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In the landscape of low carbon sources of energy, nuclear power stands out as an option that has generated increasing attention and capital investment. Since 2001, nuclear energy production has been in decline, though Clean Core Thorium Energy, led by Mehul Shah, is one of the companies that is bringing nuclear back to the forefront. Founded in 2017, Clean Core is a nascent player in an industry that has a poor reputation among investors. As Shah and his team think about building out the business, they must consider not only the typical competitive pressures of creating a new company but also the unique challenges of nuclear power - safety, waste management, and cost overruns among them. On top of all this, in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine War, more conversations are happening than ever before about reducing the dependence on imported natural gas.

Cashify, a start-up incorporated in 2013, is a reverse commerce (re-commerce) company in India with first-mover advantage in the re-commerce of electronic goods. In its contribution to the circular economy (CE), it claims to handle 100,000 used smart phones a month and plans to grow the figure to 200,000 by 2023. The company contributes to the CE by adding value to used electronic devices, particularly smart phones, and extending their lifespans. This ensures that products enter into repeat economic transactions before finding their way to landfills. However, the re-commerce model that gave Cashify a competitive edge became obsolete in 2022 because of emerging competition that leveraged technological advancements to create value in the sector. The company's founders now find themselves facing difficult questions: Should they include new electronic products in their portfolio? In 2022, after two years of COVID-19-related impacts on the economy, overall circular growth was slipping, as consumers preferred to buy new products instead of recycled, refurbished, and reused goods. Can consumers be incentivized to return to the CE and appreciate the value of remodelled goods? Should the company diversify into new products entirely, including automobiles, home appliances, textiles, apparel, and plastic packaging?

The mission of Fairphone, an Amsterdam, Netherlands-based social enterprise company, was to design, produce, and sell smartphones that had a more positive impact on the environment and society. Fairphone was rated as the most sustainable smartphone in 2021 and was considered as a champion for the circular economy in the smartphone industry. Since 2018, Fairphone had been headed by Eva Gouwens. Under Gouwens's leadership, Fairphone had more than doubled sales between 2018 and 2019. Sales were an important measure of impact for Fairphone and a driver for much of its strategy. In 2021, Fairphone announced a distribution agreement with Vodafone Group plc, the launch of a new flagship phone, and expanded recycling services. Fairphone now wanted to consider how to rapidly scale its impact in 2022 and beyond, and determine how it could increase sales. Should it consider new markets or new offerings? Or should Gouwens shift Fairphone's focus from sales to some other strategic goal?

In this second article in a series of four, the researchers behind the 2023 MIT Sloan Management Review-BCG Artificial Intelligence and Business Strategy Big Ideas research project offer a framework improve-create-establish, or ICE for enhancing strategic measurement with artificial intelligence. Examples from companies such as Wayfair and DBS Bank help illustrate the potential benefits of using AI to improve KPIs.

Wat-a-Burger, a quick service restaurant chain, was incorporated by Rajat Jaiswal and Farman Beig on February 14, 2016. Their burgers, customized to suit the Indian palate, were their unique selling proposition. As envisioned by the founders, from 2016 to 2019 the brand quickly expanded and grew to over 60 outlets in 21 cities and 11 states. In mid-2019, they formulated a plan to expand to 150 outlets and aimed to serve more than 25,000 orders per day by mid-July 2021. The company was in general growing according to the founders' plan until the COVID-19 pandemic hit India and the lockdown was imposed in March 2020. The COVID-19 crisis caused a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) environment. Due to multiple waves of the pandemic, lockdowns, and the associated government regulations, the revenue of the company in the financial year 2020-21 declined by almost 56% relative to that in FY 2019-20. The following questions troubled the founders: Adopt an aggressive expansion strategy as initially envisaged or go slow and survive the VUCA environment for now? See the VUCA environment as an opportunity? How can a win-win value proposition be created at this point so that potential partners continue to get added to the network?

