This case study explores Microsoft Teams' strategic response to Zoom's rapid rise during the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights the ways in which Microsoft leveraged its customer base, expertise in enterprise software, and integration with the Microsoft 365 suite to challenge Zoom in the video communications market. The case highlights the playbook Microsoft has used many times over the past three decades to compete against challengers who established a first-mover advantage. It covers two phases of the competitive battle between Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The first phase began with the launch of Microsoft Teams in 2017 and ended in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic helped Zoom dominate the video communication market. The second phase of the battle focuses on how Microsoft Teams counterattacked to gain market share against Zoom.

Microsoft launched the Xbox gaming console on November 15, 2001. For years, Microsoft used the "razor-razorblade" business model for Xbox by subsidizing the console's price while making money from game titles. In 2017, Microsoft introduced Xbox Game Pass, a subscription-based model for video games. Xbox Game Pass was intended to allow subscribers to discover and play new games without having to buy the games. Those subscribers could always choose something new to play from the catalog of games on Xbox Game Pass, all for a single fee of about $15 per month for the Ultimate version. Xbox Game Pass had achieved significant success, with a subscriber base of some 25 million gamers by January 2022, accounting for about 20% of Xbox's 2021 revenues of $16.3 billion. But growth had not kept pace with expectations, partly due to the post-pandemic slowdown in gaming activity. The Xbox team began examining three options for increasing the growth and profitability of its business. One option was to optimize the current subscription-based model by adapting the Xbox game catalog, benefits, pricing, and features. The second option was innovating the business model by changing it to a usage-based one was reducing subscriber churn by creating a loyalty program (called Xbox Rewards). The Xbox team needed to decide which of these strategies would produce the best revenue and profit outcomes while minimizing the risk of alienating the most valuable subscribers of Xbox Game Pass.

In January 2022, the Tata Group acquired Air India and Air India Express from the Indian government, marking the culmination of a long privatization process of the government-owned airlines. Before the Air India acquisition, the Tata Group already operated two airlines in the Indian market: Air Asia India and Vistara. Air India was a full-service domestic and international carrier with a large fleet; Vistara was a premium full-service domestic and international carrier with a limited fleet; and Air India Express and Air Asia India were low-cost carriers (LCCs). The Tata Group urgently needed to reduce operating costs and maximize synergies across its airline portfolio, as all four airlines were losing money. Tata wanted to capitalize on the massive growth potential in the Indian airline market by augmenting and modernizing its aircraft fleet, expanding the route network, and improving the brand image of Air India. Some of Tatas decisions were constrained by conditions imposed by the Indian government. The Tata Group would need to move quickly, as customers and investors had high expectations for the turnaround of Air India.

Infosys, an India-based global IT consulting and software services provider, had more than 200,000 employees, mainly software specialists and technical consultants, who were assigned to projects by a talent allocation team that made staffing recommendations based on detailed manual assessments of employees' skill sets and experience. However, Infosys delivery managers, responsible for managing the talent assigned to projects, often rejected the matches proposed by the talent team and hoarded human resources for their own projects. In fall 2017, Infosys leaders assembled a cross-functional team and tasked it with developing a new AI-based talent management system to replace the old manual process. The new system was to provide a 360-degree view of open positions and available employees and use an algorithm to make hiring recommendations for projects. The AI team members had to make various data, design, and deployment decisions before they could begin building the new solution. First, they had to select data variables to define "supply" (i.e., employees available for assignments) and "demand" (i.e., staffing needs for client engagements). They also had to establish a system for ensuring this data was kept accurate and up to date after launch. Last--but perhaps most critical--the team had to develop a plan for maintenance and continuous improvement of the model, even at this early stage.

Throughout 2021, excitement about the metaverse as the next generation of the internet experience had been building steadily. The buzz reached a fever pitch in October 2021, when the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that the company was changing its name to Meta and that it would spend $10 billion to build "the metaverse." Nike had been exploring opportunities in this new virtual environment with several experimental probes, including its purchase of a virtual sneaker company called RTFKT, partnerships with game platforms Roblox and Fortnite, the creation of blockchain-based digital sneakers called CryptoKicks, and moves to protect its brands and logos by filing for trademarks for its virtual sneakers and logos. In its early metaverse initiatives, Nike had employed a "probe and learn" strategy to evaluate the metaverse as a new channel for customer engagement and to create new digital revenue streams. However, it was now time for Nike to define a cohesive metaverse strategy that would help drive its business goals. To do this, Nike's digital team needed to understand how each of the metaverse initiatives would help Nike to grow revenue, build brands, and promote its thought-leadership position as an innovator. The team then needed to prioritize these initiatives by assessing their risks, rewards, and reversibility. Finally, it needed to define a roadmap to scale and enhance each initiative. In charting its course in the metaverse, Nike also needed to consider whether the timing was right to place big bets on metaverse platforms and assets, given the high level of uncertainty about the evolution of this emerging space.

