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In April 2017, the co-founder and vice-president of Hitch Health in Minneapolis Minnesota was faced with an intriguing but challenging strategy decision. Hitch Health had been created as part of Upstream Health Innovations at Hennepin County Medical Center to improve transportation services for its many vulnerable patients. By using human-centred design, Hitch Health had succeeded in developing a system of ride sharing and sophisticated information technology that met its initial goal of reducing missed appointments. However, the development of Hitch Health had also presented a new opportunity to engage patients in many aspects of their own care. The co-founder realized that she had to make a key strategy decision. Was Hitch Health just a practical solution to Hennepin County Medical Center’s transportation problem? Could it solve transportation problems at similar hospitals across the country? Could it be an idea big enough to serve as a platform with the potential to disrupt health care delivery?

SF Express Group Co. Ltd. (SF Express) was a leading express delivery and logistics solutions provider in China. In May 2017, SF Express became involved in a dispute with the logistics-tracking platform Cainiao Network Technology (Cainiao), which was controlled by Alibaba Group Holding Limited. SF Express and Cainiao were the two largest players in China’s express delivery market. The dispute, which involved an SF Express–affiliated smart package locker company that declined a data-sharing request from Cainiao, caused SF Express and Cainiao to sever their ties over proprietary data and cybersecurity. This severance caused significant disruption to China’s e-commerce sector. After regulatory intervention, both parties agreed to resume sharing data for the time being and had to negotiate a resolution to their data dispute within 30 days. The chief information officer of SF Express needed to come up with an immediate solution to the dispute as well as a long-term data strategy for SF Express.

In 2014, Guccio Gucci SpA (Gucci), a flagship brand of the Kering group, was struggling with its operating profit and human resources. By December 2014, the company had experienced three consecutive quarters of declining profits. In addition to the company’s financial issues, its president and chief executive officer (CEO) and its creative director had abruptly left the company. On January 15, 2015, a new CEO took over and faced several decisions. He needed to decide whether or not to reposition the brand and whether to hire internally or externally for a new creative director—related decisions that would strongly influence the brand’s position in the market and its appeal in the future.

In late 2017, the leader of the implementation circle at iQmetrix, a software firm based in Vancouver, Canada, was reviewing her company’s progress with Holacracy. This radical new organizational design was centred on employee self-management and based on a philosophy that focused “on roles (accountabilities for work), not souls (people).” All parts of the organization were now arranged in circles, which were the basic building blocks of the Holacratic organizational design, and all employees had completed their initial training and were now meeting in circles to fulfil the work of the organization. But was it enough? Could iQmetrix truly consider that it was now fully Holacratized? Nearly one year after the launch of Holacracy, the implementation leader looked back over the past year and assessed whether the implementation of Holacracy was now complete, whether the process had been a success, and what to do next.

In 2015, the general manager of the Gold Crest Hotel (Gold Crest) in Mwanza, Tanzania, had only three days to present a compelling marketing strategy for the hotel at the executive board meeting. Though the hotel had recently experienced revenue growth from its conference room bookings, management wanted to increase average yearly hotel occupancy. A new marketing strategy had to include a target consumer segment, a marketing plan, and options that would attract customers to book guest rooms at the Gold Crest. Also, the manager had to decide whether to renovate the ninth floor of the hotel and, if so, whether to add additional conference rooms or additional guest rooms, depending on the targeted market segment.

Burro was a growing start-up in Ghana with a mission to provide “tools for a better life” to Ghanaians by distributing products that addressed local needs. In February 2015, after seven years of operation, the company had finally become profitable. Demand for Burro’s sustainable products was growing quickly in the booming Ghanaian market. The country manager wanted to determine a strategy for growth to maximize the success of Burro's future.

In late May 2014, the founder of Liyu Ethiopia Tours was considering his options to grow the company. The small but reputable tour company had become successfull in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in only seven months. The founder, who faced the challenge of continuing to grow the business on a limited budget, was considering several strategic decisions: should he increase the company’s online presence by using the services of Google AdWords or TripAdvisor; expand local and national partnerships with hotels or with tour companies in neighbouring countries; or participate in a major trade show, with the hope of developing international partnerships. The founder wondered how to align his company’s goals with its capabilities.

In mid-2015, India-based Titan Company, a joint venture between Tata Group and Tamil Nadu Development Corporation, was active in several retail businesses: watches; jewellery; eyewear; and youth accessories (e.g. backpacks and helmets). As of July 2015, Titan Company operated 1,300 of its own stores in 240 Indian cities and towns, and its products were being sold abroad through 2,300 third-party retail outlets in 32 countries. Titan Company's board of directors had developed an ambitious target—revenues of INR300 billion by 2020. The chief executive officer and his team needed to outline a strategy to achieve this goal. In particular, they needed to decide whether Titan Company should continue to launch new businesses or instead focus on consolidating its existing businesses.

Malaysian palm oil company IOI Corporation Berhad (IOI) developed from a plantation company in Malaysia to become a vertically integrated manufacturing company with a range of higher value manufacturing businesses across Asia, Europe, and the United States. The rapid expansion into what the chief executive officer (CEO) called a “mini-multinational” placed greater demands on IOI and its leadership. The CEO had struggled to simultaneously achieve growth, innovation, control, and coordination, and the company had experienced a sustainability crisis in 2016. In early 2017, the CEO needed to decide whether to approve an ambitious growth strategy—proposed by IOI’s specialty oils and fats team, which led most overseas operations and handled IOI’s most innovative products—to be achieved by 2025. While he was eager to expand IOI and strengthen its position as a widely admired Asian family multinational, he also needed to weigh the constraints. He could not risk growing the company faster than the leadership’s ability to control it.

