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This case explores the evolution of Nike's global product sourcing strategy, in particular ongoing efforts to improve working conditions at its suppliers' factories. When the case opens in July 2018, Vice President of Sourcing Amanda Tucker and her colleagues in Nike's Global Sourcing and Manufacturing division were focusing on three key supply chain challenges: sourcing from suppliers that meet compliance standards, challenging and encouraging suppliers to improve capabilities, and being responsive to consumer demand across the world.

Zydus Wellness Ltd. (Zydus), based in Ahmedabad, India, operated in the consumer goods sector, offering health and hygiene products and brands such as Sugar Free, Everyuth, Actilife, and Nutralite. Zydus promoted its Nutralite margarine brand mainly through television advertising. Its other communication strategies included digital marketing efforts and on-ground activities. Entering a market that was primarily dominated by Amul butter, Nutralite positioned itself in its marketing communications as a healthier alternative to butter. With Amul, Nutralite faced a strong legacy and brand loyalty, which Amul had created in the market over the years. Market research indicated that consumers were uncertain about what kind of product Nutralite was. At the end of 2017, the head of marketing at Zydus faced several challenging questions: How should the brand establish its identity? Having existed in the market for more than a decade, should Nutralite now promise something more than health? Finally, how could the company convert this transactional relationship with its consumers and strengthen its market share?

In April 2017, Butterfly Edufields Pvt. Ltd., in Hyderabad, India, was experiencing a rapid growth in demand and needed to find ways to expand its capacity to meet this demand without significantly increasing costs. The company created innovative teaching and learning products for students in grades 1 through 10. Working with these products hands-on helped students understand various mathematics and science concepts such as magnetism, light, and sound. The founder and chief executive officer asked the head of production and stores to evaluate the company's existing production processes and capacity and to suggest options for improvement at a senior management meeting, scheduled for a week later.

In February 2018, Punjab National Bank (PNB) in India reported a US$1.8-billion fraud related to the illegal issuance of letters of undertaking. The fraud was engineered by one of the leading diamond jewelers of India, Nirav Modi; his uncle, Mehul Choksi; and employees of PNB's Brady House branch in Mumbai. Indian investigative agencies found that the previous top management of PNB along with other employees had also been involved in or had prior knowledge about the fraud. PNB's current chief executive officer, Sunil Mehta, was trying to steer PNB out of the crisis. What key challenges did Mehta face with respect to managing the operational risks of PNB? Was Mehta right to consider the fraud a people issue and not a systems issue?

On May 27, 2018, Maryanne Trollope, the Learning and Development (L&D) manager for Anglo American South Africa, was considering her dilemma of handing over her brainchild to her successor. The Building Leaders and Shaping Talent (BLAST) program was a flagship talent management program for young graduates in South Africa, and she wanted to ensure a smooth transition for her successor and to ensure that the BLASTers (BLAST recruits) developed relationships with her replacement. Trollope was meeting with one BLASTer, who had been on an international BLAST placement in London, England. She had to decide when to introduce this recruit to the individual taking over the program and what information and insight she should recommend the recruit share with her colleague. What were the critical success factors of the talent management program, and how could Trollope ensure sustained success and a smooth handover process?

In July 2018, MICA, Ahmedabad, one of the leading management institutions in India, was experiencing bottlenecks in its dining hall that were delaying regular operations during peak lunch hours. The lunch break was for about 75 minutes between classes. The dining hall catered to 480 people at any given time-not only students but also faculty members and other MICA staff. After eating lunch at the dining hall, many students had to rush to post-lunch class sessions, and they risked missing attendance. Most faculty members had zero tolerance for late entrants. A MICA faculty member from the business management area was entrusted with studying the situation, determining the cause for delay, and proposing remedial measures. He needed to identify the weakest link in the chain and then propose an infusion of resources that would buffer this constraint, thereby reducing the total time students and other members of the MICA community spent in the dining hall during lunch hours.

