Israeli generative artificial intelligence company AI21 Labs was founded in 2017 to realize the vision of true machine intelligence. It sought to reinvent writing and reading and in 2020 it launched Wordtune, an app using GenAI software to offer alternate text suggestions to help improve users' prose; in 2021 it released Wordtune Read, an app that summarized documents. In 2021 the company unveiled its first Large Language Model (LLM), and it also offered five application program interfaces on its Studio platform. Following a 2023 partnership with Amazon Bedrock, AI21 Labs' LLM was available to third parties. After Generative AI burst onto the global scene in 2022, AI21 Labs considered the best strategy to stay relevant among tech giants in the GenAI arena.
This case covers Ripple's events from 2020-2023. The focus of this case is Ripple's 2023 victory over the SEC, which sued Ripple in 2020 claiming that they did not register their XRP coins as securities. After Ripple's victory, CEO Garlinghouse faced numerous decisions, including whether to invest other companies to building out the crypto ecosystem, launch a stablecoin (as several crypto companies had done), and whether he should take a leadership position on government policies on crypto or remain in the background.
What's the future of corporate communications? Email? Corporate messaging? The battle for corporate messaging in 2023 was stacking up as a fight between Slack, which had been recently acquired by Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams. This case explores a classic judo strategy problem: how to compete against a giant competitor? Slack's new CEO, Lidiane Jones, had to devise a strategy against Microsoft, which bundles Teams with Office, and gives it away for free. Should Salesforce promote Slack as a standalone, superior product? Bundle Salesforce and Slack together? And, should Slack price its SaaS as a premium product or give it away to build scale and account control?
In 2023, the term metaverse - a combination of "meta" and "universe" - had become a catch-all for a diverse set of expectations about online virtual worlds and the future of the internet. To some, the metaverse conjured images of a massive participatory videogame inspired by science fiction. To others, the metaverse meant the evolution of the internet into something more three-dimensional and social. In October 2021, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his strategy would be "metaverse-first," leading him to change Facebook's name to Meta. However, executives at other companies like Epic Games, Microsoft, Nvidia, Electronic Arts, and Apple had different views of if, when, and how the metaverse would take shape. Amid the hype and uncertainty, executives and entrepreneurs had to grapple with critical questions as they strove to form their own vision and strategy for the metaverse. First, was the metaverse going to emerge in the next few years or much further down the road, if at all? Second, what would be the important use cases? Some expected gaming to emerge first, while others expected enterprises would drive adoption. Third, and perhaps most critically, would the metaverse be an open and interoperable virtual world, like the internet itself? Or would the development of the metaverse play out like the more recent models of app stores and social networks, born on the internet but maintained as distinct walled gardens? Answers to these questions would shape billions of dollars of investment, profits, and losses.
In 2022, after five years of pursuing a new "AI-first" strategy, Google had captured a sizeable share of the American and global markets for voice assistants. Google Assistant was used by hundreds of millions of users around the world, but Amazon retained the largest share of the smart speaker market, and Apple's share was quickly growing following a strategic shift towards affordability. In addition, Chinese companies including Baidu and Alibaba dominated the smart speaker market in China, and their products were increasingly popular in foreign markets. Google CEO Sundar Pichai needed to figure out how to gain new users and grow Google Assistant's market share. Second, he needed to determine how Google Assistant would, if ever, generate revenue.
2021 was a banner year for Elon Musk. CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, the aerospace manufacturer SpaceX, and a few smaller startups, Musk became the richest person on Earth after Tesla reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion and SpaceX a private valuation of $100 billion. Both companies made bet big on risky technologies. Now that they were leaders in booming industries, the task was to retain their lead. Musk had proposed a round of big new bets for each company: Tesla was to work with partners to rapidly expand battery production with a focus on lithium-iron phosphate batteries, and SpaceX was to launch thousands more of its Starlink satellites aboard Starship, the largest launch system ever devised. Meanwhile, Tesla faced litigation related to SEC complaints and safety concerns about its Autopilot driver-assistance system, and SpaceX's growing Starlink constellation similarly raised safety concerns. For Musk, the question was: should he consolidate gains and fix the operational, legal, and political problems before launching new initiatives, or should he proceed full speed ahead?
In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce. While widely viewed as the best corporate collaboration and messaging software, Slack was being challenged by Microsoft, which was giving away its competitive product, Microsoft Teams, for free with a subscription to Microsoft's Office software suite. The purpose of this case is explore how to compete with "free." The case examines the advantages and disadvantages of bundling and how to build an enterprise software platform.
