The global rise of responsible investing in the last decades (boosted by the increasing debates around climate change, business ethics and distribution of wealth) urged the development of coherent and reliable methodologies gauging the effect of business on Environmental, Societal and Governance (ESG) aspects. However, existing ESG rating methods not only differs greatly among themselves, but they are also typically based on companies' own practices (outputs), not on the final impact (outcome). To measure the latter, a Geneva-based company called Impaakt developed a digital platform, using the 17 United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as benchmark, engaging the collective intelligence of the global community (on a Wikipedia-like model) to achieve this ambitious goal. This case explores the strategies behind the design of such a platform, investigates the importance of scale and sides, and analyses to what extent social and environmental impact can be measured objectively.
The case, based on extensive interviews with Retail Rocket's co-founders (Nikolay Khlebinsky and Andrey Chizh), several employees and one of the start-up's investors, documents the genesis and rapid growth of the company. Launched in 2012 in Moscow, Russia, Retail Rocket was a big data-based personalization platform for e-commerce and omnichannel retail identifying the needs of customers based on their online behavior and, thanks to artificial intelligence, offering personalized product recommendations through the website, e-mail and other marketing channels, increasing the conversion rate, average order value and retention rate of its clients. In effect, it makes available to small and mid-sized online firms the same website optimization functionalities associated with powerhouses such as Amazon or Yandex. Its value proposition included superior shopping-pattern prediction algorithms and value-based pricing using randomized A/B testing. What would it take to monetize and grow its exceptional IT competencies?
The case highlights the dilemma of Zenith Watches, a company that got stuck in its own tradition and lost its drive to innovate, relying too long on technical inventions of the past. Julien Tornare was appointed as Zenith CEO in early 2017 by Jean Claude Biver, head of LVMH watch division (Zenith's parent company) and living legend of the Swiss watch industry (after turning around Blancpain, Omega, Hublot and TAG Heuer). Julien was tasked with repositioning Zenith and injecting a new startup mindset into it. Tornare inherits a demotivated but talented workforce in a very traditional artisanal company but aims to spark creativity and innovation there. His agenda is loaded: repositioning the brand, bringing new products to market, improving sales, opening new markets, transforming the culture, all of this on a short schedule because LVMH has a short fuse
The case is the fourth is a case series documenting the genesis, deal engineering, early implementation and then mounting operational challenges faced by Robin Budowski as he acquired and tried to turn around Château d'Agel, a vineyard located in the Minervois region of Languedoc, going from ideation to execution, stagnation and deep crisis. The key protagonist has to decide which plan he will present to the upcoming critical shareholders' meeting. Chateau d'Agel was acquired in 2003, for €0.8 million. After years of below par performances, sales dropped drastically in 2017 while capital expenditures exploded, generating critical financial issues. The vineyard manager was replaced and Robin took full operational control to manage the turnaround, cutting costs and investments.
Ukrainian founder Aleksandr Stepura wants to grow his civilian drone-manufacturing startup Skyeton. Thanks to a local pool of aeronautical expertise inherited from the Soviet period, Stepura rapidly reached product excellence, technically on par with global powerhouses such as Boeing and other manufacturers coming from the military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) space. Coming from a market approach focused solely on addressing the needs of governmental entities (police, border patrol, coast guards...), Stepura wants to expand the activities to regular B2B sales, for which the sales cycle is much shorter and less dependent on political connections. But moving from B2G to B2B was no easy feat operationally. The startup also had to make other decisions: selling products (drones, as flying platforms or complete systems) or services? Where to re-locate the company? What business model to pursue? How much financing was required? What needs to change in the management team to go from startup to scaleup effectively?
