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Leaders of Accenture's compliance and ethics program are seeking to design a new code of business ethics for its global workforce of over 400,000 employees. The case explores the decision making process that went into the design process and ultimately how they created a revised code.

The case opens in 2013 as Amine Benkirane, founder and CEO of the leading Moroccan furniture company KITEA, contemplates the loss his company has incurred for the first time in its 20-year history. The case then describes KITEA's origins and provides a detailed overview of the business plan that enabled Benkirane to bring affordable modern furniture in flatpacks to the Moroccan market, which had previously been dominated by unorganized artisans. At the beginning of 2010, KITEA was a market leader with a robust market share of 24%. However, Benkirane read about rumors that IKEA was planning to enter the Moroccan market. The case explores in detail KITEA's efforts to prepare for the increased competition. In 2013, KITEA found itself in a difficult situation, facing a downturn in the economy, a slowdown in sales, a delayed store opening, and souring creditor sentiment following the news about IKEA's entry. Would KITEA be able to bounce back and remain competitive when IKEA entered the market?

Alibaba's Rural Taobao initiative had been launched in 2014 as a public service initiative to increase e-commerce adoption in China's remote rural areas. In the first two iterations of the initiative, dubbed "1.0" and "2.0", Alibaba had partnered with local businesses and young returnees to operate village stations. Village stations served as logistical and educational hubs to help villagers make online purchases. Despite significant growth in sales through village stations, the business model was operating at a loss, and competitors JD and Pinduoduo were growing quickly, threatening to challenge Alibaba by claiming the rural e-commerce markets. Bill Wang, the head of the initiative, was tasked with designing and implementing the next model for Alibaba's future expansion into rural areas. The decision centers around whether Alibaba should copy the successes of competitors JD and Pinduoduo, escalate commitment to its original value proposition (hands-on service to villagers), or embrace an entirely new model. The case highlights the competing pressures of financial performance, CSR and corporate mission, government relations, and long-term competitive positioning that are common to major strategic decisions.

This case contains excerpts from prominent business leaders and others expressing their views on the responsibilities, if any, of business leaders to other stakeholders in society. It begins with an excerpt from Andrew Carnegie, the nineteenth century steel magnate, in which he argues that although making wealth through business was valid and desirable, the business leader should see himself as a trustee who should distribute this wealth to society. It then tracks debates concerning business responsibility over the decades. It includes excerpts from Theodore Levitt's warning of the "Dangers of Social Responsibility" (1958) and Jensen and Meckling's (1976) "Theory of the Firm," which argued that a firm was merely a nexus of relationships among individuals and could have no responsibility. The case ends with excerpts from Warren Buffet, Dominic Barton, Judy Wicks and Larry Fink, each offering a different perspective on the responsibility of business leaders.

The Institute of Technical Education (ITE) was established by the Singapore government as a post-secondary principal provider of vocational and technical education (VTE). This case study chronicles ITE's transformation from a public education institution that was plagued by social stigma into an award-winning institution. It relates how in Singapore, VTE and ITE were destigmatized through a multi-pronged approach that encompassed social marketing, industry partnerships, strategic planning, and government support.

Pat Chan and Nicky Caxton, a married couple and co-owners of Chan & Caxton Booksellers, faced a difficult decision. Seven months before, they had changed their channel strategy, moving from their home-based business to a shared retail space to increase revenue and decrease lower-margin consignment sales. This new strategy was not generating the expected increase in sales; however, the space offered them both low cost and flexibility to deliver special events for their customers. Were these problems merely growing pains, or were they evidence that the bricks-and-mortar retail channel wasn't working out? Pat and Nicky thus found themselves pondering several options: staying in their current location, moving their business back to their apartment, renting an office space, or finding a stand-alone retail space in a better location. Each option had different potential implications for their business model, channel strategy, and their family life. This case is appropriate for upper-year undergraduate and graduate business courses or workshops in small business, small-business development, entrepreneurship, or family business. It explores the ongoing issues of managing and adjusting when a strategy fails in a context of small business and constrained resources. We use the business model canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2010) and the Diamond-E framework (Crossan, Rouse, Rowe, & Maurer, 2016)to illustrate the interrelationship between the industry environment, management preferences, and business model alternatives. As such, the case explores the role of management preference in a small family business.

