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Ola Electric Mobility Pvt. Ltd. (Ola Electric) was launched in 2017 by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., better known as Ola Cabs, as a venture for making electric scooters. Bhavish Aggarwal, one of Ola Cabs’ founders, acquired a 92.5 per cent stake in Ola Electric and pursued a path of rapid expansion. By 2022, Ola Electric had successfully raised a large amount of capital from investors, developed several subsystems (especially software) of its products in-house, carried out two product launches and generated tens of thousands of bookings from customers, and was building a state-of-the-art plant for making electric scooters. While Ola Electric’s scooters had received positive reviews from a few expert reviewers and generated customer bookings, the company found it difficult to deliver defect-free scooters in sufficient numbers. The company was also mired in a number of controversies, such as some of its scooters catching fire, alleged safety issues with its products, publicly sharing a customer’s private data, and the departure of several executive from the company. Blunt communication by the founder and majority owner Aggarwal made some of the controversies worse. Aggarwal and his team now had to determine how to address the challenges and decide whether to focus on tackling these or on aggressively pursuing greater volumes. In which direction should they steer the company’s strategy?

Jonathan Gray, the head of Digital Assets at NorthCentral Bank, was tasked with deciding how the bank should approach the growing demand for cryptocurrency (crypto) investment products and services. As the fintech industry continued to grow rapidly and younger digital consumers expressed a desire for crypto-friendly products, the bank had to decide how to proceed. Gray considered three options: maintaining the status quo and not offering crypto products; developing investment-only products and services around digital assets; or becoming a meaningful ecosystem player by offering wallets and enabling users to acquire crypto assets and use them natively on blockchains. Each option had its own benefits and risks, and Gray had to decide which path is best for NorthCentral Bank to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving fintech industry.

Neeraj Bakshi, who bought a vodka distillery in 2019 in Mississauga, Ontario, had big dreams for the distillery and purchased a 2.5-hectare property in Welland, Ontario, to increase its production capacity. Bakshi had invested significantly in NB Distillers, which now produced three types of vodka, two types of whisky, and one type of gin, and he wanted to see nothing but success. He had advertised on billboards, bus shelters, and radio, but he wanted to spend his communication budget more strategically and was open to trying new ideas. Now, in May 2021, he needed answers to several important questions: What audience segment should NB Distillers target? How should Bakshi position the distillery? What other promotional tools might help him achieve greater brand awareness?

Xiaomi was a famous Chinese consumer electronics and intelligent manufacturing business group. Since Xiaomi announced its entry into the intelligent electric vehicle industry on March 30, 2021, the topic of its boundary-spanning car manufacturing had attracted wide attention. Could Xiaomi seize the cusp of new energy vehicle development and grab a piece of the pie in this fiercely competitive market? Compared with other players with different backgrounds and strengths in this industry, had Xiaomi missed the best time window to enter? In order to become a top seller, how should Xiaomi position its new energy vehicles and design its competitive strategy? Could Xiaomi easily transfer its existing advantages and resources to its new business?

The concept of courage has been associated with leaders and leadership for centuries. The purpose of this article is to explain the concept of courage and how to approach it in leadership practice by drawing on recent behavioural science and practice-based evidence. Specifically, it addresses four questions: What is courage? What does leadership courage look like in practice? Where does courage come from? And finally, how can we grow and sustain leadership courage? It is important both from an individual and an institutional perspective to identify and establish systems that support courageous leadership. Some specific systems include access to peer advisors, coaching, short sabbaticals, and support networks. The Center for Creative Leadership offers three insights about the nature and effectiveness of leadership, which are relevant to cultivating, growing, and sustaining courageous leadership. Firstly, leadership is cultivated and not inherited. Secondly, collaborations build strong leadership. Finally, good leadership never stops—meaning leadership learning and skill development must continue throughout one’s career. Ultimately, showing courage is also about finding meaning, and learning to embrace courage brings purposefulness, which in turn becomes an important ingredient in its sustenance.

VDart Inc (VDart) was founded by Sidd Ahmed in December 2007 in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, as a digital talent management and services firm, which grew at a steady rate to reach US$160 million in annual revenue and more than 2,550 employees in 2019. The same year, the company was classified as the 138th largest and fifty-sixth fastest-growing staffing firm in the United States. VDart’s global servicing hub was based in Tiruchirappalli, India, with about 380 employees who served clients from seven geographic locations. VDart differentiated itself from its competitors through its core values of appreciation, recognition, and encouragement (ARE) and through unique cultural practices including shout-outs during Monday conference calls, Friday Lunch & Learn sessions, and annual reward and recognition (R&R) events. Growing rapidly, VDart had set itself an ambitious goal of becoming a $500 million revenue firm by December 2022. However, the rapid growth was putting a strain on the existing culture, making it challenging to sustain and nurture it. Ahmed and the top management were finding it increasingly difficult to instill the VDart culture in new employees, realizing that the values which had propelled VDart’s success thus far would not take it to the next level. The case describes the company’s twelve-year growth journey, its unique cultural practices, and the growing pains, inviting students to think about options to manage culture during rapid growth.

In December 2019, Pembina Pipeline Corporation (Pembina) must evaluate an opportunity to partner with the Western Indigenous Pipeline Group (WIPG) to bid for the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) project owned by the Canadian government. Pembina’s chief executive officer had previously stated that the company was unlikely to bid on the pipeline due to the challenging legal landscape, especially regarding Indigenous land rights. However, since WIPG consists of Indigenous communities along the pipeline’s route, partnering could mitigate these concerns. If the project succeeds, the payback could solidify Pembina’s position as a market leader in oil and gas. Should Pembina proceed with the WIPG partnership? And if they do, how should they manage relations with governments and other stakeholders?

