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Sandie Beauchamp, was the chief experience officer at the social enterprise and Certified B Corporation hybrid organization Clean the World (CTW), located in Orlando, Florida. Beauchamp finds herself in survival mode as she struggles to keep the organization from closings its doors while simultaneously keeping herself, employees, and volunteers safe during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Through a focus on CTW’s mission as well as trial and error, Beauchamp and her team innovate a product and process to meet the hygiene needs of CTW beneficiaries while generating income.

In 2023, Tesla, Inc. (Tesla), was the most valuable automotive company in the world. Over 20 years, it had developed revolutionary products and a large, complex, global supply chain network. After announcing plans to spend nearly $150 billion to achieve the strategic goal of selling 20 million vehicles per year, it needed to dramatically expand its capacity. Chief executive officer Elon Musk was facing a key challenge: deciding what changes needed to be made to Tesla’s global supply chain to support its strategic objectives. What supply chain capabilities would Tesla need to support these plans?

Despite our reliance on entrepreneurs to kindle the fire of capitalism, we still know little about what motivates them and why. That’s concerning, since the data suggest most new job growth depends on the enterprise of entrepreneurs who build new solutions for old (and new) problems. For over 200 years, scholars have sought in vain to clarify the definition of entrepreneurship and reach consensus on its meaning. According to French economist Jean-Baptiste Say, who coined the term “entrepreneur” around the dawn of the 19th century, “The entrepreneur shifts economic resources out of an area of lower and into an area of higher productivity and greater yield.” For economist Joseph Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is a “wild spirit,” driven to disrupt norms and build new commodities of enduring value. But this leads to more questions: Can this creative wildness be developed? Or are entrepreneurs, as Steve Jobs put it, born primed to put “a dent in” the universe? Starting around 2002, written use of the word “entrepreneur” kept rising, and much public discussion of entrepreneurs now fixates on the fast-falling fortunes of flashy tech founders with dubious business practices. Ultimately, not all founders fit the label “entrepreneur”—it is only the tenacious ones with the skill to manage their wild spirit that dramatically boost productivity and yield and thereby lift up whole industries, sometimes entire economies, from ruin.

Tourism, the fulcrum of the livelihoods for residents of Jaisalmer, India, was significantly affected during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that occurred in January 2021. The situation worsened when SpiceJet, the only airline operator of Jaisalmer, announced the suspension of its operations, citing low passenger load and high operating costs. With the support of Ashish Modi, their district administrator, the Jaisalmer community tackled the issue using a first-of-its-kind initiative called “the citizen-airline partnership model.” The interplay between the Jaisalmer community and SpiceJet management unveiled finer aspects of negotiation during a crisis. Would the model succeed in a win-win negotiation?

Presentation to accompany product W31054.

The biopharmaceutical sector’s innovation- and growth-focused activities are having a surprising side effect—they’re building organizational resilience at a time of inflation, looming economic downturn, and scarcity of the right skills and talent. This offers relevant lessons for all other industries. The idea of building resilience may most often be associated with “playing defense” through cost-cutting and efficiency moves, but it can also stem from new and more rapid ways of leveraging invention and innovation driven by purpose. To understand how, the authors recommend taking a closer look at the “New Science” of some biopharma companies. New Science combines the best of what biopharmas know on the scientific front with the best of what technology can offer to target disease areas where no treatments or cures exist. According to Accenture’s research, the three significant benefits of New Science are improving the chances of creating viable offerings, reducing the cost of innovation, and driving revenue growth. While scientific novelty, technology convergence, and unmet patient needs are the guiding principles of New Science, transferring these basics to other industries requires shifting a company’s essence toward innovation with purpose. This article offers three practical steps to make that happen. First, reorient the portfolio: business leaders must pursue new products and services, new markets, and new ecosystems to address unmet needs. Second, flip the budget: senior executives need to free up capital to invest in innovation activities. Third, create dynamic teams: applying the principles of New Science requires forming new kinds of teams—human teams and “human + machine” teams.

The Paris Agreement, which came into force on November 4, 2016, applied to Hong Kong, where Kam Sing Wong had been secretary for the environment of the HKSARG since July 2012. Wong wanted every business sector and household to embark on a new low carbon journey through cleaner energy, energy conservation, and green commuting and to nurture a “use less, waste less” culture. On June 8, 2022, Wong had to announce an increase in the charge Hong Kong shoppers paid to retailers for each plastic shopping bag they used, which was currently set at HK$0.50 (US$0.06). Even if Wong doubled the amount to HK$1.00, this would still be a small amount in absolute terms. What messages would be necessary in order to communicate to people the importance of using less plastic? Wong had to make a big decision about how much of a change to make to this small amount of HK$0.50. A small change in the actions of each citizen of Hong Kong could potentially be amplified into a large amount of absolute waste reduction.

NutriNest, founded by Le Danh Hoang, was the first company to introduce farmed bird's nest products in Vietnam. In January 2018, the company launched a sustainable product line under a new brand called the Green Bird. The Green Bird product line was positioned to meet consumers’ sustainability and health concerns, and quickly became the company’s best-selling products. To continue to grow NutriNest, Hoang was facing a crucial decision. Should he focus on the current portfolio of the Green Bird line or add new products? If he chooses to introduce new products, how should he ensure that these products will attract new segments of customers and increase sales?

