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Set in September 2020, the case talks about marketing an accessible (affordable) luxury watch brand, 'August Berg', by a luxury-product distribution company, Norbreeze, based in Singapore. The company's founder, Anders Peter Juel Sauerberg, was sceptical about the launch of a new collection of the watch brand, as it had seen limited sales in one year since its inception. Sauerberg had set up a kiosk store of the brand in an iconic luxury mall in the city and adopted social media platforms and influencer marketing to promote the brand with little success. The brand represented the ethos of Danish design - minimalism and high quality and targeted a niche category of millennials, i.e. young parents and professionals. The brand was also attached to a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative that supported the education of children from low-income families. While Norbreeze had seen success in the Singapore market with the distribution of other accessible luxury watches and jewellery from Danish brands like Skagen and Pandora, it had failed to see similar results for its own in-house brand, August Berg. The 'lipstick effect' of the market due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lack of brand awareness for the new watch brand were identified as the key reasons for low sales. Given the financial constraints of operating as a start-up, how could Sauerberg enhance the brand awareness of August Berg? What digital and social media marketing strategies could he implement to promote his brand?

Set in April 2020, the case talks about TAIGER, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company providing natural language processing (NLP) solutions in a rapidly growing market where demand and competition for such solutions are high. TAIGER solutions could process and digitise large amounts of physical data, perform search and extract functions on data, and make appropriate recommendations. The algorithms and tools were bundled under three packages, and were customised for every client. Client companies were mainly large organisations and government entities. Despite a growing customer base, Arroyo and his team found it increasingly difficult to service new clients, who demanded more customisation and services. TAIGER's solution packages were bundled together with customisation and post-implementation support services based on contract licenses. The downside of this model was that it used many resources and limited the delivery of the products to a per project basis. The monetisation of the model was also complicated and project costs were difficult to control. Administering customised solutions was time consuming and expensive for both TAIGER and its clients; it also lacked flexibility and quick scalability for large-scale implementation. Arroyo realised that he needed more than just efficient solutions, given the expanding opportunities for NLP in the market and the constraints of TAIGER's existing solution packaging. He wondered if designing a new business model was the right way forward. Would he also need to devise a new pricing strategy and rebundle solution offerings? How could he unbundle the business value of TAIGER's NLP solutions?

Set in July 2020, this case talks about a solar park public-private partnership (PPP) project in Madhya Pradesh, India. Manu Srivastava, Chairperson of Rewa Ultra-Mega Solar Limited (RUMSL), and his team had decided to go ahead with the project without the support of viability gap funding (VGF). However, the project faced a setback when the central government lowered the solar VGF tariff by 10%, forcing RUMSL to look for innovative ways of attracting lower bids. After consultations with solar developers and potential financiers, Srivastava and his team introduced many de-risking measures like payment security mechanisms, land availability guarantee, project termination and grid unavailability compensation and tax-change risk coverage clauses in the power purchase agreement. The team also implemented innovative features like an optimum scheduling mechanism (to attract a high credit off-taker) and a data room with updates on land and internal evacuation infrastructure availability before the start of the bidding process. The overall strategy was to avoid the 'Goldilocks syndrome' and create a perfect balance between risks being transferred and known risks being accommodated. An e-reverse auction was used for the bidding process. The final tariff achieved was 40% less than the VGF tariff. RUMSL's nuts and bolts approach of process innovation motivated the central government to shift its focus from VGF to scalable market-based financing models. A "Standard Bidding Guidelines" for solar projects was introduced by the government, incorporating many features of the Rewa project.

