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The president of Vic Progressive Diamond Drilling, a Canadian enterprise based in Sussex, New Brunswick that provides products and services to mining companies, is reviewing the progress in the market launch of SkyTrack, a new product designed for use in difficult terrain exploration by large mining corporations. Feedback during field trials has been favourable; the innovation is, in fact, customer-led. There is also evidence that this multipurpose vehicle saves time and money in transporting mining equipment across rough terrain in remote areas. But the company has yet to make its first sale in two years because the user community is experiencing a difficult economic environment and is unwilling to make capital investments. How can product adoption be generated? What customer value proposition can be developed? Can SkyTrack be positioned as a means to improve cash flow for customers during difficult times, or should customers be primed to adopt it when the inevitable uptick in exploration occurs?

After several years of near steady state, the market share of Colgate Palmolive Canada Inc. in the toothpaste category has gathered momentum in 2012. In a bid to extend the gap between the company and its primary competitors in the category in 2013, the vice-president of customer development is discussing the options with his team at company headquarters in Toronto. Market share is an important performance metric at the company. One suggestion is to increase the marketing budget. There is a general consensus that marketing dollars should not be diffused across activities during the year, but there are differences of opinion about what to focus on — trade promotions, consumer promotions or advertising — in order to sustain the momentum in market share in 2013.

Entravision, a leading Spanish-language broadcasting company in the United States that targets Hispanic Americans, has just set up a digital analytics division called Luminar, which uses Big Data to focus a company’s marketing to a particular set of consumers. The idea of launching Luminar has been mooted by an outsider who is a friend and protegé of the company’s founding chairman. As the incumbent president of the new division, he is grappling with some major issues. How should he secure the buy-in of line and staff managers at Entravision? How should he find a structural fit between Entravision and Luminar? How should he leverage business opportunities beyond digital analytics? What kind of entry barriers can he build so that Luminar retains its first mover advantage?

The newly appointed innovation manager at Purolator, a market leader in the parcel delivery industry in Canada, is under pressure to deliver quick wins. The manager faces three dilemmas in his role, which is the first-of-its-kind in the company. How should he bring innovation to the attention of Purolator employees, particularly the senior managers? How should he develop the roadmap and set an agenda for unveiling innovation at Purolator? How should he ensure that innovation becomes a source of long-term competitive advantage at Purolator?

The newly appointed innovation manager at Purolator, a market leader in the parcel delivery industry in Canada, is under pressure to deliver quick wins. The manager faces three dilemmas in his role, which is the first-of-its-kind in the company. How should he bring innovation to the attention of Purolator employees, particularly the senior managers? How should he develop the roadmap and set an agenda for unveiling innovation at Purolator? How should he ensure that innovation becomes a source of long-term competitive advantage at Purolator?

The newly appointed director of Innovation Management & Strategy at Boehringer Ingelheim, a German-based multinational pharmaceutical company, is finding his way forward in his firm’s new, first-of-its-kind role, which is central to the company’s growth rejuvenation strategy. His job has a threefold mandate: to build internal networks, to establish internal structures and to leverage internal ideas. His biggest challenge, however, may be transforming the organization’s DNA. The blockbuster business model that has characterized the company for decades is no longer appropriate. Instead, the firm needs to develop healthcare products available to end users over the counter. This shift in strategy requires innovative changes in distribution, delivery and customer focus. To accomplish this goal, he needs to institutionalize innovation so that it becomes sustainable. But in doing so, he must also identify the metrics for assessing progress. The case provides an opportunity for students to step into the shoes of an innovation leader, to develop an innovation roadmap for the organization in the face of uncertainty and to understand how to engage in innovation leadership at various levels of a global enterprise.

Since 2006, Alcatel-Lucent, an international telecommunications equipment manufacturer based in Paris, France, has been conducting boot camps for its employees to provide business training and help them monetize their innovative ideas with a view to creating value for the company. The program has led to 32 projects of which two have been commercialized, three transferred to business units within Alcatel-Lucent and one spun off. In 2012, however, the boot camps were discontinued due to a cost reduction program aimed at making the company cash-flow positive. Now, in June 2014, after a change in top management and a desire to regain the innovative edge against its competition has revived the idea, the company’s director of Open Innovation & Intrapreneurship is facing three dilemmas: how to reconcile the big business intolerance for failure with failure-prone intrapreneurship, how to design a forward-looking component into intrapreneurship and how to change the design and architecture of the boot camp in its new edition.

The world’s second largest home appliances company has introduced a change in its global organization structure. Electrolux AB has consolidated its research and development, marketing and design functions at the top to form what is known as the “Innovation Triangle.” This change is in tune with the pursuit of innovation as a source of differentiation in a competitive industry. The concept has been tested in Electrolux Brazil for four years before being scaled up globally. The amplified version of the Innovation Triangle has a singular objective: to facilitate innovation enterprise-wide by leveraging cross-functional, cross-geographical and cross-business synergies. The ultimate goal is to launch new products faster, better and in greater number. The unveiling of the new organizational structure presents an opportunity for the company's Innovation team to review the company’s ongoing innovation initiatives. The four-member team grapples with issues around improving the company’s innovation pipeline.

