Acorai AB, a Swedish medical start-up, had developed a heart monitor designed to meet the needs of cardiologists worldwide. The portable heart monitor had demonstrated in clinical trials its equivalence to the prevailing gold standard of invasive blood pressure management. The establishment of proof of parity was a big step forward for the company, though the clinical trials were preliminary and the product on hand was only a prototype. <br><br>The director of Sales and Marketing at Acorai AB was keen to establish product–market fit, and to resolve another dilemma: Should the start-up stay only in Sweden, limiting its activities to local clinical studies, local clinical research, local patients, and local cardiologists? Or should it pursue a higher profile by conducting clinical studies in the United States—the largest health-care market in the world—and then the European Union, as part of getting regulatory approval in both geographies, before launching the product globally?
The founder of Cheekbone Beauty, an Indigenous enterprise in the Niagara Region of Ontario, was driven by the goal of becoming “the first Indigenous woman to create a unicorn beauty brand from Canada.” In early 2021, she was seeking resolution to an ongoing entrepreneurial dilemma: How should she identify the fledgling company’s unique strengths and build them into sustainable competitive advantages?<br><br>The Ivey Business School gratefully acknowledges the generous support of Pierre Lapointe, MBA ’83, in the development of this case.
In March 2020, the chief innovation and strategy officer (CISO) of Amsterdam-based Koninklijke Philips NV (Philips), a global leader in health technology, was surveying the distance that Philips had traversed in its transition from products to platforms. The CISO faced three managerial dilemmas: How could he transform the long-standing functional orientation at Philips into a multidisciplinary alignment? How could he ensure that Philips’s customer-facing teams moved from a transactional mode to a relational mode? And how could he motivate employees to deal with a burning platform when they did not see one?
In February 2020, the director of Global Creative Intelligence at McCormick & Company, Inc. (McCormick), was grappling with some challenges at his desk at the company’s headquarters in the United States. Having been mandated to deploy Artificial Intelligence (AI) in developing new products—in partnership with IBM—he had been interfacing with over 500 product developers at the company’s various locations worldwide. The director faced three managerial dilemmas: How should he get the company’s product developers to trust the findings of AI? How could he teach and train AI to become smarter? And how should he deal with the global-local dynamics at McCormick in launching AI-engineered products?
In June 2020, the head of Customer Centre at DBS Bank Ltd. (DBS), the largest commercial bank in Singapore, was wondering how to leverage the bank’s current success in digitalization to create a competitive advantage. As a business leader, she was facing major decision points. How could she increase awareness of the bank’s digital assets among existing customers? How could she further digitalize the customer centre? In addition, the COVID-19 global pandemic, which had disrupted businesses worldwide, had been both a challenge and an opportunity for DBS. What should be the bank’s next steps? The head of the Customer Centre needed to find a way forward for DBS in the context of an industry that itself was not only in the middle of internal disruption but was also undergoing rapid transformation.
Guillaume Laverdure, chief operating officer at Medicom Group (Medicom), was evaluating a potential investment in a new facility that would manufacture melt-blown polypropylene (melt-blown PP), a key raw material for surgical and respirator masks. It was February 2021, and the previous 12 months had been eventful for the company, one of the largest suppliers of medical masks in the world, as the COVID-19 pandemic had led to a staggering increase in demand for its products. Raw material supply shortages had been a major problem during 2020, and Laverdure was exploring opportunities that would make the company’s supply chain more resilient. Laverdure was scheduled to meet with Medicom’s chief executive officer the following week to review alternatives and to make a decision regarding melt-blown PP supply.
In early June 2020, the owner of BYKlyn, an exercise bike fitness studio in New York, was considering her response to the business disruption that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had caused the health and fitness industry. BYKlyn had recorded consistent annual growth since its launch in 2014. The fitness studio owner had been confirming her business expansion plans by moving into a larger space in the city when the pandemic struck in early 2019. Consequently, she was forced to shut down the business in mid-March 2019, in compliance with COVID-19 regulations. After a two-month lockdown, the New York state government announced phased-in reopening plans, and the fitness studio owner was considering three options for restarting her business: reopen at the existing premises; move to a virtual environment with a new business model; or set up an outdoor fitness club, which would offer fitness club members a completely new workout format.
In April 2020, the interim president of the 3D printing and digital manufacturing business of HP Inc. was weighing his options in resolving three managerial dilemmas: (1) How should HP promote technology awareness among industrial customers? (2) How should HP scale up its production of 3D printers? (3) How could HP promote shorter technology adoption cycles among industrial customers?
In December 2018, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Carrot Rewards (Carrot), a profitable Canadian social enterprise, was facing a turning point. The company, which had been founded three years earlier, was about to implode. Its single largest client had just conveyed its decision to pull out, causing a sudden 65 per cent drop in the company’s annual revenue. Should Carrot continue with the prevailing model—one day at a time? Should it launch a freemium version of its app? Should it pivot toward new geographies and new locations? Should it begin to focus on new verticals and go after new clients? Should it go on the auction block and salvage what is left of the original company? The founder and CEO wondered whether the future held workable options other than those he was considering in dealing with the enterprise he had founded, built, and nurtured.
