentially millions of mom-and-pop stores in China. Huixiadan has used mobile technologies to develop an inclusive and collaborative business model linking most players in the existing traditional trade channel. However, it faces fierce competition from many online competitors seeking to disrupt the FMCG industry, including Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com. Cui is wondering how competitive and sustainable Huixiadan's business model is and what he should do to withstand the competitive threats even as he tries to exploit opportunities in the traditional FMCG industry in China.

Since China's reform and opening up, in merely four decades, the GDP of the city of Shenzhen has grown more than 10,000-fold. The city's development in the past 40 years has been underpinned by industry transformation and innovation, and the Huaqiangbei area in the city epitomizes this development process. Forty years ago, Huaqiangbei was a completely inconspicuous street in Shenzhen, but riding the wave of China's reform and opening up, Huaqiangbei has emerged and gradually grown to be widely known around the world as "China's No. 1 Electronics Street." How should we assess Huaqiangbei's journey of exploration and development? How many rounds of industrial upgrading and market transformation has Huaqiangbei experienced in the course of its development? Also, as the saying goes, nothing lasts forever. After its explosive growth propelled by the knockoff cellphone business, Huaqiangbei soon found itself cornered by the rapid development of e-commerce and mobile Internet technologies. How should it stand up to new challenges and identify new growth opportunities?

This case describes how EVCard, a car-sharing business in China, was created from scratch using a lean startup approach through observing overseas peers, analyzing market opportunities, building a startup team and conducting feasibility studies. The company formed at a time when the commercialization of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in the country was in its infancy, public awareness was low, and viable domestic models did not exist. The case describes how EVCard first developed a minimum viable product and improved on it incrementally through closed testing and a pilot. The firm eventually expanded its Shanghai model to 64 cities across the country, offering more than 42,000 vehicles from more than 13,000 stations to four-million-plus members. They generated nearly 100,000 daily reservations as of November 2018. EVCard's entrepreneurial journey will show students that in a changing market environment, startup companies can develop competitive advantage through rapid learning and product iteration.

A new study looked at what happens when auto owners get ratings on their driving immediately from an app. The surprising finding? Their driving usually gets worse.

Supplemental to case 517025. This (B) case describes the changes in the organization's strategy from one of Building Playgrounds to Influencing Play. It describes the implementation of the strategy and the challenges it faced internally and externally. It goes on to describe how the organization under its new leader, James Siegal, further adjusted the strategy and its implementation, to navigate through the initial difficulties. The case closes with the question, what else should the organization do to help the new strategy take off?

Elite Chinese law firm Fangda Partners has steered Alibaba and other Chinese and international clients through the complex legal, corporate, and regulatory challenges associated with executing international transactions. "Fangda has traveled a long distance in a short while," reflects senior partner Jonathan Zhou, "but we have a long distance to traverse further. We have lofty aspirations." Fangda Partners seeks to build on its growth and strong reputation to establish itself as a major, high-end law firm in the Chinese market. What needs to be accomplished and how should Zhou proceed?

Hope Noah Health Management (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (hereafter Hope Noah) was one of China's earliest providers of medical tourism services. The company built a sterling reputation among customers, and demand for its services grew quickly. However, CEO Wang Gang wanted to achieve more than just handsome sales figures and hoped to provide customers with more effective, efficient, and affordable medical tourism services. He believed that the industry's prevailing pricing model, whereby customers were charged according to the amount, duration, and frequency of services ran counter to patients' interests, as less effective and longer treatments resulted in higher bills. To address this issue, Wang considered switching to an "all-inclusive" pricing model covering medical costs, service charges, and all other non-medical expenses arising from treatment. In addition to addressing patients' concerns about unpredictable expenses, this model would also force the company to increase efficiency, aligning the interest of patients with those of the company. However, Wang's proposal was unanimously opposed by other executives due to the financial risks associated with the inherent uncertainties of medical treatment. This case looks into a thought-provoking topic as it concerns China's inadequate medical resources, deficient healthcare system, rapidly aging society, and consumption upgrading trends. The case study will cover topics like basic pricing theories and innovative pricing methods while showing students how to formulate marketing strategies for companies by applying theoretical frameworks such as the marketing mix.

Yiliu Tech was established in 2006 to reform road freight in China and address its lack of transparency with information technology. Its philosophy was built on the concept of "logistical transparency", i.e., providing digitalized services to road freight suppliers and customers. These services use real-time positioning and other physical vehicle data collected via various devices and sensors. Of the three stages of logistical transparency, Yiliu Tech has undergone stages 1.0 and 2.0 in the past ten years and is now transitioning from business digitization to data-driven services. How important is logistical transparency, and what do Logistical Transparency 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 actually mean? How should Yiliu Tech use logistical transparency and logistics big data to optimize logistical decision-making, design more innovative services and make them widely accessible? Against the backdrop of industry-wide transformation and upgrading and the opportunity presented by strategic investment from Cainiao Network Technology (hereinafter "Cainiao"), what path should Yiliu Tech take to pursue its goal of Logistical Transparency 3.0?