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The case describes how Spanish entrepreneurs Daniel González de Vega and Javier Arroyo founded Smartick with the aim of tackling the poor level of math education in their native Spain. Smartick is a self-financed enterprise that combines social impact with profitability. The two entrepreneurs are up against stiff competition, notably from the education giant Khan Academy, who not only has major financial backing but also offers its service free of charge. After two years of developing and testing a mix of the leading offline methods and state-of-the-art web-based technologies, Smartick is ready to make a big push into the after-school math learning space. Javier and Daniel are mulling over three options for their long-term marketing strategy. They are looking to segment the market and find the right segment to implement the strong brand positioning necessary to impact Spain's math education culture and society. The three options are to focus on B2B through schools, a combination of B2B and B2C, and a B2C-only approach. They must also decide on a pricing model and a communication strategy.

The case shows how concepts from operations management can be applied to a service setting (as opposed to manufacturing). With private equity as the setting, it aims to help students understand how to use systematic process and queuing analysis to design a professional service operation. Please visit the dedicated case website https://cases.insead.edu/durian-capital to access supplementary material.

The case shows how concepts from operations management can be applied to a service setting (as opposed to manufacturing). With private equity as the setting, it aims to help students understand how to use systematic process and queuing analysis to design a professional service operation. Please visit the dedicated case website https://cases.insead.edu/durian-capital to access supplementary material.

The case shows how concepts from operations management can be applied to a service setting (as opposed to manufacturing). With private equity as the setting, it aims to help students understand how to use systematic process and queuing analysis to design a professional service operation. Please visit the dedicated case website https://cases.insead.edu/durian-capital to access supplementary material.

In July 2016, Baba Iqbal Singh Kingra Ji, Chairperson, The Kalgidhar Trust-Society (TKTS), a non-profit social development organization based in Himachal Pradesh, India, wanted a plan for expanding the rural school activities of TKTS. In 2012, TKTS had fixed a target of 500 academies with 250,000 students to be achieved by 2020. As of 2016, it ran 129 schools that catered to 62,000 students. Apart from continuing with its donations and bank loan-based model, TKTS could explore franchising, entering into management contracts with existing schools, lease in land, or enter into public-private partnerships with the government.

EFY Group was a media group in the electronic industry, with four main activities: (1) publishing print magazines that focused mainly on the electronics industry in India-this was the main activity; (2) publishing digital (pdf) versions of the print magazines; (3) managing ten online communities; and (4) conducting events for the electronics industry. On June 16, 2016, the Board of EFY Group asked Rahul Chopra, Managing Director & CEO, to develop a "Digital First" strategy. It felt that the group had not paid adequate attention to digital publishing that was becoming common in the publishing industry and asked Rahul Chopra to focus on increasing the subscriptions to EFY's digital products.

An estimate of the fair rate of return on capital is a critical input into tariff regulation. A too high estimate will lead to high tariffs for consumers; a too low estimate will not provide adequate incentives for investment. The Airport Economic Regulatory Authority of India has issued a consultation paper for finalizing the norms and procedure for estimating the fair rate of return. It now needs to reconcile the differing view and approaches of different stakeholders.

In 2010, Martha Johnson, new Administrator of the General Services Agency (GSA), advanced the Zero Environmental Footprint (ZEF) initiative-a sustainability initiative to render GSA's activities environmentally neutral, agency-wide. She and her leadership team initiated a high-profile renovation project-dubbed the Extreme Challenge-at the agency's headquarters-one which sought to consolidate all GSA employee office space in the Washington, D.C. region into a single federal building. Doing so would require nothing short of a major organizational change effort within GSA, one which, if successful, could potentially serve as a model for other U.S. federal agencies looking to transform the way in which government employees organized themselves within modern office spaces. A year later, the agency approached a crucial moment in its evolution as a number of key leadership and organizational change questions needed to be answered: Could GSA execute on the vision put forth by Johnson's senior leadership team? Were the steps taken to date the right ones in setting the tone and preparing the agency for success? And what additional steps or strategies would need to be undertaken to ensure that the $5.5 billion investment in the Extreme Challenge would succeed, even as GSA pursued a longer-term vision of net zero impact through ZEF? The 13-min. video supplement includes 5 short segments exploring various aspects of the ZEF initiative. In it, Martha Johnson and her team describe their vision for the new office space and the challenges involved in changing the organizational culture at GSA. The videos also include footage of the old headquarters and examples of the new workspaces, as well some of the visual aids being used to increase staff engagement.

In 2015, DeliverMeal was a Norwegian online food delivery firm, mostly present in what could be considered emerging markets such as those in Africa. Founded in 2010, the company had experienced extremely rapid international expansion. DeliverMeal followed a global strategy, and standardized processes and turnkey solutions were provided from the headquarters to the subsidiaries.<br><br>The local business development manager at DeliverMeal's Ivory Coast subsidiary needed to make some decisions on how to react to three demands that had recently been passed down from corporate headquarters, all of which were at odds with the West African environment. How could the Ivory Coast manager meet her headquarters' corporate expectations and still conduct successful business operations within the local cultural context?

