In the summer of 2016, ARM Holdings (ARM), a British semiconductor IP licensing firm, has been acquired by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. The acquisition is a strategic leap for Softbank to expand its market outreach into the Internet of Things (IoT) market. Share prices of ARM have soared by 63% just prior to the acquisition. Co-founder of ARM, Jamie Urquhart was, however, worried if this move would be beneficial for the company in the long run? ARM has flourished in the semiconductor industry and paved the pathway for intellectual property (IP) Licensing to become a celebrated business model, further strengthened by an ingenious partnership model and an eco-system. So far, ARM has primarily operated in the processor and consumer electronics industry which typically has a few large players in the market. However, the company's strategic shift towards the IoT market poses a new set of risks and challenges. The IP Licensing business model and strategy that has worked for ARM in the processor market may not necessarily work for the firm in the IoT market. In the IoT space, applications are diverse, there is no clear leader, and there are many smaller individual players. IP licensing model works well when the processor firm can monitor the sales of end products of large licensee organisations with huge revenues. However, in the IoT market, licensees will likely be a large number of smaller firms with smaller production volumes. Under this scenario, the IP licensing model can introduce prohibitively high monitoring costs. Can ARM continue to use its existing IP licensing business model for the IoT market? How should ARM reinvent its strategy and business model to adapt to its new strategic focus?
Case A is set in 2016. Trung Dung is the founder of iCare Benefits (iCare), a social enterprise established to aid low-income workers. His background included studying computer science in the US and successfully working in the American software industry. Trung returned to Vietnam to discover that many low-income workers had to borrow heavily for basic household necessities, especially migrant workers who moved to the city with nothing. How could he help? Trung decided to tackle the related problems of lack of access to the formal financial sector and the workers' lack of basic consumer durable goods. He partnered with employers, global manufacturers and financial institutions to develop a third-party employee benefits programme that would help low-income migrant workers afford basic goods. iCare would undertake retail functions to enable migrant workers to buy consumer goods. Using an innovative retail model, iCare would provide workers with zero-interest procurement loans for up to six months. His value proposition to partners allowed for a collaborative setup that permitted the social enterprise to operate without donations. Case B continues in 2018. iCare has been successful in reducing borrowing from other sources at usurious rates. Many workers now have access to financing and consequently basic consumer durable goods. Trung is able to scale up and reach many more workers. However, he wanted to help existing members as well. He would start to offer additional consumer discretionary products and services in the areas of education, healthcare and insurance. How might he further improve the lives of low income workers?
Case A is set in 2016. Trung Dung is the founder of iCare Benefits (iCare), a social enterprise established to aid low-income workers. His background included studying computer science in the US and successfully working in the American software industry. Trung returned to Vietnam to discover that many low-income workers had to borrow heavily for basic household necessities, especially migrant workers who moved to the city with nothing. How could he help? Trung decided to tackle the related problems of lack of access to the formal financial sector and the workers' lack of basic consumer durable goods. He partnered with employers, global manufacturers and financial institutions to develop a third-party employee benefits programme that would help low-income migrant workers afford basic goods. iCare would undertake retail functions to enable migrant workers to buy consumer goods. Using an innovative retail model, iCare would provide workers with zero-interest procurement loans for up to six months. His value proposition to partners allowed for a collaborative setup that permitted the social enterprise to operate without donations. Case B continues in 2018. iCare has been successful in reducing borrowing from other sources at usurious rates. Many workers now have access to financing and consequently basic consumer durable goods. Trung is able to scale up and reach many more workers. However, he wanted to help existing members as well. He would start to offer additional consumer discretionary products and services in the areas of education, healthcare and insurance. How might he further improve the lives of low income workers?
