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In August 2022, Anthony Tan, co-founder and CEO of Flirtual, a virtual reality-based dating platform was deciding whether to hire a new employee or work with a consultancy to complete a major rewrite of the platform's code. Flirtual had experienced high user growth, resulting in performance issues among some of its users. Tan wanted to decide how to continue growing its users while addressing these challenges.

In August 2022, Pinduoduo Inc., one of the fastest growing and largest e-commerce companies in China, faced several challenges. Alongside intensified competition from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and JD.com Inc., as well as weakened consumer spending due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pinduoduo had reached a potential growth ceiling within the domestic market. To explore new growth avenues, Lei Chen, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, would need to evaluate the potential opportunities and challenges Pinduoduo might encounter in its overseas e-commerce business expansion.

In August 2022, a student pursuing his master of business administration degree in Mumbai at one of India's top business schools found himself in a despondent situation as he prepared his curriculum vitae (CV) to apply for an internship position at Golden Tobacco Company. He had written an email to his former project supervisor (a senior fellow of the MIT Media Lab at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay), requesting him to approve the project the student had worked on under his supervision as relevant experience for the internship position. In response, the student received an email from his supervisor with one terse line: "Is this an order?" With a deadline that very evening to submit the CV, the student was in a tizzy. Where had he gone wrong in his email to prompt the terse reply from his former supervisor? How could he fix the situation? And how could he prevent such a situation when writing emails in the future?

Natalie Wilson, a human resources administrator at League Plastics, a manufacturer of parts for the recreational vehicle industry, was worried that she would be blamed by her supervisor for an increasing number of workers' compensation claims. After gathering data on the ever-worsening safety record in the facility and taking notes about where injuries were occurring, Wilson knew she would need to act before the company's workers' compensation policy came due for renewal. She needed to put together a plan that would start reducing injuries for the rest of the year, and she needed to persuade her supervisor to implement it.

One afternoon on January 10, 2020, Zhengting Chen, the chief executive officer of Sichuan Zhiyuan Digital Finance Information Technology Co., Ltd. (Zhiyuan), was reading an internal report on the company's performance. Founded in 2013 in Chengdu, Zhiyuan was one of the first platform companies to provide traditional supply chain financial services in southwest China. Zhiyuan had experienced a decrease in both annual revenue in 2019 and year-over-year growth rate of membership. So, Chen wondered how the Zhiyuan's digital transformation could help attract customers and sustain the company's long-term growth by ensuring the authenticity and transparency of transactions.

The case describes the nature of the challenges facing Osman Arbee, CEO of Motus Holdings Limited (Motus) and his executive committee (exco) as they led the business through the challenges inherent in the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the South African government's initially stringent response to it. Arbee and other exco members explain the competing interests of different stakeholders and highlight the urgency with which they needed to act to ensure the long-term viability of the business. Motus is an integrated automotive holding company based in Ekurhuleni, near Johannesburg, South Africa. Its four divisions include Import and Distribution, Retail and Rental, Motor-Related Financial Services, and Aftermarket Parts.

Big Brothers Big Sisters of Niagara (BBBSN) was a not-for-profit (NFP) organization that offered mentoring and other programs for children and youth. The organization recruited and deployed volunteers in a variety of positions, including those available through its mentoring program, thrift store, bingo halls, and periodic fundraising events. However, while demand for BBBSN's services was increasing, the number of people willing to volunteer their time was declining. Since BBBSN was a newly amalgamated organization that had combined three Niagara-region Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) agencies over the past two years, the fundraising and events coordinator of BBBSN also had to develop an integrated volunteer recruitment and fundraising program that would create a stronger voice for BBBS in the whole Niagara region.

Organizations that practice open innovation draw on external resources to develop new ideas for products and services. Since the term’s introduction 20 years ago, open innovation has had many proven successes, but organizations must recognize and address a potential barrier: an inability to move knowledge across internal functional, departmental, or geographic silos. Author Henry Chesbrough suggests ways to overcome the obstacles imposed by these organizational boundaries.

In 2019, Moderna faced long odds of survival having failed to develop a successful clinical program out of the vast platform technology they had built around mRNA. Nearly overnight, the company skyrocketed to success with a vaccine for COVID-19, leading to an extremely fast ramp-up in manufacturing relying heavily on contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) to produce hundreds of millions of doses of a single vaccine. However, on the heels of Moderna's COVID success, the company had more than 40 clinical programs in the pipeline, and as they moved towards personalized vaccines, had to determine what the future of manufacturing would look like for a company that needed to produce massive amounts of certain products and a handful of doses of others.

This case traces the life of Robert McNamara from Harvard Business School to Ford Motor Company to the U.S. Department of Defense. McNamara excelled in every job along the way: becoming the youngest-ever professor at Harvard Business School, the first non-family president of Ford, and Secretary of Defense under President John F. Kennedy. He achieved these successes by using quantitative techniques he learned at Harvard to drive goal-oriented efficiency. Unfortunately, his tendency to manage by the numbers had dire consequences when he ran the Vietnam War. Many blame McNamara, who relied on incomplete and inaccurate performance measures, for 58,000 American deaths in a war that the United States ultimately lost. Studying the life choices of Robert McNamara will be a cautionary tale for all leaders and students of business.