The case documents the challenges of Priya Nadkarni and Digvijay Singh, the cofounders of Mrida Education and Welfare Society (MEWS). Recognizing the need for intervention at a much early stage of learning to alter the mindset and nurture a love for learning, the duo established the Riverside Natural School (RNS) under MEWS in 2016. RNS introduced innovative teaching models drawing on the tribal children's innate cultural capital and core strengths by integrating sports, computers, robotics, and other new-age technologies with the conventional formal education curriculum. The aim was to make the tribal children of the Mandla district in Madhya Pradesh develop a love for learning, gain worldly exposure, develop higher aspirations to become education-oriented, and thus be ready to take up jobs without any inhibitions. In this process, they identified the inherent socioeconomic issues and started addressing them. The program started showing results, beneficiaries grew in number, and outcomes improved.Also, public and private partnerships started building up for MEWS. What started with pre-primary to class four expanded to offer the program up to class seven. As children at the RNS started progressing to higher classes, Nadkarni and Singh felt the need to transition to a fully residential higher secondary school. This warranted extensive investment in infrastructure. With a nearly fully subsidized service model and reliance on donations, predominantly from individuals, Mrida had to mobilize funds for its expansion. In addition to funding, Nadkarni and Singh stared at a formidable human resources (HR) challenge compounded by the project's non-profit nature and geographic location.

Special trains are unscheduled trains run to meet the unexpected surge in demand during holidays and festive seasons, which is generally difficult to predict. Special trains were therefore allocated at SCR using rule-based processes, resulting in suboptimal revenues and occupancy rates. This case presents a data-driven approach to schedule special trains based on passenger waitlist data and application of statistical techniques.

Spreadsheet supplement for case ISB396.

Spreadsheet supplement for case ISB396.

Incubated by two engineering students from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. After several pivots, the company focused on home appliances, specifically ceiling fans. The fan-related journey began in 2016 as a Business -to-Business business (B2B) venture, but soon, the company focused on the larger consumer market. In a very short span, it had grown to a revenue run rate of US$80 million in annual revenues by 2022. At the same time, it faced many challenges. To begin with, the company's marketing efforts were mainly through digital channels. 25% of Atomberg's sales were made through online channels, far higher than the industry average of approximately 10%. However, to scale its ceiling fan business to the next level, the company needed to grow its share in the offline market dominated by regional distributors and retailers. While e-commerce will continue to grow, companies such as Atomberg need to have a multi-channel strategy in the short run. They need to focus their marketing and brand-building activities through digital channels and synchronize these with in-store promotions. The case follows the life of a young and successful start-up that pivoted its business model multiple times to reach its current size but needed fresh thinking on its marketing strategy to scale to the next level.

This case narrates Bestore's initial success as a regional snack food brand and goes on to introduce its multiple channel innovations, i.e. from running 100% self-operated stores in central China to opening franchise stores all over the country, then to striking online-offline balance in revenue, and finally to finding ways to increase its presence in a rising channel, Douyin, also known as the Chinese version of TikTok, a globally popular short-video-themed social software on smart phones. As Bestore's founder, Yang Hongchun, observed that Douyin was attracting increasing user traffic, he decisively assembled a team to build business there. However, it seemed that the underlying logic between traditional e-commerce platforms and Douyin's e-commerce model was largely different. He needed to push for constant iterations on the part of the Douyin business team based on the data service and with the tools provided by the Douyin platform. In addition, the team also needed to grow its capabilities in many aspects to adapt to business on Douyin, such as having a familiar understanding of the new fads and creating contents that could resonate with Bestore's target customer groups. Bestore was just a small firm compared to western food conglomerates. As Bestore already had a complex online and offline channel system, was it worth the sweat to further invest in creating and running more Douyin accounts?

Planet Abled is a woman-led, for-profit social venture based in New Delhi, India, offering customized tours around India and South Asia for people of all disabilities. Planet Abled was formed in 2016 by its chief executive officer, Neha Arora-herself a daughter of two disabled parents. Planet Abled's start-up story explains how social ventures can repurpose traditional travel to reveal and reverse multiple types of stigmas (public, cultural, social, and structural) as well as defy and defend against the self-stigmatization of the one billion disabled people in the world (15 per cent of the global population).<br><br>Part A of the case presents the real-time conundrum of continuity of mission in the time of COVID-19 given the complete cessation of travel following the declaration of the pandemic and the lack of economic assistance from the Indian government. Part B describes real-time experiments Planet Abled undertook in a concerted and creative team effort to survive against all odds in the first year of the global pandemic-a period of unprecedented hardship for the global tourism industry. Part C jumps forward to discuss how Arora's mid-2022 epiphany culminated in an early 2023 tipping point for Planet Abled and the global tourism industry. The three-part Planet Abled case series invites learners to drive system change by engaging them in real-time dilemmas about diversity and inclusion in the specific context of disability rights.

