Novetex, one of the world's largest single-site spinners, was celebrating the opening of its new spinning mill in 2018. The Hong Kong-based company had spent four decades expanding its operations, and its main factory was in Zhuhai, in southern China. But this new facility would be in Hong Kong, and would produce yarn from waste material in Hong Kong's textile and apparel industry. This case looks at Novetex's commitment to environmental sustainability, and efforts to become a leader in developing cleaner solutions by focusing on circular economy solutions within the global textile and apparel industry. Global clothing production had doubled within two decades, reflecting the rise of the middle class consumer in countries like China, and increasing sales in affordable fast fashion in mature economies. But the apparel industry was a top industrial polluter, accounting for 10 percent of global carbon emissions; the polyester and nylon textile industry, moreover, released about a half-million tonnes of plastic microfibers into the oceans each year. This case study looks at the evolution and risks of "upcycling" technologies within the textile industry, and the science and partnerships behind the new Novetex Upcycling Factory in Hong Kong, which aimed to demonstrate the profitability and environmental sustainability of circular economy practices.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Thanks to emerging technologies like 3-D printing, manufacturers can offer consumers customized products and do so with unprecedented speed. Intrigued by a new product you saw in a YouTube video? Well, someday soon you may be able to personalize it, order it via the company's website, and have it in your hands in a matter of days. But to enable this phenomenon at scale, an entirely new model of supply chain is required.

The American public raised serious concerns about product safety in 2007, when the number of product recalls broke a new record. Following a temporary drop in 2008, both the number and retail value of recalled units have been increasing, despite various efforts exerted by government agencies and private companies to combat this trend. Currently, many countries--including China itself--are expressing serious concern over adulterated or unsafe food made or sold in China. What are the underlying reasons for some Chinese suppliers to adulterate product? When law enforcement is still weak in China, what can western manufacturers do to reduce the risk of product adulteration? To develop effective deterrence mechanisms, we first identify four underlying factors that create incentives for some Chinese suppliers to produce unsafe products. Then we propose ideas to discourage Chinese suppliers from producing adulterated products based on two underlying strategies: (1) creating economic incentives through contingent payments, and (2) creating a social incentive by threatening public exposure through the power of the Internet and social networking sites.

As the world population exceeded 7 billion by the end of 2011, various agencies working to alleviate poverty had come to a general consensus that pure charity was not a sustainable solution. In the absence of venture capital and angel investors in developing markets, Microfinance (MF) was one of the most promising tools in the fight against poverty. MF institutions tended to focus on micro-lending, providing small loans to micro-entrepreneurs from which interest could be earned. This case details the issues and challenges that Microfinance institutions faced a decade into the new millennium. The rise of mobile technology is a key theme as it promised innovative solutions. The case discusses various mobile financial services, including Safaricom's M-Pesa and M-Kesho offerings, and focuses on Experian's MicroAnalytics (EMA) unit, created to serve the financial services sector in developing countries. EMA developed an innovative system to enable financial service providers (clients) to serve their customers via a distributed, branchless, "mobile only" model. After a successful pilot study in the Philippines, EMA created a mobile banking platform that offered the potential of extending mobile money to other financial services as well as new customer and geographic segments.

In 1984, Trung Dung fled political persecution in Vietnam, the country of his birth, to arrive in the United States as a refugee with only $2 in his pocket. Over the next two decades, he proved his mettle as one of the most astute and successful Vietnamese-American entrepreneurs. Although Dung had never thought that he would return to Vietnam, the instinctive entrepreneur inside him recognized the opportunities presented by country's rapidly developing and modernizing economy. Dung returned in 2007 to found MobiVi, an Electronic Financial Transactions (EFT) firm. This case explores the intersection of mobile network operators, the ETF industry, and social entrepreneurs to pursue an innovative approach to providing financial services to the approximately 2 billion people worldwide who lacked access. The focus is on three of MobiVi's areas: the Nationwide Distribution System (NDS) unit, MobiVi's innovative offerings around financial services (MFS), and MobiVi Foundation. In 2012, Dung was looking at how to address market inefficiencies, help MobiVi's investors and business partners create and capture more value, and make credit more accessible to the middle and lower income classes in Vietnam. Dung was optimistic given the positive state of the Vietnamese economy, the patented MobiVi payments processing technology, and the most recent developments in telecommunication technologies.

This article presents a perceived shopping utility framework for analyzing the impact of retail price format on store choice. Retail price format, in turn, determines three key performance metrics: number of shoppers, number of trips, and average spending per trip. When choosing a store, consumers evaluate both the fixed and variable utilities of shopping. The fixed utility does not vary from trip to trip whereas the variable utility depends on the size and composition of the shopping list. Summarizes prior findings on store choice, analyzes how retailers can improve their performance, and interprets the practices of leading retailers. Presents a framework that can accommodate situations where retailers face multiple segments of buyers with different sensitivities to fixed and variable utilities.