As the new CEO of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) since autumn 2021, Christoph Schweizer had big shoes to fill-his predecessor, Rich Lesser, had tripled the partnership's total revenues and created digital initiatives that contributed 40+% of 2021 revenues, more than doubling headcount along the way. Schweizer announced plans for fresh growth: he planned to double the partnership's size and pursue what he called moonshots-dedicated efforts to accelerate in artificial intelligence and climate & sustainability that would each help drive 20% to 30% of total BCG revenues by 2030. Externally, however, BCG was soon grappling with the macro-effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well as rising interest rates, compounding the potential risks BCG faced with a commitment to rapid growth. As yet unclear was how much BCG needed to adapt or alter the formula of success that Lesser had applied in order to tackle these headwinds and deliver on Schweizer's vision.

This case examines factors contributing to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in March 2023, an event as unpredicted as it was quick. SVB funded nearly half of all U.S. venture-backed startups and at the end of 2022 held $173 billion in deposits, largely comprising the venture capital those startups had raised. On February 28, 2023, Moody's warned SVB about a potential credit rating downgrade, reflecting concerns over "funding, liquidity, and profitability" which factored in substantial unrealized losses on SVB's debt securities. To strengthen its balance sheet, SVB sold $21 billion in securities on March 8, but the move shocked its customers, as it resulted in a realized loss of $2 billion. The ensuing bank run intensified as SVB proved unable to placate investor fears or raise capital to plug that hole, and SVB was placed in receivership on the morning of March 10. Finger-pointing began immediately. Some argued that misguided pressure from Moody's over the fair value of SVB's debt securities prompted the bank's death spiral. Others blamed SVB management and directors, its regulators, and the venture capitalists whom SVB otherwise benefited. What went wrong, and what lessons could be learned?

Considers McDonald's efforts to build resilience into its global supply chain so that the company and its suppliers can better navigate the increasing pressures and pace of climate change and regulatory change, including a focus on supplying sustainable beef, while the company seeks to continue is current pace of growth and deliver on multiple public commitments.

In 2023, CEO Randy Wu was considering the optimal growth strategy for Fantuan, a restaurant food delivery platform that had expanded from its 2014 founding in Vancouver, Canada to serve the Chinese demand for Asian cuisine in urban markets across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Unlike mainstream platforms such as DoorDash and Uber Eats, Fantuan had been profitable for its first four years until deciding to invest heavily in international expansion in 2020. Wu and his team now were evaluating how best to scale Fantuan further in order to capture additional value: by extending its existing services to new geographies, deepening its offerings for existing customers, or broadening its customer base beyond the Chinese diaspora.

In December 2022, Loris's executive team considered their go-to-market strategy. Loris was an artificial intelligence (AI) software startup for the customer service industry with two products on the market: 1) Agent Assist which provided customer service agents (CSAs) with empathetic, on-brand responses to text-based live chat (live chat) conversations, and 2) Insights which provided customer experience (CX) leaders with CSA performance and customer satisfaction (CSAT) data. Loris was also developing a third product: Automated Quality Assurance (AQA) which analyzed quality assurance in customers' email and live chat conversations. The Loris team faced challenges to growth with prospective clients cutting costs through laying off their CX leaders and automating customer conversations through chatbots including the recently-released ChatGPT generative AI chatbot. To increase marketplace traction in preparation for raising a Series B round, the Loris team was reevaluating two aspects of its go-to-market strategy. First was sales approach: Loris previously used a sales-led growth model with robust marketing and sales teams, but had begun experimenting with product-led growth (PLG) which focused on developing exceptional products so that word of mouth would drive quick and exponential sales. Loris's PLG efforts had little success, though, and the team wondered if they should continue with PLG, revert to sales-led growth, or pursue pay-for-performance where clients only paid for Loris products upon Loris's achieving agreed-upon revenue or cost savings. Second, was product strategy: Loris had been offering Agent Assist and Insights as a bundled suite, but was considering using one of those products or AQA as a foot-in-the-door approach to cross-sell and upsell other products. Which sales and product strategy would help Loris grow, especially given the threat from ChatGPT which both raised awareness of AI tools like Loris and served as competition to Loris?

Supplements "Peloton Interactive (A)" (HBS No. 323-005), describing company restructuring and changes to management and the board of directors between February 8 and early October 2022.

Early in February 2022, the board of Peloton Interactive faced some knotty challenges. Immense pandemic demand for its stationary exercise bicycles and treadmills had prompted the firm to scale up production rapidly. But as gyms reopened and the virulence of the virus ebbed, demand had ebbed too, leaving Peloton with unsold inventory, an unsustainable cost structure, and Nasdaq's worst-performing stock for 2021. Activist shareholders were calling on the board to remove the founder CEO, who was board chair and a controlling shareholder through a dual-class share structure, and sell the company to a strategic investor. Complicating external pressure for change was a dual-class share structure that gave insiders a high degree of control over governance.

On December 12, 2020, SolarWinds learned that malware had been inserted in its software, potentially granting hackers access to thousands and thousands of its 300,000 customers. General Counsel Jason Bliss needed to orchestrate the company response without knowing how many of its customers had been affected, or how severely. The SolarWinds CEO was already scheduled to step down within three weeks, and the incoming CEO was as yet unaware of the incident. Bliss needed to address three immediate issues. First, did the incident qualify as a material event, and if so, what information did SolarWinds need to report to whom, and when? Second, what posture should SolarWinds take with respect to its customers and to the media, where the news was expected to break within a day? Third, how should SolarWinds balance helping its customers understand and recover from the breach with protecting itself from a negative stock price impact and potential legal implications?

