The case taps into several contemporary and classical issues in the realm of competitive strategy. Set in the luxury resale business, it explores the business models adopted by The RealReal and several of its competitors, such as Vestiaire Collective, in providing a good foundation for exploring the evolution of different paths to profitability in an intensely competitive environment. In exploring the fortunes of key players in this business, the case helps students to apply core strategy tools such as the Business Model Canvas, and activity mapping to understand the process of creating and sustaining competitive advantage. Focused on The RealReal, the case offers the instructor the requisite details to explore the economics of a business model starting from conceptualization, piloting, and scaling, with particular emphasis on the challenges that firms often encounter at each stage. It touches on a wide range of contemporary issues such as the monetization of AI-based insights to reduce operating costs, digital authentication of valuable luxury products, and promoting circularity and sustainability, in addition to the dynamics of platform models.

The case study follows Microsoft's transformation under CEO Satya Nadella over the last decade. The story of the transformation emphasizes two critical and inseparable themes, namely strategy and leadership. In doing so, it hews closely with the classical view of a turnaround and how Nadella was able to command the attention of the organization as he breathed new life into what had become a complacent company resting on past laurels. It traces a host of changes that were made to articulate and implement a cloud-first strategy with an emphasis on customer centricity and ubiquity of the product suite. The changes called for destroying some of the core advantages the company had relied in the past to deliver predictable revenue growth. It discusses the approaches that Nadella deployed to reengage the talent of the company and rebuild a new culture consistent with his new vision for the company, and the manner in which he infused a growth mindset among the rank and file. It closes with the partnership deal with OpenAI and the changes that have followed at the company. The case also raises questions about the viability of another turnaround, this time a pivot toward generative AI in an intensely competitive landscape.

The case focuses on the growth of electric vehicle (EV) market in China and the emergence of BYD as a major player aspiring to gain a significant foothold in global EV markets. The case traces the growth of the industry in China, identifying factors that have contributed to the rise of Chinese companies in this industry. In doing so, it offers a rich portrait of the industry landscape encompassing contextual factors, including the role of government and governmental subsidies to the industry, the intensity of competitive rivalry shaping the race for Chinese market share, and the nature of buyers and how their demands have forced Chinese companies to hone their skills in design and value engineering, which can be used to mount an assault in global markets. After providing a broad discussion of the industry, the case delves deeper into the strategic choices made by BYD as it rose to the top ranks of global players in units produced. The case closes with broad questions about the directions that BYD could pursue as it seeks to conquer advanced country markets from its China homebase. In doing so, the case sets the stage for debate on issues relating to transferability of home-grown advantages, the entry barriers that they will confront in markets such as the United States, and ways in which the barriers can be overcome.

The case focuses on the competitive dynamics of the fast fashion industry and the strategic approaches adopted by major competitors within the domain of ultra-fast fashion. Set against the backdrop of major events that are reshaping fashion retailing, the case explores the business model adopted by Shein, the world's largest online fashion retailer, which in October 2022 was rumored to be on the cusp of an IPO. In 2021, Shein had sales of more than USD 15 billion, shipped clothing to more than 150 countries, and was one of the most famous clothing brands in the world. In addition, its shopping app was the world's most used, reaching roughly 17.5 million screens, more than twice the downloads for e-commerce giant Amazon.

Lisa Mitchell, Deputy Vice President of Tech Operations at Albright Cancer Centers (ACC), is confronted with significant customer service issues. The current cloud system often malfunctions, causing disruptions for patients and their families. Founded in 1988 by Robert L. Albright after the heart-wrenching loss of his daughter to cancer, ACC has always prioritized compassionate care. By 2023, the center had expanded to over 2,000 staff across various cities. Their unique Guardian Standard combines traditional medical care with therapies aimed at enhancing the overall well-being of patients, emphasizing empowerment throughout their treatment journey. However, the present call system falls short of these standards. Recognizing this gap, Mitchell advocates for the exploration of advanced AI solutions. She launches the "Guardian Level of Call" initiative, aiming to transform the calling experience. With the help of consultant Alex Sanches, they undertake a thorough analysis of the customer journey. ACC's CEO, Dr. Fernanda Rivera, later introduces Air.ai, a state-of-the-art AI system, believing it could replace customer service reps and redefine ACC's customer service approach.

