In February 2022, Daryl Lim, founder of Kuehchic Desserts, created his own recipes for kueh, bite-sized cakes local to Singapore, that are healthier and more appealing to modern tastes. Together with his friends, Sharon Tan and Shiva Kumar, he set up the business and worked out a strategy for the launch of Kuehchic. While the initial feedback on the food is positive, Lim wants to test his products with a wider tasting panel. The company also has to undertake various business development and website development tasks, which would be split among the team. After some discussion, Lim worked out a task schedule. He also estimated the time needed for each task and the sequence in which some of them had to be carried out. For reasons beyond their control, the team could only start work in July. Lim wondered if the steps he had listed out to manage the project were adequate, and if his entrepreneurship journey would be successful.

Set in 2019, this case describes the challenges faced in the adoption of DfMA (Design for manufacturing and assembly) concept by Singapore's construction industry. Use of DfMA increased productivity manifold, requiring less time for completion and less manpower, in addition to providing a safer and healthier work environment. The transition entailed a significant shift in the way different stakeholders such as developers, consultants, architects, contractors, vendors and the government operated in the domain, as the design and construction processes using DfMA were more akin to factory production and manufacturing industry than to the prevalent construction industry. Consequently, the existing ecosystem in the industry was not suited to the new technology and lacked supportive services and economies of scale. In addition, Singapore's easy access to low-cost migrant labour from regional countries had made the labour-intensive methods far more lucrative for the developers and contractors. In particular, the case presents the journey of two avant-garde companies - Teambuild, and LHL in their quest to adopt Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction (PPVC) and Mass Engineered Timber (MET), two lead DfMA technologies in their projects, supported by Building and Construction Authority (BCA) of Singapore. BCA, as the key enabler for proliferation of DfMA technology, provided support to organisations keen to adopt it by subsidising training programs and co-funding technology adoption. However, despite a few landmark successes, the majority of the industry was risk averse and preferred to continue with the cheaper and conventional construction method that they were well-versed in. Going forward, it was important to create additional value and better interfaces for the stakeholders in order to bring down their associated tangible and intangible transaction costs.

In November 2019, Tommy Leong, Zone President, East Asia & Japan (EAJ), of Schneider Electric, a French multinational corporation (MNC), hosted regional clients in the Singapore HQ building. He highlighted how the company would capitalise on digital transformation to help create a futuristic city. Despite the high operating costs, Singapore was an ideal location for a regional HQ because of its first-rate infrastructure, strategic location and business-friendly corporate ecosystem. Through the Economic Development Board, the government actively pitched to MNCs and provided concierge services when possible. Schneider Electric was the global leader in energy management and industrial automation with strong growth prospects due to increasing urbanisation and digitisation trends. Leong had identified ASEAN as the growth region for the company. How could he create customised solutions for the business requirements of clients?

In 2019, Ai Hua Ong, Group Chairperson, Asia Pacific of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), was ruminating over the choice of Singapore as the company's regional headquarters (RHQ). While political stability, ease of doing business, a start-up friendly and open innovation ecosystem and supportive government regulations had built an ideal climate for the city to function as a base for a RHQ, many other cities in Asia provided tough competition to the city country. Moreover, while co-location had been widely recognised as one of the drivers towards the effectiveness of the innovation ecosystem - emerging technologies like hologrammatic communication could make the need for the RHQ model outdated. In the R&D space, the need for a skilled workforce could be alleviated by employing technologies like Artificial Intelligence. For the purpose of collaboration, blockchain technology could be applied to enable firms to share data more securely over longer distances. The use of Internet of Things (IoT) in the biomedical sciences sector, could reduce the need for being close to the consumer for R&D and market research; while the increased use of 3D printing devices could make Singapore's advantage as a logistical hub in the region less salient, as designs could be shared virtually and printed locally. Amidst such tugging tensions, Ong wondered if Singapore would continue to remain an attractive destination as an RHQ? Would its innovation-ecosystem suffice as a sustained differentiating factor? Could the concept of Technology Hub be an alternative path?

Almost three-and-a-half years after a turnaround strategy for the UK-based loss-making Guardian Media Group (GMG) was launched, it had finally managed to stem its losses. Key to the successful turnaround was a culture of openness, which was exemplified by how it allowed its partners to reuse its online content provided they carried its advertising, and its groundbreaking efforts to bring citizen journalism to the fore. The case examines how GMG built an ecosystem that flew in the face of conventional wisdom by providing content for free and working with supposed rivals, yet enabled it to boost its earnings in the process.