In March 2021, Amnon Shashua, co-founder and CEO of Israel-based Mobileye, was preparing to meet with Intel's new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, to review plans for the future. Mobileye had been acquired by California-based Intel in 2017, but still operated independently. Mobileye was the global leader in vision technology for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) with a 70% market share and $1 billion in revenue. However, for Shashua, ADAS was just the first step towards his dream of leading the autonomous vehicle (AV) revolution. It was this vision that led Intel to acquire Mobileye for $15.3 billion. Shashua's challenge was that consumer AVs were still years away due to concerns over safety, regulation, cost, and consumer acceptance. A nearer term use case for AVs was the robotaxi market-fully autonomous, driverless taxis. Shashua and his team were excited about the potential of robotaxis to change the future of mobility, projecting that the market would grow to $160 billion globally by 2030. Mobileye believed that it could generate at least $15 billion in annual robotaxi revenue by the end of the decade. Equally important, Shashua viewed robotaxis as a necessary first step toward consumer AVs. Mobileye could use its experience in robotaxis to improve AV technology, address regulatory challenges, and build high definition maps. The long-term question facing Mobileye was whether to: 1) invest billions of dollars to build-out a global, vertically integrated robotaxi business; 2) use robotaxis as an opportunity to learn and then revert back to a horizontal supplier of AV chips and software; and/or 3) do both? During most of Intel's history, the company had been a horizontal semiconductor company which avoided vertically integrating into its customers' businesses.
This case is used to explore the strategic concept of "look forward, reason back." Roku in 2021 is trying to figure out the future of television and streaming media. Students are asked to provide a vision for television and streaming media (that is, Look Forward) by the middle of the decade, and then reason back to the strategic choices it should take in 2021. Roku is well positioned, but industry and consumer habits are changing quickly, and Roku must decide whether to focus on creating its own exclusive content, focus on licensing its OS to TV manufacturers, and/or remain the "Switzerland" of the streaming media world, without competing with content players or TV OEMs.
This case explores the competitive war between Snap, Facebook, and TikTok in 2021. The strategic focus is on Snapchat: how should it respond to the emergence of TikTok, and how should it compete with the dominant competitor in its space - Facebook. The case examines the history of Snap, its emerging threat from TikTok, and its on-going struggles to become profitable in the shadow of intense competition from Facebook, and especially Instagram. Looking at strategy from the perspective of Snap CEO, Evan Spiegel, the case asks whether Snap should seek new demographics to grow the user base, explore alternative business models such as WeChat, differentiate itself with augmented reality, or focus on privacy to distinguish itself from the competition. The context of these strategic choices is how do you win in a world with strong network effects and much larger competitors.
Founded in 2012, Skillz offered a platform for mobile app developers to monetize skill-based games via prized tournaments. Skillz had over 20,000 registered developers that had created thousands of Skillz-powered games played by over 30 million registered users (gamers). A successful gamer could make hundreds of thousands of dollars playing competitive games of skill. The company had a gross marketplace volume of almost $1 billion in 2019 and over 250 employees primarily in San Francisco, California and Portland, Oregon. CEO Andrew Paradise challenged his leadership team to explore options for accelerating growth.
While the growth of virtual reality started in gaming, the industry was increasingly focused on enterprise applications in 2020. This note explores the market opportunities and challenges for virtual reality and augmented reality in the enterprise, while diving into a number of specific applications, including education, construction, retail, and training.
In 2020, Numenta's co-founder, Jeff Hawkins, completed his pathbreaking research on artificial intelligence. His co-founder and CEO, Donna Dubinsky, had to find a business model to monetize the technology. This case explores the challenges of building a business around intellectual property.
This short cases provides an update on TiVo from 2016-2020. The case covers TiVo merger with Rovi, the turnover of several CEOs, and struggles on how to reposition its product business (the digital video recorder).
After a decade as CEO, Tim Cook is facing one of his biggest strategic transitions of his tenure. While Apple had performed spectacularly well under Cook, Apple's core business was maturing. Sales of iPhones, iPads, and Macs were flat or down. However, Apple's new hardware-Apple Watch and Airpods-as well as services were growing rapidly. This case explores Apple's history and Cook's strategic options for driving new hardware and services into Apple's mainstream in the next decade.
After raising $6 billion and buying 60,000 patents, Intellectual Venture was confronted with a changing legal environment. A number of important legal decision, including the Supreme Court's so-called "Alice" decision, IV had to shift strategy. IV sold off a substantial portion of its IP portfolio, and refocused its efforts on trying to innovate, using its acquired technologies.
Innovation and transaction platforms have enabled nearly every type of exchange and activity imaginable in today’s world, earning some of the companies that own them valuations in excess of $1 trillion. But while successful platforms yield a powerful competitive advantage with financial results to match, the nature of platforms is changing, as are the ecosystems and technologies that drive them and the challenges and rules associated with managing them.
Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook based on the idea that connecting people was a fundamentally good thing-and a way to turn a handsome profit. But from the beginning, Facebook received criticism both for how it handled user privacy and how it curated user-generated content. These two issues coalesced in the aftermath of the 2016 United States presidential election, after Facebook's role in the spread of political misinformation and the leak of Facebook user data to political consulting firms began to receive significant media coverage. In 2019, Facebook announced it was shifting to a "digital living room" model that would focus more on private, encrypted conversations and less on sharing viral content. Several important questions remained. Would the digital living room ease users' privacy concerns? Would Facebook still be able to effectively curate content? Would its advertising model still work? Or were financial success and good governance mutually exclusive? This case explores the parameters of governing an internet-based platform.