The Surface Hub 2S, a video-based collaboration device, had been initially designed for the corporate market. In late 2020, Jon Worsley, senior director of hardware program management at Microsoft, and Frank Buchholz, senior product marketing manager for Surface devices, were exploring a new opportunity in the higher-education market. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom had established itself as the go-to software platform for livestreaming and webinars for higher education. Worsley and Buchholz believed that the Surface Hub, with its large display and Microsoft Teams collaboration software, could offer a more powerful integrated solution for teaching and learning for universities and colleges.</p> <p>To pursue the higher-education market opportunity, Microsoft would need to pivot the positioning and messaging, as well as the design of the Surface Hub 2S. This pivot involved two sets of decisions: one in marketing communications and the other in product design. In the short term, Microsoft's marketing team, led by Buchholz, would need to redesign the value proposition, positioning, and messaging for the Surface Hub to appeal to educators. In the longer term, Worsley's engineering team would need to redesign the product features and the product architecture of the Surface Hub 2S to better address the needs of students and instructors. In entering the higher-education opportunity, Microsoft had to be careful not to create a product or deliver a message that would diminish its offering for the core corporate market.

In late 2019, Dr. Hiroaki Kitano, the president and director of research at Sony Computer Science Laboratories (Sony CSL), had decided he would be stepping down from his position soon. Sony CSL, a small blue-sky fundamental research facility funded by Sony, had always operated on the strength of the trust between Sony's CEO and the lab's director. Sony had been hands-off in its management, leaving Kitano to hire, fire, fund, and evaluate the lab's researchers and project portfolio at his own discretion. Now that he was stepping down, however, he worried that Sony CSL could not withstand his departure. Kitano wanted to make a transparent plan for the organization's future before he handed off Sony CSL to his successor. That plan involved three key decisions. First, what should be the optimal structure and governance of Sony CSL? Should it maintain its independence and autonomy, or should it align more closely with Sony's business priorities? Second, how could Sony CSL scale its impact on Sony and society at large, given its small size? Finally, should Sony CSL establish some standard methods of measuring project success and strength of the portfolio? In making these decisions, Kitano wanted to ensure that he preserved the unique culture that had allowed Sony CSL to pursue path-breaking research and innovation.

After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to: understand how to identify customer pain points by using customer experience mapping and the Jobs to Be Done framework; identify hypotheses to measure and improve the customer experience; articulate the logic for creating a quantitative metric for the quality of the customer experience; understand how business executives can lead the development of machine learning analytics models.

After a successful transition from a projects-based IT business services company to a platform-driven analytics company, Saama's core leadership team gathered in 2017 to brainstorm the next phase of its growth. The year before, the team had decided to narrow its target market to the life sciences vertical. Saama now had to decide how to execute on this focused strategy by choosing a growth pathway within the life sciences vertical. Saama's leadership team was considering three alternatives: acquiring new customer accounts, developing existing customer accounts, or developing new products by harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies. The team had to evaluate these growth pathways in terms of both short- and long-term revenue potential, as well as their potential for sustaining Saama's competitive advantage.

In 2008, Starbucks was in crisis as a result of undisciplined growth and loss of focus, and its stock declined almost 70%. In August of that year, Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, came out of retirement to take over as the CEO. The company regained its footing by refocusing on its core and driving strong organic growth. By 2014, the stock price had reached $40, an all-time high. To prevent history from repeating itself, Schultz wanted to ensure that Starbucks' growth strategies not only addressed market opportunities, but also were aligned with the company's brand image, assets, and capabilities. Starbucks announced a five-year growth plan in December 2014 with ambitious goals that included nearly doubling its revenues from $16 billion to $30 billion, doubling operating income, and expanding its footprint to more than 30,000 stores globally by 2019. The growth plan consisted of seven specific growth strategies, one of which was the New Occasions strategy. The objective of New Occasions was to drive growth by diversifying Starbucks' revenues beyond breakfast to the lunch, afternoon, and evening dayparts. Starbucks created specific offerings for each daypart, called the Lunch, Sunset, and Evenings programs. The case focuses on evaluating these three occasions-based growth opportunities and identifying the best path forward.