LakeDiamond is a company founded in 2015 in Yverdon, close to Geneva, in Switzerland. Its goal was to leverage an industrialized method of producing high-purity diamonds through a process called "micro-wave chemical vapor deposition" (CVD). Such diamonds are much purer than diamonds obtained through mining, allowing for novel industrial uses for diamonds, such as in watchmaking or in developing military applications. An initial funding round allowed LakeDiamond to demonstrate its ability to grow such diamonds in an industrial reactor. In 2017, LakeDiamond's founder Pascal Gallo started seeking new funding to scale up the operation. At the same time, the hype around blockchains had started to drive a surge in startup funding through Initial Coin Offerings (ICO). As Gallo was reluctant to dilute his ownership and control over the venture, he decided to raise the money needed for LakeDiamond's expansion through an ICO. Despite significant press coverage regarding blockchains, ICOs remained at the time relatively niche investments. Therefore, to target a wider base of investors, Gallo partnered with Swissquote, a prominent Swiss online bank that was at the forefront in offering to layman investors access to crypto-currencies. The ICO did raise sufficient funds for new reactors to be purchases and production to start. However, LakeDiamond's sales never really picked up afterwards and by early 2020 the company was filing for bankruptcy. Framed from the perspective of a small investor assessing the opportunity of investing in LakeDiamond's ICO, the case is based on publicly released information by the company, and especially on its ICO. Extensive interviews with ICO experts who assessed the LakeDiamond fundraising at the time were also conducted.
When the COVID pandemic hit developed economies in full swing in the spring of 2020, companies scrambled to make sense of the implications for their business models. In most cases, reactions were defensive, aimed at ensuring the survival of the firm to the end of the epidemics. Cimpress, better known for its B2C brand Vistaprint, the world leader in e-printing, took a very different stand: it resorted to very creative finance to not only address the downside of the crisis (making sure it raised enough capital to weather the likely difficult quarters and renegotiating preventively loan covenants that could get breached in the worse scenarios from a position of strength) but also to possibly take advantages of emerging M&A opportunities. Competitors in less favorable financial shape would likely be put in situations of distress by the crisis: this could create extremely interesting opportunities for Cimpress. This aggressive use of refinancing during times of crisis for both risk mitigation and opportunistic gains is discussed.
Jonathan Lachowitz founded a start-up venture in the Financial Planning industry called White Lighthouse Investment Management in 2006. He targeted a niche segment (US citizens living abroad) that had a critical problem that was not addressed by existing companies (e.g. US Tax Reporting). The organization has grown slowly and consistently. In 2015 the current form of organization is stretched to a maximum. There are several decisions Jonathan needs to make, he needs to decide whether or not to hire new employees or partners and he needs to come up with a strategy on what type of clients he should accept.
Analytics Pros (AP) is a consultancy that gives elite and global brands the most accurate picture of their digital landscape. In particular, Analytics Pros analyzes any interaction an online- customer experiences with websites, mobile apps, marketing efforts and more. The firm leverages primarily the leading software platforms Google Analytics 360 Suite which is part of the Google Marketing Platform to generate insights that help customers better understand their own customer journey from marketing acquisition and purchase through to retention and loyalty. Founded by young entrepreneurs at the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2009 with limited experience on how to run a business and no capital funding, AP reached $4.5m in revenues by 2014. A subsequent acquisition was considered to propel the company's growth but almost ruined the company if the CEO had not pulled the trigger to fire herself.
The global rise of responsible investing in the last decades (boosted by the increasing debates around climate change, business ethics and distribution of wealth) urged the development of coherent and reliable methodologies gauging the effect of business on Environmental, Societal and Governance (ESG) aspects. However, existing ESG rating methods not only differs greatly among themselves, but they are also typically based on companies' own practices (outputs), not on the final impact (outcome). To measure the latter, a Geneva-based company called Impaakt developed a digital platform, using the 17 United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as benchmark, engaging the collective intelligence of the global community (on a Wikipedia-like model) to achieve this ambitious goal. This case explores the strategies behind the design of such a platform, investigates the importance of scale and sides, and analyses to what extent social and environmental impact can be measured objectively.
