In May 2019, amidst of an ever-worsening trade war between the U.S. and China, President Donald Trump added Chinese telecom giant Huawei to the Department of Commerce's "entity list," essentially forbidding American firms from doing business with the company. Huawei, along with another Chinese telecom firm, ZTE, seemed poised to lead the globe in 5G technology, a step-wise shift in mobile communications that would be rolled out everywhere from Beijing to Beirut to Boise over the early 2020s. In the last year of Trump's presidency, a group at the State Department led by Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Energy, and the Environment, former Silicon Valley business leader Keith Krach, embarked on a global campaign to challenge the market dominance of Chinese firms. The Clean Network initiative, which recruited countries and companies into commitments to abide by a set of shared principles in technology adoption and practices, began with 5G but Krach and others had ambitions well beyond. The controversial program to some heralded a new era of multilateral, democratic governance of the internet and to others augured a "splinternet" where market participants and countries had to choose between the U.S. and China. Whatever the view, the competitive landscape for 5G was different at the end of 2020, and participants had to understand how and why.
In 2020, Ndidi Nwuneli, founder and CEO of Sahel Consulting in Nigeria, faced a thorny set of problems. Her firm partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in a large project to develop the local dairy industry as a way to facilitate equitable growth and conserve foreign exchange. The Nigerian dairy market was dominated by imported, powdered milk, but the country had a large population of cows owned by pastoralists. Nwuneli had to devise a plan to get local dairy processors, multinational firms, local pastoralists, and the Nigerian government to work together to make local cows more efficient, connect smallholder farmers with processors, and compete with imported milk powder. The stakes were high: the project, if successful, could play a large part in reducing Nigeria's deadly farmer-herder conflict and reducing the country's macroeconomic imbalances. The case explores the variety of interests involved and asks students to debate whether Nwuneli and others should push for protectionist policies as a way to catalyze local production.
In 2019, the People's Republic of China (PRC) turned seventy-years-old and became the longest active authoritarian regime in recent history. By then, China was the world's second largest economy by GDP (after the United States), and a high-technology industrial powerhouse, with ambitions to bring connectivity infrastructure to developing nations. By the time China's fifth generation leader Xi Jinping took office in 2012, the Chinese Communist Party had presided over decades of unprecedented economic growth while maintaining a monopoly on political power. By 2021, Xi showed no signs of choosing a successor or stepping down after the customary two five-year terms. Despite promising more and deeper market reforms, the PRC at 70 appeared to oversee an increasingly complex economy and society with a party-state expanding its presence into nearly every aspect of civilian life. The world sought to make sense of China's changes and especially the apparent resurgence of the party-state. What would China's conservative turn mean for its future and its role in the world?
The case opens in November 2020 as Eyad Alkassar and Mahmoud Fouz, co-founders of Iran's first and leading ride-hailing platform, Snapp, eagerly await the results of the U.S. presidential elections. The case takes us through the challenging times between November 2019 and November 2020, as the confounders navigated Snapp through an increasingly challenging environment of sanctions, stricter restrictions of big tech companies, and since February 2020, through the operational difficulties exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic that shook Iran to its core. The case highlights the challenges of operating under sanctions and the different ways the co-founders try to find to keep Snapp alive and asks how the U.S. election results could change the environment in which Snapp operates, as the two presidential candidates have vastly different approaches to their policy to Iran.
The case opens in November 2019 as Eyad Alkassar and Mahmoud Fouz, co-founders of Iran's first and leading ride-hailing platform, Snapp, find out about Apple's and Google's decisions to remove all Iranian apps from their respective application stores. The case takes us through the founding story of Snapp in 2014 to how the company grew to reach two million daily rides in Iran servicing 30 million customers through its two million registered drivers in 100 cities in Iran. The case then goes into detail about how the removal of all Iran-based apps from application stores limited Snapp's operations and its go-to-market channels. Next, the case chronicles how the co-founders focused on finding operational and technological solutions to minimize Snapp's reliance on U.S. technology following the U.S.' withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018 and instating the secondary sanctions on Iran. The case highlights the challenges of operating under sanctions and the different ways the co-founders try to find to keep Snapp alive in a market that had been out of reach for Western investors. In 2019, Snapp had become the largest Internet company in the Middle East yet it was increasingly difficult to navigate the operational hurdles. The co-founders could not help but think whether it was now time to reach out to major media outlets and launch a public relations campaign to create awareness around the unexpected decision that had put the very existence of many companies at risk, including Snapp's. Alkassar and Fouz needed to weigh it against Snapp's realities. The case then asks: Should they go public with their story, or would it be better to stay under the radar and focus on efficiency and sustainability of operations?
