個案總覽

The chief executive officer of Ruaha Farm (T) Ltd (Ruaha Farm), in Iringa, Tanzania, established his honey business, in 2012. The company’s business model relied on the engagement and empowerment of neighbouring communities of low-income beekeepers, creating mutually beneficial relationships with local beekeeping communities in the Iringa region. The business model was unique, asset-light, and scalable. In contrast with an integrated business model in beekeeping, where a company typically owned all assets (land, beehives, processing machinery, and routes to market), Ruaha Farm not only commercialized the honey from its own farms but also reached out to all beekeepers in the region to support them in the production and collection of their honey. By 2019, amid the challenges of managing the company’s relationship with the beekeeper communities, the chief executive officer had to consider how to increase Ruaha Farm’s annual production volume from 10 to 100 tons in five years.

Sirona Hygiene Private Limited (Sirona Hygiene) started operations in 2015 with its launch of PeeBuddy—a portable urination device for women. For Sirona Hygiene, the first four years had been extremely satisfying, as the company was able to launch five unique products and 15 differentiated products across its three brands—PeeBuddy, Sirona, and BodyGuard. Each brand had its own unique value proposition and operated in a different product space. The company’s founder was looking for additional funding as he moved toward achieving his mission of tripling the company’s growth by 2022. When it came to investor mindsets, most investors were traditional in their thinking and sought to invest in single brands. As such, the company’s founder was considering consolidating all of the brands under the corporate brand—Sirona Hygiene. Brand articulation, strategy formulation, and fundraising were all interlinked, and to steer the firm to its next journey, a sequential path was imperative. The question was clear, but there were no straight answers.

The exercise directs students to watch specific scenes from the movie Hidden Figures, which is loosely based on the book by Margot Lee Shetterly that tells the story of three African American women who were mathematicians working at the Langley Research Center in Virginia in the 1960s. The women encountered racism and sexism as they attempted to contribute to the Center’s work for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and its space race with the Soviet Union. The clips assigned to students for viewing portray moments of leadership in the story of the three Black women who were considered “human computers.” The students are expected to view the assigned clips and consider how the scenes portray leadership and what character dimensions the actors demonstrate in their roles.

On January 3, 2017, the principal investigator at the Biomedical Engineering and Technology Innovation Centre (BETIC), in India’s Indian Institute of Technology Bombay was considering the next steps for a newly developed product. BETIC was a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional translational research and development network in the medical technology sector that acted as a running partner for innovators and entrepreneurs. The core vision of BETIC was to create global success stories of indigenous medical devices by providing systematic guidance and support to innovators developing medical devices. The principal investigator and his team had developed an indigenous and innovative smart stethoscope from the ideation stage to a functional prototype. The next critical challenge was how to commercialize the product and ensure that it could deliver the maximum amount of social impact.

In February 2020, the director of Global Creative Intelligence at McCormick & Company, Inc. (McCormick), was grappling with some challenges at his desk at the company’s headquarters in the United States. Having been mandated to deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing new products—in partnership with IBM—he had been interfacing with over 500 product developers at the company’s various locations worldwide. The director faced three managerial dilemmas: How should he get the company’s product developers to trust the findings of AI? How could he teach and train AI to become smarter? And how should he deal with the global-local dynamics at McCormick in launching AI-engineered products?

On November 4, 2020, the group chief financial officer of Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Limited was tasked with determining the cost of capital in preparation for the corporate response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In planning for 2021, the company would need to make considerable investments throughout its franchises in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Europe. The cost of capital would be integral to these investment decisions. In the previous year, Domino’s Pizza Enterprises Limited had made A$98.9 million in investments, so the difference of a few per cent in capital costs could mean a swing in millions of dollars in expenditures. The chief financial officer had all background information including balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, common stock data, financial ratios, market return data, peer firm data, and an itemized list of debt obligations. Based on this information, he had to derive the company’s cost of capital using a weighted average cost of capital methodology.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W25568.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W25570.

Amazon.com, Inc. (Amazon) India expanded Amazon Food into the food delivery market in March 2021 amid a pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. The move surprised the industry, especially considering that Swiggy and Zomato Ltd. (Zomato), the two key players in the food delivery business, were facing an all-time slump and that restaurants were seeking to move away from aggregators to create their own ordering platform. Zomato and Swiggy, a duopoly in the food service aggregator (FSA) space in the country, had been struggling to keep cash burn low, squeezing delivery-executive commissions, executing mass layoffs, and scaling down profit-draining cloud kitchens. Although the timing of the launch appeared risky, Amazon India’s confidence to take on the established players and challenge the status quo stemmed from its size, reach, resources, technological prowess, reliability, trust, and goodwill. In a market scenario where safety and hygiene standards were set to change forever and the odds were stacked against FSAs, the industry and consumers were expecting a tough battle. Amazon had to reassess whether its strengths would be adequate to help it make satisfactory inroads into the industry, confront the obstacles, and overcome the ongoing slump and make good on its decision to be the new entrant when the established players were bearing the brunt of not only the pandemic but also a deeply divided restaurant industry.

