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In December 2022, after the independent film distributing company levelFILM Inc. experienced several box office failures, the company's manager of sales strategy was wondering if the company needed to re-examine its portfolio strategy. Based in Toronto, Ontario, levelFILM Inc. operated in the highly uncertain film industry, in which it was almost impossible to predict how any one film would perform at the box office. The various distributors in the industry employed different strategies for managing risk, including building a large diversified portfolio of projects or pursuing a blockbuster strategy with heavy investment in fewer projects. The company's manager was wondering which strategy would be most appropriate for levelFILM Inc. and how he might use extensive historical data that he had available to determine optimal risk management and investment returns options for the company.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case W33828

A Hong Kong start-up, Senior Deli develops a wide variety of soft meal products targeted at mostly elderly patients suffering from dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing and chewing. Its patented technologies help supply softened food that retains the original taste and appearance and appeals to local palates. There is significant market potential for soft meal products amid the aging populations in Hong Kong, mainland China, and other developed countries. Yet the team has found that some patients and care homes have hesitated to adopt the products. In general, soft meal products are still new to many people and suppliers in Hong Kong. The stakeholders seem to hold up in adoption of the products. This market chasm is too costly for Senior Deli or any single start-up to overcome. Therefore, Senior Deli's major issues are educating target customers, legitimizing soft meals, and promoting its products amid such uncertainty. At the end of 2022, a localized guideline for care foods was announced in Hong Kong, but will it create an opportunity for Senior Deli to overcome the issues it has been facing?

In December 2022, Shariq Nomani had been living with his family in a rented apartment in Lucknow, India. Even though they liked the place, which had all the necessary amenities, they were thinking of buying a unit in the same community. After collecting all the necessary information, Shariq sat down to figure out the best alternative between two options: buying and renting. He needed to undertake a comprehensive quantitative analysis by applying the concept of time value of money to make the optimal decision.

In May 2023, partners from a private equity (PE) fund, Jefferson Capital, and a private (mezzanine) debt fund, Cavalier Capital, need to join forces to design their bid for Williams-Sonoma, Inc., to take the company private. May 2023's market environment looked unfriendly for LBOs: interest rates were steadily climbing as the Federal Reserve was trying to rein in inflation, the risk of the economy entering a recession was high, and banks themselves were under pressure from financial turmoil and were tightening their lending standards. Dealmaking at the top investment banks seemed to have frozen. At the same time, the PE industry was sitting on a record amount of dry power, and players were eager to move from the sidelines into the heat of the investing battle. Investing in iconic home-goods retailer Williams-Sonoma was the biggest opportunity of the year. Jefferson Capital's team knew that its initial 7.05x EBITDA bid was not super competitive. The fund had to apply all of its operational and financial engineering muscles, including expanding its debt financing to include mezzanine debt. Subdued before 2022 when investors had easy access to senior debt, mezzanine financing has regained popularity in early 2023, catalyzed by higher interest rates and reductions in the availability of traditional debt finance. Cavalier Capital and its mezzanine debt fund were perfectly positioned to aid Jefferson Capital in its aspiration to acquire Williams-Sonoma. The case is designed as a platform for a negotiation exercise between equity and mezzanine debt investors who need to put their heads together and form a bid to acquire Williams-Sonoma via an LBO. Students can be separated into paired equity and mezzanine teams. Faces with fixed amount of Tranche A and Tranche B debt (4x to 4.5x, depending on instructor risk appetite), each equity-mezzanine consortium needs to decide the amount of capital it is willing to invest and interest rates and warrant overage for the mezzanine

Spreadsheet supplement for case UV8930.

This note provides an overview of how psychological principles may be used as part of a seller's pricing strategy. The note defines the concept of psychological pricing and explains the motivations for firms to engage in it. Prominent practices and tactics, with detailed reference to the psychological and behavioral principles at play, are featured. Numerous examples are given to illustrate the material covered. The note also highlights several concerns companies might have in employing psychological pricing techniques, along with thoughts on how to mitigate or counter these reservations.

In this short vignette on ethics in consulting, Brenda Thompson, a new Associate at a prestigious consulting firm, learns that a fellow Associate is using the firm's meal expense benefits to pocket the difference between the maximum daily allowance and his actual amounts spent in the form of prepaid gift cards. Though this practice was not explicitly said to violate the policy, Brenda feels uneasy about the situation and must decide how to act on her ethical sensibilities.