In June 2015 Lina Bowden, chair of the Innovation Works Finance Committee (Finance Committee), needed to finalize a plan to raise an additional $1,000,000 of capital. The capital would primarily be used to fund renovations to a building that had become known as Innovation Works, a novel coworking space and social innovation hub located in London, Ontario, Canada. The building was already secured; however, significant renovations were required before all floors could be rented. The Innovation Works project was spearheaded in 2009 by Pillar Nonprofit Network, a member-based organization comprised of nonprofit organizations. Members of the Innovation Works Project Team (Project Team) expressed a strong desire to launch London's first ever community bond to finance the renovations. The Project Team tasked the Finance Committee, lead by Bowden, with the job of providing a recommendation on the viability of the community bond financing strategy. If it was determined that a round of community bond financing was indeed viable, Bowden would need to recommend bond structure details as well as report how much capital would be needed in a second round of financing. If she concluded that community bond financing was not viable, she would need to present a convincing case for pursuing another strategy given the team's strong desire to make a statement in the community.

Case describes the career journey of the owner of two small family businesses, and illustrates the intertwining of crisis planning, retirement planning, and succession planning. The owner loses more than $500,000 in some problematic ventures, but gradually achieves steady profitability. At age 62 he has a heart attack, requiring emergency triple-bypass surgery. His wife, shaken by this close call, asks her husband to retire or at least sell one of their two businesses. However, this owner-manager is in no hurry to relinquish control. Next, a fire destroys his fast-casual restaurant, and the insurance settlement will not fully cover the cost of renovations to restore it to full operation. He considers several options: 1) walk away from it (minimal renovation, covered by insurance) and focus on his granite restoration business; 2) restore and return the restaurant to full operation (drawing on his personal savings) and continue as before. Discussing this case helps students appreciate why family business owners should plan for predictable surprises and how and why to develop a solid management succession plan.

In fall 2018, the 64-year-old owner of a small 5th-generation family business in rural Iowa has not begun succession or retirement planning. His older daughter asks to talk with him about possibly taking over the store someday; Skip defers this talk until after the busy harvest season. A few days later "Big Ag Feeds" (disguised) offers to buy his business; they want an answer by year-end. Skip discusses the offer with his wife. If he accepts it, ownership would transfer to Big Ag in four years, ending the family business legacy. Skip always assumed he would keep the business in the family, yet now he considers this option and three others: 1) Counter-propose to transfer ownership to Big Ag in one year ("clean break" to retirement). 2) Groom his daughter to succeed him as owner/manager; 3) Hire an outside manager to run the store (retain ownership). Seeing that times are changing (huge agribusinesses are replacing small farms, with repercussions for his business; emerging technologies and new government regulations bring other opportunities and threats) Skip believes the next owner/manager will face a tougher road than the rough road he traveled in his career journey.

Aaron Slade, CEO of Snakes & Lattes (S&L), was tasked with overseeing the ambitious growth plan for the company. Snakes & Lattes was a chain of board game cafés in Toronto; customers could come and play board games, eat, drink, and have a good time. The firm had grown from one small location opened in 2010 to three locations in 2018, each larger than the last, and annual revenue had increased to $7 million. The company had announced plans to sell franchises in about 20 North American cities and open three more company-owned cafés. The immediate problem that Slade was wrestling with had to do with marketing strategy and communication. To date Snakes & Lattes had very controlled, centralized branding and communication, but each of the cafés was different due to its location, clientele, games, and history. With each venue having its own character there was room for more decentralized marketing, but only if it was not to the detriment of the brand. Two factors complicated this further: the company was involved in many non-café revenue-generating activities, and the planned rapid growth would exacerbate the existing problem of individual character of each café. Slade needed a strong marketing plan to complement the growth in locations.

In January 2016, Silvio Elías, co-founder and CEO of Veritas, Catalonia's leading organic supermarket chain, headed to a meeting with the company's board to present the alternative options to enter in Madrid. At that time, Madrid was thriving like no other Spanish region and stood out as an attractive market for expansion. Most of all, operating in the nation's capital accounted for an instrumental step forward on the path to accomplish Elías' overriding vision: turning Veritas into Spain's organic food leader. Nonetheless, Spain's organic food retailing landscape was changing very rapidly, with increased, fierce competition from a diverse range of players. Against this competitive backdrop, Elías wondered if Veritas should approach Madrid by opening their own stores, following the same strategy it had used to rise as industry leader in Catalonia. Eroski, a conventional supermarket chain, had also reached out to Elías to offer Veritas an opportunity to display some of its private label products at Eroski's stores in Madrid as they did in Catalonia. Elías needed to make the final decision on his recommendation to the board.