The case study examines the journey toward value-based healthcare at Karolinska University Hospital. The hospital's ambitious shift to a patient-centered care delivery model, accompanied by the construction of a new facility, encountered challenges such as high costs, staff dissatisfaction, and growing waiting lists. The departure of CEO Melvin Samsom in 2018 left the new director Bjorn Zoega with a budget deficit, discontented staff, and an outdated IT system. By 2023, however, Zoega had achieved a remarkable turnaround. Ranked among the top 6 international hospitals, the institution boasted a positive budget and had exceeded production assignments for three consecutive years. In 2023, Zoega pondered if his changes were long-lasting and how the Hospital should face new challenges such as an aging population and a shortage of qualified nurses.

Nora is an intelligent, hard-working employee in her first managerial role. As she attempts to move from a role as a contributor to that of a leader, she struggles to effectively manage her workload, her boss, and her team. While she is prepared to do what it takes to be successful, the characteristics that got her to her current level are not those that are needed in her new position. In other words, while she is technically adept, motivated, and customer-focused, this is no longer enough. Nora needs to identify what she can do-and what resources and support she should ask for-to fulfill her potential in this new role.

In April 2023, Maxwell Cutler, director of marketing and sweet potato sales at Race-West Company (Race-West), faced a daunting challenge of high demand for produce in the week leading up to Easter, Passover, and Ramadan. With a responsibility to ship 35-40 truckloads per day, Cutler was under pressure to ensure timely deliveries to satisfy and retain customers. Despite his best efforts and collaboration with his cousin Rachel Pisarz, who managed onion sales, multiple incidents disrupted the transportation process. Cutler received phone calls and emails reporting missing drivers, misloaded shipments, late deliveries, truck breakdowns, and extreme weather conditions. These disruptions resulted in significant financial losses for Race-West as well the loss of some customers. Determined to resolve the situation, he wondered what steps he could take to address these challenges and implement measures to avoid encountering similar issues in the future.

For this exercise, students are asked to assume the place of the two founders and owners of a web-based company called Good Authority. The venture was launched one year earlier and has been successful, although the two owners are finding it difficult to continue operating the company during their spare time while working full-time hours at their day jobs. Recently, an investor offered to fund the salary and payroll expenses for one employee, allowing the two owners more time to grow and expand the business. The students are tasked with effectively designing a job for the new employee to allow the two owners time and energy to focus on the future and success of the business.

In this exercise, students are asked to assume the role of a project manager for Kaymak Consulting, a 210-employee management consulting firm located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Students must work in groups to determine how much of a merit increase each of six analysts should receive during their next salary review. They make their decisions while considering the values that the organization would like to encourage. Background information on each analyst, along with current salary, are provided in the exercise. The task is to determine the most fair and effective method for dividing the pool of funds for salary increase among the six analysts.

Rodolphe Saadé was the chief executive of the CMA CGM Shipping Co., Ltd. a giant in the maritime industry that was long criticized by customers for its lag in digitalization. Realizing the importance of digitalization, Saadé defined digitization as a key strategic priority for CMA CGM's development. This case traces CMA CGM's digital transformation process and discusses how Saadé and CMA CGM successfully addressed different challenges to gradually launch a series of digital innovations to the company's processes, products, services, and business model. However, as new waves of technology, from autonomous vehicles to smart data continued to emerge, how could CMA CGM leverage the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the shipping industry? How could CMA CGM make full use of big data to optimize business operation decisions?

Nicole Rotumah, chair of the Tweed Aboriginal Co-operative Society Limited, which ran the Minjungbal Museum and Cultural Centre (MMCC) in Tweed Heads, Australia, and the museum manager, Tina Pidcock, were standing in the middle of their beloved museum looking at the worn flooring, dusty artifacts, general state of disrepair, and stark absence of visitors. It was August 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic had brought tourism to a standstill. However, both Rotumah and Pidcock knew that the museum's problems ran far deeper than the absence of visitors during the pandemic, and that something had to be done to revitalize this Australian cultural treasure. The question was what. Was MMCC functioning in the museum, tourism, or cultural experience industry? Who were its main stakeholders and competitors? Was it correct to measure success according to revenue or the number of visitors, or was protecting cultural heritage a sufficient goal?

This technical note graphically presents various working capital ratios (days inventory outstanding, days sales outstanding, days payables outstanding, cash conversion cycle, and operating cycle) over the 2016-2022 period by industry and for specific well-known companies. Students are given the opportunity to craft an intuitive "story" around the ratios they are presented.

This technical note explores the "self-focus" and "mission-focus" mindsets based on two of the Arbinger Institute's book