In April 2020, the chief executive officer of Xiaoxiandun E-Commerce Co. (Xiaoxiandun), faced a tough choice. Founded in 2014 in Beijing, China, Xiaoxiandun focused on birds’ nests—an extremely popular traditional Chinese tonic product—and advocated the benefits of nourishing Chinese medicine. Low-temperature technology and timely delivery helped consumers to nourish the bird's nest on time and in standardized amounts. The "Expert of Fresh Stewed Bird's Nest" strategy during 2017-2019 helped Xiaoxiandun surpass the original leader in the bird's nest industry and became number one in sales on Tmall Double Eleven in 2019. In the same year, the leader regarded Xiaoxiandun as the main competitor, and adopted similar fresh stew technology. Faced with this challenge, how should Miao move forward: adhere to the "expert" strategy, diversify and expand, or make strategic changes to become a leader?

Ludesco, an international festival of games and gaming experiences held in Switzerland, had enjoyed growth since its inception in 2010, leading to an impressive 10,000+ visitors during the tenth edition of the festival in 2019. The success of the festival was owing to the unique, fun, and unforgettable experiences in which visitors could immerse themselves throughout the festival weekend. However, misfortune struck in 2020, when the organizing committee was forced to cancel the event due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.<br><br>With no end to the pandemic in sight, the committee wondered if this could be the opportune time to pursue a stronger social media presence. What challenges would Ludesco face in creating digital engagement? How could Ludesco’s organizing committee increase digital engagement through social media that complemented the offline festival? What type of content could encourage participation and create a sense of community, while simultaneously generating build-up for the festival?

Consumers in El Salvador can now use bitcoin to buy everything from Big Macs and Starbucks coffee to big-ticket items like automobiles. But don’t be overly impressed by the cryptocurrency’s newfound status as legal tender in the Central American nation. It isn’t the watershed moment in monetary history that true believers claim. Being the first nation to adopt bitcoin is a great way to make headlines, but a policy decision as big as this for any nation should be backed by indisputable rationale. And El Salvador’s decision to embrace bitcoin is a significant gamble by President Nayib Bukele. Protesters are now taking to the streets to express fears related to crypto-market instability and the risk of inflation. And they have reason to worry. In the case of bitcoin—which ironically wasn’t designed to work in tandem with a fiat currency or need government support—viability as a currency will take much more than enabling legislation. Although the world is likely to eventually warm up to digital currencies, how things shake out in the crypto space could be poles apart from the contemporary scene. If you are interested in government policies that will influence the future of crypto, China’s pilot project on introducing a digital yuan is where you should be looking.

La Colombe Coffee Roasters was founded in 1994 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with the notion that “America deserves better coffee.” The company provided attractive cafés and an online coffee subscription program to its customers. It supported ethical trade in the sourcing of its products and coffee innovation, which had led to the Draft Latte cold coffee, a ready-to-drink product available both at La Colombe Coffee Roasters cafés and in a variety of retail outlets. The company hired a customer experience consulting firm to design its virtual presence and provide a seamless experience for consumers both through its cafés and online. It operated in a high-margin competitive industry with a high rate of company shutdowns, making customer interface and product innovation essential. With new equity invested by a highly-successful venture capitalist, the company had to now decide whether to scale up into a mass market company or continue to serve a niche segment through its artisanal cafés.

Supplement for product W24932.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W24933.

In 2018, the founder of Swift Mobility in Nakuru, Kenya, Africa was considering her options for the future of her company, which was a Safaricom Plc dealership. The founder was reflecting on how much her business had progressed in the past ten years and wondering if this was the right time to expand or invest in the company’s future. She had just spoken with the property owner of a potential new store in Mombasa, Kenya, but was also considering other options. In addition to potentially expanding to a new location, the founder could choose to invest further to grow her current operation, or sell the business and exit the highly competitive telecommunications industry in favour of a more moderate lifestyle. Which option would be her best path forward?

Two managers in the Power Tools division of German multinational corporation Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch) have been tasked with devising potential solutions for addressing tensions between the regional headquarters (RHQ) for the Eastern Europe and Middle East region of Bosch Power Tools' Blue Emerging Markets business unit. The RHQ faces challenges in managing its geographically dispersed subsidiaries, with the subsidiaries complaining about slow decision-making, a lack of efficiency, and a limited understanding of customer needs. Bosch Power Tools must rethink its approach to the Blue Emerging Markets unit and the organizational set-up of the RHQ. Thus, the two managers are meeting with senior managers from across the Eastern Europe-Middle East region and the board of management (Case A) in order to determine the best way to address the issues (Case B).

In 2016, a social entrepreneur founded Even Cargo in Delhi, India to provide last-mile logistics by employing only women. Even Cargo trained and provided employment opportunities to women from underprivileged backgrounds, usually as their first job ever outside the home. The company encountered various challenges, including resistance from patriarchs and gender bias. The founder remained persistent in his goal to establish Even Cargo as a successful social enterprise in Delhi and eventually expand into smaller Indian cities. However, a prevalent patriarchal mindset and gender inequality were deeply ingrained in these areas, which would make this goal considerably more difficult to achieve. What strategies could the founder consider to realize his business growth and expansion objectives?

A recent MBA graduate from a premier business school in India successfully secured a position with a major investment firm. Shortly after starting his new job, he was asked by his supervisor to evaluate the performance of three mutual funds that he had invested in during his MBA studies: Edelweiss, LIC MF, and BNP Paribas. All three investments were large cap funds. After completing his evaluation, the MBA graduate was hoping to understand the performance of the three mutual funds and determine which was the best investment choice.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product W24912.