The case focuses on the precision agriculture industry, an emerging combination of technologies and solutions targeted at improving the economics and sustainability of the agricultural industry. Within the context of the industry transformation, the case specifically examines the strategic decisions made by John Deere, the leading agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturer in the world as it charts its course towards digitally transforming the company. The case provides an ideal platform to explore a broad spectrum of topics ranging from ecosystems and platforms, defining and delivering a unique customer value proposition, and leveraging contemporary tools such as artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), data analytics, and deep learning to revolutionize the old and tradition-bound agricultural business. John Deere has introduced a set of leading-edge tractors, sprayers, and farm equipment that promise to personalize agriculture at the plant level. The technologies embedded in its tractors along with cloud-based analytical capabilities provide farmers with real-time actionable data and advice. As it launches a new way of farming, the company confronts skeptical customers who think the equipment is too expensive and hard to repair, and the data streams too complex to comprehend and apply to their field-level decisions. There are other issues relating to data privacy and ecosystem management that Deere confronts as it aspires to emphasize its software platform as the way to the future. The reader is asked to assess the way the Leap Ambitions strategy has played out in the marketplace and suggest course corrections as needed to guarantee that Deere can ensure it derives the maximum value from the ecosystem.

As 2023 neared its end, Richard Adkerson, CEO and Chairman of Freeport McMoRan, marked two decades of leadership. Dubbed "the elder statesman of the copper industry" by The Economist, Adkerson had witnessed various industry shifts. He anticipated a surge in copper demand, driven by the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. However, meeting this demand posed challenges, as copper mines take nearly a generation to become operational. With demand outstripping supply, the industry might seek copper alternatives. Recognizing these challenges, Adkerson prioritized operational efficiency and yield across Freeport's global copper operations. Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Freeport invested heavily in technologies like artificial intelligence and data analytics to maximize copper extraction from existing mines. This strategy, initiated in Baghdad, Arizona, expanded across the U.S. under the America Concentrator program, aiming for efficiency in all American copper mines. However, competitors like BHP, Grupo Mexico, Codelco, and Rio Tinto were also adopting similar technologies. The ubiquity of these technologies raised questions about their potential as a sustainable competitive advantage for Freeport. The company faced the challenge of leveraging its human capital to maintain its edge, especially as its stock performance lagged behind rivals like Southern Copper. The future posed questions about Freeport's continued dominance in the copper industry.

This case study follows the evolution of plant-based meat alternatives industry, focusing specifically on the major competitors namely Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. It provides a good snapshot of the way in which the new industry has evolved and the manner in which key industry forces have begun to shape the competitiveness and profitability of this nascent industry. It builds on an analysis of the industry to explore the fortunes of the rising stars in the business and concludes with several key questions about the potential future trajectory of the Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods in the face of new competitors and the defensive strategies deployed by the established meat producers. The case sets up the backdrop for a spirited debate relating to the viability of the strategies of the established rivals versus the emerging new players in the midst of unclear consumer trends and preferences.

The case focuses on key decisions facing a startup venture BuyHive, that is on the cusp of disintermediating the sourcing business with a new business model. There are a few core issues such as (1) identifying the pros and cons of raising capital from strategic investors who can open doors to large pools of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) that can be attracted to the platform versus financial investors who typically only bring in the capital, (2) how to monetize the data that the company can access from the platform users, and (3) how to address some of the issues that are central to platforms such as platform disintermediation, network switching, bridging, and multi-homing. The founders have to specifically consider ways in which they can increase scale and stickiness with respect to the platform users as well as its sourcing specialists. The platform was an outcome of radically rethinking the way value was being delivered to buyers seeking to identify manufacturers who could supply to the specifications that the buyers had developed. The giant global sourcing companies and platforms such as Alibaba, Made-in-China, Global Sources among others had typically focused on creating value for the suppliers (manufacturers and their representatives or intermediaries). BuyHive seeks to turn the attention on buyers as their core focus and create a buyer-centric platform. The company has to make decisions on identifying the right type of investors, engineering the platform to create greater buyer value, improve stickiness of the platform, and adopt AI-based algorithms in bringing sourcing experts on board.

Toyota's supply chain, long admired as an industry benchmark for efficiency and effectiveness, was unable to supply critical parts to replenish inventory in its plants pursuant to the global chip shortages that resulted from the general disruption created by the Covid-19 pandemic. During the first quarter of 2021, the delta variant of the virus was spreading across the globe. Southeast Asia, where Toyota sourced many auto components, was particularly hard hit. As demand for automobiles was surging during the second half of 2021, a critical shortage of microchips forced Toyota and other automakers to shut down some of their assembly lines. Set against this backdrop, the case focuses on options that firms might pursue in preparing for black swan events such as Covid-19.

