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<p align="justify">VaccineOnWheels (VOW), a social enterprise providing doorstep vaccination to India’s low-income and marginalized communities, was founded in December 2019. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and arrival of COVID-19 vaccines, VOW was perfectly positioned to contribute to the government’s immunization drive. In 2021, the company entered into a public-private partnership with some of India’s largest municipal corporations as their on-the-ground COVID-19 vaccination partner, then made forays into the business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. VOW set out to vaccinate one million people by the end of the fiscal year 2021, but faced with shortages of funds and resources; its founder needed to decide on the target market and business model to allow him to achieve his goal and make the enterprise scalable.<br><br>This case was the second winner of the 2021 Fox International Business Case Writing Competition.</p>

Spreadsheet to accompany product W27266.

Presentation to accompany product W27266.

On May 11, 2021, US federal agents raided the premises of a Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) temple in New Jersey and freed dozens of workers who had been operating under modern slavery conditions. Shortly afterward, six workers filed a class-action lawsuit against BAPS at the United States District Court, District of New Jersey. The lawsuit solicited to address the violation of the laws applied to workers, including laws prohibiting forced labour. The lawsuit claimed, among other things, that BAPS isolated workers, coerced workers to live and work in conditions causing psychological deterioration, limited workers’ outside contacts, and caused financial and reputational harm. Although this was only one particular case to come to light, it pointed to a broader problem faced by many companies across the world, either within their own operations or in the supply chains of the organizations they partnered with for corporate social responsibility purposes. How could companies ensure that they abided by fair labour practices and avoided the use of modern slavery?

The chief executive officer (CEO)of NorthCan Packaging and Logistics (NorthCan) was considering options for NorthCan’s planned expansion into the United States. He had to decide whether NorthCan should (1) construct or purchase a facility in the United States; (2) develop a strategic partnership with an established, complementary US-based packaging solutions company; (3) franchise sales and service in the United States; or (4) expand into the United States, while keeping core operations in Canada. The CEO had to ensure that, with any option, the full-service and value-added aspects of NorthCan remained central. He had to also consider the social and economic costs and benefits of each option, including potential for international growth and competitive advantage, sustainability, regulations, and stakeholder preferences.

In September 2019, Mircom Technologies Limited faced a serious crisis after sustaining a ransomware attack. The medium-sized manufacturer based in Toronto, Canada had been offering smart building solutions for almost two decades. The attackers encrypted all of the company’s data, halting all business systems and processes that relied on information technology, including email, voice-over-Internet phones, manufacturing, billing, shipping, and receiving. The company was suddenly unable to conduct basic business operations. The attackers demanded a large payment in bitcoin in exchange for a decryption key that would allow the company to access its data. Over the next several weeks, Mircom Technologies Limited faced unforeseen challenges in its attempt to recover its data, negotiate with the attackers, and eventually find a way to successfully restore normal operations.

Supplemental product to W28457.

In October 2019, the regional chief data and analytics officer at Allianz AG, Belgium, attended a two-hour strategy meeting with the Allianz Benelux chief executive officer, who had expressed concerns about the company’s digitalization strategy. A few days earlier, the marketing department had found that online sales channel results had fallen unexpectedly. The chief executive officer was worried that the company could lose market share if it did not react accordingly, which would damage the company’s competitive position in the market. Therefore, the regional chief data and analytics officer was asked to gather a team to investigate why online sales were low and to design an effective customer acquisition strategy. In addition to his data office staff, the regional chief data and analytics officer asked for the business transformation unit to provide assistance. He had to consider how best to approach this challenging task.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W27305.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product W27305.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product W27305.

Founded in 1950, King’s Hawaiian, a Los Angeles–based bakery, operated in the competitive bread industry with an expansive list of rolls and bread, as well as a selection of other baked goods, which varied by region. As the business grew over the years, it had added production facilities and increased marketing. For decades, King’s Hawaiian had focused on its core bread products, using occasion-based marketing to target consumers. However, in April 2021, with an ever-increasing market, the company had to decide whether to scale up into a mass-market company or continue to service a niche occasion-based segment by offering its unique sweet bread through in-store bakery and deli departments.

On July 24, 2021, Chinese authorities issued the Double Reduction Policy to ease the burden of excessive homework and off-campus tutoring for students undergoing compulsory education in China. Off-campus English tutoring became strictly regulated, and hiring foreign teachers abroad to carry out training activities was strictly prohibited. 51Talk had achieved great success in the K–12 English online tutoring market, and this business accounted for more than 95 per cent of the company’s total revenue. However, the company would not be able to continue its K–12 student English online tutoring business in the Chinese market under the Double Reduction Policy. Jack Huang, 51Talk’s founder and chief executive officer, had to consider how to transform the company in order to survive.

In June 2022, Kelvin Van Rijn, owner of The Fritter Shop in London, Ontario, is considering multiple options for the future success of his business. The Fritter Shop had experienced significant growth over its first years in business and had recently relocated to a new production facility. This facility provided approximately 1,500 square feet of unused production space and Van Rijn is wondering how to make the best use of it. Van Rijn’s options include maintaining the status quo, seeking additional franchisees, wholesaling his fritters, selling the business, and exploring co-tenancy.