This is a two-part case series. Case A begins in October 2012, when Encompass Singapore has introduced innovative ways to increase the capacity of its facility to cope with its fierce growth over the past few years in the Pay-tv industry. The company has captured over 50% of the market for outsourced digital playout services in Asia. The sheer speed of growth that Encompass Singapore is experiencing calls for an innovative, solutions-driven approach to almost all aspects of the business. Growth in the media industry is costly and capital intensive. At the same time, the group is facing increased competition. Process innovation has been critical in supporting the growth of the company since 2009, but can that alone continue to fuel double-digit growth? Case B is set in April 2019, when the media industry has shifted gear, and Pay-tv demand is declining. Online television content and Video on Demand services have instead started to see a growing demand in the market and Encompass is forced to adjust its strategy to cope with changing industry and market. Can process innovation continue to support the growth of the company amidst technology disruption and changing trends? What can be Encompass's growth strategy moving forward?

This is a two-part case series. Case A begins in October 2012, when Encompass Singapore has introduced innovative ways to increase the capacity of its facility to cope with its fierce growth over the past few years in the Pay-tv industry. The company has captured over 50% of the market for outsourced digital playout services in Asia. The sheer speed of growth that Encompass Singapore is experiencing calls for an innovative, solutions-driven approach to almost all aspects of the business. Growth in the media industry is costly and capital intensive. At the same time, the group is facing increased competition. Process innovation has been critical in supporting the growth of the company since 2009, but can that alone continue to fuel double-digit growth? Case B is set in April 2019, when the media industry has shifted gear, and Pay-tv demand is declining. Online television content and Video on Demand services have instead started to see a growing demand in the market and Encompass is forced to adjust its strategy to cope with changing industry and market. Can process innovation continue to support the growth of the company amidst technology disruption and changing trends? What can be Encompass's growth strategy moving forward?

This relatively short case describes the development of Rolls-Royce's (RR) Seletar plant in Singapore, and in particular how the plant moved very quickly from a factory receiving information and innovation from its sister facility in the United Kingdom to a node in RR's manufacturing network. The Seletar plant in Singapore is RR's first overseas plant to assemble aircraft engines, as well as to produce some high tech components. The case is divided into three main parts, each discussing a key question: Why did RR decide to set up a plant in Singapore? How did RR develop in the early days of the plant (e.g. talent development, transfer of knowledge, etc.)? How did the RR Seletar plant evolve from a receiver of knowledge to a partner in the network? The case ends by asking the question how to maintain the good network interactions after the plant has matured, and the initial attention paid to the new plant by the UK management has subsided. The case pays particular attention to the transfer of knowledge from the UK to Singapore and the development of a capable local workforce and management.

A firm's raw material sourcing knowledge can be a strategic resource. This article explores how firms can capture and use this knowledge. It examines the sourcing experiences of four firms in four different countries in the automotive industry and identifies the raw material sourcing knowledge-related parameters. Synthesizing the findings from these case studies, it proposes the concept of the sourcing hub, a collaborative center involving the firm, its suppliers, and raw material suppliers, which can effectively capture and deploy the raw material sourcing knowledge for managing value in upstream sourcing.

This case is set in April 2013, and discusses the key elements that have contributed to the successful operations of the Rolls-Royce Singapore Seletar Campus. In 2006, Rolls-Royce had decided to expand its production capacity and set up operations outside the UK to meet growing customer demands and future growth. Asia was the Group's largest and fastest growing market, with almost half of their new aircraft-engine orders coming from customers in this region. In order to meet this increased demand, Rolls-Royce helped strategise and facilitate the company's largest investment to date: the US$565 million (SG$700 million) Seletar Campus - a 154,000 square metre site housing cutting-edge manufacturing, training and research capabilities. However, while building the facility was relatively straightforward; sourcing the right talent was more challenging. The issue of technology and knowledge transfer essentially came down to developing the high-value skills necessary to assemble and test Trent aero engines and manufacture wide chord fan blades to Rolls-Royce standards. Rolls-Royce was committed to growing its own highly-skilled workforce, and invested heavily in training staff with the intention of developing high-value skills through internationally recognised qualification programmes. Rolls-Royce knew that the local labour market lacked enough seasoned aerospace technicians with the desired manufacturing experience to meet their requirements. To overcome this challenge, the Group developed several collaborations with existing and new partners to develop training and qualifications programmes. This case discusses the challenges encountered, and the way they were overcome, by this public-private partnership that successfully created an ecosystem, which could provide a steady stream of new recruits with the high-value prerequisite skills mandatory for developing quality aerospace technicians.

This case is set in April 2013, and discusses the key elements that have contributed to the success of Infosys Ltd's Campus Connect Programme (CC) in developing India's Information Technology talent over the past eight years. The CC programme is an industry-academia initiative that re-constructs the education experience of engineering students. The programme was launched in May 2004 with 70 colleges. By December 2012, the model had been successfully scaled up to cover 400 colleges, and more than 180,000 readers and 8,300 faculty members across India had benefited from the programme's technical and soft skills training, and exposure to industry practices. Since CC's launch, Infosys has experienced a measurable improvement in the quantity and quality of their new recruits. Infosys understands the value of creating a talent ecosystem, and this case explains just how, and why, Campus Connect has worked as a successful example of industry-academia partnership in the talent management space.