Set in July 2020, this case talks about ZENXIN Organic (Zenxin) - an organic farming company of fresh produce in Malaysia, and traces its evolution using the brick and mortar retail supply model in a nascent market where customers liked to "see and feel" fresh produce before purchasing them. Zenxin used a 'Farm to Fork' approach to expand its brick and mortar retail business to become the largest supplier of organic produce in Southeast Asia. The company acquired more farmland to increase supply, widened its produce variety to include a selection of 200 products with affordable price points, established supply partnerships with more than 100 supermarkets, opened 12 brick and mortar retail stores, and an agro-tourism recreation park under its brand name. Zenxin ventured into delivering organic produce online in late 2018, about a year before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced millions of consumers to switch to online mode of purchase for their daily needs. While Zenxin was presented with the opportunity of tapping on this demand through its recently launched ecommerce platform, its digital marketing strategy to sell its products was still evolving. The company had implemented an improved ecommerce website, an updated Google My Business profile and social media accounts to build brand awareness and drive online sales, and seen some positive results. However, it was still struggling to build a strong, regular, online customer base. The firm's CEO, Sengyee Tai, wondered how he could further improve on Zenxin's digital marketing and e-commerce marketing strategies to attract more customers.

Analysts have often compared keeping up with Cybersecurity threats to running on a treadmill that keeps speeding up; the runner cannot move forward and often begins to slide backwards and fall behind. Set in July 2020, this case explores how one of the world's most renowned such cybersecurity "runners", FireEye, implemented AI-based solutions within the organisation to provide improved cybersecurity services to its clients. The case delves into the various strategies implemented by the firm for AI adoption using a specific example tool. FireEye used its conceptual AI framework called the 'Automatibility Spectrum' to determine the appropriate degree of automation for developing different solutions. Additionally, the firm implemented agile practices to build inter-team collaborations, cross-team workflow processes and changes in its organisational structure and culture to promote a mind-set shift towards automation. Tasks that involved decision making would typically incorporate human verification with repetitive tasks being performed by automated algorithms. This Human+AI approach had enabled FireEye to expand and scale its support services. However, cyber attackers were constantly 'upping their game', and rapid technology innovations were creating new threat exposures. The nature of cybersecurity threats and the supporting technical methods were changing rapidly and continuously, and some of the rules and approaches for threat protection and investigation applicable earlier were becoming irrelevant as cyber threats evolved and became more sophisticated over time. Was FireEye's existing approach of Human+AI capable enough to tackle the ever-changing challenges in cybersecurity?

Set in April 2020, with the backdrop of the Covid 19 pandemic, the case talks about the opportunities for visual search in the online retail market segment and beyond. Visense is a visual search software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions provider with a pay-as-you-use, API based, market solution that focuses on the retail segment. Visenze had experienced a spike of about 30% in the usage of its solutions between January to April 2020. Predominantly, usage growth had extended across all item categories, with footwear, apparel and jewellery products being the top gainers. The presumed understanding from this trend was that with more time in hand for home browsing during the pandemic, consumers were exposed to more visual inspirations and objects of desire. This inclination had led them to explore ecommerce websites increasingly, paving a direct path to progressive sales conversions. Moreover, consumers had started to demand shorter purchase journeys, in the quest for a frictionless ecommerce experience. While Generation Y and Generation Z were the major users of ecommerce and visual search, older generations (Generation X and Baby Boomers) had also started to increasingly use online channels of shopping. Visual search was firmly in a sweet spot with the promise of collapsing the conversion process from image to purchase in a few seconds. Amidst such market conditions, Oliver Tan, co-founder of Visenze, wondered if his firm required a new market strategy to tap on the latest opportunities. Should Visenze continue to focus on the retail segment? Should it target older consumers in the retail segment? Will its technology need to be enhanced to target the new consumer segment?

In 2015, Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd (Mapletree), a real estate and capital management company headquartered in Singapore, was due to launch its new Five-Year Growth plan. The key decisions that the company needed to take were: should Mapletree extend its reach geographically outside Asia? Should it also consider going into any of the new asset classes-student accommodation, corporate housing and data centres-that it was currently evaluating? The case is divided into two parts. Case A is set in December 2014, and discusses the strategic decisions the company needs to take for future growth. It has several possible options - grow in the existing markets, expand its product portfolio, or enter a new market. Adopting a hybrid strategy, Mapletree decided on a mixed approach that included some geographical diversification as well as a strong push for new products in existing markets. Case A also discusses how Mapletree put together its initial five-year plan and expanded in Asia before venturing into Western markets. Case B is set in 2019 and focuses on how Mapletree achieved its second phase of growth. The key takeaway here is how the company organised itself internally to deliver growth. Discussion points in the case are around the elements of shared incentives, clearly aligned plans, and a team culture of successful execution. The case also elaborates on how Mapletree put together its new five-year plan with a clear and ambitious goal of doubling its assets under management (AUM), and then backed it up with specific geographic and product market initiatives.