In December 2022, Jack Munroe, president of Munroe Homes Ltd. (Munroe), is trying to determine if his firm should take on a new development called Creekside Estates near Caledon Village, Ontario. Munroe began as a builder of modest homes on a large scale; the Creekside Estates opportunity involved developing high-end custom homes. Jack’s decision will have a significant effect on Munroe’s future strategy. Munroe can stay within its comfort zone and continue building large numbers of entry-level or mid-level homes or the company can choose to move into the high-end custom home segment. Jack needs to consider what changes will be necessary to position the Creekside Estates opportunity for success.

As Hasbro Inc.’s Wizards of the Coast LLC (Wizards) worked to design the next iteration of its popular tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), word leaked that it was looking to change its decades-old Open Game License. This would restrict third-party contributions to the game and reduce gameplay options for customers, in favour of increased protection of D&D’s game mechanics as Wizards’ intellectual property. Wizards’ delayed reaction to the leak gave way to an organized response from the D&D community, eventually pushing Wizards to give up its efforts to restrict licensing and take further steps to restore trust. What, if anything, went wrong with Wizards’ priorities, and what should its priorities be going forward?

On July 2022, Signify Health, a health care services company that was disrupting the US health care market with its value-based care provision, announced the opening of a new technology centre outside the United States. This was a significant first step for the company beyond its home country. The company had an ambitious plan to develop an international centre of excellence for innovation that it expected would grow to employ more than 125 people by the end of 2023. The new technology centre was seen as a critical step to develop new solutions and provide technologies that would enable the platform to scale up its business. However, the company had to make some important and urgent decisions, including where to locate the international technology centre and how to integrate the new centre into the wider domestic organization.

After importing three hundred bags of ground sacha inchi, a seed with promising nutritional benefits, from Peru, Kayla Gray has important decisions to make. Her new venture, Sachi Superfoods, is ready to launch; however, she does not have a clear plan on how to best market her product. Gray must decide on the best market segment to pursue in addition to the most effective marketing channel for her product.

Hope Medicals owner, Shiva Aruguman, was considering entering the online pharmacy market. Hope Medicals was a local pharmacy in Madurai, India’s Tamil Nadu state, and Aruguman was at a strategic crossroads—he had to decide whether to expand into the online pharmacy market. With the challenges (financial and non-financial) of integrating the “brick” and “click” modes of his pharmacy business, Aruguman had to conduct an analysis based on capital budgeting and run a Monte Carlo simulation to determine the potential profitability and risks of such a venture.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W34714.

In March 2021, the wholesale distributor of home décor products SBO Distributors Ltd. (or SWISSBO), based in Vancouver, Canada, was considering an opportunity for strategic analysis. The firm was at a crossroads in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic had led to a setback in the company’s revenues and margins—seemingly, a temporary setback. The wholesaler was now facing a make-or-break dilemma that involved a new growth opportunity to move up the value chain toward retailing.

Opened in January 2021, the medical centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), CUHK Medical Centre (CUMC), was a non-profit teaching hospital wholly owned by the university. In December 2022, Professor Hong Fung, the executive director and chief executive officer, knew that the CUMC board of directors would soon be asking how he was going to ensure that the privately operated CUMC would remain financially sustainable while still achieving its mission and vision—offering quality healthcare services at affordable and transparent package prices—and returning all surpluses from healthcare services to the hospital to support its future development and the CUHK Faculty of Medicine’s research and teaching.

In early 2018, WhatsApp—the cross-platform messaging and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service—began testing its WhatsApp Payments (Payments) service, designed to enable digital payment transactions in India. By late 2020, the platform had rolled out the initial launch of its Payments feature within India, with the National Payments Corporation of India agreeing to a staggered launch. However, despite the number of Payments users increasing from twenty million to forty million between November 2021 and April 2022, the platform witnessed stagnation in customer retention due to faulty transactions and inefficient processes that resulted in driving customers away. WhatsApp’s challenge was to review its customer value proposition to gain new customers and retain existing ones. How should it communicate this customer value proposition to its target customer base to attract new users? Would it be more appropriate to launch Payments as a standalone app?

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.<br><br>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.<br><br><p><p align="center"><b>This case was the first prize winner of the 2022 John Molson Business Ownership Case Writing Competition.<b/><p/>

Captain Fresh, a tech-enabled business-to-business (B2B) seafood marketplace based out of Bengaluru, India, had been enjoying phenomenal success. Founder Utham Gowda set out to simplify the seafood supply chain in a fragmented, unstructured, and complex market. He was sure that going forward, technology would play a major role in building high-quality distribution infrastructure that would take fish from sea to plate. In January 2022, having achieved revenue growth of more than 700 per cent from September 2020 to September 2021, Gowda was faced with three equally compelling options for growth. In January 2022, he was faced with three equally compelling options for growth. The first was to set up Captain Fresh’s own business-to-consumer brand; the second was to add mutton and chicken to his product offerings; and the third option was a bold proposal to go international by expanding to the United States. Another exciting strategy was expanding Fishgram, the unique proprietary marine supply-chain technology platform Gowda had built to help fishers connect directly to buyers across various geographies. There was an opportunity to monetize the platform by offering it to non-competing fishers as a software as a service. Which of three options should he choose while maintaining his original goal of easing problems in the country’s fish and seafood supply chain? Should he offer Fishgram to fishers and other businesses?

In February 2020, Peter Maxwell received his share from the sale of the Australian property development company he had co-founded in 2002: US$115 million. He began organizing his reflections on four of the most significant company decisions that had occurred at the company in recent years and how they had impacted the business. They focused on installing effective board governance; rejecting a move into resort development; maintaining ownership and control; and considering the personal health of the senior executives. Having been invited to speak at his alma mater, Maxwell was planning to ask the students to rank these decisions in terms of importance.