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On December 1, 2014, Medtronic announced that it had completed a $17 billion bond sale to finance the Covidien acquisition, officially completed on January 26, 2015. Medtronic's legal headquarters moved to Ireland, while its operational headquarters remained in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In this case study, Medtronic CEO Omar Ishrak reflects back on the integration progress since the deal's completion and offers his perspective as a global leader.

In June 2016, Illinois Tool Works (ITW), a fortune 500 manufacturing company in the United States, was at a critical juncture in its evolution. The company had identified a number of lofty goals in its 2015 annual report to be achieved by the end of 2017. These expectations included reaching over 200 basis points in organic growth above the market, a 23 per cent operating margin, a 20 per cent after-tax return on invested capital, 100 per cent free cash flow as a percentage of net income, and 12 to 14 per cent shareholder returns. Riding on the success of 2015, these targets had seemed achievable based on ITW's performance and operational excellence. However, the U.S. and world economies faced a variety of challenges related to political uncertainty in the United States due to a presidential election and also in Europe because of the United Kingdom's recent decision to exit the European Union. Additional challenges such as continued weaknesses in emerging markets and volatile currencies also affected ITW's outlook. ITW's acquisition strategy had yielded excellent results over the past few years by effectively using diversification and decentralization strategies in its growth, but there was considerable uncertainty about achieving future goals. ITW had to make important choices about resource allocation across product groups based on their past performance and future prospects. The CEO also had to make appropriate decisions for continued superior performance.

In 2015, Corticeira Amorim, S.G.P.S., S.A. (Amorim), the world's largest cork manufacturer, was facing multiple strategic dilemmas. After enjoying a near-monopoly in the wine stopper market for over 300 years, cork's reputation had been damaged in the 20th century by concerns over "cork taint," and the cork industry had been challenged by the resulting disruptive technologies of screw caps and synthetic corks. Amorim needed to rethink its core assumptions, including product design and supply chain strategy. The company had taken a new direction in the previous 15 years, and appeared to have regained a secure niche for the foreseeable future. The family-owned business was now emerging from its comeback and reviewing various strategic options to secure a sustainable future. Should Amorim rely more or less heavily on its wine stopper business in the future? Which form of competition should Amorim confront most directly? Should the company compete primarily based on cost or value?

In 2012, a real estate entrepreneur and his long-time friend and former neighbour, a police director, had enjoyed the profits of "guanxi"-a bilateral flow of personal favours-for many years. The use of guanxi in China had long been a core component of successful and sometimes illegal business. However, China's new president had recently created a tough anti-corruption Disciplinary Committee. As a result, many respected citizens who had previously profited from corrupt practices were being exposed, prosecuted, and imprisoned. News was leaked about the city's entire police force having enjoyed a six-day vacation in Bali at the expense of the police budget. The real estate entrepreneur and the police director were going to be questioned about their role in arranging this vacation. What should they do? Could they escape the consequences of their questionable business practices, or were they headed for a future in prison?

In early December 2016, the owner of the Asian Grill restaurant in Henderson, Nevada, noticed that the restaurant had busy nights where customers left due to long wait times, yet there were empty seats due to small groups occupying large tables. She had a proposed new table layout before her and had to evaluate whether this would allow the restaurant to seat more customers on her busiest nights (Thursday to Saturday), or whether a different table layout would be even better.

In 2016, the community engagement manager at Biblio Credit Union, a financial institution in Ontario, Canada, was concerned about rising social inequality. The company was respected in the community for its high business ethics and careful attention to corporate social responsibility. Although most of the company's employees were paid well, some employees received little more than the minimum wage. The community engagement manager wondered how to reduce that inequality. If the company were to give a raise to the lowest paid employees, all other employees would likely also expect a pay increase. Therefore, to bring all employees to what was considered to be a living wage, the company would need to adjust its pay scale. But would the credit union's board of directors support a sudden change in expenses? Would the increased expenses be offset by a corresponding increase in revenues? Would new customers pay more for the services of a living wage employer? The company needed to weigh the implementation of a living wage against the possibility of declining revenues, which could place the company in serious jeopardy.

In 2014, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Calvert Investments (Calvert) found herself at a crossroads. Under her stewardship, Calvert had become one of the world's leading investment management firms, specialized in using sustainability as a platform to create value for investors. After having been recruited to the position from Wall Street, the CEO had enthusiastically embraced and encouraged Calvert's unique positioning for 17 years. The idea of environmental, social, and governance sustainability had not only defined Calvert's niche in investments, but had come to describe the CEO's personal leadership style and shaped how she ran the company. However, with many apparent challenges to the environmental, social, and governance community and the broader investor community, the CEO wondered if the old way of doing sustainable and socially responsible investing was sufficient to support the changes that she felt were needed.

PatientsLikeMe, an health online community formed to provide value for patients in exchange for sharing their health data, had grown substantially since its founding in 2004. By 2016 it had over 130 employees. However, convincing investors of the viability of the business model proves more challenging. Its three founders believe it has the potential to reshape the healthcare ecosystem, but its "not just for profit" approach is complex to communicate. In their ambition to improve the healthcare experience by capturing health outcomes and learning what works in the real world (beyond clinical trials) - they must attend to critical issues such as patient privacy in addition to setting their growth strategy.

