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On January 2, 2018, the chief executive officer of a private company in Karachi, Pakistan, Imaam Spinning Mills (Imaam), was planning to expand the company's product line and enter the weaving business by setting up a new weaving plant. He asked his chief financial officer to conduct a financial evaluation financial evaluation of the project. To do so, she needed to calculate the weighted average cost of capital, using the comparative method to calculate the cost of capital for the unlisted firm based on financial data from Imaam and comparable firms, and determine the feasibility of the project.

Cynet Systems Private Limited (Cynet) was a subsidiary of Cynet Corporation, a technology services firm providing staffing support for US clients. The Cynet team in India was based in smaller Indian cities such as Karnal and Dehradun. When a lockdown was announced in early March 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country, the recruiters working for Cynet had to shift to remote work. This was a dramatic shift for the young recruiters, most of whom were recent college graduates. The onus of ensuring the client deliverable was met was on Shyam Sharma, the team leader at Cynet. At that time, the company created a centralized data reporting team, and in December 2021 the organization was still looking to enhance an analytics dashboard to better predict employee performance; further analytical insights would allow Cynet's top management to make better predictive outcomes versus what was currently being measured to evaluate performance.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case W31026

In August 2022, a Canadian investor, Adam Eissa, was considering making an investment in Nautilus Inc. (Nautilus). Nautilus was a manufacturer of connected home fitness equipment that was experiencing financial volatility amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Before coming to a decision, Eissa wanted to analyze the financial data from Nautilus's annual report and complete a business size-up of its corporate strategy.

Third Place Winner; 2023 Energy Innovation in LMICs Global Case Writing Competition Gigawatt Global Coöperatief U.A., a multinational renewable energy company focused on the development and management of utility-scale solar and wind fields in emerging markets, faces a striking dilemma: the firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities may be limiting its efforts to bring clean energy to Africa. Gigawatt Global's strategy is to partner with diverse stakeholders-energy financial entities, governments, development groups, and other institutions-to structure renewable energy investments in emerging markets. As a mission-driven company, it invests significant resources into CSR efforts alongside each project it completes. The challenge for the company is determining the right amount of mission-fulfilling CSR efforts it should invest in, while also growing and thriving as a business in a market replete with uncertainties. Where is the right balance, where should the CSR line be drawn, and why? The case presents conditions and potential decisions that the company's chief operating officer was actually facing.

Second Place Winner; 2023 Energy Innovation in LMICs Global Case Writing Competition This case puts students in the role of the protagonist Sergio Araújo, CEO of SolarEnergy, so that they can assess the company's next steps amid the arrival of new investors. SolarEnergy provides installation and maintenance services for photovoltaic panels in regions of Brazil. With shifts in the market and new government tax policies at the beginning of 2023, Araújo faces new dynamics and challenges. The new investors seek to multiply annual revenues by five within five years. Araújo and the investors have several alternative strategies.

Karen Chan was a Hong Kong second-generation leader in her family business, German Pool Hong Kong Limited (German Pool), a home appliance and furniture company founded by Karen's father, Edward Chan. By July 2022, Karen had developed the family business and founded her own high-fashion brand, Sparkle Collection, amid ongoing disruptions in Hong Kong. Karen was an innovator of products and ideas for the family business, but her niche venture Sparkle Collection gave her an understanding of the hardship her father faced starting a new business from scratch. Social unrest in Hong Kong in 2019 and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 had a strong impact on the economy, drastically affecting sales of premium products. Karen pivoted to make her venture survive. She also created a new strategic plan for the enterprise's portfolio. Sparkle Collection targeted a niche artistic and cultural sector. In contrast, German Pool's appliance and furniture business, along with its Happy Kitchen Cafe, catered to the mass market. Karen knew that it could take years of continued investment in Sparkle Collection to make it a "star" in the portfolio. She wondered if she could balance her roles as steward of the family business, while pursuing her passion as the entrepreneurial founder of Sparkle Collection. Should she continue to invest in her venture despite uncertainties in the economy and in her own future? Or should she give up on Sparkle Collection and refocus her efforts on steering German Pool's existing business through the pandemic?

First Place Winner; 2023 Energy Innovation in LMICs Global Case Writing Competition Sammy Kalunji, 36, a low-income self-employed motorcycle taxi microentrepreneur in Kampala, Uganda, decided to buy an electric motorcycle with a rechargeable battery. He is one of about 250 such pioneers in low-emission transportation in this major (and air-polluted) city in west-central Africa at the end of 2022. However, operating in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, he does not receive enough income to fully provide for his family. This is true, despite the fact that his electric motorcycle (known as an E-boda) has substantially lower operating costs than his former petroleum-powered one (known as a P-boda). This case elaborates on four financial, operational, commercial, and social organization models and alternatives Kalunji must navigate so that he and his fellow E-boda riders can harness economic opportunities emerging from this new low-carbon urban transportation solution, and be recognized as making an essential contribution to the transition to green urban mobility in Kampala. Ultimately, the case takes the perspective of low-income groups adopting low-carbon mobility innovations while working in generalized informal market conditions. It reflects and critiques the global Northern concept of social and environmental "sustainable innovation" as it is exported to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with the risk of making such innovations unsustainable by themselves.

