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In 2022, Ola Electric Mobility Private Limited (Ola Electric), a motor vehicle manufacturing company based in Bengaluru, India, was embroiled in a privacy controversy pertaining to the use of customer data. Ola Electric had voluntarily published the telematics data of one of its customers on its Twitter account. This was done in response to allegations by a customer whose son was involved in a serious accident while riding a scooter manufactured by Ola Electric. The company’s actions sparked Internet-wide discussions regarding data privacy, with numerous people voicing their distaste for its response. Moving forward, Ola Electric needed to take action to mitigate the effects of the controversy. Meanwhile, governments, companies, and consumers needed to understand their responsibility in relation to data privacy, given that data collection would become more prevalent in future.

In 2022, the National Football League (NFL) created the International Home Marketing Areas program with the goal of stimulating global fandom for American football. As part of the program, the league assigned individual teams exclusive commercial rights to international territories, effectively giving teams the opportunity to create “international home markets.” As a result, the Eagles, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania were granted access to Ghana, making it the first NFL team to officially enter a market in Africa.<br><br\>But how should the Eagles’ marketing team go about creating a fan community in Ghana? How should it market the game of American football? What media or social channels should the team use to reach and connect with Ghanaian audiences? What activation points should it leverage? Should the team prioritize educating Ghanaians on the rules and nuances of American football or focus on building awareness and interest in the Eagles franchise specifically? And how should the Eagles evaluate whether their marketing efforts are succeeding? These were all questions Jen Kavanagh—Senior Vice-President of Marketing and Media for the Philadelphia Eagles—needed to answer before she could formalize the Eagles’ marketing strategy in Ghana.

In June 2022, Jay Monahan and his executive team at the PGA Tour were evaluating their current state of operations after some of their star golfers began to leave for the rival LIV Golf League. The PGA Tour was the dominant tour for professional golfers from around the world. But some PGA Tour professionals were critical of player compensation, including digital media rights, appearance fees, and guaranteed pay. However, the LIV Golf League was backed by Saudi Arabian funding, leading to calls of sportswashing. Should the PGA Tour change its business model to secure the players’ confidence? Could the PGA Tour innovate to keep up with the guaranteed money and earning potential offered by their new competitor? How should the PGA Tour address its stakeholders?

This case explores the development of Projet Jeune Leader, a social entrepreneurship enterprise founded by Maia Ramarosandratana in 2013 to provide comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) to middle school children throughout Madagascar. Ramarosandratana had grown the organization to have fifty-six educators reaching over 29,490 adolescents. As she thought about the next plans for scaling the work, which included partnering with the Ministry of Education to help with technical assistance to institutionalize CSE within the department’s existing educational structures, what else needed to be considered? What were some of the lessons learned over the last nine years, and what other building blocks should she be thinking about?

This annually updated exercise assesses one’s exposure to the rest of the world’s peoples. A series of worksheets require respondents to check off the number and names of countries they have visited and the corresponding percentage of world population that each country represents. The summary of a group’s collective exposure to the world’s people will inevitably be the recognition that together they have seen much, even if individually some have seen little. The teaching note provides discussion questions that consider why there is such a high variability in individual profiles, the implications of each profile for one’s business career, and what it would take for respondents to change their profile.

In March 2022, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Auchan Retail Group (Auchan), a top French retailer, faced a serious dilemma. As head of a €30 billion, privately held company, the CEO had to choose between staying the course and leaving Russia, one of Auchan’s top three markets, in the aftermath of the business turnaround and explosive geopolitical tensions that followed within two weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Public backlash had already forced more than 300 companies to exit or scale down their operations in this large emerging market. In this context, as he prepared for an interview with a popular French newspaper, the CEO had to decide how to best to address this dilemma: should Auchan follow the crowd or stay the course?

In May 2022, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Pfizer Inc. (Pfizer), Albert Bourla, announced an initiative called “An Accord for a Healthier World” to supply less-developed countries with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and the oral antiviral drug Paxlovid. The program sought to reach 1.2 billion people in 45 countries with a focus on treating diseases that disproportionately affected low-income countries. The initiative was part of the company’s goal to reduce the number of people around the world who could not afford their medicines by 50 per cent. Bourla’s plan was to reach that goal by 2023.<br><br>The move was in response to criticism that Pfizer was not doing enough to get vaccines to people in less-developed countries. The CEO acknowledged the challenges of distribution, such as poor infrastructure, misinformation, and corruption and stated that solutions should address these underlying problems, rather than focusing on the cost of vaccines. He also stated that a vaccine patent waiver would not be effective because other countries did not have the necessary infrastructure or knowledge to safely produce high-quality vaccines. The waiver would also set a precedent for future endeavours, potentially making manufacturers reluctant to develop new treatments. However, how could Pfizer effectively communicate its efforts to address global health inequities?