Supplements the (A) case, describing actions taken by SolarWinds as well as by regulatory agencies in the aftermath of the immediate crisis. The case also includes reflections by SolarWinds managers on the choices they made with respect to disclosure, media relations, cybersecurity preparedness, and the sometimes-contending agendas of companies and government agencies SolarWinds interacted with.

Supplements "SolarWinds Confronts Sunburst" (723-357, -368) to provide context on types of cyberattacks and their costs, as well as-at the time of the Sunburst cyberattack in December 2020-the fragmentary regulatory regimes through which U.S. states and regulatory agencies attempted to encourage disclosure of cyberattacks and pursue enforcement action against negligence in failing to adequately safeguard personally identifiable information (PII), payment card information (PCI), and protected health information (PHI).

On June 21, 2022, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect, requiring companies to prove that goods imported from the People's Republic of China were not made with forced labor. The bill was a reaction to reports of products being made with forced labor from Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities being held in camps in the PRC, chiefly in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. However, implementation of the bill would be difficult. The PRC government denied the existence of forced labor, and this would make it nearly impossible for importers to trace their supply chains all the way to the origins of primary goods and prove that no forced labor was involved. Three industries were chiefly at stake - tomatoes, cotton, and polysilicon - at a time of high inflation and increasing urgency to do something about climate change, but the bill also threatened to fundamentally re-shape U.S.-PRC relations, potentially along the lines of a full-scale economic "decoupling."

This case covers TikTok's purchase of Musical.ly and the reaction of the United States government, including the review of the purchase by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the reaction of the presidential administration of Donald Trump. The case delves into the mechanics of CFIUS' legal mandate and its review process, in order to shed light on how the United States views data security in the context of rising geopolitical tensions, particularly with China and Russia. The case also looks at how China and Russia, among others, are seeking to establish their own versions of "internet sovereignty" in order to expand their domestic control and international influence. The case asks how these countervailing forces impact a company such as TikTok that seeks to become a global platform and how it can respond.

Early in August 2021, DaVita CEO Javier Rodriguez was assessing the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on his firm, which provided life-sustaining kidney dialysis to roughly 240,000 people. Effective infection control practices and information sharing had ensured that no COVID case had yet been transmitted to patients or staff on DaVita premises. A strong corporate culture had fostered the commitment among DaVita staff and management to each other and to their patients that had enabled their successful collective response. But 18 months into the pandemic, unprecedented staff attrition, exhaustion, and the now rapidly spreading Delta variant had Rodriguez and other DaVita managers concerned that the traits that had sustained the firm to date were no longer enough.

In November 2021, Girish Nadkarni, the head of TotalEnergies' corporate venture capital arm (TEV) was considering whether, and on what terms, to exit an investment in Hyzon Motors, a start-up supplier of hydrogen-powered trucks. TEV had invested $4 million in Hyzon, which had gone public in July 2021 with a $2.7 billion valuation. Nadkarni was now eager to take TEV's gains, but recognized the potential harm that selling TEV's Hyzon shares could cause. Market observers might interpret TEV's exit not as profit-taking but as an early investor's lack of confidence in Hyzon's prospects. Further, TotalEnergies had signed an MOU with Hyzon to bring 80 trucks to Europe-the goal was to demonstrate for its truck fleet customers the viability of hydrogen as a viable replacement fuel for the diesel it already supplied. Selling the Hyzon shares might convey the opposite message.

Orchadio, a direct-to-consumer grocery business, needs to conduct its first two A/B tests-one to evaluate the effectiveness and functioning of its newly redesigned website, and one to market-test four versions of a new banner for the website. To do so, it will rely on a technology management platform designed by Split Software, whose feature flags allow Orchadio engineers to (1) turn specific software features on and off and (2) to limit access to those features to specific groups of website visitors. These capabilities in turn enable A/B feature testing. Split also offers data analytics to allow Orchadio to assess how its tests affect a plethora of Orchadio's business, software, and operating metrics. Orchadio managers now need to decide how to design their experiments for maximum impact, including whether or how to sequence them.

Supplement to the (A) case.

As founders of the software company Basecamp, Jason Fried and David H. Hansson were used to being the subjects of social media attention. Both maintained active and dedicated Twitter followings for their unique perspectives on management and life. But on April 26, 2021, Fried and Hansson found themselves in the spotlight for a very different reason: they had just publicly announced a new policy that would curtail the discussion of politics at work. The co-founders argued that this policy would prevent distractions and polarizing political differences that Basecamp employees could not hope to resolve amicably or productively. But just one day later, a number of their employees reached out to a journalist to report that Fried and Hansson were simply using their new policy to chill dissent about problematic practices within the company. The subsequent exposé yielded public outcry, and the co-founders were firmly in the crosshairs. In response, Fried held an all-hands meeting at the company to address the events, but tensions quickly escalated. Two hours into the meeting, one of his employees challenged Fried to publicly denounce another employee who had voiced an opinion on matters of racial bias and white supremacy that some viewed as deeply troubling. Basecamp, Fried had argued, could not afford to get distracted by talking politics at work. But could it afford not to?

Supplement to the (A) case that offers an assessment of the August 2019 Markopolos report on General Electric.

Realizing in early 2021 that their pending real estate investment fund would likely be oversubscribed, Drake Real Estate Partners co-founders Nicolás Ibáñez and David Cotterman were considering how best to continue to diversify their investor base and how to optimize operational efficiency as they deployed increasing amounts of capital. Although his family office had funded the company's first fund, Ibáñez added Latin American family investors and some institutions to subsequent funds while Cotterman focused on delivering 20+% returns. As they looked ahead to their fourth fund and beyond, the partners needed to decide how best to develop their firm and their offerings as they worked to attract capital without alienating either their smart-money family investors or their nascent institutional clientele.