• PayMe: Hong Kong's e-wallet

    As one of the largest banks in Hong Kong and worldwide, HSBC faced unprecedented challenges from mobile payment platforms (e.g., Alipay and WeChat Pay). In response, HSBC quickly launched its first e-wallet PayMe, a fee-free, user-friendly mobile app that targeted people and businesses in Hong Kong. Within five years of launch, PayMe had 2.6 million users in Hong Kong. The success of PayMe is attributed to its user-friendly design and its initial targeting of the peer-to-peer (P2P) market. Unlike its competitors, PayMe focused on the P2P market by solving consumers' difficulty in transferring money among friends without cash or the many steps of online transfer. As the payment between friends naturally had a social network effect, PayMe's customer base grew exponentially with only minimum marketing expenses. However, when expanding to the fee-charging P2M market, PayMe experienced more challenges as merchants were reluctant to pay for an additional payment method. With 2.6 million users and their HKD8mn in the e-wallet, PayMe's executives were exploring ways to trigger a virtuous cycle in the two-sided market, i.e., P2P and P2M markets. How can PayMe expand its customer base while becoming a profitable payment platform?
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  • Redress: Creating a Sustainable Movement For Change in Fast Fashion

    Redress is an environmental charity that aims to encourage consumers, the fashion industry and manufacturers, to take a more sustainable approach to garment and textile manufacturing. Every day, thousands of tonnes of unwanted garments and textiles are dumped in landfills, an issue that has escalated due to fast-fashion production. Textile manufacturing consumes valuable resources such as water and releases harmful pollutants, while worldwide shipments account for 10% of global carbon emissions. Redress encourages consumers, both corporates and individuals, to take a more responsible attitude to fashion, through clothing drives, redistribution of garments, and pop up stores in Hong Kong. It also works with the global manufacturing and textile industry to encourage greater sustainability through key initiatives, events and forums.
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  • Mapxus: How Complementary Partners Created the Leadership Needed To Build a Successful Innovation Start-Up

    Mapxus is an award-winning innovative smart tech start-up whose research and development is based in Hong Kong. Using a combination of artificial intelligence, algorithms, and digital technology, Mapxus creates high-quality digital maps of the interior of buildings at a significantly lower cost than traditional methods of indoor mapping. Mapxus technicians have now mapped the interiors of hundreds of urban building where keeping up to date records is vital for building owners, safety and emergency services. Its smart technology also has an important social benefit since visually impaired people can use its data to help them find their way safely through city buildings. The venture's success relies on a unique partnership between its two experienced cofounders--serial entrepreneur and academic Dr. John Chan, and Chief Executive Officer and the company's Chief Operating Officer, Ocean Ng. While each has different leadership skills, their success demonstrates how a complementary partnership can create the leadership needed to build a successful start-up. In just six years, the company has expanded its indoor mapping and navigation services to Japan, Singapore and Taiwan and it now plans to expand globally. To do this, the company might need to undergo significant change.
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  • Urban Spring: Building a Sustainable Social Enterprise

    Urban Spring is a successful social enterprise. Every day, people in Hong Kong buy around 2.5 million bottles of water. Until Urban Spring marketed its award-winning high tech Well井 water fountains, most plastic containers were sent to landfill, adding hazardous chemicals to the environment. Urban Spring's founder has made it his mission is to reduce the city's plastic waste and to encourage people to take a more sustainable approach to bottled water. By providing consumers with clean chilled water - free of charge, 24/7, Urban Spring has replaced more than 5.28 million plastic bottles, which would otherwise have been sent to landfill. Led by its CEO, Ada Yip, the Urban Spring design team created a fountain that is monitored remotely for hygiene, water quality, and data collection. Units are leased to corporations, hotels, schools and learning institutions. With its second-generation fountains ready for release, the company now needs to make crucial decisions about its future expansion and potential partnerships.
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  • The Kommon Goods: Creating Change Through Social Entrepreneurship

    The online eco-lifestyle start-up The Kommon Goods, founded by Alvin Li, a young Hong Kong social consultant and entrepreneur, seeks to change consumer behaviour through its sustainably sourced products platform. The social enterprise also aims to drive change in the B2B space, while also raising awareness about the growing issue of plastic waste in Hong Kong and globally. The Kommon Goods is an extension of Li's own lifestyle and philosophy. The social enterprise encourages consumers to avoid buying plastic items or packaging and to focus on purchase items that are produced sustainably and recyclable. The social entrepreneur has already gained worldwide recognition in his quest to support the UN's SDGs and reduce plastic waste worldwide.
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  • Food Angel: A Sustainable Solution to Food Waste in Hong Kong

    Food Angel is a Hong Kong based social venture that recycles food into cooked meals for Hong Kong's poor. Founded by Gigi Tung, Food Angel has growth so a successful organisation employing over 200 paid staff and 20,000 volunteers who process over 10,000 meals and 200 food packs daily. Gigi believes her philosophy and leadership are working successfully. But going forward, as the charity expands, she wants to develop leadership from within. Can institutional culture, once established, be changed?
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  • Bringing Down the President: Do Results Justify the Means?

    This case explores the actions taken by a reporter that ultimately resulted in the impeachment and imprisonment of former South Korean President Park Geun hye due to corruption. The information for the ground-breaking story, however, may have been obtained using questionable means. The case seeks to highlight the process of mental rationalization, specifically forms of moral disengagement, like moral justification, that frequently occur before engaging in ethically questionable behaviour. Through the case, students will grapple with the difficult question of whether it is okay to do a little bad for something that might be considered a greater good. This kind of moral dilemma and related rationalization process will confront every student in some phase of their life. To be effective in ethical decision-making, it is important for students to be aware when such situations arise, to understand rationalization and related psychological processes, and to use this knowledge to make more thoughtful decisions.
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