WestJet, Canada’s second largest national airline, is preparing to launch a social media initiative to coincide with the year-end holiday season. As the company’s executive vice-president (Sales, Marketing and Guest Experience) reviews the plan, he is seeking answers to three questions. Does the proposed initiative fit or mismatch with WestJet’s brand image? Will the initiative deepen or dilute the engagement the airline currently enjoys with its guests (as it calls its passengers) and WestJetters (as it calls its employees)? What specific outcomes can WestJet achieve through the initiative and how can those outcomes be improved? Also see supplement 9B14A027.

Supplement to 9B14A026.

WestJet, Canada's second largest national airline, is preparing to launch a social media initiative to coincide with the year-end holiday season. As the company's executive vice-president (Sales, Marketing and Guest Experience) reviews the plan, he is seeking answers to three questions. Does the proposed initiative fit or mismatch with WestJet's brand image? Will the initiative deepen or dilute the engagement the airline currently enjoys with its guests (as it calls its passengers) and WestJetters (as it calls its employees)? What specific outcomes can WestJet achieve through the initiative and how can those outcomes be improved?

Supplement case to W14399.

As multinational enterprises expand operations in emerging economies, identifying and responding to unique marketing challenges may require strategy that focuses on local adaptation and global integration on a country by country basis. In March 2014, Tesco PLC (Tesco), the largest retailer in the United Kingdom and the third largest supermarket group in the world, has signed an agreement with Trent Hypermarkets, the retail division of the Tata Group, a leading Indian business conglomerate, for setting up a 50:50 joint venture (JV) in Indian retail. Tesco is committed to investing £85 million (US$110 million) as its share of capital. As it gets down to the basics of operating the JV, the management of Tesco, head quartered in London, United Kingdom, is facing three major dilemmas: How should Tesco sustain the advantage of being the first global multi-brand retailer to be allowed to invest in India? How should it fine-tune its tried and tested global business model to suit Indian retail? How could the company avoid the kind of failure it had experienced in the U.S. market, which it exited in April 2013?

In 2009, a U.S.-based social enterprise, d.light design, launched its innovative brand of solar lamp in India. Although the company has gained market share, the category as a whole is not growing. In 2014, The solar lamp market in India is complex, as a result of being both fragmented and disorganized. The company’s new head of Indian operations faces three dilemmas: How can the company scale up? How can the company improve the productivity of its distribution channels? How can the company leverage its first-mover advantage to make its brand synonymous with the category?

The world's leading documents company is in a transformation mode. From being a provider of cutting-edge technology products for decades, it is moving towards providing product-service combinations. As a person driving this enterprise-wide change, the head of Xerox Innovation Group (XIG) is facing two specific issues. How should XIG become more customer-centric? How should the company build new competencies to provide consistent services across devices and locations for each customer?

Having positioned itself from the beginning as a global enterprise in information technology, Infosys benchmarked its governance practices with the best in the world right from the start, focusing on the importance of performance appraisal at all levels, including that of the board. Indeed, Infosys broke fresh ground when it introduced a model of Peer Review at the board level wherein each board member would annually review the performance of every other individual member of the board. Launched as the personal initiative of the chairman of the board and chief mentor – who also designed its process framework – the Peer Review was meant to raise the stature of corporate governance at Infosys. <br><br>More than seven years later, Infosys launched Board Review, a more common form of performance appraisal wherein each individual member of the board would annually review the performance of the board as a whole during the previous year. As he re-examined Peer Review in light of this new model of appraisal, the chairman of the board had to decide if Peer Review was serving its purpose, if it was damaging to boardroom collegiality, and how to institutionalize performance appraisal processes before he retired.

Sears Canada’s associate vice-president of sustainability faces dilemmas in executing a strategy to reduce the retailer’s carbon footprint. He needs to integrate the concept of sustainability into the company’s larger corporate objectives, drive the concept in individual business units and identify the metrics for tracking the progress of reducing Sears Canada’s carbon footprint.<br><br>The (B) case, 9B13D015, is positioned two years later, when the associate vice-president is about to leave the company and needs to plan for the transition.

This is a supplement to 9B13D014.

In mid-April 2013, the chief executive officer of Tesco PLC, the world’s third largest global retailer headquartered in London, United Kingdom, must explain to shareholders his decision to close down the operations of the fully owned subsidiary, Fresh & Easy Neighborhoods Market Inc., in the United States. Following a December 2012 strategic review that reported that the subsidiary was not delivering acceptable returns, operations have already been discontinued and a buyer is being sought. Although the focus on fresh food to ameliorate the health care costs of obesity in the United States was a driver for establishing the subsidiary, the effects of the 2008 recession discouraged consumers from paying the higher costs of fresh food. Is exiting the United States the right decision for Tesco? How should the process of exit be managed? Are there any takeaways from the U.S. operations that Tesco can apply elsewhere in its global strategy?