In May 2018, B9 Beverages Private Limited (B9 Beverages), the owner of craft beer Bira 91, reached a total of over US$100 million in funding after receiving $50 million from Sofina SA, a Belgian investment firm. This third round of funding would allow the company to meet the various objectives that the founder and chief executive officer had planned for the company's new Bira 91. He wanted his India business to break even by 2019 and expand fivefold over the next three years. He also wanted to establish a leadership position in the Indian premium beer market. The company also planned to launch Bira 91 as a public company through an initial public offering within the next few years. His long-term goal was to make Bira 91 a product rooted in India, as well as a global leader in craft beer. As the market and competition continued to grow, B9 Beverages had to develop a strategy to differentiate Bira 91 in the crowded global beer market.

An executive at a North American-based multinational company contacted an old friend and former business associate in Indonesia in hopes of collaborating with him to purchase Asian software companies. After several emails, the two disagreed and disengaged. The North American declined the Indonesian's advice to invest time in developing the relationships required to access this market. Three months later, after realizing he had closed the door on a huge and growing market, the North American again contacted his Indonesian associate. He realized that his North American style of negotiation was ineffective in this market and that the Asians had their own preferred approach. He planned a phone call to Indonesia to try to restart the process. What style of communication should he use this time in an effort to generate a better understanding and success?

A doctor in the Department of Pediatrics at Riverdale Hospital, an Australian hospital affiliated with the faculty of medicine at a leading nearby university, reported directly to the chair of the department. The doctor received funding for his research in the amount of $380,000 per year, but because he was not a tenured faculty member, he was not able to directly control the contributions. Instead, the fund was administered by the department chair, under the doctor's supervision. While checking the accounting of the fund in December 2010, the doctor discovered an irregularity that made him doubt the chair's administration of the donations. As more clues and irregularities emerged, the doctor became convinced that the fund was being mismanaged and that this mismanagement was being covered up. When he eventually confronted the chair, he found himself in a stressful and difficult situation, with little support. In 2018, the dean of medicine circulated an external audit that claimed there had been no wrongdoing, and the doctor found himself facing a much larger, stronger opponent. Should he take action, pursuing civil or criminal charges? Should he leave the institution and take the donations with him? Should he stay where he was and deal with the consequences?

In 2017, the German grocery chain Lidl Stiftung & Co. KG (Lidl) opened its first 20 U.S. stores in the southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Key target segments of Lidl were budget-conscious customers, middle-class families with children, and elderly customers on a fixed income. Lidl offered lower prices than its competitors and quickly gained a strong advantage in the marketplace. Despite high early consumer demand, however, Lidl struggled to hit the correct target market for each of its different locations in terms of tastes and demographics. With plans for 100 U.S.-based locations by the summer of 2018, Lidl had set its sights high. What could Lidl do to meet its U.S. market goals and expand into the future?

Francesco Cavarero, chief information officer of Miroglio Fashion, Italy's third-largest retailer of women's apparel, was trying to bring analytical rigor to the company's forecasting and inventory management decisions. But fashion is inherently hard to predict. Can artificial intelligence and machine learning replace human intuition in this industry?

Spreadsheet supplement for case 118013.

The director of World Tailors, a small Canadian manufacturer that employed immigrant and refugee women to sew high-quality aprons, napkins, and market bags, wondered how all of the needed products would be completed for the 2017 December holiday season. During the past seven years, demand for World Tailor products had steadily increased from craft markets, online orders, and retail stores. How could the capacity of its current operations be better managed and expanded? World Tailors was more than a local manufacturer: it supported courageous women, who had recently arrived in Canada as refugees and immigrants, to integrate into the community. Would reorganizing as a business co-operative better balance the unique social mission of the organization?

I@NS was intended to mimic the experience of founding a start-up, getting it funded, building a product, and taking it to market, with all the potential risk and reward this entailed. Except, of course, this particular start-up experience would occur within Nokia Corporation, a 150-year-old global company with 103,000 employees working in more than 100 countries-a company that described its mission as "creat[ing] the technology to connect the world." Given this rather unusual "start-up" environment, the creators of the program had no idea how it would all unfold. But, they went ahead and established it, evangelized it to Nokia Software employees around the world, judged the first round, and then launched a second round, which was still underway at the time this case was written. In the process of creating I@NS, its founders learned many important lessons about encouraging and supporting innovation and a start-up mentality within an established corporation. The case covers many elements of the design and implementation of an innovation program including: Strategic objectives of innovation processes; Defining success; Determining the scale and scope of new ventures; The staging of the innovation process; The gating and funding decision making process; The definition of the strategic objectives behind the innovation process; Communicating the process to the wide organization; Communicating (the go/no go) gating decisions; Identifying and allocation resources; Recruiting evangelists and mentors; Team formation and composition; How the process interacts with and impacts the culture in the organization; Incentives for innovation; Career development paths for innovators; Attitudes to risk.

