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ExtraCarbon was a company focused on the sorting stage of India’s unorganized waste management industry. The company was founded in 2013 with owners’ capital and some investments from friends and family. In October 2018, one of these friend investors expressed a desire to exit the venture. Although ExtraCarbon had made steady progress since its founding, the company did not have enough money to buy out the investor’s stake, and the company’s valuation was too low for the investor to benefit from leaving the venture. The investor complained that the founders had never taken his advice to scale up the venture more quickly, which would have benefitted all stakeholders by providing a better valuation and attracting more investors to the company. The incident led the founders to review their current scale of operations and make more ambitious growth plans for the company, including setting an ambitious revenue target of US$6 million by 2021. The challenge was to identify resources and ways to achieve this target. What strategy would help the company reach its target in a largely unorganized industry?

Primark was a low-cost, fast-fashion clothing retailer headquartered in the United Kingdom. The company’s low-priced clothing enticed consumers, but it also attracted criticism for exploitative labor practices in the low-cost economies where Primark’s manufacturing was outsourced. However, Primark believed that it created jobs in low-cost economies, and its low prices were the result of efficient initiatives such as no online presence and limited advertising. Experts suggested that the absence of an e-commerce division was a strategic mistake. In October 2019, the company’s chief executive officer was challenged with synchronizing Primark’s low-cost strategy with its sustainability initiatives and deciding on the company’s online presence.

The age of disruption has pushed activism inside the boardroom, where the role of directors is no longer easily defined because changing times require changes in leadership. So, what does an activist director look like? This was the topic of a recent address to The Empire Club of Canada by Rahul Bhardwaj, president and CEO of the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD), included in this article. The Edelman Trust Barometer—which recently polled 34,000 people in 28 countries on how much they trust core institutions—revealed that for the first time, most people believe that capitalism is doing more harm than good. Directors are entering a new era where all directors must be activist directors and act more “nose in, fingers in,” where appropriate. This makes being the chair especially challenging because the chair will have to lead the redrawing of lines between board and management and free directors to speak their minds. When the sightline of a politician is rarely more than one election cycle ahead, when “unknown unknowns” are not the exception but the rule, who better to think of how companies and Canada itself can compete and win in 2030? The ICD has come to view this shift not as an unwanted task for directors, but as an unprecedented opportunity to step up and play a greater role in the direction of Canadian business and of Canada.

With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders across all sectors worldwide face enormous challenges. How they behave and the decisions they make will separate the bad from the great. In 2010, the Ivey Business School established the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership with a mandate to focus on leader character. Its research resulted in a framework consisting of 11 dimensions of character and supporting behaviours that were identified as foundational to good leadership. COVID-19 is revealing things about the citizens of affected nations as well as their leaders. The singing Italians, for example, serve as a powerful reminder that we can find creative ways to remain connected as medical experts urge us to remain apart. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the dimensions of character with concrete examples of the behaviours that leaders and citizens alike are manifesting during the pandemic. The authors believe it is of paramount importance to raise awareness of the construct of character and its dimensions—not just to ensure it is brought to the forefront of leadership education and development, but so it can be used by citizens in their everyday lives and as a tool by which they measure, vote for, and follow leaders.

With the lives and routines of young consumers disrupted by the global health crisis, brands have unique opportunities to build long-lasting relationships.

Some physical classroom experiences can’t be beat, but moving university programs online offers instructors unexpected advantages.

In January 2020, a U.S. hunter-killer drone killed Iran’s second most powerful person, without congressional approval. During the fog of Iran’s response, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was shot out of the sky over Tehran by jittery Iranian military defense personnel. Michael McCain, CEO of Toronto-based Maple Leaf Foods, blamed Trump for the accident, which claimed the lives of 176 people, including the wife and 11-year-old son of a Maple Leaf Foods employee. Without mentioning the president’s name, McCain used his company’s official Twitter account to express what he said were “personal reflections” about the tragedy. The corporate world was divided by McCain’s blunt assessment of Trump’s leadership, with critics insisting he had crossed a clear line by using the official Maple Leaf Foods Twitter account to spread personal opinions without any regard for the corporate bottom line. There is no question that CEOs are accountable to company stakeholders via corporate boards, but the guiding principles of corporate leadership and governance are constantly evolving. While fans of the shareholder primacy model are free to resist change, there is no universally accepted line that separates the duties of corporate leaders and the personal views they hold, especially not on matters of interest to the stakeholders they serve.

