During the rapid growth of China's commercial health insurance industry in the 2010s, many third-party administrators (TPAs) emerged to provide administrative services to primary insurers. However, most of these TPAs were small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) that offered poor-quality services and were often short-lived. This made them incompatible with the long time horizons and high risk management requirements of the insurance sector. There were also additional structural, institutional, and technical obstacles that primary insurers had to overcome to collaborate with TPAs. To address these pain points, in 2010, Steve Zhang, then Managing Director of Munich Re Life China, and Eric Zhao, general manager of the operations department responsible for insurance innovation, established HAP (Healthcare Assistance Platform) with a view to creating a one-stop solution for the customers of primary insurers by integrating top TPAs under one roof. After a decade of growth, by 2020, the company offered more than 30 services through this platform. It had also developed a set of criteria used to screen and evaluate TPAs, ensuring the quality of its services, which earned the platform recognition from primary insurers. As direct competition in the health insurance market intensified, and insurers became increasingly aware of the importance of customer service and data collection, many primary insurers started to develop their own service platforms, while reinsurers and TPAs also began to experiment in this direction. HAP was originally launched as a supporting service for Munich Re, so it wasn't placed under pressure to grow by the company. However, as HAP's operations matured and market competition intensified, Zhang began to entertain the possibility that the platform might grow its user base from three million to ten million in three to five years or perhaps even become a future profit center for Munich Re. However, he needed to carefully consider how this objective

This case relates to Shanghai Huanxin Electronic Technology Company (hereinafter "Huanxin"), and discusses the company's decision to launch a new scheme for shared strollers. Huanxin, established in 2012, initially focused on providing technologies and services for government-funded public bicycle programs and metro cards. In 2016, following the arrival of bike-sharing in China, Huanxin rolled out its own scheme called '100Bike'. However, it was very short-lived. The company subsequently launched "Share++", an IoT SaaS platform for business customers which aimed to make their products and services (such as umbrellas) available for sharing. However, "Share++" soon encountered difficulties, including customer acquisition challenges and high operating costs. Therefore, Zhao Wei, CEO of Huanxin, decided to focus on a specific segment. By chance, he had heard his family complaining about the lack of baby strollers available for rent when they went on holiday. This inspired him with the idea of launching a stroller rental scheme. Should Huanxin enter into this new market?

This case explores the implementation of Huanxin's shared stroller scheme 'Pandastroller', launched in September 2017. To achieve rapid growth, Pandastroller established a franchising model in June 2018, which aimed to boost its market share by leveraging its franchisees' funds and marketing channels. The franchising model was gradually expanded, and by the first half of 2019, it had started to deliver positive results. However, the speed of expansion was still far below expectations. What could Pandastroller do to accelerate its expansion?

Capillary Technologies, an Indian customer relationship management software as a service company, provided cloud-based omnichannel customer engagement and related services to retailers and brands. In a country well known for software service companies, based primarily on labour cost advantages, Capillary was founded as a business-to-business software company (i.e., an intellectual property company). After entering several Western markets, which was consistent with its lofty aspirations, Capillary decided to pursue Asian markets. The new venture relocated its headquarters from India to Singapore and made strong efforts to gain revenue in the Asia region—including the large, but intensely competitive, Chinese market. Capillary started by working with Western multinationals that were its customers in other markets. The company then began attracting local customers, as it established a Chinese technology team to cater to the unique technological ecosystems prevalent in China. Over a three-year period, Capillary achieved 200 per cent annual growth. With the opening of a new office in Guangzhou, Capillary then hoped to further deepen its presence in the Chinese market. What could the general manager do to help Capillary reach this goal within the next three years?

This case focuses on the challenges and key decisions facing Winner Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Winner Technology or Winner) when shifting from selling brick-and-mortar retailers traffic analytics systems to providing them with big data services. Founded in 2004, Winner Technology had become the leader in the Chinese traffic analytics system market. However, with shifting consumer behaviors and the recent advancement of technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence, Zhang Hongjun, Chairman and CEO of the company, was keenly aware that simple traffic data analytics could not keep up with retailers' growing needs, while the application of big data in the retail industry brought about tremendous opportunities. Therefore, in 2015, Winner Technology established winneryun.com, a platform to marshal traffic data in the Chinese retail industry, and launched enhanced big data services based on these data resources at the end of 2018. However, the new big data services have received mixed responses from the market. Zhang and his executive team have identified two fundamental issues that the company needs to address: What kind of revenue model should be adopted for big data services? And how can Winner cultivate the market?