For more than fifteen years, successful Canadian entrepreneur and investor Kevin O'Leary had developed his brand into a global powerhouse. Since his first appearance on the Canadian television program Dragons' Den in 2006 and his meteoric rise to stardom through the hit show and cultural phenomenon Shark Tank, O'Leary had become synonymous with his penchant for telling the "cold hard truth," just as much as his investing savvy. A natural storyteller, O'Leary had long recognized the value of a powerful narrative. Now bolstered by network deals and a growing social media presence, the balding businessman had cultivated an audience of millions who eagerly await his advice on personal finance, just as much as they rely on him for entertainment. At the same time, active investments, speaking engagements, book deals, and a foray into politics bolstered his image as a formidable businessperson and thought leader. Within a decade, he had come to realize the vast potential of the virtuous cycle that underlies a successful personal brand. On November 11, 2022, news broke that could spell the end for Mr. Wonderful: FTX, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange firm that O'Leary had supported as an investor and paid spokesperson, declared bankruptcy amid reports of mismanagement of customer funds and a potential investigation by the US government. Sitting in Boston Logan Airport and watching his multimillion-dollar investment drop to zero, his phone suddenly rings: CNBC is running a national story on FTX and O'Leary's involvement, and if he wants to tell his side of the story, he has to go live on air in ten minutes. For O'Leary, the decision is more than whether to face the media. He must decide how to protect his personal brand, defined by honesty and credibility, from associations with potentially massive fraud. How should O'Leary respond? And what direction should he take his brand in the face of potential crisis?

In 2016, Roche, then a 120-year-old global leader in healthcare, pharmaceuticals and diagnostics, was in growing need of reinventing itself to become faster and more adaptable. It was facing disruption both from nimbler rivals and new competitors. The organization was sometimes likened to a "tanker" - a collective of 100,000 employees around the world that had become slow-moving and weighed down by bureaucracy and too many processes. Cris Wilbur, the incoming head of People & Culture, was tasked with articulating and orchestrating what she termed a cultural evolution towards agility, empowerment and self-directed leadership. One of the transformation's primary goals was to channel more funding into the company's R&D pipeline. This required that Roche should not only reengineer its ways of working but also uphold its long-standing commitment to science and innovation, its newly articulated core values and its purpose of "Doing now what patients need next." The case examines the difficult choices that executives at Roche had to make in order to anchor and sustain the change for its workforce around the world, including tradeoffs between: Autonomy and alignment, top-down and bottom-up initiatives, quantifiable business outcomes versus employee engagement and professional growth. And, more specifically, the demands placed on Roche - a manufacturer of PCR tests - by the Covid pandemic while it was simultaneously battling a sense of transformation fatigue among employees. The case raises questions about segmenting and signposting the change process, and about the next phase in the process, likely more stable and, by comparison with the starting point in 2016, less defined by immediate and existential external threats.

Effective leaders use pushback as an opportunity to boost learning while moving their organizations forward. The authors describe three primary mistakes leaders make when responding to ambivalence, disagreement, or resistance and offer five guidelines to help them better respond.

KOODESIGN was founded in Hong Kong by Larry Koo and Natalie Chan in 2017. From its base in Hong Kong, KOODESIGN has managed global design projects for clients around the world, such as Philips, Whirlpool, and Softbank. All of those product designs then needed to be manufactured and brought to market. Accordingly, KOODESIGN also developed its Go-to-Market strategy to facilitate the process of moving a product from a design concept to a finished product ready to be launched in the market. KOODESIGN's latest project was the design of an Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) for a major, new client, Eaton, a global conglomerate with US$20 billion in annual sales. The product called the ATS MATSN was to be manufactured in China and was intended for the mainland China market. As the product design lead for KOODESIGN, Larry interacted extensively with Studio Blue, Eaton's human-centric design team, and studied the Eaton Designer's Guide to Visual Brand Language (VBL) that Studio Blue had shared with KOODESIGN. Natalie, on the other hand, had been in close communication with the ATS MATSN project team in China, which included product development, as well as sales and marketing. They also provided input on product design. Over the course of the interactions that Larry and Natalie had with the respective parties, it became apparent that the priorities of the design team in the USA and the product development and manufacturing teams in China were not necessarily aligned. While KOODESIGN had an established Go-to-Market strategy, implementing that strategy varied across projects depending on the stakeholders involved in each project and their respective priorities. It was necessary, therefore, for Larry and Natalie to further vet the priorities of the parties involved with the ATS MATSN project and ensure that key elements of Eaton's VBL were not compromised while also ensuring that the product could be manufactured and assembled in a cost-effective manner so as to be competitive in