In 2010, Salil Pande founded VMock, an online product that helped MBA students prepare for job interviews. Students could upload their video interviews and get feedback from mentors and peers. Four years later, VMock pivoted from an interview feedback product to a "Smart Resume" product that focused on improving resumes. The pivot was based on the insight that job candidates first needed help fixing their resumes before they could obtain and prepare for interviews. Further, the interview feedback product was difficult to scale as it relied on human feedback. The Smart Resume product, on the other hand, was powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence technology, making it more scalable and allowing VMock to evolve its offering from a product to a platform for managing careers. VMock had forged strong relationships with top business schools in the United States and Europe and its Smart Resume platform had been well received by the market. Now Salil and his wife (and head of product development), Kiran, had to determine the next step in the company's evolution. They realized that the time had come to take their business to the next level. But they were faced with several options on how to go about scaling VMock. Should they market directly to consumers or should they use partners to scale their user base? Should they create a solution for employers to help them recruit and manage talent? What revenue streams should they focus on to maximize growth and profitability? These strategic decisions would be key to the survival and growth of VMock.

After a successful run for many years as a resilient consumer electronics giant, Best Buy was under intense pressure at the end of 2014. Even as competitors like Circuit City melted away, Best Buy had been able to withstand the onslaught of online behemoth Amazon and discount retailers like Target and Walmart. However, its competitive position was threatened as online shopping became more popular, particularly among millennial customers. With a new leadership team, Best Buy had recently undertaken bold initiatives to expand and refine its online presence and position itself for success. These initiatives had produced encouraging results, but Best Buy needed to do more to stem the loss of market share to Amazon and to become more relevant to millennial customers. To address these challenges, Best Buy approached the Kellogg School of Management to solicit ideas from student teams by sponsoring a Business Challenge competition. The teams came up with several strategic initiatives. Best Buy needed to evaluate these initiatives on two criteria: First, how well did these initiatives leverage Best Buy's privileged physical assets (stores, salespeople, and Geek Squad services staff) to create a winning customer experience? Second, how effective would these initiatives be in attracting and retaining millennial customers?

In early 2017, after launching its successful "Greenhouse-in-a-Box" pilot project in India with fifteen smallholder farmers, Kheyti, a non-profit agricultural technology (AgTech) social enterprise, was struggling with several decisions in developing and growing its business. Kheyti was launched in 2015 to help smallholder farmers battle poverty and income variability by providing affordable technologies bundled with services. Over eighteen months, the team had developed a low-cost and modular greenhouse product to which it added financing, inputs, training, and market linkages to create a comprehensive "full-stack" solution for small farmers. The pilot project was a success in many ways, but Saumya, Kheyti's co-founder and head of product, was concerned that it revealed shortcomings that could severely affect the viability and scalability of Kheyti's solution. Saumya had some important decisions to make. Should Kheyti redesign the product from scratch, or find other ways to reduce the cost for early adopters? Should it rely on upfront revenues from sales of the greenhouse, or consider developing an innovative financing or contract farming model? Kheyti's dwindling cash reserves meant that these decisions were urgent and critical. The path chosen now would determine whether the startup would move beyond the pilot stage and achieve its vision of serving 1 million farmers by 2025.

In early 2016, after the success of its first two smartphones, the OnePlus One and OnePlus 2, China-based startup smartphone maker OnePlus was deciding how to build on its early success and grow into a global contender in the highly competitive smartphone market. Technology enthusiasts and geeks had flocked to purchase the first two generations of its smartphones and expectations were high for the company's next product. The company's founders, Pete Lau and Carl Pei, faced the challenge of broadening the appeal of OnePlus to address the mainstream market without alienating its core customer base. "Crossing the chasm" from the early adopters to the mainstream market involved addressing three interrelated questions: First, what segments should OnePlus target as it sought to grow beyond its loyal fan base? Second, what value proposition and positioning strategy should it adopt to appeal to these target customers? Finally, what distribution and marketing communications strategy should it employ to make best use of its limited financial resources? A key consideration in formulating its strategy was to stay true to the company's culture and mission of "Never Settle" by charting its own course and not emulating the strategies of much larger competitors like Apple, Samsung, LG, and HTC.

After the successful release of the first Hunger Games film in 2012, the film's distributor, Lionsgate, was preparing to release the next movie in the series, Hunger Games: Catching Fire. Fan expectations had grown after the success of Hunger Games and Lionsgate faced the challenge of keeping moviegoers interested and engaged in another Hunger Games movie. In an era marked by the rising popularity of digital and social media, Lionsgate knew that attracting fans to a sequel meant pushing the boundaries of traditional marketing tactics. Digital brand storytelling is about using digital media in a holistic way to tell a brand story and build excitement for an audience. Brand storytelling seeks to make a connection with the audience by giving them an emotional experience that resonates with them. While Lionsgate was aware that traditional marketing would need to be blended with a digital campaign to bring in moviegoers, it also needed to strike a careful balance between the two and choose the appropriate platforms to tell a cohesive story. Should Lionsgate launch a brand storytelling campaign to appeal to fans? Lionsgate's comparatively small marketing team gathered to brainstorm about how to execute such a campaign and position the film for another big success.