By 2020, Umesh Shah could rightly be proud of what he and his team had accomplished over the last eight years to capture white space consumers, i.e. those consumers that Unilever operating units had progressively labelled non-core or new groups created by emerging megatrends, such as globalization and digitalization. Unilever International UI was created with the mandate to create the capabilities to reach out to these consumers and re capture them for the Group. It quickly proved its case when it doubled the turnover it had inherited in less than four years. In a second phase, it doubled it again, reaching a turnover of €1 billion in 2019, ahead of plans. UI's strong performance was acknowledged within Unilever when it won the prestigious Unilever Global Compass Award in 2019. UI was now preparing to embark on the next phase of its journey, labelled UI 3.0, with the goal of again doubling its turnover to €2 billion. Three areas were singled out for attention:(1)making a strong business case for the market potential;(2)building the capabilities to scale by investing further in digital marketing and the partner network; and(3)maintaining and even enhancing the unit's entrepreneurial culture, ensuring motivation and proper compensation for its intrapreneurs. Getting to €1 billion in sales had not been easy but doubling it again would increase UI's complexity by an order of magnitude. How could UI keep pace and remain entrepreneurial while at the same time maintaining its strong governance and control systems? intaining double digit annual growth would require focusing on ever-larger opportunities and their inherent complexities, and placing larger bets, some of which would definitely fail. Was UI ready to cope with larger failures? And what about the Unilever mothership? It relished the unit's success, but would it still be there in difficult times? Umesh knew that UI's past achievements only earned it additional runway; he and his colleagues could not be
ZURICH (SWITZERLAND), MAY 2018 - Cristian Grossmann arrived early in the office that day. It had not been a breeze for Beekeeper to reach its current situation: a quickly expanding company with over 130 employees across the world, with a plethora of large clients. It was not so long ago that he had started a side-project with a university friend to develop an anonymous flirting platform for students. Several pivots later, the project had started getting a lot of traction and disrupting the hospitality industry's way of working. The last 12 months had been much more turbulent than expected, and Grossmann was mulling over how the next 12 months would look like. It was crucial for Beekeeper to continue growing, yet there were more and more indications of the organization's rapid growth leading to overwhelming complexity. So how could Grossmann steer the company towards even more growth while staying agile and exciting?
MILAN (ITALY), SEPTEMBER 2018. The Strategic Lab at De Agostini, part strategic think-tank and part assessment tool for the next-generation talent of the Drago-Boroli family, owners of De Agostini, was brainstorming the future direction of the diversified, family-owned group. After almost 100 years in the publishing and printing business, the third-generation family leader Marco Drago set the family firm on a radical new course, which included globalization and diversification across media and communication, gaming, and financial services to create a powerhouse, with entities listed on three different stock exchanges. However, diversification did not come without its challenges. Could portfolio repurposing also serve to anchor the family's identity? Were family values properly embedded in the current structures and investments? Should the holding structure be perennialized or be treated as a temporary arrangement until the next major liquidity event, when assets would again be refocused on a single industry? Did the legacy publishing business still serve a purpose or should it be disposed of? Emotional ties ran deep, but so did the losses... and those were not sustainable. Could it be turned around or pivoted to capture the latest digitalization wave?
Ellerines was a leading South African furniture retailer, with more than 1,270 stores; it was a household name in the country for 45 years and the main target market was the bottom of the pyramid, which was mainly driven by credit sales. In January 2008, African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL), a holding company of African Bank Limited (ABL), bought the Ellerines business with the aim of exploiting its credit customer base of a million names. ABL was one of the leading micro-financing banks in South Africa. The ABIL offer was the perfect opportunity for Ellerines to address the growing burden of regulatory compliance required under the new National Credit Act (NCA) and to possibly source capital at a lower cost, passing this on in part to customers through lower credit costs. ABIL set about implementing new strategic initiatives, mostly around centralizing the credit business with ABL credit unit and consolidating the brands across market segments. But these strategic initiatives proved disastrous for investors, employees and customers, with Ellerines and ABIL quickly showing abysmal results. On 7 August 2014, the iconic furniture retailer shocked the market by filing a business rescue process with the South African Regulator. On 10 August, ABIL itself was placed under curatorship by the South African Reserve Bank. How could these two reputable and profitable companies have failed so dramatically? Was this really a case of customers buying the credit terms more than the product?