Changes in the global environment are generating opportunities for companies to build advantage by creating loosely coupled networks or ecosystems. Ecosystems are larger, more diverse, and more fluid than a traditional set of bilateral partnerships or complementors. By leveraging ecosystems, companies can deliver complex solutions while maintaining corporate focus. This article describes six keys to unlock ecosystem advantage: pinpointing where value is created, defining an architecture of differentiated partner roles, stimulating complementary partner investments, reducing the transaction costs, facilitating joint learning across the network, and engineering effective ways to capture profit.

Through the example of the high-profile Eurotunnel project, the case shows how important contracts and agreements are in project management. Seen through a retrospective lens, it allows students to analyse the relative contributions of market uncertainty, technical uncertainty, and behaviour alignment through contracts, to the performance problems of the effort to construct the first-ever undersea rail link between France and the UK.

This case describes Banyan Tree Resorts & Hotel's rapid growth starting from a single resort converted from a disused tin mine in Phuket, Thailand, to become an international resort operator and one of Asia's top 20 brands. It explores the realisation of an innovative lifestyle concept, the subsequent challenges involved in replicating its original success in different parts of the world, the company's marketing strategy, and the development of service operations capabilities to back the brand, as well as the challenges faced in extending the brand into new businesses including branded goods and a travel portal.

In June 1998, The Board of Directors of INSEAD, a leading international business school based in Fontainebleau (France) had to decide to proceed with an investment in a second campus in Singapore. Over the past 20 years INSEAD had established an international reputation and had developed some expertise on Asian business. The case presents the history of the project, the process by which the idea was transformed into an investment proposal and presents various views on the potential and risks of such development.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The word of the hour is "uncertainty"; it permeates all of modern life and business. Uncertainty so strongly affects companies' project management, for example, that three project management experts decided to study companies that successfully embrace it. The authors acknowledge the challenges of increased complexity, the shrinking of development cycles, and the inadequacy of traditional risk management in shifting markets. But they observe that, counterintuitively, projects conducted in such environments often have high returns. The secret is a willingness to redefine everything in midcourse on the basis of the predominant type of uncertainty. Arnoud De Meyer, Christoph H. Loch, and Michael T. Pich, professors of technology management at INSEAD Singapore, observed 16 major projects in a variety of industries. Using interviews and research on project documentation, they identify four major uncertainty categories. In variation, the project plan is detailed and stable, but project schedules and budgets drift from their projected values. Foreseen uncertainty is characterized by identifiable and understandable influences that the team cannot be sure will occur. Unforeseen uncertainty and chaos are the hardest categories to address because they require a balance between planning and learning. Projects featuring unforeseen uncertainty or chaos are common when the technology is in upheaval or when research, not development, is the main goal. At such times, a project may have successful results that are completely unexpected. Companies must learn to ascertain what kind of uncertainty is likely to dominate a project. For those that do, the authors reveal the best mix of tools and techniques to select when managing each type.

Supplement to case IN1082. This series of 3 cases describes the creation of a dotcom start-up in Singapore and its penetration of the Chinese market. The company, MyWeb Inc.com started as a web designer, but moved quickly into set-top boxes for Internet access using TVs, as well as the design of a portal with localized content for China. At the end of the case, the inventors of the dotccom realize that their original business model is not viable and they evaluate the different options they have to create a profitable business model.

Supplement to case IN1082. This series of 3 cases describes the creation of a dotcom start-up in Singapore and its penetration of the Chinese market. The company, MyWeb Inc.com started as a web designer, but moved quickly into set-top boxes for Internet access using TVs, as well as the design of a portal with localized content for China. At the end of the case, the inventors of the dotccom realize that their original business model is not viable and they evaluate the different options they have to create a profitable business model.

This series of 3 cases describes the creation of a dotcom start-up in Singapore and its penetration of the Chinese market. The company, MyWeb Inc.com started as a web designer, but moved quickly into set-top boxes for Internet access using TVs, as well as the design of a portal with localized content for China. At the end of the case, the inventors of the dotccom realize that their original business model is not viable and they evaluate the different options they have to create a profitable business model.

Supplement to case IN1040. The Alcatel Access Systems Division case highlights the issues and challenges, mainly in terms of product development and innovation, within a multinational organization traditionally organized on a country-based unit structure. The case focuses on the strategic organization and management issues aimed at developing adequate international integration, innovation and transformation processes amidst a fiercely changing competitive environment.