In early April 2020, COVID-19 began impacting trade, commerce, and industry globally. The founder and president of Innovative Automation Inc., a custom machine builder in the small and medium enterprise sector in Ontario, Canada, was facing two main dilemmas. First, how should he ensure that the internal channels of communication at the company remain open as its employees—like everyone in the rest of the province and indeed the rest of the world—dealt with a largely unknown virus? Second, how should the company enforce social distancing—made mandatory by the provincial government in its bid to contain the spread of the virus—at its manufacturing facility?
The chief commercial officer of Johnson Controls International, a multinational manufacturer and marketer of security systems, was noticing a change in the buying behaviour of one of its premier customers. As one of the company’s designated strategic accounts, this customer was entitled to multi-level collaborative support. Of late, the customer had been taking a “bid-and-buy” approach to its purchases, ignoring the standards agreed to in the strategic agreement with Johnson Controls International. It also sought a scaled-down version of a security system, and this ran contrary to the original strategic account agreement. The chief commercial officer was examining the way forward with the customer. Should he demote it from the strategic account status to a regular sales account, despite the risks involved in doing so?
In March 2020, the founder of an auto mechanic shop in a Toronto suburb was contemplating a five-year growth strategy. Given the disruptions in both the auto mechanic sector and the automotive industry at large, she wondered whether her plan was realistic. Should the founder execute the growth strategy according to plan or change the plan and lead the business in a completely different direction?
In April 2018, the two co-founders of SafeMotos, a motorcycle taxi service in Rwanda, in Central Africa, were examining their expansion plan. Their start-up had not yet become profitable, but they were already making plans to expand into the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo. They were also driven by the larger goals of replicating their tried and tested growth model in other cities on the African continent and moving quickly into the underserved city transportation markets of Asia and the Far East. As they reviewed their four-year experience of working in Africa, they were facing a singular question: What should be the roadmap for scaling up their ride hailing service?
In July 2019, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of a one-year-old start-up in Los Angeles was reviewing the path forward with the company’s new technology platform. The product helped brand managers insert their brands virtually and in real time into television (TV) and movie scenes. With each placement customized to the individual habits and personal preferences of the viewer, virtual placement was a considerable improvement over physical placement of brands as permanent fixtures in TV plots and movie scenes. The technology represented a major disruption to the product placement industry. The company’s CEO needs to resolve three dilemmas to take Ryff forward. First, how should the company find its fit with large advertising agencies that operate in a traditional placement market? Second, how should the company convert traditional industry person-to-person interactions to interactions driven by software programs? Third, how should the company take its business global?
In February 2020, the executive vice-president of Manufacturing and Supply Chain at CoolIT Systems (CoolIT), met with the company's chief executive officer (CEO) in their Calgary office. The company had recently developed a new range of products that provided liquid cooling solutions to large-scale data centre installations for high-performance computing. In addition to expanding capacity to meet demand, the CEO was also concerned about the requirements and expectations of the company's new customers and the implications for its operations and supply chain. He asked the executive vice-president to prepare recommendations for CoolIT's operations and supply chain strategy for its line of products for the data centre market. What would the relationship with a contract manufacturer entail, and what key capabilities did CoolIT need to look for in a potential supplier?
In July 2019, the uncertainty that had been surrounding Brexit since the public referendum in June 2016 had led to a crisis for Owen Barry Inc. (Owen Barry), a luxury goods manufacturing enterprise in the United Kingdom. The company’s finance and production manager had voted in favour of Brexit but was hardly prepared for the deadlock that followed. He was now weighing different options for navigating a way out of the company’s predicament. His three main concerns were: How should he deal with the exchange rate fluctuations that had been affecting the company’s revenues and margins? How should he deal with issues around sourcing and importing essential raw materials? How should he deal with problems around the recruitment and retention of the skilled workforce at the company’s manufacturing plant near London?
In May 2017, the recently appointed chief executive officer of Sobeys, the second-largest grocer in Canada, was considering the company’s financial difficulties. He was tasked with saving Sobeys from near insolvency and planning strategically for the company’s core grocery business. Sobeys had posted a loss of CA$2.1 billion for the fiscal year ending May 2016, compared to a profit of $419 million just a year earlier, partially due to a high-profile acquisition that had gone sour. In addition, a ratings agency had downgraded Sobeys’s debt to junk level, citing underperformance and lost market share as the reasons. The new chief executive officer devised an interim three-year growth plan called Project Sunrise, which had two main objectives: quickly relieve Sobeys of its troubled financial situation, and prepare for the long-term industry disruption that was becoming prevalent, both locally and globally.
In mid-2018, the president and chief executive officer of Siemens Canada was examining his options in executing Vision 2020+, a growth plan developed by the company's headquarters in Germany. One of the cornerstones of the plan was digitalization, both internally, among the company's sprawling manufacturing operations, and externally, among the company's industrial customers. How could Siemens Canada, as a North American subsidiary of a large multinational enterprise, add value to the global plan? And to do so, what skills and competencies would Siemens Canada need to acquire locally?
In June 2018, Lena Koke, the co-founder of Axess Law Professional Corporation, a legal services enterprise in Toronto, Ontario, was examining how to take the firm to the next level of growth. Koke had to determine what legal products and services the firm could expand and diversify into, how the firm should leverage information technology to reinforce its low-cost positioning, and how the firm should finance growth. The co-founder must evaluate the road map that she chose, and develop a long-term strategic plan for the firm.