In 2015, Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd (Mapletree), a real estate and capital management company headquartered in Singapore, was due to launch its new Five-Year Growth plan. The key decisions that the company needed to take were: should Mapletree extend its reach geographically outside Asia? Should it also consider going into any of the new asset classes-student accommodation, corporate housing and data centres-that it was currently evaluating? The case is divided into two parts. Case A is set in December 2014, and discusses the strategic decisions the company needs to take for future growth. It has several possible options - grow in the existing markets, expand its product portfolio, or enter a new market. Adopting a hybrid strategy, Mapletree decided on a mixed approach that included some geographical diversification as well as a strong push for new products in existing markets. Case A also discusses how Mapletree put together its initial five-year plan and expanded in Asia before venturing into Western markets. Case B is set in 2019 and focuses on how Mapletree achieved its second phase of growth. The key takeaway here is how the company organised itself internally to deliver growth. Discussion points in the case are around the elements of shared incentives, clearly aligned plans, and a team culture of successful execution. The case also elaborates on how Mapletree put together its new five-year plan with a clear and ambitious goal of doubling its assets under management (AUM), and then backed it up with specific geographic and product market initiatives.

In 2019, Ai Hua Ong, Group Chairperson, Asia Pacific of Johnson & Johnson (J&J), was ruminating over the choice of Singapore as the company's regional headquarters (RHQ). While political stability, ease of doing business, a start-up friendly and open innovation ecosystem and supportive government regulations had built an ideal climate for the city to function as a base for a RHQ, many other cities in Asia provided tough competition to the city country. Moreover, while co-location had been widely recognised as one of the drivers towards the effectiveness of the innovation ecosystem - emerging technologies like hologrammatic communication could make the need for the RHQ model outdated. In the R&D space, the need for a skilled workforce could be alleviated by employing technologies like Artificial Intelligence. For the purpose of collaboration, blockchain technology could be applied to enable firms to share data more securely over longer distances. The use of Internet of Things (IoT) in the biomedical sciences sector, could reduce the need for being close to the consumer for R&D and market research; while the increased use of 3D printing devices could make Singapore's advantage as a logistical hub in the region less salient, as designs could be shared virtually and printed locally. Amidst such tugging tensions, Ong wondered if Singapore would continue to remain an attractive destination as an RHQ? Would its innovation-ecosystem suffice as a sustained differentiating factor? Could the concept of Technology Hub be an alternative path?

In March 2020, Manav Kamboj, CTO of PropertyGuru, an online property platform, wondered what it would take for his firm to become a one-stop solution-shop for property seekers in the home buying process. His company had just launched a new application - PropertyGuru Finance which could enable seekers to search for a home loan entirely online. The solution had taken Kamboj and his team one step closer to achieving the organisation's vision - enabling completely online property transactions by 2025. PropertyGuru had implemented several AI-based solutions to transform its platform from a property-search to a property-trust platform. The goal was to become the customer's trusted friend, philosopher and guide in the home buying process. The transformation had seen the implementation of several useful analytics tools and AI applications that had helped property seekers, sellers and agents make informed decisions in buying and selling properties. It had also propelled the company to become Asia's leading online property platform providing users a choice of over 2.7 million homes and the preferred destination of more than 24 million property seekers per month. To attain its vision of enabling fully digital property transactions, however, the company would need to think outside the box and rely on its old friend - technology, to design new solutions to enable online property transactions. How could PropertyGuru become an end-to-end property solution platform? What emerging trends in real estate could the company explore? Would it need to bundle all its proposed applications, or could it offer the additional offerings as standalone services? Could AI open more doors for the company?