In June 2009, Martha Johnson was selected to lead the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency headquartered in Washington, D.C that largely oversaw government procurement. After Johnson, a GSA veteran, was sworn into office in February 2010, she told reporters she was committed to holding the GSA to the highest ethical standards. In October 2010, ten months after she took office, four of GSA's Public Buildings Service (PBS) regions held their biennial Western Regions Conference (WRC) with the object of providing job skills training and encouraging the exchange of ideas among senior managers in the four regions. The conference, held at the upscale M Resort Spa Casino in Henderson, Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas, was dubbed "A Showcase of World-Class Talent" by GSA officials with the intention of matching the conference's theme to the Las Vegas location. In December 2010, just a few weeks after the conference ended, an investigation into the event was requested citing excessive expenses as well as possible employee misconduct. This case traces the investigation as well as the steps the GSA took during the following nine months to strengthen its leadership, improve organizational controls and address conference management. Case number 2087.0

In March 2015, Amgen is preparing for the launch of Repatha, a new molecule that has demonstrated a remarkable ability to treat high cholesterol. Through a series of clinical trials, Amgen has proven that the molecule is both safe and effective for patients with high cholesterol. It also is effective for patients with familial hypercholesterolemia, a difficult-to-treat population that has exceptionally high levels of cholesterol. Amgen expects the FDA to approve the molecule before the end of the year. Now, the Repatha team has to develop a revenue forecast.

In April 2012, Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Brazlian conglomerate, EBX, believing the company to be undervaluing by the public markets. Shortly thereafter, however, EBX and its multiple business lines began to spiral downward. Hani Barhoush and Oscar Fahlgren, members of Mubadala's investment team, were now charged with leading the restructuring efforts on behalf of Mubadala. The situation was exceptionally complex and involved dealing with different creditors, untangling cross-collateral clauses from EBX's subsidiaries' loans, and foreclosing on personal guarantees from Batista. There were also strong political challenges, since most companies operated in tightly regulated markets, some were publicly-traded, and many had received substantial subsidized financing from Brazil's Development Bank (BNDES). Finally, the country's economic and political environments were rapidly deteriorating, with a combination of stagflation, rising interest rates, and successive popular demonstrations causing the gradual loss of governability and ultimate impeachment of President Dilma Vana Rousseff.

Kate Wilson, retail analytics manager at Flashion-a fashion flash-sale site-is tasked with developing analytics to optimize pricing for first-exposure products on the site. Many in the industry have relied on years of experience and intuition to determine pricing, can Wilson provide new insights?

Headquartered in Hangzhou (China), Ant Financial has grown into a fintech "Unicorn." The fintech empire that the company established spanned verticals such as mobile and online payment (Alipay), money market fund (Yu'e Bao), wealth management (Ant Fortune), digital-only banking (MYbank), credit scoring (Zhima Credit ), and consumer credit portal (Ant Credit Pay) among others. After another sales record during the 2016 11.11 Global Shopping Festival along with Alibaba, Long Chen, Chief Strategy Officer of Ant Financial was contemplating the various opportunities and challenges associated with the firm's international expansion, inclusive finance in rural regions, and regulatory uncertainties.

The objective of this reading is to introduce two fundamental investment principles that underlie stock valuations and how these principles apply to two popular approaches to valuing stocks: multiples and discounted future earnings.

Companies developing complex products face a crucial dilemma: the benefits of research and development (R&D) outsourcing such as lower costs, access to specialist knowledge, or shorter development lead times often have negative consequences for competence development due to the loss of opportunities for learning by doing. Having experienced the problems of outsourcing R&D, Fiat developed a novel organizational solution that offers new insights as to how firms can organize R&D to protect against innovation competence loss in R&D outsourcing.

Food Empire Holdings Limited (Food Empire) was a food and beverage brand owner and manufacturer of instant beverage products, frozen convenience food, confectionery, and snacks. Its main markets were Russia and Ukraine. When the political tensions between Russia and Ukraine erupted and their currencies depreciated in 2014, Food Empire's bottom line was badly affected: its share price dropped 71 per cent in 30 months. In light of these developments, investors were not sure if they should sell their investments in Food Empire. Using financial statement analysis and various valuation concepts-including net tangible assets, dividend discount models, and peer multiples-it was hoped that the best course of action could be determined.

MBA students are taught to use the expected monetary value (EMV) to evaluate risky opportunities. The reaction of individuals to risk, however, is far more complex. In fact, individuals are rarely found to be consistently risk neutral, risk averse, or risk seeking. They can be all these things, depending on whether the probabilities are small or large or the outcomes are gains or losses. The purpose of this note is to introduce a behavioral model that modifies EMV and does a better job of predicting how individuals evaluate risky prospects. The model builds on the distinction between probabilities and decision weights, as well as the notion of framing and loss aversion, as put forward by prospect theory.

By 2016, the Indian taxi market was beginning to move from the unorganized sector to the organized sector, as evidenced by the emergence of radio cab services (cab operators that hired salaried drivers and used call centres for bookings) and cab aggregators (e.g., Uber and Ola Cabs). Initially, the market had only a few players, but the competition turned fierce after the entry of Ola Cabs and Uber led to major disruptions. None of the aggregators had yet achieved a positive bottom line, but industry reports and a speculated compound annual growth rate of 25-30 per cent suggested a bright future for the industry, provided the stakeholders could strategically tap into the opportunities. A small taxi firm, Kanika International Tour and Travel Pvt. Ltd. (KITT), needed to come to terms with its falling market share, difficulties in retaining drivers, and decreasing profitability. In light of the intensifying competition, should KITT and other independent players hold on to their business, or should they join the aggregators?