St. Luke’s Hospital (SLH) started out as a community hospital (CH) to help rehabilitate patients who had undergone or were undergoing treatment at acute-care hospitals. By 2016, SLH’s range of services had increased manifold, making SLH one of the few CHs with a comprehensive suite of services, such as rehabilitative, wound, and dementia care. Beyond inpatient care, SLH also offered outpatient and support services such as day-patient rehabilitation, diagnostics and laboratory services, and home-care services. To meet the growing health-care needs of an aging population, Singapore adopted the CH concept for its national health-care master plan, which projected a tripling in the number of CH beds over the next 10–15 years. As more new public CHs were established, especially in the western region of Singapore—where SLH used to operate as the only CH—SLH had to review its role and future direction. To sustain its competitive advantage, should the organization invest its resources into strengthening its existing capabilities, or diversify into new areas of growth? Tan had to provide his recommendation at the next quarterly board meeting.

James Waite, the manager at Western Film, must decide which film to screen at his cinema in the upcoming week. He must evaluate whether to continue showing Spider-Man: Far From Home (Spider-Man), or replace it with one of three other films available for him to screen. Western Film, a second-run theatre, has the advantage of having domestic box office information available, and Waite must analyze whether this information is helpful to him in making this decision.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W34029.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product W34028.

As the leading e-commerce platform in Hong Kong, Hong Kong TV Shopping Network Company Limited (HKTVmall) faced an important challenge in early 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic had severely disrupted the global supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE), and prices for masks and other products on its website had skyrocketed. While management had little knowledge or experience in sourcing or producing such products, they wondered whether they had a responsibility to act on this matter. Despite its meteoric growth, the company had yet to turn a profit, so the executives were unsure as to whether they should let the invisible hand of the market restore the equilibrium between supply and demand or take an extra step to guarantee a stable supply of PPE. If the platform intervened, was contracting with new local suppliers the right way to go, or should HKTVmall itself start producing PPE?

Nirbhay Lumde, head of corporate social responsibility (CSR) at CGI Inc. (CGI), along with his efficient team, implemented certain novel CSR initiatives to address two critical societal issues: COVID-19 infrastructure and women’s safety in the context of India. CGI had to form partnerships with health care, law enforcement, and government to achieve greater impact from its CSR initiatives and to empower CGI’s employer branding. How could Lumde assess the effectiveness of CGI’s CSR initiatives? Which metrics were likely to help in this regard? Should Lumde consider expanding CGI’s CSR initiatives? Were there any potential benefits to CGI of doing so? If yes, what potential CSR opportunities could Lumde explore?

In late 2022, E-Mart, South Korea’s leading supermarket chain, had pulled out of major Asian markets such as China and Vietnam after experiencing poor performance, and the company planned to expand into the US market. In the Asian markets, E-Mart relied on a direct entry mode, but in the US it changed its mode of entry by acquiring local companies and planning to open new grocery brand stores. Although the US market has substantial growth opportunities due to its large size, it is not easy to succeed there because of limited profit margins and fierce competition. Could E-Mart establish a foothold in the US supermarket and grocery store industry? What strategies should it develop to succeed in this new market?

In the quarter ending March 2022, Apple Inc. (Apple)’s share in the Chinese smartphone market fell to 17.9 per cent from 21.7 per cent in the previous quarter. Business analysts attributed the falling share to weak consumer sentiments; a lack of innovations; and major supply-side headwinds, including frequent COVID-related lockdowns in China, power shortages, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the trade and technology war between the United States and China. Apple needed to identify strategies to gain a leading share in the Chinese market. In the face of demand- and supply-side adversities in China, it also needed to reconsider its supply chain and manufacturing base. Should Apple keep its supply chain concentrated in China, to reap the benefits arising from the economies of scale in the production process? Or should it pursue geographic diversification for its supply chain, to protect itself from the major problems hovering on the horizon?

LINE Corporation was started in 2000 as a local company in Japan focused on developing a mobile communication application. It later expanded its reach to operate a wide range of products and services in various markets including retail, entertainment, financial technology, and artificial intelligence. LINE Corporation was operating in two global markets—Asia and North America—with its top four strategic business units. The LINE mobile messaging application was the cornerstone of the company, launched in Japan shortly after the Great East Japan earthquake in 2011 to allow individuals to connect with loved ones, participate in relief efforts, and express their feelings through emojis and stickers. LINE FRIENDS INC. was a standalone entity created to sell and distribute character-related merchandise featuring the popular animal characters Brown, Cony, and Sally. LINE PLAY Corporation, the company’s popular avatar-building game, had over 75 million registered users, but some users saw it as merely a cash-grabbing game. LINE Next Inc. was a venture focused on developing and expanding the global non-fungible token ecosystem. In 2023, the main issue that LINE Corporation was facing was how best to allocate budget and resources to the two markets (Asia and North America) and to its top four strategic business units.

A recent Master of Business Administration graduate from a renowned business school in India secured a position with a top rated asset management company. On the first day, his manager asks him to construct a portfolio using William Sharpe's single index model (SIM). To construct his model portfolio, he reviews the Bloomberg terminal for the data set. This exercise provides a step-by-step review of his analysis to construct a portfolio through SIM.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W34643.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product W34642.

RideAlly, a ride-hailing platform headquartered in Bangalore, India, catered to the business-to-consumer and business-to-business segments. It operated in Bangalore and Hyderabad. Hariprakash Agrawal, the chief executive officer and founder, needed to devise a plan to sustain the business in India’s highly competitive ride-hailing market. It was time to think about scaling up the business, which needed significant investment and the right strategy to gain a solid foothold in the industry. Agrawal’s team needed to prepare a pitch for investors and present a strategy for penetrating the market and expanding the business.