People can no longer always trust their eyes or ears thanks to generative adversarial networks (GANs), a special subset of artificial intelligence technology. This technology makes it relatively easy to create deepfakes—convincing clips of people doing or saying things that they never did or said. Deepfakes present a serious threat to Western civilization because they create an opportunity for bad actors to supercharge disinformation. National security experts worry about foreign actors deploying deepfakes to manipulate public opinion. The potential for an assault on reality has put a serious regulatory target on GANs. But the technology behind deepfakes might just be what democratic nations need to keep up in the AI race. The objective of this article is to highlight how GAN technology enables AI developers to augment or complete data sets where data is unavailable, incomplete, or otherwise lacking. GAN technology has plenty of other positive things to offer, including for medical research, automotive safety, and security and military applications. Instead of having a conversation based on fear and misunderstanding, Western nations need to explore deploying laws, policies, and regulations grounded in age-old legal concepts like defamation and slander to counter the threat posed by deepfakes. After all, knee-jerk calls for regulatory action risk putting unnecessary restrictions on the development of a technology that could hold the key to democracy’s survival.

People with higher rates of reported mental illness are entering the workforce and discovering that it has less accommodation for mental health issues than their high school or college did. As a result, a complex issue has become even more difficult because many people struggling with mental illness believe they have to hide it from their employer. Consider some findings from a recent Accenture study of almost 4,000 workers in Britain. Nearly half of the younger participants reported that they had experienced suicidal thoughts or feelings. They were twice as likely as older workers to be experiencing a mental health challenge. Yet they were also more hesitant than their older peers to tell employers what was going on. Employers shouldn’t underestimate the difference they can make, even by making a fairly modest (and low- or no-cost) effort to create a more supportive workplace. Numerous characteristics differentiate more supportive cultures from their opposite. But three stand out as being particularly significant—and they aren’t difficult to replicate. First, in more supportive cultures, 53 per cent of all workers note that senior leaders visibly support mental health at work. Second, in more supportive cultures, 87 per cent of workers can identify a senior leader they can approach for help with a mental health challenge. Third, it’s important that workers know about the supports that are already in place.

Smoking was once considered as American as apple pie, but times change. Cigarette sales in the United States dropped to 216.9 billion in 2018, marking the industry’s lowest level in demand since the tracking of cigarette sales began in 1967. But today’s smokers are not just being banned from lighting up at work—they are being banned from employment by companies like U-Haul, at least in the United States. (In Canada, the Human Rights Act theoretically protects nicotine users from this sort of selective hiring policy.) There is no question that well-designed wellness programs can benefit employers and society alike. But on the other hand, besides having the potential to negatively impact employee morale, aggressive wellness initiatives can spawn a culture of deceit, fostering unhealthy attempts to beat the system. In the case of weight-loss programs with financial incentives, studies have found that employees often attempt to manipulate results by binge eating and crash dieting. As a result, wellness programs must be well designed. Providing employees with knowledge, risk management tools, and positive incentives has a role to play in today’s workplace. But refusing to hire people who, for better or worse, use any legal product can do more harm than good.

The Academy, a local CrossFit gym in Kitchener, Ontario, was determining how best to expand its business in order to continue its growth trajectory in a highly competitive industry. The gym’s co-owner and head coach needed to decide whether to invest in upgrading The Academy’s existing facility or open a second location. He wanted to complete a qualitative industry size-up, competitive analysis, consumer analysis, and corporate capabilities size-up, in addition to a quantitative size-up, including statement of cash flows and ratios analyses. He required the chosen growth strategy to meet a hurdle rate of 20 per cent.

In June 2017, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Kindred Home Care, a home care company in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, bordering the United States, was grappling with three options for scaling up operations—take the familiar acquisition route, move toward the untested franchising route, or cross the border to the larger US market. The company has limited physical assets, and therefore the CEO cannot tap external capital to finance growth; however, he could access internally accrued funds of CA$2 million.

In 2018, the owner of Northwest Fitness, a fitness business in London, Ontario, Canada, was analyzing the business's past year of operations and planning for the future. The company focused on “functional fitness” training to help clients improve aspects of their everyday life. The owner had launched the fitness studio with the help of a bank loan and a line of credit; after three years of success, he wondered if the company was finally in a financial position that would allow him to expand operations. He needed to analyze the past financial performance and project a statement of earnings and a statement of position assuming an expansion was pursued.

