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Ofo (stylized “ofo”), a Beijing-based bicycle-sharing company, had grown bicycle sharing from nothing into a dockless mobile application (app) service industry with over 120 million monthly active users sharing 30 million bicycles in cities across China and around the world. Founded by five bicycle enthusiasts in 2014, its dockless system used a smartphone application to unlock and locate nearby bicycles, charging an hourly rate for use. Although only two years old in 2017—and yet to turn a profit—the company was valued at over USD 1 billion in a recent E round of private-equity financing. ofo’s new funds would be used to buy bicycles for international expansion and hire more talent, but in a rapidly changing, highly competitive environment, the company needed to assess its current and future position.

Presentation to accompany product 8B19M055.

In July 2016, in Philadelphia, a group of aspiring entrepreneurs had developed a proof-of-concept prototype for the Drinks-Up! mobile drinks-ordering app, a digital innovation designed to provide a better bar experience. The team had received an investment proposal that included a plan for app development and a partnership opportunity from the potential investor’s company, and they were facing an investment decision: Was an agreement that would see the investor develop the app the right option to develop Drinks-Up!? If not, how much time and sweat equity was this really going to take? Was Drinks-Up! truly a disruptive innovation that was worth the risk?

The backwaters of Vembanad, in Kerala, India, were a renowned tourist attraction, known for their beautiful waters, schools of fish, and the people who lived along the shores. However, the exploitation of resources had taken a toll on the lake and its ecosystem. Pollution and the decline of the rich fish population had left the community impoverished. In 2008, the non-profit social enterprise Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE) had launched an innovative educational and self-regulatory program that had begun to improve the ecosystem. However, by 2018, the resurgence of the fish population had also attracted a fisheries-based food company that wanted to begin processing and exporting fish caught in Vembanad. The immediate employment benefits were attractive to the impoverished local fishers, but the long-term consequences for the region and its community were severe. How should ATREE respond to this pending crisis? Should ATREE use incoming money for immediate relief for Vembanad’s stakeholders or should it use the money for long-term benefit by focusing on further conservation efforts?

In 2018, Restaurant Kazu was operating at near full capacity with long waiting lines. Located in a mixed, high-density neighbourhood in the west end of downtown Montreal, Quebec, the full-service restaurant had been popular with patrons since its opening eight years earlier. However, the owner and chef wondered if he should address the issue of long waiting lines, which could discourage potential customers. If so, what measures could he take to improve the situation, and how cost effective would the measures be? With the start of the peak season only two weeks away, the owner had to make some quick decisions.

In June 2017, executives from Amalsad Vibhag Vividh Karyakari Sahakari Khedut Mandali Ltd. (Amalsad Cooperative) met to consider possible changes to the cooperative’s interventions in commodity marketing, particularly, whether further interventions would benefit member farmers. Linking a unique reward and penalty scheme to the grade supplied by the farmers and directly supplying produce to the terminal market in Delhi had resulted in a 15 per cent increase in the farmers’ income. Streamlining the entire process—from receiving the commodity, grading and sorting the supply, to paying the farmers—had considerably reduced delays. The chairperson of the Amalsad Cooperative, which covered farmers from 17 villages near the town of Amalsad, in India, was pleased that reengineering the commodity marketing process had not only fetched a better price but had also eliminated the inefficiencies associated with marketing through the traditional channel—the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee trading yards, or mandies. However, he wondered whether further refining the grades would enhance the income of the members and asked his executives what other processes could be modified to benefit the members, especially in rendering services.

In 2014, the vice-president of Group Corporate Social Responsibility at Singtel, a Singapore-based provider of telecommunications products and services, was scrutinizing his proposal for the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) transformation. He wanted to reposition Singtel's CSR approach to create greater social impact while demonstrating greater benefit to the company beyond promoting its branding and reputation. In doing so, he was mindful that the proposal would require greater financial investment on the part of the company. The proposal would also need to leverage the company's capabilities and partnerships and address the possibility of dropping its current beneficiaries. His team needed to convince the board of directors and senior management that the potential benefits of the proposed changes would be worth the financial investment and the possibility of reduced brand exposure.

In August 2018, the managing director of Grace Castings Ltd. (GCL) was preparing for an upcoming board meeting. At the meeting, which was expected to take place at the company’s head office in Ahmedabad, India, he planned to present the strategic plan for GCL’s future expansion as well as chart the company’s direction. GLC was a small mill that manufactured steel products, including structural bars, thermomechanically treated bars, angles, and channels. In fiscal year 2017–18, the fully family-owned business had a financial turnover of US$33.85 million. With the recent growth in India’s steel industry, the managing director was considering various options for expansion. The first option was backward integration, which meant increasing the capacity of billet manufacturing by adding a 30-metric-ton induction furnace. The second option was to expand the business by adding a new power plant. The managing director had to decide whether to recommend one or both of these options or simply maintain the status quo and grow the company at a slow pace.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B19D011.

Spreadsheet for product 8B19N012.

Spreadsheet for product 9B19N012.

DuckDuckGo, a late entrant in the search engine industry, was founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg with the main purpose of protecting users' online privacy and raising the standard of trust online. DuckDuckGo earned a reputation for being the search engine that doesn’t track you, and despite initial hurdles, by 2017, it had emerged as one of the top 10 search engines in the world. DuckDuckGo had managed to successfully leverage increasing privacy concerns amid accusations of tracking made against other search engines. Weinberg was now contemplating how to compete against organizations with massive resources and reach the maximum number of people who were concerned about privacy yet unaware of the existence of his search engine.