In May 2018, Malaysia's 14th General Election saw a change of power that many thought they would never witness in their lifetimes. The political party that had ruled Malaysia for 60 year was kicked out of office by a 92 year-old challenger, Mahathir Mohamed, who had also been its leader and longest serving prime minister. These surprising events seemed to involve a financial scandal of historic proportions. The ousted Prime Minister, known as Najib, was associated with a sovereign wealth fund, 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), that had, with the aid of Goldman Sachs, borrowed 7 billion USD in global capital markets, all of which was squandered and some in remarkable fashion. An unknown young Malaysian of Chinese descent, Jho Low, had siphoned billions into his personal accounts, throwing parties for celebrities from Bangkok to LA. Was the Malaysian experience an idiosyncratic event in the trajectory of global capital markets or were its lessons more generalizable? The case explores illiberal actors in global financial markets and the dynamics of accountability in sovereign borrowing.
In 2015, a surprise presidential election result seemed to imperil Chinese investments in Sri Lanka, which were associated with China's Belt and Road Initiative to build global infrastructure. In the previous decade, China had undertaken two major projects in the country: the construction of a port in the poor district of Hambantota (also the previous president's hometown), for which Sri Lanka borrowed 1.2 bn USD from the China Ex-Im bank, and a major real estate project outside of Colombo. The new administration pursued renegotiation of both contracts. In 2016, a Chinese state-owned company purchased the asset of the Hambantota port, generating concerns about sovereignty in Sri Lanka and Chinese naval ambitions in Delhi and Washington, DC. This case explores the dynamics of Chinas ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, a large-scale infrastructure and connectivity project launched under its powerful leader, Xi Jinping, as well as the politics and economics of sovereign borrowing in the age of Chinese lending. Did Sri Lanka fall victim to a sort of "debt diplomacy," or did the Chinese side fail to understand Sri Lanka's domestic political landscape? Was the sale of the asset the right choice for Sri Lanka? The right investment for China Merchants Group, which bought the 99-year lease?
Xi Jinping assumed his position as head of China's fifth generation of leaders in 2012. Xi was head of both the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, which had ruled China since 1949. Xi inherited a country far more unequal than the one that Mao Zedong, Communist China's first leader, had left behind in 1978. The growth of markets had made China much wealthier, but also generated many social problems, including inequality, corruption, and social protests. This case discusses China's political and economic development in the 20th century to situate Xi's-and China's-contemporary challenges.
The case narrates the development of Pittsburgh from the 1940s to 2012. It analyzes the collapse of the steel industry in the early 1980s, the city's subsequent decline, and the city's later re-emergence as a hub for higher education, the tech sector, and the healthcare industry. Attention is given to the public-private partnerships that emerged in Pittsburgh, as well as the economic development and taxation initiatives pursued by different mayors.
Since opening to the global economy in 1979, but especially since entering the WTO in 2001, China's economy grew at rates around 10% annually by attracting FDI and promoting exports. After the financial crisis that began in 2008 and depressed demand in the United States and Europe, China's growth began to slow, and vulnerabilities in its economy came to light. It became clear to many in China that the growth strategy that got China from 1978 to the present was unsustainable and that the country needed a new strategy to resolve the country's regional inequalities, stimulate domestic consumption, and create growth less vulnerable to global contractions in demand. At exactly this time, between 2007 and 2012, the provincial municipality of Chongqing in China's mountainous southwest became the fastest growing city in China with GDP growth averaging over 15%. Chongqing's growth was the result of a suite of economic and social policies that had been dubbed the "Chongqing Model," a controversial bundle of reforms that promised public and private sector growth with benefits more equitably shared by all citizens. Yet critics found the model politically suspect and over reliant on state-owned enterprises and debt-driven investment. When the city's preeminent leader was publicly fired following a sensational murder scandal, the region's new leaders-and indeed China's new leaders-had to weigh in on the "Chongqing Model." Would it signal a new path to prosperity for post-WTO China?