This case focuses on the actions of Beijing Baman Technology Co., Ltd. ("Baman") to improve supply chain performance to support its innovative "boundaryless dining" business model. These actions included defining supply chain strategies and roles, and driving upstream and downstream collaboration. As a start-up, Baman served authentic Hunan Changde beef rice noodles, earning its restaurant chain great popularity online through successful community marketing. It then innovated its business model by breaking time and space restrictions of traditional eateries and diversifying its portfolio to include dine-in, take-away and retail products. However, after expanding its retail SKUs, Baman suffered from a bloated inventory and faltering cash flow at the end of 2017. Company founder Zhang Tianyi then realized the importance of supply chain management and the different characteristics between restaurant and retail supply chains. Since 2018, Baman has made relentless efforts to build on supply chain management capabilities by clearly defining supply chain strategies, tactically segmenting the management of restaurant and retail supply chains, and improving supply chain efficiency while reducing costs through upstream and downstream collaboration. The case ends with an open discussion: how could Baman manage more complex supply chains to boost efficiency with lower costs? By depicting the story of a start-up, this case expands on how a company can improve its supply chain to facilitate business model innovation, which may serve as a reference for supply chain management of small and medium-sized enterprises in other sectors of the real economy.

Capillary Technologies, an Indian customer relationship management software as a service company, provided cloud-based omnichannel customer engagement and related services to retailers and brands. In a country well known for software service companies, based primarily on labour cost advantages, Capillary was founded as a business-to-business software company (i.e., an intellectual property company). After entering several Western markets, which was consistent with its lofty aspirations, Capillary decided to pursue Asian markets. The new venture relocated its headquarters from India to Singapore and made strong efforts to gain revenue in the Asia region-including the large, but intensely competitive, Chinese market. Capillary started by working with Western multinationals that were its customers in other markets. The company then began attracting local customers, as it established a Chinese technology team to cater to the unique technological ecosystems prevalent in China. Over a three-year period, Capillary achieved 200 per cent annual growth. With the opening of a new office in Guangzhou, Capillary then hoped to further deepen its presence in the Chinese market. What could the general manager do to help Capillary reach this goal within the next three years?

Ace Company (Ace) was a Chinese start-up developing software for the Internet of Things (IoT). The company was founded in February 2015 by three colleagues for the initial purpose of providing an unprecedented universal IoT operating system, the absence of which was severely crippling developing development in IoT. By mid-2017, having proven the technical viability and market acceptability of its offering, the company was ready to scale up. However, the co-founders disagreed on the choice of growth strategy. One founder advocated extending Ace’s business to as many industrial scenarios and companies as possible, while the other founder was in favour of Ace focusing on and penetrating deeply into a few industries. The third founder was stuck in the middle and wanted to know which path they should choose.

Ace Company (Ace) was a Chinese start-up developing software for the Internet of Things (IoT). The company was founded in February 2015 by three colleagues for the initial purpose of providing an unprecedented universal IoT operating system, the absence of which was severely crippling developing development in IoT. By mid-2017, having proven the technical viability and market acceptability of its offering, the company was ready to scale up. However, the co-founders disagreed on the choice of growth strategy. One founder advocated extending Ace's business to as many industrial scenarios and companies as possible, while the other founder was in favour of Ace focusing on and penetrating deeply into a few industries. The third founder was stuck in the middle and wanted to know which path they should choose.

This case is essentially about economic growth and development in general, and about China in particular. It makes the topic of growth more interesting by discussing the triggering factors of the MIT through comparing the differences between a trapped and an escaped province, i.e., Shaanxi and Jiangsu, respectively. To alleviate the regional development gap, Shaanxi and Jiangsu became paired poverty alleviation partners in 1996 under the guidance of the Chinese central government. However, 20 years have passed and a huge gap still exists between the two provinces in many fields. Jiangsu's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has surpassed the MIT range, while Shaanxi's has not, and the province is very likely to be trapped with the continuing slowdown of its economic growth. The key difference between the two provinces is not resources, but development policies.

Hope Noah Health Management (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (hereafter Hope Noah) was one of China's earliest providers of medical tourism services. The company built a sterling reputation among customers, and demand for its services grew quickly. However, CEO Wang Gang wanted to achieve more than just handsome sales figures and hoped to provide customers with more effective, efficient, and affordable medical tourism services. He believed that the industry's prevailing pricing model, whereby customers were charged according to the amount, duration, and frequency of services ran counter to patients' interests, as less effective and longer treatments resulted in higher bills. To address this issue, Wang considered switching to an "all-inclusive" pricing model covering medical costs, service charges, and all other non-medical expenses arising from treatment. In addition to addressing patients' concerns about unpredictable expenses, this model would also force the company to increase efficiency, aligning the interest of patients with those of the company. However, Wang's proposal was unanimously opposed by other executives due to the financial risks associated with the inherent uncertainties of medical treatment. This case looks into a thought-provoking topic as it concerns China's inadequate medical resources, deficient healthcare system, rapidly aging society, and consumption upgrading trends. The case study will cover topics like basic pricing theories and innovative pricing methods while showing students how to formulate marketing strategies for companies by applying theoretical frameworks such as the marketing mix.

This note addresses the key concepts of food security and sustainability, non-linear innovation, and open innovation models such as incubators and accelerators.

This note addresses the key concepts of food security and sustainability, non-linear innovation, and open innovation models such as incubators and accelerators.