This note introduces some fundamental concepts regarding Indigenous peoples and their relationships to the land in Canada. It revisits injustices experienced by Indigenous peoples since the arrival of European settlers and investigates attempts at addressing those injustices. In the context of this note, “Indigenous” refers to the original inhabitants of North America and their descendants. Indigenous peoples in Canada describes three distinct groups, the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit, all of which are individually discussed later in this note. This note is based on a literature review of academic and governmental information sources.

Yukimi Daifuku was an ice cream that had been sold exclusively during the winter season in Japan for almost four decades. Lotte Co., Ltd. (Lotte) entered the ice cream market thirty years after its major competitors, so the company strategically targeted the ice cream off-season, when other producers were not promoting their products. Lotte successfully grew the product’s sales, and Yukimi Daifuku became an iconic winter ice cream in Japan. However, the external environment surrounding Yukimi Daifuku had undergone significant changes, and in 2018, Lotte decided to sell the product year-round in order to boost availability and sales. Yukimi Daifuku saw sales momentum in 2019, but growth stalled in 2020. Without the benefits of its historical (and iconic) off-season position, Yukimi Daifuku faced the challenge of thriving in the competitive Japanese ice cream market. In addition, the patent on the product development process of Yukimi Daifuku was set to expire in March 2021. Without the iconic winter ice cream positioning and patent—the two key factors for their forty-year success—what were the next steps needed for the Yukimi Daifuku Branding Division for the product?

Spreadsheet to accompany product #W29882.

After four successful years on the market, the founder and chief executive officer of Sanzo Brands Inc. (Sanzo) was looking for ways to continue the momentum and growth of his company. Sanzo was an Asian-inspired flavoured sparkling-water beverage company with an innovative approach to marketing and branding. Rather than promoting its sparkling water through traditional media channels, Sanzo relied on a digital-brand story approach and adopted social-media marketing tools in a mass-marketing environment. Alessandro Roco knew this was the right product at the right time, but his greatest concern was how to maintain the social-media buzz and continue to build the community around the brand. He wondered how Sanzo should manage social media to keep the community engaged and the brand story relevant.

In its effort to fight climate change, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) established its RBC Climate Blueprint, an enterprise strategy to accelerate clean economic growth and support its clients in a socially inclusive transition to net-zero. RBC holds itself accountable to this plan through its Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) Performance Report, which quantifies the bank’s climate change actions. Any business activities that contradict RBC’s strategy may adversely impact the bank’s reputation. This study was carried out in response to a strategic decision-making requirement from RBC regarding Bitcoin and new technology investment. The case discusses the definition of cryptocurrency, the Bitcoin mining process, energy consumption associated with the mining procedure, and the impact of Bitcoin mining on climate change. After thoroughly describing and analyzing each topic, we will draw conclusions about the effects of Bitcoin mining energy consumption on climate change. At the end of the study, we will be able to answer this question: What environment-related reputational risk might RBC face if the bank were to support products and services around Bitcoin?<br><br>The Ivey Business School gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Pierre Lapointe, MBA ’83, in the development of this case.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W33552.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product no. W33552.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product no. W33551.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product no. W33551.

Faraaz Usmani, heir to the family-owned Herbo Drugs & Pharmaceuticals, a small private Unani pharmaceutical company in Prayagraj, India, planned to expand the company’s business to other states to cover most parts of India. Before implementing this ambitious plan, Faraaz needed to conduct a feasibility study by applying some popular capital budgeting tools such as net present value, internal rate of return, and profitability index. He first projected the cash flows for ten years with an initial investment of ₹6.5 million financed with 80 per cent equity and 20 per cent debt. He expected sales to grow by 15 per cent annually for the next five years, 10 per cent from year 6 to year 10, and a perpetual growth rate of 5 per cent afterward. Faraaz understood that the estimation of the cost of capital was a key step in his analysis. He discovered that finding the cost of equity for a private firm was tricky because stock return information was not available to estimate beta. The case introduces the basics of cost of capital (i.e., weighted average cost of capital) and capital budgeting. It focuses on the details of how to estimate the cost of equity for a private firm.

Spreadsheet to accompany product no. W34060.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product no. W34061.

<p align="justify">Two months after his January 1, 2021, appointment as chief executive officer (CEO) of NewCo, the code name for the soon-to-be spun off managed infrastructure services portion of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), Martin Schroeter was faced with the daunting prospect of creating a distinct strategy and identity for a huge company in a very short time frame. Announced on October 8, 2020, by IBM’s CEO, Arvind Krishna, NewCo was a high-stakes strategic move to “create value through focus” and “increased agility to focus on evolving customer needs and delivery excellence.” Once spun off, NewCo would immediately become the world’s leading managed infrastructure services provider, with US$19 billion in revenue, 90,000 employees, and 4,600 customers, including more than 75 per cent of the Fortune 100 across 115 countries. With the spinoff expected to be complete by the end of 2021, Schroeter had only a few months to craft a strategy, recruit a leadership team, define a new identity for the company, ensure a “strong strategic relationship” with IBM, and bring thousands of customers and tens of thousands of employees into NewCo. Success required many pieces to come together rapidly and seamlessly. Schroeter was unsure how best to address these challenges. All he knew was that failure was not an option and that time was short.