In 2016, the Volkswagen Group (VW Group) announced a new future program, Together–Strategy 2025, which outlined the company’s ambition of becoming “a world-leading provider of sustainable mobility” by 2025. The VW Group made it clear that innovation and technology would be essential enablers to the success of the new strategy. In 2018, VW Group, like other players in the automotive industry, was increasingly drawn to artificial intelligence (AI), which could be used in areas including manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, and data analytics.

By mid-2019, more than the 18 years since its inception, mjunction had grown to become India's largest e-commerce player and the world's largest e-marketplace for steel. The company had extended its presence to multiple business units, such as coaljunction, teajunction, and straightline.in, all of which operated under the corporate name of mjunction. Some of the business units enjoyed a strong brand identity, while others did not. The chief executive officer was worried about the implications of the diverse brand names being used. Should the organization use a common corporate name for all of its businesses, or follow an individual brand name strategy? And if mjunction chose to transition to a single brand name, how could it minimize the loss of brand assets and other issues?

In 2018, China was the biggest market for Internet services in the world. Along with the country's huge market size, its comparatively low penetration made it an immensely attractive market for search engine services. To capture this market, Google was planning to re-enter the Chinese market—after leaving in 2010—with a censored search engine codenamed “Dragonfly.” The move was opposed by human rights activists, Google’s own employees, and the U.S. government. Google had the opportunity to improve its share in the global search-engine segment if it could somehow tap into the vast Chinese market. But the tight control over Internet services by the Chinese government on one hand, and the protests by various interest groups on the other, had put Google in a tight spot. Google had to decide if it should go ahead with the plan to offer Dragonfly in China. Should Google instead explore other market and non-market strategies to re-enter the Chinese market?

In 2014, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) had just taken over operations of the Delhi Airport Metro (DAM), which connected the Indira Gandhi International Airport to the New Delhi railway station. However, high capital expenditures, excess operational expenditures, and low ridership meant that the concessionaire, which had been operating since 2011 on a public–private partnership model, was continuously reporting losses and therefore decided to quit the project in June 2013. When project operations were transferred to the DMRC, the metro’s overall capacity utilization was a very low 5 per cent and the line had few riders and operational losses. The DMRC’s director of operations had the challenging task of making the DAM operationally viable. There were several available options. Should he consider rationalizing the fares; increasing ridership by connecting the Delhi Metro Airport Express Line to passenger hubs; improving the amenities or attractions at the metro stations; or offering hassle-free travel for different groups of customers?

In 2019, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Boston-based Feehan Investment Management faced a decision. After succeeding her father as CEO, she launched a quantitative research group, or quant group, which used statistical and mathematical methods to determine investment strategies that were applied to incubate a long/short equity strategy. After incubating the strategy for three years and realizing good returns, the CEO wanted to open up this fund strategy to outside investment; however, she needed to decide on which fund structure to wrap this strategy in—a hedge fund or a mutual fund.

In July 2017, the government of India implemented goods and services tax (GST), which brought uniformity in the tax rates on all types of biscuits. Compared to the pre-GST regime, the uniform tax rate resulted in a higher tax rate on mass-market biscuits and a lower tax rate on premium biscuits. Parle-G, the most popular brand of Parle Products Private Limited (Parle), fell into the mass-market biscuit category. The Parle-G brand had 75 to 80 per cent market share in the mass-market biscuit category, and it contributed nearly 33 per cent of Parle’s total revenue. The brand was sold at a very low price point and was highly price sensitive. To mitigate the tax rate increase, one option was to raise Parle-G prices; however, any price increase or change in package size for a product in the highly price-sensitive category could reduce company revenue. Therefore, new business strategies were needed under the new tax regime and amid the country’s overall changing business and economic scenario so that Parle’s margins and leading position were retained.

Six years after its inception, Montréal-based social media marketing agency OVRGRND started a sister company, 66Agency, to tackle the growing need for brands to use Instagram influencers for their marketing needs. The new 66Agency acted as a facilitator between brands and influencers. However, the demands of managing people—the brands on one side and the influencers on the other—had become a burden that was distracting the agency from its original intention, which was be a social media marketing company. In May 2018, the company was looking for a creative business plan that would allow it to facilitate interactions between brands and high-quality influencers quickly and efficiently, while still ensuring that all parties were happy.