This case study follows the evolution of PBMs focusing specifically on the main substitutes that have challenged dairy milk for market share namely soymilk, almond milk, and oat milk. It provides a good snapshot of the way in which the new industry has evolved and the manner in which key industry forces have begun to shape the competitiveness and profitability of this nascent industry. Using the template of Porter's five forces model, the study sets the stage for an in-depth application of the framework to identify the key drivers of profit performance. It builds on the analysis to explore the fortunes of the rising star in the business, Oatly, the Swedish oat milk producer that has made a dramatic entry into the world of PBMs with much initial success. It concludes with several key questions about the potential future trajectory of the company in the face of new competitors and the ever-changing array of alternatives ranging from hemp milk to barley milk and everything in-between.

The grocery industry was going through a major transformation as a consequence of three major trends - the increasing use of ecommerce and online shopping, the intense rivalry from the hard discounters such as Aldi and Lidl who threatened the already modest margins of the national chains such as Safeway, Kroger, and Wal*Mart, and changing customer demands that emphasized convenience, ubiquity, and variety. It was against that backdrop that Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger, initiated the Restock Kroger campaign, a strategic initiative that aimed to digitally transform the entire grocery business. Slated to cost $9b, the initiative was launched in 2017 with four fundamental aims - "redefine the grocery customer experience, expand partnerships to create customer value, develop talent and, living our purpose" . The campaign to transform the company was announced just a few months after Amazon had entered the grocery business with its game-changing acquisition of Whole Foods. The case study follows the execution of the Restock Kroger initiative as it unfolded and highlights the crucial decisions that the company made in its digital transformation journey. In doing so, it offers a snapshot of the partnerships that Kroger has built to gain momentum in the digital realm, how it has tried to leverage modern digital technologies (e.g., AI, big data, predictive analytics) to not only improve the efficiency of its store operations but also to provide superior customer service. As the case closes, the company's business was being challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the rapid transformation strategies that were deployed by its major rivals such as Walmart and Amazon. Thus, the case offers a good platform to explore the process of digital transformation, aligning the strategy of transformation with the customer journey, and balancing the pressures to maintain some of the elements of the legacy retail model while ushering in radically new solutions online.

Many of the changes seemed to occur at the confluence of three major trends that characterized the industry; namely, (1) the advent of extremely cheap computing power and ubiquitous connectivity; (2) the increasing impact of customer centricity, and (3) the rising influence of wide-ranging new technology tools such as predictive data analytics, artificial intelligence, and neural networks that promised to reduce operating costs while at the same time making a quantum leap in product design and customization. Loosely referred to as the 4thIR (4th Industrial Revolution), these technologies were a small subset of fundamental shifts that were reshaping the industrial world. The financial services industry in the United States was dominated by a handful of very large players who dominated both the active management as well as the passive fund management sides of the business. Most of the industry revenues originated from the fee income for investment advisory services and active fund management services that the companies provided through its legions of financial advisors and branch networks that spread across the country. Black Rock, Vanguard, State Street, JP Morgan, and Fidelity managed approximately $23 trillion. However, life at the top was far from secure. The advent of distributed payment systems, new investment opportunities and approaches such as blockchain-powered Bitcoin and Ethereum, along with the rise of chat bots and digitally enabled user-friendly advisory interfaces, threatened to upset the balance in this once staid industry. The case discusses attempts by Fidelity Investments to navigate the changing landscape through the establishment of Fidelity Labs, an in-house innovation engine that was chartered to experiment, validate, and develop new technological solutions that would allow Fidelity to retain its edge in the changing world of financial services.

The economic woes of 2008 gave a boost to budget retailers such as Dollar General, Aldi, and these retailers have unleashed significant change in the retailing industry in general and the grocery business sin particular. The case focuses on the hard-discounters from Germany, Aldi and to a lesser extent on Lidl to describe their operating models and their relative impact on the strategies adopted by their US peers. The case provides a rich discussion of the industry environment in the U.S. grocery business and the key trends that were shaping organizational strategies. It follows with an in-depth examination of the cornerstones of the hard-discount model and how the German companies have been successfully implementing this approach in the U.S. As the case closes, the US retailers had started to respond to the new competitors while firms such as Aldi had moved more deliberately into the realm of service innovation to retain an edge over peers. It appeared as if the hard-discounters were trying to reach into the upper tiers of customers by tailoring their choices to suit such an audience. They were locating in richer neighborhoods, providing a more sophisticated product assortment, and some were even rethinking their store layouts. These changes seemed to be going against the grain of conventional budget operators. It remained to be seen whether the sources of competitive advantage built by firms such as Aldi would prove resilient against the much larger peers who enjoyed much greater advantages of scale and resources.

