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Spreadsheet supplement for case 318003.

A year after Norwegian grocery chain REMA 1000 adopted Workplace, Facebook's corporate social media network, CHRO Tore Hoylie is asked to evaluate its impact on company culture and communication. Almost 90% of the workforce is engaged with the platform, which they use to communicate with colleagues across the decentralized chain of independent outlets. However, there are some concerns that the site is overloaded with information and difficult to navigate. Hoylie must decide whether to try to improve the platform or look for an alternative. If REMA keeps Workplace, how can REMA improve the way employees interact with it?

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.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 818026.

Wiikano Orchards, a family-owned business, faces declining demand in a commodity industry. The president is considering rebranding Wiikano's apple juice, increasing its prices and promotions. If this proposal succeeds, wholesalers and retailers would be more likely to distribute and pay more for Wiikano's juice. The Wiikano case focuses on challenges related to product differentiation and can be used to discuss branding, pricing, and marketing communications. It also addresses issues that small- and medium-sized business owners face, by employing a product and distribution system that are easy to understand. The case is recommended for upper-level undergraduate students or first-year MBA students. It may also be used as an exam case.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 918517.

AM-Pharma is a biotech company developing a medicine for patients with acute kidney injury. The case describes the company's journey from inception in 2001 to a large deal with Pfizer in 2015. The aim is to discuss the value creation of AM-Pharma through its strategic decisions over time. It highlights the patient journey, company challenges, market size potential, and how the management team was able to raise multiple financing rounds from venture capitalists. It further provides the readers with a unique insight in the key risks and operational challenges of a biotech company and the value of an experienced management team backed by strong investors. The drug development process is inherently risky, long and expensive and the probability of commercializing a new drug is very low. The company's CEO is the protagonist and the case is split in three parts to provide the readers with surprises and open strategic questions which are time related. The case is semi-chronologically and a patient story is intermingled to provide a different perspective on clinical trials, ethical dilemmas and the high unmet medical need for new therapies. The case ends with a valuation simulation, in which the readers can negotiate the AM-Pharma/Pfizer deal themselves. Learning objective: The aim of the case study is to evaluate the value creation of AM-Pharma strategic decisions over time. 1/ The strategy diamond and Porter's Five Forces will be applied as a tool for understanding the industry and the company's strategy. 2/ The key success factors are also assessed for this challenging setting of a biotech startup. 3/ Role of Serendipity and management vision in opening new doors. 4/ Different exit options are discussed, highlighting pros, cons and what actually happened. 5/ How clinical outcome, and exit timing highly impact the valuation. The case will trigger discussions on the strategic options listed, and engage the students into exit negotiations simulation.

In the summer of 2017, after completing his third year of business school, a student was eager to apply his newly developed business and technology skill sets at his father's company during his four-month summer position. His father's business, Custom Closet Contractors, designed and manufactured custom home organization solutions for home builders and individual clients. In the past year, the successful company's sales growth had slowed, while expenses as a percentage of sales had increased. The company had experienced operational problems leading to higher expenses, and the student had found that part of the problem was the lack of data organization, which led to miscommunication between the front office and the production staff. To solve the problem, he proposed to design a centralized database and set to work trying to understand the business processes in order to design a data model.

Student spreadsheet for case W16567.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 218064.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 618712.

In 2015, activist hedge fund Sachem Head Capital, led by founder Scott Ferguson, launched an activist campaign at (computer aided design) CAD software maker Autodesk. The activist campaign, waged mainly in private, was over Autodesk's lacklustre financial performance, with Ferguson thinking that Autodesk's performance could improve with better cost management. Facing a proxy contest, Autodesk added Ferguson and two others to its board in exchange for a standstill agreement. Following two years of significantly improved performance, Ferguson eventually stepped down when longtime Autodesk CEO Carl Bass announced his retirement in February 2017. The case illustrates how even companies with stellar products can underperform and how benchmarking and financial analysis can help identify drivers of firm performance. The case describes how boards and investors can engage to improve governance and ultimately achieve sustainable performance objectives.

Supplements to (A) case 818112.

This case profiles the early career choices faced by three McKinsey associates. The A case profiles the dilemma faced by each individual and sets up the class discussion. The B case outlines the choices made by the associates in real life and the consequences of such choices.

This case profiles the early career choices faced by three McKinsey associates. The A case profiles the dilemma faced by each individual and sets up the class discussion. The B case outlines the choices made by the associates in real life and the consequences of such choices.

This case examines the rise and competitive positioning of Lufax, an online marketplace headquartered in Shanghai, China, and a pioneer in the origination and trading of financial assets. The company had grown at a remarkable rate, and was awarded "Trading Platform of the Year" for 2017 by the Asian Banker Financial Markets Awards Programme. Case protagonist Gregory Gibb, Chairman & CEO of Lufax, must decide how to navigate the challenging regulatory and competitive landscape, in order to achieve Lufax's goal of transforming and expanding the wealth management industry in China. Whether the technology giants (e.g. Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, often collectively known as "BAT") would be able to develop strong capabilities in the "Fin" part of "FinTech," and whether traditional financial institutions would become technologically sophisticated enough for their "Tech" capabilities to materialize, were among some of the key uncertainties and potential challenges that Lufax had to confront. There were also looming risks and lingering uncertainties on the political and regulatory front. The focal point of the case centers around how Gibb can strategize and position Lufax going forward, and leverage its unique "finance DNA" to try to win market share in the rapidly changing FinTech and wealth management sectors in mainland China.

This course overview note was prepared to aid students in Corporate Strategy.