What does it take to set up the next level of schools that encourages academic excellence at an international level in a developing country? How should the school brand itself to communicate that commitment to excellence to prospective students' parents? How can a school provide that level of academic excellence at an affordable cost to the middle-income segment? What are the levers that it can use to scale its school locations over the country? In September 2019, Phan Hu Thuy, CEO of Vinschool, contemplated the above questions as she addressed the managing committee of Vinschool. Thuy had a daunting target ahead of her - to expand Vinschool to double its existing size in a period of five years. Vinschool was established in 2013 in Vietnam, as a directive of Vingroup, to provide schooling facilities for children residing at the Vinhomes real estate complexes built by the group. The school had expanded rapidly, growing from one campus to 31 campuses with over 27,000 students, by 2019. Operating as a not-for-profit entity, Vinschool delivered international standard education to its students, amidst an increasingly competitive private school education market served by a limited resource pool. The challenge was clear: Vinschool had to provide an excellent academic experience with limited resources, and at the same time, focus on uniformity of quality as it established new campuses. How could Vinschool expand holistically? How could Vinschool stay ahead of the competition? Could the school expand its potential consumer market segment? How could the school make it's brand more compelling?

In November 2019, David Broom, Chief Marketing Officer of FWD Singapore, replayed a commercial ad clip of his company, as he ruefully considered the competitiveness of the insurance market in Southeast Asia. Building competitive resilience in a cutthroat market dominated by large traditional insurance players was a constant challenge for FWD. Although his company had launched innovative products in the market with improved claims processes, competitors had quickly replicated the product features and launched similar products. FWD had launched its direct-to-consumer business in September 2016 with the aim of changing the way people felt about insurance by leveraging technology to deliver products that were relevant, easy to understand, and well-priced. The direct-to-consumer business focused on life and general insurance products like direct-term life, car, travel, personal accident, and maid insurance. All FWD products were sold online, making it one of the first completely online insurance companies in the region. The company had implemented an online underwriting system, and mobile technology solutions for claims processing. FWD was also the first corporate health insurer in Southeast Asia to adopt two AI solutions - one to read documents and another to assess corporate claims (detecting fraud waste and possible abuse). And yet, despite its best efforts to leverage technology, FWD found that technology alone yielded a very slippery slope as a competitive advantage. Broom brainstormed with his colleagues for hooks that would provide FWD with that practically difficult "oomph factor" known as sustainable competitive advantage. What could be their competitive strategy?

In July 2019, Evangeline Leong, co-founder and CEO of Kobe (a Singapore based start-up providing Influencer Marketing services) had a challenging task ahead of her. Her company was preparing for a campaign to build brand awareness of Jia Jia herbal tea amongst millennial consumers in Singapore. At Kobe, Leong and her team provided end-to-end influencer marketing services for clients including consultation on marketing strategies for realising brand objectives, assisting clients in identifying KPIs, execution and monitoring of campaigns, analysis of campaign results and providing recommendations. In addition, Kobe's AI driven influencer platform allowed clients to choose the most suitable influencers from a database of over 5000 influencers. Millennials in Singapore were social media savvy and often-brought products based on recommendations of influencers they trusted. Targeting this customer segment through social media was therefore a viable option. However, the Jia Jia campaign had a few limitations including a small budget and a short timeframe. Another constraint was that herbal tea was not popular with millennials. Historically Chinese herbal tea was synonymous with Singapore's culture and dated back to its history as a British settlement. However, over the past decade, bubble tea had become the preferred drink of the millennials. Leong knew she was being ambitious in trying to "sell bell-bottoms to Millennials", and she wondered if her influencer marketing campaign to rebrand Jia Jia herbal tea in Singapore could be as successful as the Levi's Jeans' 501 campaign. Could Leong turn the clock back and make Jia Jia the most talked about beverage brand in Singapore?

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?