The author-the Chief Economist at the Creative Destruction Lab-argues that recent developments in artificial intelligence constitute advances in prediction. Prediction occurs when you use information that you have to produce information that you do not have. In a wide-ranging interview, he says that importantly, this is all machine learning does. It cannot establish causal relationships and therefore it must be used with care in the face of uncertainty and limited data. As a result, he explains why workers will be making more complex decisions going forward, and why there will always be a role for human judgment in every organization.

If you trace the origin of any creative breakthrough, it is possible to find the point where someone changed the question. The author-who co-wrote The Innovator's DNA with Clayton Christensen-shows that questions can do amazing things: Knock down the walls that have been constraining your thinking; remove one or more of the 'givens' in a line of thinking; and open up space for inquiry that had been closed off by narrow framing. He provides a three-step framework for asking better questions and re-framing issues, showing that if you can properly phrase a question, the answer is the easy part.

Most of the big car manufacturers now have an automatic vehicle ('AV') division and expect to make the technology available to the mass market as early as 2025. And by the year 2045, AV market share is predicted to be as high as 87.2 per cent. The authors share findings from their study of 55 cities worldwide that are taking a holistic approach to implementing multifaceted AV policies-covering everything from traffic rules to land use, ride sharing and taxi reform. They describe the progress made to date and the key challenges that lie ahead as consumers, cities and regions embrace this disruptive technology.

The high degree of change in today's environment demands that organizations adapt their strategy to new situations much more frequently than ever before. Yet in a world of 'transient advantage', too many companies are obsessed with traditional industry analysis and continue to define their most important competitors as the other companies within their industry. In a wide-ranging interview, the author shows that this is a very dangerous way to think about competition right now. In more and more markets, we are seeing industries competing with other industries, business models competing with other business models - even within the same industry - and entirely new categories emerging. She describes the new mindset required to thrive in an age of transient advantage, explaining the roles of 'continuous reconfiguration', healthy disengagement and more.

Managers often express a grave concern about how fast artificial intelligence is unfolding - so fast that they become afraid of committing to any one supplier or standard. But precisely because we are living in a world of accelerated change, it is critical to stay in the know. The author describes some of the key concepts that every manager should be familiar with in the 'second machine age'. In the end, he shows that companies can no longer claim conventional advantages by virtue of being 'vertically integrated'; instead, they will be under tremendous pressure to match smaller players that are able to deliver customized solutions in real time as orders are made. In other words, in the second machine age, big companies need to act small.

The most innovative organizations realize that the best strategy in the world will get you nowhere unless you relentlessly make it happen. They show that the relentless execution of innovation has five key characteristics: clarity, focus, commitment to change, acceptance of failure and close proximity to customers. In the end, they show that getting things done with a relentless can-do attitude demands a degree of bravery that few organizations demonstrate; and that, as indicated by the stories of Amazon, Netflix, Haier and many others, fortune truly does favour the brave.

It is widely accepted that creativity influences critical organizational outcomes. Yet many practitioners struggle to design work routines that foster creativity. In response to this 'knowledge gap', scholars have increasingly studied job design factors that enhance or hamper creativity. The authors focus on one under-explored job design factor that may influence creativity: task switching. They show that, by forcing individuals to temporarily put tasks aside, a 'continual-switch' approach elevates creative performance by alleviating the tendency to cognitively 'fixate' on ineffective ideas or problem-solving strategies.

The core challenge in healthcare is not a lack of funding, commitment or individual skill. The key issue that demands disruptive innovation is that healthcare systems are highly fragmented. The author argues that the best solution is for healthcare vendors to engage more actively in the system as value chain partners. Actors across the healthcare value chain need to improve their public perception, and one way to achieve that is to work together in stronger partnerships. He explains why commercial vendors offer key knowledge and appropriate incentives as central actors in these partnerships.