In October 2022, Chinese car company BYD Auto Co., Ltd. (BYD) announced its entry into the Indian automobile market with the Atto 3, an electric sports utility vehicle (e-SUV). Despite facing challenges in India's emerging electric vehicle (EV) market and the close scrutiny on investments from China, BYD aimed to sell 15,000 units to be assembled at its existing Chennai plant, to establish manufacturing facilities, and to open fifty-three dealerships by the end of 2023. BYD's push into India was part of its larger expansion strategy to diversify into new markets globally to include Japan, Thailand, the United States, and Brazil. However, the company needed to determine its target segment, who its competitors were, and what macroeconomic challenges it would face so that it could establish a position within India's competitive car market. The existing Chennai plant saved BYD from having to obtain new approvals from the government, but the company still had to navigate the challenges of entering a new market with a nascent EV infrastructure.

After four successful years on the market, the founder and chief executive officer of Sanzo Brands Inc. (Sanzo) was looking for ways to continue the momentum and growth of his company. Sanzo was an Asian-inspired flavoured sparkling-water beverage company with an innovative approach to marketing and branding. Rather than promoting its sparkling water through traditional media channels, Sanzo relied on a digital-brand story approach and adopted social-media marketing tools in a mass-marketing environment. Alessandro Roco knew this was the right product at the right time, but his greatest concern was how to maintain the social-media buzz and continue to build the community around the brand. He wondered how Sanzo should manage social media to keep the community engaged and the brand story relevant.

In its effort to fight climate change, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) established its RBC Climate Blueprint, an enterprise strategy to accelerate clean economic growth and support its clients in a socially inclusive transition to net-zero. RBC holds itself accountable to this plan through its Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) Performance Report, which quantifies the bank's climate change actions. Any business activities that contradict RBC's strategy may adversely impact the bank's reputation. This study was carried out in response to a strategic decision-making requirement from RBC regarding Bitcoin and new technology investment. The case discusses the definition of cryptocurrency, the Bitcoin mining process, energy consumption associated with the mining procedure, and the impact of Bitcoin mining on climate change. After thoroughly describing and analyzing each topic, we will draw conclusions about the effects of Bitcoin mining energy consumption on climate change. At the end of the study, we will be able to answer this question: What environment-related reputational risk might RBC face if the bank were to support products and services around Bitcoin?

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case W33551

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case W33551

In early 2022, Rajendra Jaiswal was in a quandary about the future of the collective enterprise Diwak Mata Farmer Producer Company Limited (Diwak Mata), which his organization, Prakriti Foundation for Natural Resources Regeneration (Prakriti), had helped incubate and grow. Since Diwak Mata's registration in 2018, Prakriti had helped it develop connections with various value chain participants and overcome the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a supportive Board of Directors (BoD) and an able chief executive officer (CEO) in Rakesh Sen, Diwak Mata was recognized as one of the better-performing producer companies in the region and had growing revenues with fluctuating profits. Looking at the figures of the audited balance sheet, Jaiswal wondered whether Prakriti should withdraw its support to the producer company. Were Diwak Mata's BoD of farmers and the CEO strong enough to chart the organization's own path? Could they create sufficient ownership from the stakeholders for sustained growth in Prakriti's absence? Should Prakriti remain loyal to Diwak Mata or exit and continue its core activities with other communities?

Faraaz Usmani, heir to the family-owned Herbo Drugs & Pharmaceuticals, a small private Unani pharmaceutical company in Prayagraj, India, planned to expand the company's business to other states to cover most parts of India. Before implementing this ambitious plan, Faraaz needed to conduct a feasibility study by applying some popular capital budgeting tools such as net present value, internal rate of return, and profitability index. He first projected the cash flows for ten years with an initial investment of ₹6.5 million financed with 80 per cent equity and 20 per cent debt. He expected sales to grow by 15 per cent annually for the next five years, 10 per cent from year 6 to year 10, and a perpetual growth rate of 5 per cent afterward. Faraaz understood that the estimation of the cost of capital was a key step in his analysis. He discovered that finding the cost of equity for a private firm was tricky because stock return information was not available to estimate beta. The case introduces the basics of cost of capital (i.e., weighted average cost of capital) and capital budgeting. It focuses on the details of how to estimate the cost of equity for a private firm.