This is a two-part case series. Case A begins in October 2012, when Encompass Singapore has introduced innovative ways to increase the capacity of its facility to cope with its fierce growth over the past few years in the Pay-tv industry. The company has captured over 50% of the market for outsourced digital playout services in Asia. The sheer speed of growth that Encompass Singapore is experiencing calls for an innovative, solutions-driven approach to almost all aspects of the business. Growth in the media industry is costly and capital intensive. At the same time, the group is facing increased competition. Process innovation has been critical in supporting the growth of the company since 2009, but can that alone continue to fuel double-digit growth? Case B is set in April 2019, when the media industry has shifted gear, and Pay-tv demand is declining. Online television content and Video on Demand services have instead started to see a growing demand in the market and Encompass is forced to adjust its strategy to cope with changing industry and market. Can process innovation continue to support the growth of the company amidst technology disruption and changing trends? What can be Encompass's growth strategy moving forward?

In October 2016, Wilf Blackburn, the CEO of Prudential Assurance Company Singapore (PACS) started an organisational transformation journey to reposition PACS as the number one insurance company in Singapore. Earlier that year, PACS' market share had fallen from 22 per cent in the previous year to 17 percent, pushing the company to the number two position. But plummeting market share was not the only reason for concern. There was brimming dissatisfaction amongst employees within the organisation over long work hours, a hierarchical work culture and dwindling bonuses. PACS was a subsidiary of Prudential plc (Prudential), and had a long successful history in Singapore. It had been the performance powerhouse of the Prudential Corporation Asia (PCA), but in 2015, the company lost two key bancassurance partnerships. As a result, PACS annual new business premiums dropped by US$ 82.7 million, and its market share slipped by almost five percentage points. The following year, PACS lost a long-standing high performing agency to its competitor. Once, considered the fortress of Prudential's business in Asia, PACS had many challenges to overcome. The company hardly relied on its regional office (PCA) due to its previous stellar performance, and, there was undoubtedly little trust between the regional office and Singapore office. Internally, there was discord between departments, and each unit preferred to work in silo. Hierarchy was pervasive and performance was sales driven; targets set were not aligned to expectations. Moreover, PACS had seen five CEO appointments over a span of 10 years. Each CEO had his own unique, quite contrasting style of leadership, and this quick succession of changes yielded different business strategies, with many not seen through their full completion. As the incoming CEO of a troubled first world business, what approach could Blackburn take to turn around the organisation?

Co-founded by Raghav Kapoor in Singapore in 2014, Smartkarma was an innovative e-commerce-based independent platform for providing investment research - conceived in response to changes in banking industry regulations post the 2008 financial crisis. New industry regulations required investment research to be a separate entity from sales in banks and financial institutions. Consequently, large investment banks looking to slash cost centres had started to outsource investment research. Smartkarma used a Subscription based business model. Independent analysts could publish research content on the platform and client organisations brought monthly subscriptions to access all content. Analysts were paid based on revenues generated from their content, determined by quantified value add (QVA) calculation model. By the end of 2017, Smartkarma had established itself as Asia's largest investment research platform with more than 14,000 insights across several verticals. It had also expanded geographically, establishing offices in Hong Kong, Frankfurt, and London. Smartkarma's CEO and co-founder, Kapoor, however, was aware that the firm's business model was susceptible to several risk factors, including very short-term client commitment, economic downturns and industry regulations. Kapoor chose a strategy of quickly acquiring as many clients as possible, as well as continuously building a pool of insight providers to create an early mover market advantage. Would Smartkarma be able to scale from being an Asian leader to dominate globally? Ease of entry, informational efficiency, and simplicity in replicating an independent investment platform, made it extremely difficult for such a business to beat the market on a sustained basis. Would focusing on the quality of research and transparent payment be enough to make Smartkarma the choice for asset managers in large banks? Could the company's subscription-based business model stand the test of time?

