People seldom know that the fashion and luxury industry has become an industry with high water pollution, raw material consumption, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Premium goods and sustainability seem contradictory, but Kering Group, one of the leading global luxury houses, has blazed the way for more than two decades. From the Chairman and CEO, and Sustainability Programme Director at headquarters to employees on each continent, sustainability was rooted in the mind of everyone at Kering. It evolved its strategies for environmental protection and social benefit issues by various means: the Group adjusted its organizational structure and set up a specific department with experts from different backgrounds. The Group also calibrated specific numbers to improve on operational efficiency and decrease pollution. More intriguingly, it diversified ways to achieve business objectives such as innovative initiatives like the "Kering Generation Award (K Gen)" and the measurement tool, "Environmental Profit & Loss (EP&L)". The K Gen in China aimed to gather critical players along the value chain within the luxury ecosystem while establishing an open platform to enhance awareness of corporate citizenship and environmental protection. EP&L measured Kering's ecological impacts, assessed raw materials used in production and designing, and directed the Group towards more sustainable sourcing solutions, innovative technologies, and new materials development. However, both innovative initiatives had their limitations. The cultural differences between East and West mean it is difficult to duplicate the western model in the eastern cultures. At the same time, any new management tool had to overcome organizational inertia and balance the interests of different stakeholders. Stakeholder management has thus become an inevitable issue. Internally, the Group had to balance corporate-level enforcement and brand-level autonomy. Externally, the Group had to engage with various

Link REIT, Asia's largest real estate investment trust and the second largest of its kind globally, holds a position of infamy in Hong Kong, its headquarters and primary market. A decade on from its formation, which occurred through the divestiture of what were previously public retail assets, Link REIT has been both lauded by investors for its superior returns and vilified by the general public as an agent of the city's gentrification. Critiques have raised two sets of allegations against Link REIT: that their approach to redeveloping the city's public markets has made these spaces unaffordable to the poor, previously the markets' principal patrons; and that many of the markets' legacy vendors, themselves also often impoverished, have been forced to leave their businesses post-renovation, unable to afford refurbishment. Redeveloped wet markets are now more upmarket and almost European, with Link REIT targeting a decidedly more bourgeois patron. But at what cost to the city's social fabric? And should this be a material concern? The story's protagonist, Calvin Kwan, is the General Manager of Sustainability at Link REIT and has spent his tenure attempting to demonstrate that sustainability has a place in the corporate boardroom. Now tasked with rethinking his company's approach to managing these assets, Calvin must consider to whom Link REIT holds obligations and how outside approaches to urban redevelopment might generate sources of value that are both financially accretive and socially beneficial. Faced with heightened levels of public scrutiny, Link REIT's response may shape their continued right to operate within the city.

V.Rose is a Shanghai-based company founded in 2009 by Leo Cui. The company sells natural skin-care products imported from Latvia to Chinese customers. Case A focuses on the company's business expansion strategy. In 2014, V.Rose faced intensifying competition in the handmade, natural cosmetics market in China. To expand its business, the company had a number of options to choose from, each with pros and cons. One option was to enter the Hong Kong market to raise its brand awareness. Without knowledge of the Hong Kong market, however, senior management was uncertain about how to enter the market and what its managerial and financial implications were. Another option was to expand the online business to reap the benefits of the industry's fast-growing online sales. This case gives students an opportunity to discuss and compare different business-expansion strategies.

In contrast to the decision on business expansion in Case A, Case B focuses on the company's decision to narrow its business scope. Changing government policies, including stricter labor laws, increased the company's operation costs. The closing of department stores forced the company to rethink its strategy and to focus more on online business. The company has made a series of changes in product offerings, sales channels, strategies, pricing schemes, and IT management. In Case B, students are required to identify the company's competitive resources and discuss whether the company is moving in the right direction by focusing on online business and scaling down its product range.

When the Hong Kong billion-dollar revitalization of a set of derelict cotton mills in Hong Kong was first conceptualized by property heiress Vanessa Cheung, the project had a clear direction around which it was to be oriented. The Mills was to be a social institution: a space in which an otherwise poor and fragmented local community could connect with both its past, as a center of textile production, and its future. Financed by Nan Fung Group, Vanessa's multigenerational family business and one of Asia's most valuable property development companies, the Mills was underwritten without the diligence that might proceed projects of a comparable scale. Three years from project inception but still several months away from the facilities opening to the public in late 2018, the Mills struggled to operationalize the three business models it had evolved to encompass, namely, an incubation platform including co-working space; shopping space targeting pop-up stores and smaller retailers; a heritage center to operate as a non-profit museum. Vanessa also wondered how her project will deliver on its original vision of creating shared value for its stakeholders.