This case study explores the growth journey of Polish computer vision sports start-up ReSpo.Vision in an emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem. By providing 3D data and analysis to soccer clubs, ReSpo.Vision achieved significant milestones with a €1 million seed round, an EU innovation grant, and gained traction with top European soccer clubs. However, pressure to accelerate revenue growth led the company to consider a strategic shift towards immersive 3D visualizations for media and entertainment. Ahead of the upcoming funding round in early 2024, CEO Pawel Osterreicher faced a critical decision between scaling the existing business or creating a new business line. The case study highlights the opportunities and challenges associated with this shift in the context of a new and emerging market.
The case study examines the journey toward value-based healthcare at Karolinska University Hospital. The hospital's ambitious shift to a patient-centered care delivery model, accompanied by the construction of a new facility, encountered challenges such as high costs, staff dissatisfaction, and growing waiting lists. The departure of CEO Melvin Samsom in 2018 left the new director Bjorn Zoega with a budget deficit, discontented staff, and an outdated IT system. By 2023, however, Zoega had achieved a remarkable turnaround. Ranked among the top 6 international hospitals, the institution boasted a positive budget and had exceeded production assignments for three consecutive years. In 2023, Zoega pondered if his changes were long-lasting and how the Hospital should face new challenges such as an aging population and a shortage of qualified nurses.
In 2019, Daniel Pinto, President and COO of JPMorgan Chase, has to make a recommendation to the bank's Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, about where to physically locate the bank's European trading operations after Brexit takes effect in 2020. The decision-making process considered a range of European locations, including Dublin, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Paris, and ultimately Pinto is left with a choice between Frankfurt and Paris. The case describes the decision-making process and gives an overview of JPMorgan's history in France and the French government's efforts to make the country more economically competitive to lure banks moving from London in the wake of Brexit.
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.
A traditionally mono-brand menswear luxury company faces growing competition from international groups and changes its brand focus from formal wear to leisure wear.
The Dutch company Adyen was founded in 2006 to provide online merchants with smooth online payments, regardless of currency, country, or payment method. Its services had attracted large online merchants, which struggled to reconcile different payment methods across countries. Adyen's technology made online payments easier, and faster, and with increased online payment transaction success rates. In 2013, Adyen started providing point-of-sale payment devices to stores and became attractive to companies with store networks. Multinational enterprises with online and offline sales channels, such as the sportswear Nike and the fashion firm H&M, were those that appreciated Adyen's services the most. However, since 2018, Adyen had tried to attract the mid-market with little success. Adyen's management was analyzing different strategies to reach out to such a segment.
In 2021, the car manufacturer National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) faced the challenge of securing funding from its investor to launch an innovative mobility solution based on fleets of shared autonomous driving (AD) cars. The system was complex as it required the development of several interconnected components: from AD cars to a system to coordinate the vehicles with the city's digital and physical infrastructure. Furthermore, AD cars were still in a testing phase. The project was made even more complicated by NEVS' decision to target different customers: from companies which could use PONS as part of a leasing service or to transport goods, to municipalities willing to complement their public transportation services, or private citizens which could use it to commute or go shopping. NEVS felt the urge to launch the system. But was NEVS ready?
Farfetch, a global luxury technology platform and digital marketplace had been surfing the wave of digital transformation in the luxury fashion industry since 2008. While the company's stock price and market valuation had fluctuated since its IPO in 2018, it had achieved positive EBITDA only once in the fourth quarter of 2020. Now, CEO Jose Neves had to decide how to allocate company resources across the various business lines that had sprung up alongside the marketplace, including Farfetch Platform Solutions, a modular set of e-commerce technology solutions and services for luxury retailers and brands, the Store of the Future initiative, a partnership with Alibaba and two of the largest luxury houses (Richemont and Kering), and investment in Farfetch's own fashion brands. As the company expanded into new business lines, it stewarded an increasingly complex and interdependent luxury ecosystem in which it could be perceived as both a collaborator and a potential competitor to its various constituents. How could Neves chart the best path to profitable growth while keeping everyone satisfied as competition heats up in the online and offline luxury retailscape?