The case discusses the rise of a global chain of hotels that originated in India in 2015/16 and grew to become one of the top five leading hotel chains in the world in about four short years. The story of OYO's meteoric growth illustrates the power of technology to transform emerging markets and disrupt established industries. OYO represents a classic case of an organization that leveraged the fragmentation associated with emerging markets and used technology to bridge gaps across the value delivery model to offer a predictable customer experience. It believes a large part of the value it has created in India relies on its use of predictive analytics, big data analysis capabilities, and the integration of enterprise systems at variable scale to allow even the smallest of operators to be able to utilize valuable insights to take advantage of the boom in travel. Since its inception in India, where it has thoroughly dominated the industry landscape in terms of the number of hotel rooms it controls through its franchise/lease/manchise agreements, it has expanded into other emerging market countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and China. It has been quite successful in these forays, barring some teething troubles that are typical of global expansion. However, as the case closes, the company had entered the developed markets of the UK, Japan, and had just arrived in the U.S., where it had made a large acquisition of a Hooter's hotel in Las Vegas, NV. The second round of expansion covering developed markets raises numerous questions regarding transportability of the model across two very different contexts, namely emerging markets, where the industry is fragmented, versus developed countries, where the industry is already dominated by famous brands.

The case describes the transformation of the large independent oil and gas company, Anadarko. The company had fallen into bad times as a consequence of a host of environmental factors as well as questionable strategic choices and ill-timed acquisitions. James Hackett was hired as the new CEO to transform the company. The case discusses the major changes that he made during his tenure and the transition from Hackett to his handpicked successor Al Walker. It dwells on the era of Hackett more than Walker and focuses on the manner in which Hackett engineered the key changes, his approach to leadership, and his inclusive transformational approach. The case ends with some key challenges confronting Al Walker as he contemplates the changes he would have to make in both preserving the legacy of his mentor Hackett and addressing the challenges that confronted the company in 2017.

In a few decades starting in the 1990s through the early 2000s, Reliance Industries had emerged as a powerhouse in the oil and gas business. It cemented its global reputation by adopting innovative approaches to articulating an integrated business model that would span the entire value chain from exploration to petrochemicals. Much of its success revolved around its execution prowess and its ability to deliver projects well under budget and ahead of schedule, a field of expertise that had traditionally been dominated by the more established supermajors in the industry such as ExxonMobil. This case study addresses the evolution of the company from a fairly small-scale textile manufacturer to a global powerhouse, with specific focus on the way in which the company intertwined its sources of competitive advantage (e.g., location, project execution, relationship building, and financial acumen) to establish a winning proposition. The case allows for a rich thematic discussion around understanding the modes of competition adopted by companies from newly industrializing contexts.

The case provides a discussion of the birth and evolution of Ryanair in Europe. It paints a rich picture of the avenues of competitive advantage that the company had built in its march toward dominance among the low cost carriers segment of the aviation business in Europe. The early segment of its history provides a very useful discussion to explore fundamental concepts in strategy such as competitive positioning, activity maps, low cost strategies, and tradeoffs. The later half of the case describes the transformation of Ryanair from a pure low cost provider to more of a value added company that seeks to enhance the overall customer experience within the constraints of a low cost model. It closes with a set of issues that surface when Ryanair undertakes the massive shift in its strategy to become a more customer friendly airline company. The later half of the case is an ideal vehicle to reinforce the concept of tradeoffs in strategy and the need for strategic clarity around what a company will do and what it will not do.

The case uses the backdrop of a bitter battle between Nelson Peltz, the activist shareholder and founder of Trian Partners and the management of Procter & Gamble. The battle focused on the future strategic direction of the company. While Nelson Peltz identified a host of concerns ranging from poor brand management and innovation failures to weak corporate governance and P&G's insular culture, the management of P&G countered that it had a sound strategy in place that it was executing and that the initial results were indeed quite positive. The case explores the major strategic questions that P&G confronts at the time of the battle. It offers a wealth of information about trends in the fast moving consumer goods sector globally allowing for a nuanced discussion of strategic options available to competing firms. Combined with a discussion of management imperatives at P&G, the case provides the basis for the key decisions that the reader is expected to make regarding the proxy battle.

Russia has emerged as a dominant player especially in the natural gas segment of the global oil and gas industry. Its position of power has been cemented over the last decade on a variety of fronts ranging from the execution of the first offshore project, the first LNG project, the first Arctic exploration program, and the emergence of global giants, namely Gazprom and Rosneft, that have exerted considerable influence in attracting global super majors to Russia. The case study explores the execution of the two major Sakhalin projects that were instrumental in establishing Russia's position as a pre-eminent source of natural gas. These projects were among the earliest ones on a global scale that involved multiple global partners and were executed in a forbidding part of the country, offshore Russia in the Sea of Okhotsk. Both development deals were struck when Russia was in the midst of significant economic chaos following the breakup of the USSR into constituent republics. This period in Russian history was marked by significant opportunities as well as significant risks.