In 2017, bike sharing was one of the hottest technology trends in China. Since its inception two years earlier, Mobike had quickly become one of China’s leading bike on-demand companies because of its bicycles’ superior quality, and the company’s intelligence capability, open innovation, alliance strategies, and big data applications. Mobike expanded aggressively to take advantage of opportunities in this emerging market and the need for efficient, green, and sustainable solutions to short-distance urban transportation. However, Mobike's aggressive expansion faced tough challenges, including shared bicycle operations and management, competition from rivals, and government regulations. By late 2017, several bike-sharing services had gone bankrupt. How could Mobike avoid the same fate, generate profit, and continue to prosper?

Excel spreadsheet for instructors.

Instructor spreadsheet to accompany product 8B18D022.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product 9B18D022.

On October 3, 2016, the Government of Ontario released its finance statements for the province without the opinion of Ontario's auditor general. This incident stemmed from a disagreement between the auditor and the government over public-sector pension accounting interpretations, which had the potential to seriously affect the province’s budget balance and long-term debt levels. It was uncertain how this disagreement would be resolved. Many members of the media, think tanks, and opposition political parties decried the government for refusing to co-operate with the auditor, while others felt the auditor had gone too far in her interpretation of Public Sector Accounting Standards.

In 2015, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Hart Schaffner Marx, a 130-year-old U.S. maker of men’s suits and sport coats in Des Plaines, Illinois, set out to create an employment program for people with autism with the help of the company's partner, Autism Workforce. Unlike other similar employment programs, this program aspired to employ people who were seriously affected by autism challenges. The two partnering organizations had worked diligently to activate work skills in people with developmental disorders, and now sought to extend and leverage their initial successes. In 2017, the company’s CEO and owner was now facing decisions about how to extend and leverage the employment program’s initial success.

In March 2017, a pharmacy in Berlin encountered a personnel scheduling problem. The pharmacy’s key activity was serving customers in-store with ready-made medication. These services had to be offered during regular opening hours, on occasional Sundays, and during pre-assigned emergency-service shifts. In addition, customer-specific formulations had to be prepared, and certain office duties had to be performed. A particular aspect of the problem was that, in addition to differences in the employment contracts, the employees’ preferred attendance times had to be considered. Although the issue was presented as an operational problem, long-term considerations of determining the cornerstones of the employment contracts could be addressed.

In late 2015, the chief people officer at IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, a joint venture with two public sector banks in India, faced a new challenge. The company’s managing director and chief executive officer communicated the company’s goal to become India’s largest insurance provider and to be among India’s top five insurance companies by 2020. The chief people officer was tasked with ensuring the company had the organizational capabilities in place to achieve this goal. Although the chief people officer was confident he could complete the task, he needed to devise a plan, roll it out, and deliver it promptly to meet the pressing expectations of achieving the new vision.

In 2017, a strategic analyst with the Ontario Ministry of Energy, was asked to evaluate the potential for decommissioning the Ontario Power Generation's Pickering Nuclear Generating Station (Pickering) in Pickering, Ontario, at the scheduled end of the plant’s operations in 2024, instead of waiting until 2054. Decommissioning Pickering would require $5.264 billion in 2016 terms. Storing the spent fuel would cost another $4.3 billion, for a total of $9.564 billion. Ontario Power Generation had set aside $2.75 billion for decommissioning Pickering and for long-term storage of its spent fuel. To bridge the gap between what it had contributed and what was required, Ontario Power Generation was investing in a decommissioning fund and assuming that its investment would increase in real terms by 3.25 per cent a year. The strategic analyst had to examine what it would cost to decommission Pickering in 2024 versus what it would cost in 2054.

On January 1, 2017, the head of sustainability initiatives at Lemon Tree Hotels (Lemon Tree) in India reflected on the future of the company’s inclusion and diversity initiative. Since the inception of the initiative in 2007, Lemon Tree had become the largest employer of persons with disabilities in the Indian hospitality industry. In 2014, Lemon Tree had set itself an ambitious target of increasing the share of opportunity-deprived individuals, which included mainly persons with disabilities, to 45 per cent of its workforce by the end of financial year 2025.<br><br>To remain on course to achieve this goal, the head of sustainability initiatives needed to address key areas of concern in expanding the initiative beyond its current level. For example, where would the company source and recruit persons with disabilities, what costs would be involved, and what specific types of disability would the initiative need to open itself to? While expanding the initiative, how would Lemon Tree preserve its sustainability framework, which was based on the three pillars of the triple bottom line: profit, planet, and people? Should the company instead pursue deeper integration and more gradual growth, which would allow it to consolidate its learning thus far, but would require deeper analysis of training needs and delivery? The head of sustainability initiatives felt the need to discuss these options with the senior leadership team and plan the company’s approach to best operationally and culturally integrate persons with disabilities and other opportunity-deprived individuals into its workforce.

LaundryWala was an online, on-demand laundry service provider in the suburbs of Delhi, India. In 2018, three years after its inception, the firm had more than 30,000 individual and business customers. The 33-year-old owner had to make quick strategic decisions regarding the next phase of the firm's growth. She looked at the firm's operation details to assess the following: Was her service model viable and profitable? Should the customer segment focus be business-to-consumer or business-to-business sales? Was a company-owned business model the best option, or should she look at outsourcing operations? Could the young start-up move into new territories and service offerings?