Case Supplement for Case W33795

Case Supplement for Case W33795

Scuderia Ferrari SPA, the racing division of the auto manufacturer Ferrari, was the oldest and most successful team in Formula One. Since the inception of the sport of Formula One in 1950, Ferrari had never missed a season. Having navigated many technological changes over the past seven decades, Ferrari faced the latest innovations in sports and beyond: data and digitalization. What were the opportunities and roadblocks ahead? The Maranello-based company founded by Enzo Ferrari needed to make some strategic decisions about its use of data and technology.

The "Moral Complexity in Leadership" series of cases and teaching notes help business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Meaningful fiction challenges students intellectually and emotionally; it reveals the inner worlds of human players and enables learning that can be difficult to access through case studies, commentary, or reporting. Through literature, students will wrestle with the kinds of problems they will face as leaders looking to make courageous decisions aligned with their moral codes. The works in this series represent a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and cultural frameworks; the characters are complex and contradictory, and the systems within which they operate (whether family, organizational, or cultural) influence them in varied ways. They have been taught to executive, full- and part-time MBA student audiences for many years. The series aims to increase students' understanding of moral frameworks and enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. This installment of the series, "Loyalty and the Cost of Excellence," focuses on the story told in Kazuo Ishiguro's prize-winning novel The Remains of the Day: that of Stevens, a butler in an English country house in the leadup to World War II, who exerts his emotional energy exclusively on his work duties while sublimating not only knowledge of his employer's Nazi sympathies but also personal relationships. The tale shines a light on several moral issues: what can happen when one gives complete loyalty to an individual or a possible undeserving organization or cause; the potential costs of sacrificing a well-rounded life to the pursuit of professional excellence; the limitations of having a "moral code" that is not accompanied by moral awareness, moral intention, and moral action.

This case is a set of five vignettes describing career shocks experienced by managers. The stories behind the vignettes were presented by respective protagonists to an executive coach immediately after experiencing a career shock. They can be used for discussion of the topic of career shocks or as exercises in executive coaching or career counseling.

This social network data analysis case presents the scenario of the launch of a new version of a popular video game called 'Thrive in Space' by a gaming company. The company's Chief Marketing Officer Tina Lohn wants to run an influencer marketing campaign on social platform Twitch to reach its live streaming audience and promote the game. However, before running the campaign, Lohn and her team must select the right influencers for the campaign. Lohn has asked her team to conduct a social network analysis (SNA) to better understand the network of Twitch users and shortlist potential influencers based on various social network metrics. The case is accompanied by two datasets that contain a sample of real data of Twitch users, and allows students to conduct a social network analysis on this data to select the appropriate influencers. The case revolves around Lohn's dilemma of how to choose the right influencers. How can she use SNA to select the influencers? What social network metrics can help her identify the right influencers? What other strategies can she use for selecting influencers that can complement SNA? And, finally, how can she calculate the ROIs of working with the selected influencers?

It was June 2021 and the international tourism industry was beginning to show signs of revival after the COVID-19 global pandemic. Small business owner Tony Byarugaba was surveying the scenic grounds surrounding his tourist lodge in Uganda. Byarugaba had built his enterprise by offering international clients a superior African vacation that included Uganda and the neighbouring countries of Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From his beginnings as a self-taught tour operator, Byarugaba had diversified into the hotel business. His two early-stage companies, Mamaland Safaris and Woodland Lodges, had already survived very tough times-a global recession, the outbreak of Ebola, and, most recently, the pandemic. Byarugaba now had to weigh the potential risks and rewards of a number of options for ensuring the growth and stability of his businesses. As a small entrepreneur with limited access to capital and labour, he could only afford to choose one direction to pursue. The future of his company depended on making the right choice. This case was the first prize winner of the 2022 John Molson Business Ownership Case Writing Competition.