In July 2015, Tassal Group Limited (Tassal) announced the acquisition of De Costi Seafoods Company (De Costi) in a combination deal of cash and shares. The acquisition would allow Tassal to address a A$4.3 billion Australian seafood market that was much larger than the previously addressable salmon market of $700 million. Tassal had previous experience in species diversification. However, the environmental impacts of its major operations in Macquarie Harbour had been under the scrutiny of the Australian authority. Given the critical harbour issues, should Tassal continue to expand overseas? What were the motives to acquire De Costi? Did Tassal have sufficient capabilities and resources to cope with the high demand for Tasmanian salmon, particularly in the Asian market?

Job-search site iimjobs.com had evolved in the Indian recruitment landscape as one of the major players for premium jobs, spanning across mid-management and leadership roles, and across multiple industries. In January 2018, leveraging the database of job posts and resumes on its site, the company launched Calculus, a platform built using advanced talent analytics, to provide holistic and integrated talent management solutions. At the same time, market trends led the company to consider diversification into non-premium domains. The industry continued to grapple with the challenges of identifying critical talent to sustain growth plans, and talent management strategists were unable to base decisions on live, dynamic data points. However, the founder and chief executive officer of iimjobs.com faced several core concerns—the strategic implications of diversification into a non-premium job market and the expectations of the industry from a talent analytics platform. He looked at the talent analytics solutions provided by Calculus and considered: How far can the analytic solutions offered by Calculus meet modern human resources holistic requirements?

On April 14, 2014, CapitaLand Limited, a Singapore-based real estate company, launched a voluntary conditional cash offer of SG$2.22 for each share (SG$3.06 billion in total) of its subsidiary commercial property development and management company, CapitaMalls Asia Limited (CMA). CMA’s principal business strategy was to invest in, develop, and manage a diversified portfolio of real estate used primarily for retail purposes in Asia. CapitaLand’s offer represented a 22.3 per cent premium over CMA’s closing price of SG$1.815 on April 11, 2014. The intention was to delist CMA and fully integrate it into CapitaLand.<br><br>As an investor in CMA, you are seeking a reasonable valuation of CMA based on its past financial performance and other relevant market information. You also need to compute the premium, net present value (NPV), and synergy of the acquisition.

In June 2018, the president of Hongxuan Agriculture Group (Hongxuan), which operated in the Chinese egg industry, was aware that an ongoing trade dispute between China and the United States might affect both his industry and future financing for his company. The company he had founded in 2008 had grown dramatically over the past decade; it received high prices for the three billion eggs it produced each year, largely due to its branded marketing, its innovative product development, and its incorporation of new technologies into both farming and sales. The company’s goal was to integrate its entire value chain and to meet an annual production target of five billion eggs. However, the industry was asset heavy and had not traditionally been attractive to investors. In order to raise funds for future development, Hongxuan’s president needed to determine how to lower the industry price to reduce the company’s revenue uncertainty and how to persuade investors and financial institutions to provide the financing he needed for stable future development. Were there innovative supply chain financial solutions the company could use?

In late 2012, Shanghai Euclid Printing Machine Co. (Shanghai Euclid), a joint venture between a Chinese state-owned enterprise and an American multinational enterprise, was in the process of closing down. Established in December 1993, the joint venture had experienced successive rounds of downsizing over the past 18 years, dropping from an original high of 1,800 employees to a workforce size of 668 in 2012. In its place, a 100-per-cent state-owned enterprise would now be founded, and any employees and business activities that would be retained needed to be moved to this new enterprise, Shanghai Gutenberg Printing Machine Co. (Shanghai Gutenberg). The general manager at Shanghai Euclid had to make some difficult decisions about the strategic orientation of Shanghai Gutenberg. He also needed to come up with a plan regarding the remaining 668 employees, deciding whom he could retain and who would need to be laid off. Considering the importance of social harmony in the Chinese context, he also needed to determine how to conduct the workforce change process in order to cause the least possible disruption to employees and other stakeholders.

In August 2016, Foxconn Technology Group (Foxconn) acquired a majority stake for US$3.8 billion in Sharp Corporation (Sharp), which was on the verge of bankruptcy. In addition to gaining more liquid crystal display (LCD) capacity, Foxconn was combining Sharp’s advanced technology and marketing resources with its own to expand and move up the value chain in both research and development and brand building. However, the post-acquisition integration to realize such value-creation potentials faced several challenges, including the probability that Sharp’s Japanese style of management might not assimilate well within Foxconn’s organization. Now in 2018, what should Foxconn do to seamlessly integrate the two entities? How could Foxconn achieve its efficiency, cost, and innovation goals while moving toward becoming the technology leader and successfully creating its own global brand?

Midtown Medical Centre, a family clinic operating two centres in the Indian state of Kerala, provided quality and convenient health care facilities to nearby communities. Founded in 2016 by six young entrepreneurs, the project had grown to two centres by the second year of operation, serving semi-urban and urban patients in the cities of Thrikkakkara and Aluva. In August 2018, the six entrepreneurs were considering expanding to a third centre, but they were unsure how to proceed. They were also unsure about the sustainability of the business model they had adopted for the clinic. They were aware of the importance of attracting new patients and having the appropriate space for the success of any health care clinic. Therefore, the six entrepreneurs were considering revisiting their marketing strategies to make them more effective.

In 2019, 15 years after entering the Canadian wine industry, Diamond Estate Wines & Spirits Inc. (Diamond), located in the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, was poised for growth. In a fragmented industry with local, national, and international competition from well-established and new players, Diamond had decent positions in many industry subsegments. One aspect of Diamond that set it apart from other small wineries was its distribution business, allowing access to valuable channels in the Canadian market. The company had proven itself capable of most aspects of the value chain in the wine industry and was poised for growth. The question was, which of the many attractive options should Diamond pursue?