The case, set in mid-2017, traces the evolution of a gender-responsive regional level multi-stakeholder platform called GREAT Women ASEAN, dedicated to the economic empowerment of women micro-producers. In 2008, Jeannie Javelosa (Jeannie) and her friends Regina Francisco and Pacita Juan, had set up ECHOstore under a private entity called Earth Life Store Supply Inc. ECHOstore retailed organic products to upmarket consumers of Manila, Philippines. Identifying the potential to improve the marketability and earnings of the micro-producers, the trio founded ECHOsi, a non-profit foundation in 2009. ECHOsi helped micro-producers improve their products as well as their market base by providing market-linking and business support services through its network of business owners and intermediaries. The Philippines Commission on Women (PCW) roped in ECHOsi as the private sector partner to implement the projects of GREAT Women Programme (GWP), a Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) programme funded by the Canadian government. The efforts resulted in a seamless ecosystem of government agencies, private enterprises and non-profits collaborating to create an inclusive economy for micro-entrepreneurs. As the GREAT Women brand garnered commercial traction, its ownership was transferred to ECHOsi, which entrusted its commercialisation to Earth Life Store Supply Inc. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) eventually identified the GWP as an ideal WEE model to be replicated in the ASEAN region. It enlisted the help of ECHOsi to integrate women micro-entrepreneurs into the regional value chain. Jeannie was in the process of creating a collaborative network of business owners, intermediaries, facilitators, donors and government agencies to sell the products of beneficiaries under the GREAT Women brand. As the impact model scaled, Jeannie had to prepare for the risks involved in franchising the social enterprise and also find the means of funding the expansion.
This case is set in 2018, when Veriown, a pay-as-you-go Internet connected solar service provider, was preparing to launch in its first and potentially the most important market - India. Steve Johanns, the founder CEO of the company had pinned his hopes on the success of this launch to establish the viability of Veriown's business model, its scalability within India, and expansion into sub-Saharan Africa. Established in 2016, Veriown's primary objective was to bridge the infrastructural gap in energy that existed in developing countries by providing a safer and cleaner alternative to kerosene, a non-renewable fossil fuel that was detrimental to health and the environment. Besides energy, Veriown aimed to facilitate digital connectivity and access to financial services to help enable socio-economic development and financial inclusion of the impoverished rural communities. Empowered by a strong team, and supported by global partners, Veriown had developed an advanced solar energy-based solution that brought electricity, the Internet and micro-finance services together on the same platform, and followed the 'pay-to-consume' model of the kerosene transactions that consumers at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP) preferred. It had also tied up with local companies with expertise in distribution and installation of solar energy solutions in rural India for on-ground support during the launch. However, despite all the planning, Johanns was concerned about the operational capability of Veriown in meeting the high consumer demand of the market. He wondered if its service levels and frequency would be able to keep up with the demand, and effectively resolve any issues as and when they appeared. In addition, would the company be able to scale up soon after the launch, if required? Would leveraging its partners' networks curtail the extent of control Veriown could wield over customer experience on the ground?
The case is set in March 2018. Neha Bhatia Ramdas, Director of Sales at Juntos Global, is visiting a prospective partner bank of her company in Singapore, which wants to expand its outreach amongst the unbanked population in South East Asia. The partner bank is not comfortable in sharing their customer data with Juntos, and Ramdas has been entrusted with the difficult task of convincing the partner bank to share their data with Juntos. Juntos specialises in deploying SMS based solutions powered by data analytics capabilities for financial service providers to help them serve their newly banked customers more efficiently. The Juntos SMS based platform helps the newly banked customers to build formal savings habits through behavioural science strategies by building a relationship of 'trust' with their customers. By creating trusting relationships between financial service providers and their customers based on the principles of Human Centred Design (HCD), Juntos was able to generate measurable increases in account usage in many of its projects. The Juntos business model was a partnership model, wherein the partner financial service was equally involved in the implementation of the Juntos solution, especially at the beginning of the project. Juntos used an agile implementation process for project implementation that was preceded by a useful ethnographic study that allowed Juntos to customise their solution for their partner clients. Juntos typically implemented pilot projets with their partners, before implementing large-scale projects. The flipside of this arrangement was the long sales cycle that was the primary impediment to Juntos success.
This case is set in 2017, three years after Fullerton Myanmar (FFMCL), a microfinance institution (MFI) in Myanmar, was founded by Fullerton Financial Holdings (FFH), a Singapore-based firm that invests and operates financial institutions in Asian emerging markets. Since its inception, FFMCL has been able to establish itself as one of the top five MFIs in Myanmar in terms of loans outstanding, despite numerous challenges related to the country's limited infrastructure, competition from other MFIs, the dispersion of the population and the difficulty in reaching rural communities. To achieve its mission of "Enabling Success, Enriching Lives", FFMCL has demonstrated tremendous growth in providing loans to microenterprises in Myanmar through the use of technology. The company has established an ambitious growth plan of expanding coverage fivefold in the next five years, and its leadership is pondering what is the best strategy it should follow to achieve this plan. Given the advances in technology as it relates to mobile financial services and big data analytics, what role does technology play in FFCML's plan, and what strategy should the company follow to achieve its plan?