This case analyses Tata Motors' strategic move to create and launch the Tata Nano, exploring the factors behind the project's earlier success and the reasons for its execution failure. It illustrates the importance of having a strong and aligned set of value, profit and people propositions in order to create and capture a blue ocean. The teaching note reviews how Tata Nano created its exceptional value proposition and attained a viable profit proposition by following the right strategic sequence, and then examines different components of Tata Nano's people proposition to identify the major causes of failure in executing its blue ocean strategy. The case comes with a teaching note, lecture slides and a three-part movie based on first-hand research and face-to-face interviews describing Tata Nano's strategic move from conception to execution. The slides and videos can be downloaded for teaching purposes from www.blueoceanstrategy.com The case material is also available in Chinese.

Decentralized supply chains - with a greater number of hubs and depot locations - are designed to be more responsive to disasters around the globe by getting primary relief items such as food, water and medicines to beneficiaries quickly. This case explores the centralized vs. decentralized tradeoff for the secondary support supply chain of an international humanitarian organization (IHO). Using data from a real organization (unnamed), it asks whether supply chains for secondary support items should be the same as those for primary relief goods, and how earmarked funds impact the supply chain configuration. It presents information on donations, secondary support demand and response in mega disasters, and optimized data and simulation results. These allow for extensive data analytics, interpretation, and Excel modeling skills to be utilized, as well as students' intuition.

In 2011, Ingersoll-Rand (IR) decided to divest its refrigeration equipment subsidiary, Hussmann International. However, the routine auction process for the non-core asset went awry when both Hussmann's performance and external finance markets weakened significantly during the due diligence period. IR's agent, JP Morgan, sought interest from potential buyers and focused on a few leading buy-out firms that submitted bids. After not seeing eye-to-eye with the initial auction winner, Ingersoll-Rand engaged exclusively with a lower bidder, the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. The challenge for CD&R is to develop a deal structure that can meet both parties' needs, offering enough value to Ingersoll-Rand to keep them from walking away, yet taking into account the increased riskiness of Hussmann's recent performance to justify CD&R's valuation. The student takes the perspective of CD&R. Please visit the dedicated case website http://cases.insead.edu/hussmann to access supplementary material.

Paris-based S.T.Dupont is engaged in the manufacture, marketing and sale of luxury goods for men and women, including lighters, pens, jewelry, leather goods, eyewear, watches, belts, fragrances and casual and formal attire. Founded in 1872 by an entrepreneurial French photographer and carriage-maker, the company began making luxury leather luggage for wealthy aristocrats. It was owned and managed by the same family until the 1970s, when it was sold to the American multinational Gillette. A decade later, it was sold to Hong Kong conglomerate Dickson Concepts. Having largely lost its brand identity, S.T.Dupont languished until 2006, when a new management team based in Paris successfully turned the company around with a unique branding and marketing strategy. Please visit the dedicated case website http://cases.insead.edu/stdupont to access supplementary material.

Spreadsheet supplement to case IN1316.

Three years after launching his brick-and-mortar store, X Fire Paintball and Airsoft, Steve Herbert Sr. and his sons began selling products on Amazon.com's third-party Marketplace and online sales expanded rapidly. Over time, X Fire noticed that products of which it had once been the only seller were now being sold by Amazon straight from X Fire's suppliers, effectively cutting X Fire out. Amazon was also ignoring the minimum advertised price (MAP) set by manufacturers. How should X Fire defend itself? Now Amazon representatives were approaching X Fire to encourage them to sell on Amazon's smaller but growing Canadian Marketplace. How should X Fire respond to this opportunity?

In late 2016, the founders of Flatiron School, a startup offering 12-week coding bootcamps, are formulating their growth strategy. Their new online-only program has matched the excellent job placement results for their in-person bootcamps. Should Flatiron shift investment to aggressively expand online, or grow online and in-person bootcamps in tandem? Should they pursue opportunities to sell online programs to universities and corporations, in addition to their direct-to-consumer offer?

The Nanyang Technological University's Energy Research Institute (ERI@N), which focuses on the applied research, development and commercialization of innovative energy solutions, has developed an energy controller that would act as the heart of a microgrid. A microgrid is a local source of electrical power that feeds a relatively small network of electricity users, and even when attached to a centralized regional or national grid, is able to function independently. The ERI@N team in Singapore deploys 210 research staff and 150 PhD students from 26 countries to tackle emerging challenges in the energy industry. Two ERI@N flagship programmes - EcoCampus and the Renewable Energy Integration Demonstrator Singapore (REIDS) - develop and implement working solutions for energy efficiency and renewable energy integration. By 2017, ERI@N had amassed great depth of knowledge on the delivery of distributed energy resources (DER). The immediate challenges for ERI@N are: What is the best path to introduce its microgrid controller to a rapidly evolving market for distributed energy solutions, and how would it sustain its early lead in affordable DER technology?

This note gives students a systematic and comprehensive framework for analyzing and influencing market attractiveness. It pays explicit attention to value creation, complements, and the dynamics of market attractiveness. It also includes careful sub-frameworks for analyzing each driver, such as bargaining power or competitive intensity.

This article introduces the special issue on the increasing role of cities as a driver for (open) innovation and entrepreneurship. It frames the innovation space being cultivated by proactive cities. Drawing on the diverse papers selected in this special issue, this introduction explores a series of tensions that are emerging as innovators and entrepreneurs seek to engage with local governments and citizens in an effort to improve the quality of life and promote local economic growth.

The prevailing geographic model for high-technology industrial organization has been the "nerdistan," a sprawling, car-oriented suburb organized around office parks. This seems to contradict a basic insight of urban theory, which associates dense urban centers with higher levels of innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. This article examines the geography of recent venture capital finance startups across U.S. metros and within a subset of them by neighborhood. It concludes that the model is changing. The suburban model might have been an historical aberration, and innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship are realigning in the same urban centers that traditionally fostered them.