In this short vignette on ethics in consulting, John Child, a new Associate at a prestigious firm who is eager to impress, decides to use an AI tool to expedite his analysis and craft his presentation due to a short project timeframe. Feeling uneasy about his decision not to inform his team after a successful presentation, he must weigh the tradeoffs of providing late disclosure, whether partial or full, or continuing to withhold his decision from his team and client, and the ethical and career implications those decisions might carry.

In the fall of 2019, the CEO and MD of Hindustan Unilever (HUL), India's largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firm, is wondering what to do about their experiments to digitize distribution. Despite three years of intense efforts, their apps to empower retailers have not seen any traction. Is it time to shut them down and focus on another area with more potential for digital transformation?

This field-based case describes the situation facing David Bronner, cosmic engagement officer (CEO) of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps (Dr. Bronner's), the top-selling brand of natural soaps in North America in 2019. Since its founding, the company has centered advocacy for unity and social change in its products and giving. The question before David and the leadership team is whether to extend the brand further by publicizing its support for the use of psychedelics to treat mental health. David believes passionately in this cause, and he has been a major supporter of scientific and political efforts to support the informed use of psychedelics to alleviate suffering. While scientific studies are increasingly highlighting their promise and Dr. Bronner's has experience with other "label" campaigns for social issues, psychedelics remain Schedule I drugs, and other key decision-makers lack David's zeal for the cause. Dr. Bronner's established its unique position in the mid-20th century based on founder Emil Bronner's "All-One" vision of universal love and his German family's multigenerational expertise as soap makers. Since his death in 1998, the family-owned firm has grown rapidly and profitably, reaching revenues over $120 million in 2018. Students are asked to make a recommendation about whether to introduce a label campaign declaring support for psychedelic therapy and to assess that decision in ways that align clearly with the firm's perspective on value creation. The case is designed primarily for a core curriculum course in business strategy or business ethics. Because of the issues it raises, it also works well in brand marketing and leadership courses. The decisions embedded in the case are pertinent to all levels-MBA students, undergraduates, and executives.

This case is about designing and scaling up an innovative business model that leverages technology to solve the age-old Indian problem of expensive, unreliable, and unresponsive rural distribution of consumer goods. It explores an important decision concerning the growth path of a digital native, unicorn organization, ElasticRun, via exploit-led or explore-led strategy. The case is an inspiration to managers to take on yet-unsolved problems by leveraging the potential of crowdsourcing and technology.

Laser City was a gaming company with a laser tag facility that provided a variety of fun activities for children, groups, and corporate events. Most services were delivered face-to-face in Edmonton and Calgary locations in Alberta, Canada. To mitigate the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Alberta Government's restrictions on in-person services on the business, Laser City's management team launched an online gaming service called Codo in March 2020. Presented with the new challenges of leading Laser City employees remotely, the company's co-founder needed to design selection tools to better identify and hire engaged remote employees, find innovative ways to foster casual virtual interactions among workers, and identify new methods to support employees through the challenges of remote work.

In July 2021, Scarlett Johansson, the star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Black Widow, sued The Walt Disney Company (Disney), the producer of the film, for breach of contract when it simultaneously released the movie in theatres and on Disney+, the company's streaming platform, which resulted in a reduction of her compensation. The film saw a sharp drop in ticket sales in weeks two and three and ended its theatrical run with a much lower box-office take than many of the other MCU films. The lawsuit alleged that Disney's vertical integration into streaming had caused a conflict of interest that had adverse consequences for talent compensation. Disney's chief executive officer, Bob Chapek, was faced with the difficult decision of how to address talent compensation in light of streaming's growing popularity, as Disney+ competed on the quality and availability of content.

The need for business agility, that is, the capacity to adapt to changing external circumstances (and even to shape them), is high on the agenda of executives around the world, as they face up to increasing levels of uncertainty. But uncertainty still abounds about what business agility is, and most executives still struggle to master this capability. The introduction to this special issue reviews what we know and still do not know about business agility and introduces the six articles and suggests a path for more research.