Founded in 2014 in Guangdong, China, Guangdong Haiqixing Marine Technology Co. Ltd. (Haiqixing) was a total solution service provider for marine big data applications. In the early stage of its development, Haiqixing achieved growth through a business development strategy. Unfortunately, since 2019, it had been affected by such factors as the reorganization of national government agencies and the impact of COVID-19, which had caused its business to suffer inevitable shocks. In 2020, to enhance the company’s ability to cope with environmental changes and ensure continuous growth of the business, Haiqixing’s chair carried out a strategic transformation, changing the company’s business development strategy to one oriented toward product development. Consequently, the company achieved a rapid increase in operating income. However, the company’s existing technical capabilities could not meet customers’ needs. The chair needed to determine Haiqixing’s next steps. Should Haiqixing continue to pursue its product development strategy, or should it adopt a technology exploration strategy to improve its technical capabilities?

Founded in 2013 by sisters Shelby, Jackie, and Amy Zitelman, Philadelphia-based Soom Foods (Soom) aimed to educate US consumers on tahini and make the product a staple in US pantries. By 2021, the business had grown into a multimillion-dollar revenue company and had achieved national distribution through an omni-channel sales effort. However, Soom’s reliance on the single-source Ethiopian Humera sesame seed to prepare its high-quality tahini had begun to pose challenges. When Ethiopia’s inter-ethnic conflicts emerged in 2020, the Zitelman sisters foresaw possible disruptions and uncertainties in their business, especially when those challenges were combined with the supply-chain logistics issues that emerged as a result of the global pandemic in 2021. Soom was forced to reconsider its long-term business strategy: Given the threat of a potentially insufficient future sesame seed supply, should Soom use diversification in its supply chain? If so, how should diversification be applied across the supply chain while still maintaining a good return on investment? Furthermore, how could all of this be done before the next harvesting cycle?

Presans was founded in Paris, France in 2008 as an an open innovation intermediary, often referred to as an “innomediary.” Using a specific business model that combined open innovation services with state-of-the-art data-mining technology, Presans leveraged a network of over six million experts worldwide to solve problems for its corporate clients. In February 2017, the chief executive officer of Presans had to make some strategic decisions. Based on interviews with clients, he was considering diversifying the portfolio of products. In addition to the company’s classic approach of Call for Excellence, he was considering launching a new approach called Synergy Factory, where different companies could jointly tackle technical topics with experts, and another approach called La Conciergerie, which was a simplification of the Call for Expertise and required a platform-based, rather than a service-based, go-to-market strategy.

Beginning with an ambitious, lean start-up effort in the highly competitive restaurant industry in Auckland, New Zealand, a husband-and-wife team built a small empire of successful fine dining Indian restaurants. Then came the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed their extreme vulnerability to external forces and the subsequent volatility of the restaurant industry. Their quick pivot to launching a line of Indian sauces for home cooks, Cassia at Home, was an instant success. As the couple contemplated different paths to recovery from the pandemic disruption, they wondered how they should expand their newest business into a sustaining brand and what the future of the existing restaurants would look like. Should they continue to expand the new retail business, abandon the move into manufacturing and broader distribution, or even focus on reviving their existing restaurant businesses?<br><br\><br><br\>An earlier version of the case was awarded Second Place in the 2021 John Molson Business Ownership Case Writing Competition sponsored by the Bob & Raye Briscoe Centre in Business Ownership Studies, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University.

In January 2021, the Japanese fashion company Uniqlo was accused of using forced labour in its supply chains. Various news reports had been claiming that Uyghur Muslims were being detained and forced to work on cotton farms, production factories, and processing facilities in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. The United States Customs and Border Protection claimed that Uniqlo was not able to fully demonstrate that its products and inputs were manufactured without use of forced labour or modern slavery in Xinjiang, China and issued a Withhold Release Order to detain Uniqlo’s shipment of cotton garments. Uniqlo’s attempts to dispute the allegations and overturn the WRO were unsuccessful. The company had to find a way to ensure transparency and uphold traceability across all streams of its value chain activity. But how could Uniqlo ensure ethical sourcing for all aspects of its products, given limited oversight over suppliers and subcontractors? Was cotton traceability a viable and feasible option? How could Uniqlo ensure the compliance all key actors in its value chain streams, across tiers of suppliers and layers of subcontractors?

In January 2022, Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Activision) for US$68.7 billion. With a growing franchise of games, and with Microsoft’s apparent ambitions for the games console market, Activision was an attractive acquisition target. Activision owned some of the most popular games in the world and had a $54 billion market value in 2020. The acquisition would also take Microsoft a step closer to expansion into the metaverse, where—along with the cloud gaming and video game software industries—it hoped to gain an edge. However, gaming was a small part of Microsoft’s business. So why had Microsoft pursued the acquisition? What advantages did Microsoft see in it? And what would the move mean for Sony Interactive Entertainment (Sony), the market leader in the video games industry? Finally, how should Microsoft address the allegations of harassment and other employee complaints that had arisen at Activision and set right the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues that had arisen at Activision?