Seng Hua Hng (SHH) Foodstuffs Pte Ltd, the largest nuts manufacturer in Singapore, was the company behind Camel Nuts, a trusted household brand name in nut snacks in the country. Camel had a prominent brand presence both domestically and internationally in 29 countries. Aspiring to continued growth, in 2016, the company set a strategic target of 100-100-10, which stands for S$100 million (US$72 million) revenue, geographic presence in 100 countries and a profit of S$10 million (US$7 million) by the year 2020. In late 2017, a year into his new role as Head of Group Finance at SHH, Colin Chin commissioned a team of SMU accounting students to build data analytics capability in-house to help the company achieve its strategic goals. In the past, SHH as a traditional family business would rely on ballpark estimates to make key strategic decisions, for example, to determine annual production capacity. The practice of using past years' demand in current year's production planning had continued throughout the decades. Some of the key challenges SHH faced was the lack of accurate demand forecasting on a periodic basis and the absence of important financial information that would support the risk assessment of expansion to new foreign markets. By leveraging the power of predictive analytics, Colin wanted to find answers from the data insights to help him overcome some of the challenges the organisation was facing. How could SHH grow its existing markets, both domestically and overseas, and by how much? What are some of the new markets SHH can enter? Will there be any potential cannibalisation of existing products if SHH were to introduce a new product line? Could data analytics help decision-making at SHH to become data-driven, hence enabling the company to better assess if the goals of 100-100-10 were within or out of reach?

In 2017, the solar panel industry was in choppy seas due to a sudden drop in panel prices, and many large companies started to report bankruptcy. Steve O'Neil, the CEO of Renewable Energy Corporation (REC), was worried about the future of the solar industry and began reassessing REC's market strategy in the face of the downturn. REC was established as a hand-washed solar wafer manufacturing unit in Norway in 1996. Over the years the company grew to become a leading integrated solar panel manufacturing company and the largest European supplier of solar panels. It was able to build a market niche for itself and a reputation of being a quality-focused and technology-oriented manufacturer. By 2017, the company had installed more than 30 million solar panels worldwide. REC had shifted its focus to Asia in 2010 and moved its operational headquarters to Singapore. REC was a mid-scale manufacturer and focussed on residential and commercial customers. The key focus markets for the company were the U.S., Asia Pacific, and Europe with almost half of its revenues coming from the U.S. The solar industry globally was going through a downturn after several solar companies reported bankruptcy and began selling their products at significantly reduced prices. What ensued was a price war among companies, further fuelling the impact of the downturn. Companies who did not have scale had to shut down, and those that were plagued with overcapacity faced losses and became insolvent. REC had been more stable due to its niche market focus but was also beginning to experience the pressure. The company had so far focused on investing in the latest technology to ensure that its products were competitive. Could O'Neil and the management team at REC protect the company from the crisis? What could be their business strategy in the crisis?

In 2011, Alexis Horowitz Burdick founded Luxola, an e-commerce platform selling branded cosmetics online in Singapore. By 2015, Burdick was able to expand her venture across 12 markets in Asia Pacific region and was acquired by Louis Vuitton Moet Hennesey (LVMH) under its cosmetics arm of Sephora. However, the initial years of Luxola had been fraught with several challenges. The primary challenge for Luxola had been attracting funding from venture capitalists. Luxola had been established by a solo woman founder, and typically venture capitalists avoided investing in start-ups established by women. Another unexpected challenge for the company was the 'lack of trust' reputed cosmetic brands had on e-commerce platforms. Burdick used a lean business model and customer centric strategies to cope with these challenges. After the acquisition, Sephora retained the senior staff including its founder. Burdick now focussed her attention on more sophisticated channels of marketing and implemented digital analytic tools and behavioural messaging to drive customer conversion ratios. These strategies had begun to produce results, and Burdick was hopeful that she could further grow the company in the region fairly quickly. Luxola had tapped on an unmet user need of women in Southeast Asia - sourcing branded cosmetics from an online platform. The unmet user need had stemmed from a demographic transformation wherein the young women in the region were becoming increasingly independent and liked to splurge on themselves. Other than demographics, what other sources of innovative opportunity had Luxola satisfied? Was exiting through acquisition the right strategy for Luxola?