Since 1978, Spain had struggled to control unemployment. The country's labor law was protective of employees hired long-term and companies used temporary contracts as buffers. In 2012, amid economic recession and a 23.6% unemployment rate, a center-right government of Mariano Rajoy passed a reform to liberalize the labor market. The authors of the labor reform argued that it helped to close the current account deficit and recover from the recession. Critics of the reform instead argued that it increased job precariousness and impoverished employees. Others believed that even more flexibility was necessary. In January 2021, Spain was governed by a coalition between the socialists and the extreme left-wing electoral alliance Unidas Podemos, led by the populist left wing party Podemos. Both the Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, also the socialist party leader, and Pablo Iglesias Turrión, Second Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Social Rights and the head of Podemos, had promised to repeal the labor law in the electoral campaign of 2019. But not all ministers in the cabinet shared the same view. In addition, the government was applying for funding from the EU to help the Spanish economy to recover from the recession that followed the COVID-19 pandemic. But to unlock the €140 billion in grants and loans from the EU COVID-19 fund, Sanchez had to present a convincing plan of structural reforms to boost the economy and address its structural problems. Would the EU Commission approve Spain's recovery plan if the 2012 reform were to be repealed? What should Sánchez's government do?
Lexoo, a UK-based online marketplace for legal services, was facing the strategic choice of how to grow from early start-up to mature platform. Daniel van Binsbergen, Lexoo's CEO, and web developer Chris O'Sullivan, CTO, had set up Lexoo to help Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) to find legal advice at low prices. At the time of the case in 2018, Lexoo had just started attracting larger companies in need of specialized legal advice as new customers. Larger companies had higher value and more frequent needs. Lexoo could become their "go-to" place across a broad range of legal services. Nevertheless, larger companies also required a more personalized approach and were more difficult to acquire than SMEs. Van Binsbergen and O'Sullivan were debating whether Lexoo should diversify to serve both SMEs and larger companies, or whether to pivot their focus toward larger companies altogether.
The Risk organization at SEB, a leading Nordic financial services group founded in 1856, undertook a culture change program focused on psychological safety, empathic listening, and strategic framing. The program enabled risk organization teams to make progress on strategic challenges and improved decision making processes. Chief Risk Officer Magnus Agustsson believed that the rest of SEB should go through a similar program. But it was not clear how to convince other departments to invest considerable time in developing the soft skills of culture change.
In 2020, the three cofounders of Holaluz, a newcomer to Spain's electricity retail market, are preparing to launch a new offering: installing and managing solar panels on households' roofs at no extra cost for the consumer, who would still benefit from the energy savings stemming from the panels' production. Holaluz would fund the installations via a special purpose vehicle and use the surplus energy to power neighboring Holaluz clients at lower costs. There were many challenges in the new venture, like how to market the offering and if investors would buy into the new business. And what if Holaluz went a step further, got rid of all its tariff offerings and disrupted the market with a monthly "unlimited" flat rate for electricity consumption like telecom operators did with mobile phones bills? Was the market ready?
Karl Jan Erick Hummel had founded Paradigm Capital Value Fund in 2007 together with Columbia Business School Professor Bruce Greenwald, an expert in value investing and now chairman of the fund. The fund followed the principles of value investing to their target universe: publicly traded companies with market capitalization between €100 million and €4.5 billion based in Germany, the Nordic countries, the U.K., and Ireland. Hummel and Greenwald believed they had developed an investing edge in that universe, ignored by large U.S. and U.K. based funds, through deep research and by locating their headquarters close to companies and their management. Hummel and his team of six analysts were based in a small suburb of Munich, Germany. Paradigm Capital Value Fund was highly concentrated, with 60% of its assets invested in four stocks, and held its positions for long periods of time. Hummel had to decide if it was time to divest from one of their main investments, a German manufacturer of roll-over car washing systems, and instead invest in a German truck equipment supplier. At the same time, Hummel was concerned by how to grow the fund.
In 2011, Canibal launched a machine that could sort and compress aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and cups. Users could play a jackpot-style game on the machine's digital display, while disposing of their beverage containers and earning coupons or other rewards. The machine could also display advertising or serve as a communication tool. In 2016, the company's new machine, the i3, had more potential than earlier models, due to enhanced reliability and displays that could allow Canibal to pursue new markets. Benoit Paget, CEO and founder of Canibal, must choose a growth path: which customer segment should he focus on? How should he position his product? What would be the implications of these choices for marketing and sales requirements, pricing, and funding?