• Singapore's 'Crazy Rich Asians' Experience of City Branding

    Tourism has been an important economic pillar for Singapore for decades, contributing 4% to Singapore's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). While Singapore is a well-known destination with Asians and Europeans, the country has yet to become a popular choice for US travellers who lived outside the gateway cities on the eastern and western coasts. Being the second largest economy in the world, the US presents huge potential for tourism in Asia, and specifically Singapore. Under the premise of the 'Passion Made Possible' brand for Singapore, jointly launched by the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) in 2017, STB collaborated with Warner Bros. in promoting the film Crazy Rich Asians, a Hollywood romantic comedy based on a book by the same title. The film's huge success has helped raise the profile of Singapore in the US market. However, there were some misalignments in the interplay of STB's city branding vision, the cultural connection to Singaporeans and the image that US travellers had of Singapore.
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  • DBS: Transforming the Culture of an Asian Bank

    In January 2010, the new DBS chief executive officer, Piyush Gupta, was tasked to realise the bank's vision to be the 'Asian bank of choice for the new Asia'. The global financial crisis of 2008 had created an opportunity for DBS to fill the void left by the Western banks that were suffering from its aftermath. Gupta, a former Citibank executive, had to reconcile the harmonious yet passive local culture at DBS with the more competitive yet proactive culture he was accustomed to - without causing an outcry from the other stakeholders.
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  • Resurrecting an Institution through the Power of Story: Singapore's New Natural History Museum (A)

    This is the first part of a two-part case study. Part A begins In December 2009, where Professor Peter Ng, director of the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research (RMBR), is issued a challenge: raise S$25 million in the next seven months to fund the establishment of a natural history museum in Singapore. Raising enough money to resurrect the museum in the midst of a global financial meltdown seemed like an impossibly tall order for Ng. To complicate matters, donations for natural history or science-related causes were virtually unheard of in the country. How can Ng raise the funds?
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  • Resurrecting an Institution through the Power of Story: Singapore's New Natural History Museum (B)

    Supplement to case SMU398. Part B follows Part A in June 2010, after Ng's team raised S$46 million (US$33.3 million). This overwhelming success has surprised everyone, including Ng. In addition to a S$10 million anonymous donation, the Lee Foundation donated S$25 million, while the Tote Board and the general public donated S$10 million and S$1 million, respectively. With funds in hand, the former Raffles Museum is finally ready to be resurrected as the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in 2014. Part B of the case reveals how the protagonist accomplished their fund raising goal by utilising corporate storytelling skills explored in Part A.
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  • POSCO's Journey: Building Employee Trust Through Communication

    This case focuses on POSCO, the world's most profitable steelmaker and third largest steelmaker by volume for crude steel production. When Jung Jun-Yang became POSCO chief executive in 2009, he envisioned trust to be the foundation of POSCO's success in achieving sustainable co-prosperity with its stakeholders. Believing that "trust is POSCO's identity" and "trust is based on communication," he launched the 'trust communication' initiative in 2010. This initiative coincided with the start of POSCO's third phase of growth for 2010-2020 decade. For this phase, the company aims to become a truly sustainable corporation. The case describes the trust-related challenges that Jung faces as he launches the initiative. In addition, it shows some preliminary results from the company's nascent initiative and the problems that continue to confront POSCO's management as the company strives to achieve long-term sustainability through a system focused on 'Great Harmony', which is based on trust and communication.
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  • Viki: By the Fans, for the Fans

    Viki is a web portal that provides video content with crowdsourced multi-lingual subtitles. It relies on an active community of fans to add captions and subtitles in numerous languages to premium videos (movies, television shows) from around the world - thus opening up new markets and enabling new viewers to enjoy the content. Leveraging crowd-sourced subtitling enables Viki to distribute non- English, non-US television content to foreign markets quickly and cheaply. The case begins as Nadine Yap, vice president at Viki, prepares for a major redesign of the website to meet the requirements of the growing company. She laments that when the company fixes bugs or makes improvements, community members often complain and even leave. The community of fans and 'subbers' is at the heart of what Viki does, so staying authentic is crucial to the company's sustainability. How should Yap and Viki go about maintaining the delicate balance between being an authentic site that is supported by an informal community and a slick, commercial operation?
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