High-end professional services firms, unlike product companies, traditionally experience only linear revenue growth. That's because selling more services means adding more professionals, which limits profit margins. However, savvy providers of consulting, legal, accounting, and other services are using technology to their benefit. They are automating certain routine aspects of their work to essentially "productize" those tasks. By combining those products with human attention to matters requiring more knowledge or judgment, they can give clients better service at a lower cost. This article provides a guide to product development for professional services firms. The author describes the three key stages of the process: (1) To "discover potential products," identify opportunities for automation by looking for patterns in your services and zeroing in on the tasks that are performed frequently and require little knowledge. (2) To "develop products," use algorithms and artificial intelligence to create "smart" tools to handle high-volume, low-sophistication tasks. (3) To "monetize your products," stop charging for time and materials, and shift first to transaction-based pricing and then to an outcome-based model. In conjunction with this process, it's important to create a cross-functional team that focuses on product development. And take the long view--you'll have to invest time and money before you reap the benefits of embedding products in services.

In 2014 WMS Gaming, a manufacturer and seller of slot machines to casinos, was considering a redesign of its existing revenue model. As technology evolved and customer demand for gaming solutions intensified, new and innovative revenue models were being adopted in other technology markets. Most notably, the subscription revenue model, in which customers paid a monthly subscription fee rather than a large upfront fee, was becoming widely adopted in the software industry. Product manager Dayna Stone had the task of evaluating several revenue models and recommending one that most suited WMS's business needs and at the same time took customer needs and wishes into consideration. Complicating this decision were several factors that would have to be kept in mind. Americans' love of gaming had led to a mushrooming of casinos, which meant increased competition for casino dollars. Yet the financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath had weakened demand for casinos. In addition, casinos, depending on the type of customers they attracted, differed in their appetite for innovation and maintenance of their slot machines. Students will step into the shoes of Dayna Stone as she undertakes the task of weighing these factors and selecting the right revenue model.

In May 2013, Jack Russo, a Chicago-based tech entrepreneur, had to choose one of four possible product concepts to use as the starting point for his new K-8 educational learning company, TabletTeach LLC. At the time, the K-12 education market in the United States was experiencing major disruption due to print-to-digital transformation, new Common Core State Standards (CCSS), new standardized tests aligned to the Common Core (rolling out in most states in the 2014-2015 school year), and increasing pressure from parents for schools to incorporate technology in their children's learning. Based on his first-hand experience and research, Russo knew there was a significant opportunity for a company that brought to market a tablet-enabled learning solution focusing on grades K-8, which made learning Common Core math and/or language arts fun for every student and engagingly simple for all teachers. This case provides an interesting example of something typically hard to teach: transitioning from the fuzzy front end of a market opportunity analysis to a specific product opportunity. The case bounds the problem by outlining four potential product concepts, which students will then evaluate and rank using their own sets of criteria.

In today's organizations, innovators are in demand everywhere--from the factory floor to the salesroom, the IT help desk to the HR department, the employee cafeteria to the C-suite. Innovation isn't a department, the authors say; it's a mindset that should permeate your entire enterprise. And what fuels it is insight--an imaginative understanding of an internal or external opportunity that can be tapped to improve efficiency, generate revenue, or boost engagement. Sawhney and Khosla outline seven "insight channels" that would-be innovators in any function or role can use: (1) Anomalies, or data that deviates from business as usual; (2) Confluence, when economic, demographic, and technological trends come together; (3) Frustrations, which lead to innovative workarounds; (4) Orthodoxies, which can spark a search for alternatives; (5) Extremities, such as fringe members of stakeholder groups who push for solutions; (6) Voyages, whereby innovators leave their offices to visit colleagues or customers; and (7) Analogies, useful ideas or systems in other teams, business units, companies, or industries.

PageWell, an e-reading platform provider, was preparing to launch PageWell 2.0 to the larger full-time MBA student market after a successful trial of PageWell 1.0 in Executive MBA (EMBA) classes at the Kellogg School of Management. Research had shown that full-time MBA students would be very interested in using products that allowed electronic access to course materials everywhere and across many platforms and that allowed electronic note-taking and storage. To better understand this user group, PageWell conducted a market research survey of students, faculty, and administrators to gauge their needs, preferences, and potential interest in the PageWell product. The study revealed that MBA student usage patterns, scenarios, and behavior varied significantly from EMBA student needs and perceptions. PageWell now had the task of prioritizing the product requirements and recalibrating the market requirements document to more accurately reflect student needs and thus create a viable product.