I@NS was intended to mimic the experience of founding a start-up, getting it funded, building a product, and taking it to market, with all the potential risk and reward this entailed. Except, of course, this particular start-up experience would occur within Nokia Corporation, a 150-year-old global company with 103,000 employees working in more than 100 countries-a company that described its mission as "creat[ing] the technology to connect the world." Given this rather unusual "start-up" environment, the creators of the program had no idea how it would all unfold. But, they went ahead and established it, evangelized it to Nokia Software employees around the world, judged the first round, and then launched a second round, which was still underway at the time this case was written. In the process of creating I@NS, its founders learned many important lessons about encouraging and supporting innovation and a start-up mentality within an established corporation. The case covers many elements of the design and implementation of an innovation program including: Strategic objectives of innovation processes; Defining success; Determining the scale and scope of new ventures; The staging of the innovation process; The gating and funding decision making process; The definition of the strategic objectives behind the innovation process; Communicating the process to the wide organization; Communicating (the go/no go) gating decisions; Identifying and allocation resources; Recruiting evangelists and mentors; Team formation and composition; How the process interacts with and impacts the culture in the organization; Incentives for innovation; Career development paths for innovators; Attitudes to risk.

Despite initial skepticism throughout the company, by 2015 Coesia had achieved its "Ambition 2015" by exceeding the revenue goal of €1.5 billion. The company had created legitimate diversification beyond the tobacco industry, while at the same time significantly strengthening its competitive position in tobacco machinery. All the evidence suggested that Coesia's transformation had been a success. In mid-2016 a new goal, "Ambition 2020," was set with the aim of further doubling the 2015 business. The group had made the crucial choice of adopting an operating model that was referred to as the "strategic enabler" model. The enabler model ensured that the individual companies had significant autonomy and P&L responsibility. Functions such as HR, R&D, marketing and finance were created at group level to support the individual companies. A regional structure was added to enable the companies to access global markets. A Coesia identity and culture was also emerging. By the end of 2018, the group had expanded from 12 companies in 2010 to 21. The dramatic increase in size - both in terms of revenue and number of companies - brought new opportunities, challenges and dilemmas. The enabler model had delivered successful results, but the leadership team was reflecting on what, if any, changes were needed to make it scalable and efficient for a larger group.

The case opens in December of 2018, with Sunil Duggal, the CEO of Dabur India (a multinational consumer goods conglomerate with a focus in Ayurvedic products) contemplating who should succeed him at the head of the company. The new CEO will have been the first since Dabur completed its transition from family management to professional management in 2002, and though publicly listed, the majority of the company's shares were still owned by the Burman family, who founded it in 1884. The case then describes how the Burman family grew the company until the mid-1990s, when professionalization began. The case explains the various obstacles and difficulties that the company overcame in the process of professionalization and explains how the family came to step back from the business. It specifies the nature of the family's involvement during Duggal's tenure as CEO, as the company expanded across the globe, and then it closes by returning to the question of what a professionalized, multinational family business should be seeking in its next CEO, sixteen years after it last confronted such a decision.

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as "structured empowerment" to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make choices from narrow sets of options on a set of inputs and processes and (b) the responsibility to deliver results according to the company's value proposition. This lets a company control operations-by standardizing the options frontline employees can choose from to drive results-and adapt to diverse markets-because combining choices from the options makes a large number of service offerings and routine sequences possible. This abridged version of the note does not reference the case "OXXO's Turf War Against Extra." It is intended to be used in a classroom setting where "OXXO's Turf War Against Extra" is also being taught, abridged so that it does not give away any relevant information about the case.