PERTH, AUSTRALIA, September 2016. Torsten Ketelsen's history, for the last 30 years, had been deeply intertwined with that of garnet, the hardest industrial sand. He very much created a market for it, then brought GMA Garnet to a market leader position with a 40 per cent global market share. GMA Garnet's success was based on the exceptional quality of the product and on the company's complete control over the whole production and distribution cycle, from mining to processing, logistics, shipping and distribution to the final user world-wide as well as reprocessing and recycling. The industrial success story also benefited from the support of its controlling shareholder, Jebsen & Jessen Family Enterprise, a true master of entrepreneurial partnerships. But how did the Jebsen & Jessen Family Enterprise's overarching legacy, values, governance, business model and growth strategy contributed to the success of GMA Garnet? How will this relationship support or hamper the ambitious goals set for the company's future? What were the implications of the family firms' commitment to environmental mining practices and a circular economy in that context?
SINGAPORE, SEPTEMBER 2018. A Unilever internal venturing effort, UI was started in Singapore by Unilever veterans to substitute the rather inefficient operating companies' (OpCos) export units with a dedicated group focused on exploiting the group's "white spaces" - non-core brands, consumer segments (such as diasporas and religious sub-groups), new channels (such as airports and cruises) and geographies - not big enough to merit attention from the Unilever OpCos. The group proved quickly its value proposition, doubling the turnover it inherited in less than four years, with higher margins and growth rates than the mother company. By 2016, Aseem was entrusted with organizing the marketing function, setting up a 15-person team based at HQ. The team managed 10,000+ brand/country cells remotely and had to rely heavily on digital marketing, using 3rd party resources, including open talent platforms, to gain leverage, cut costs and grow faster. It conducted 250 launches in the previous 18 months, while reducing advertising and promotion costs by 20%. Now Aseem had to take digital marketing to the next level. Should he increase spending limits per brand/country?
The case, and its accompanying pedagogical material, offers a unique perspective on CSR-based transformational entrepreneurship, looking at a startup company with a strong ethical purpose and objective, in this case the transformation of the cocoa supply chain towards a child-labor free, fair-trade, organic agriculture-based sourcing. The case follows the history of Tony's Chocolonely, a Dutch producer of premium chocolate bars with a strong responsible footprint. It follows the footsteps of its founder, Teun van de Keuken (a.k.a. Tony) from journalist to social activist and ultimately entrepreneur with a strong sense of purpose and defined impact objectives. The 12-year journey led Tony's Chocolonely chocolate bars to claim the number three spot in the Netherlands's chocolate markets, with the products also sold in many other countries around the globe. Learning objective: Scaling up, growth with purpose, social and environmental responsibility, CSR, child labor, materialities, mixed motives firms, ethics, transformational entrepreneurship, social ventures, impact investment, leading change, standard setting, ESG criteria, work-life balance.
Three generations of the Rubin family gathered around the dinner table for their usual Friday evening get-together. It was a perfect opportunity to discuss everything and anything about the business, the family and the world. The discussion quickly turned to the changing channels available to consumers. There had been many radical shifts before, and the family relished its agility and ability to regenerate itself regularly. Stephen's parents had arrived in Liverpool on ships from Eastern Europe and in 1932 set up a shoe wholesaler. Later, the Rubin family ventured into shoe manufacturing, first locally then became one of the first European companies to outsource production to Asia. Savvy investments, like the acquisition and divestment of a majority stake in Reebok, financially enabled them to progressively build a unique collection of sport brands, such as Speedo, Ellesse, Berghaus, Canterbury, Mitre and others. But venturing into retail with JD Sports Fashion was a radical departure from the family's B2B roots, and they still had to figure out all the implications of the move. Other topics of discussion included how digitalization and big data would impact the future of Pentland, the impact of global political shifts and the family generational transition, with the 2nd generation turning 80.