Elsa Blix, (fictitious), a political appointee in the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Sweden, tackles two undersecretary positions. In the first (Case A), she is ignored and has to carve out her own remit in order to make a legitimate contribution to Sweden's chairmanship of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC). She chooses a subject well known to her and employs an egalitarian approach, taking on much of the work herself. In the second (Case B), she has a defined role, but repeatedly meets resistance from the permanent employees of the division. This time she has to find a way to bring them all on-side in order to deliver a massive amount of data within a tight deadline. The seccond case is set against the background of the Arctic Council which Sweden chaired from 2011 to 2013.

Elsa Blix, (fictitious), a political appointee in the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Sweden, tackles two undersecretary positions. In the first (Case A), she is ignored and has to carve out her own remit in order to make a legitimate contribution to Sweden's chairmanship of the Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC). She chooses a subject well known to her and employs an egalitarian approach, taking on much of the work herself. In the second (Case B), she has a defined role, but repeatedly meets resistance from the permanent employees of the division. This time she has to find a way to bring them all on-side in order to deliver a massive amount of data within a tight deadline. The seccond case is set against the background of the Arctic Council which Sweden chaired from 2011 to 2013.

redBus, the world's largest online bus ticket provider, required all employees across various data engineering and product teams to interact with each other daily for Agile product development. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the development of a quick and interesting mechanism to deliver new-hire induction that would reduce the time-to-productivity of new hires. To address this need, Prabhanjan Kulkarni, the CHRO of redBus, and Srijeet Sarkar, Director of the Learning & Development (L&D) team, developed an immersive web-based online induction, which they extended to a partially immersive meta-based virtual reality platform sans an interactive avatar. The platform delivered an engaging experience and reduced time-to-productivity, while also releasing leadership bandwidth otherwise required for repetitive onboarding activities and providing a ready knowledge repository for all employees. It yielded additional benefits but also presented some challenges. The millennial and centennial new hires were overwhelmed by this technology's experience and use, which was enhancing the employer brand of redBus. However, older-generation employees found the experience uncomfortable and preferred the conventional physical induction process. The success of meta-learning initiated the development of an in-house mobile and web-based learning management system (LMS). Replete with assessments mapped to individual role levels and competencies for the various departments and teams, the e-learning modules provided learning guides for free online learning, before and after score tracking, and enabled employees to own their learning and development journey. The customized assessment framework also enabled redBus to map the trainee engineers to appropriate teams based on their skill capabilities, ensuring the high productivity of the young engineers.

The PM begins with exploring the problem space, gaining an understanding of the larger context of the problem, namely the online bus travel sector in India and the challenges faced by the industry players. Then he conducts a deeper investigation of the actual user behavior data on redBus using Product Analytics (specifically, the method of funnel analysis) to identify the major scenarios when the platform users were not completing the ticket purchase. The PM uncovers that the users searching for bus tickets on the shorter routes seemed to drop off significantly more just after looking at the available bus options, as compared to the longer routes. Next, the PM formulates hypotheses to examine the reasons behind this intriguing behavior of short route travelers, and tests them using customers interactions and field studies. From the rigorous user research and hypotheses testing, the PM could confirm three categories of expectations of short route travelers which were not being fully met by the current features of the platform. Armed with this clarity about the problem space, the PM moves into the solution space, ideating feature solutions for the users. With inputs from various stakeholders, he finally designs a platform feature called 'Open Ticket' that could fulfill the three needs of their short route users. Then he worked with the engineering team to develop and launch the MVP of the solution using the Agile Scrum methodology. Finally, the post-launch user behavior was tracked to validate the efficacy of the Open Ticket solution. Unfortunately, the designed solution did not work as per expectations, leaving the PM with a decision dilemma that is critical in lean startups, i.e., whether to persevere with the Open Ticket idea by trying to fix it, or drop it completely and pivot to a new idea?

Full-on CEO engagement is needed for a successful organization redesign but many CEOs have difficulty maintaining that level of involvement. While the most effective CEOs keep their finger on the pulse of the redesign on an almost daily basis, from start to finish, leaders who lose control tend to have weaknesses such as half-heartedness, over-appeasement, indecisiveness, and incapacitation. The authors present a framework to help leaders recognize and overcome these vulnerabilities.