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Majid Al Futtaim, a retail and entertainment conglomerate based in the United Arab Emirates, undergoes a digital transformation under CEO Alain Bejjani in response to disruption in its four core industries: retail, hospitality, food/beverage and grocery, and entertainment. As a regional leader in these brick-and-mortar industries, Majid Al Futtaim must learn to compete with a variety of digitally native e-commerce, homesharing, food delivery, and video-streaming brands. The case traces Majid Al Futtaim as it blends physical and digital consumer experiences, leveraging its unique understanding of the Middle East and its customers, to ultimately make the whole of its conglomerate greater than the sum of its parts.

From his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had come a long way. Now, from his spacious office with a picturesque view of Richardson Bay in Mill Valley, California, Hohman confronted one of the most important decisions of his life. Glassdoor, the company he cofounded in 2007 with Rich Barton and Tim Besse, had grown consistently over the years. It had been fueled by multiple different investors and VC firms, under various circumstances and deal structures. Like most start-up founders, they expected to take the IPO route at some point. Then, in early 2019, when it seemed that the company was finally ready to go public, one of its largest competitors placed an offer that was hard to refuse.

From his time as a young engineer at Microsoft in 1993, to the challenge of building Glassdoor from the ground up until it reached a valuation of over $1 billion, in 2018, Robert Hohman had come a long way. Now, from his spacious office with a picturesque view of Richardson Bay in Mill Valley, California, Hohman confronted one of the most important decisions of his life. Glassdoor, the company he cofounded in 2007 with Rich Barton and Tim Besse, had grown consistently over the years. It had been fueled by multiple different investors and VC firms, under various circumstances and deal structures. Like most start-up founders, they expected to take the IPO route at some point. Then, in early 2019, when it seemed that the company was finally ready to go public, one of its largest competitors placed an offer that was hard to refuse.

SM-315 Michelin Group is told from the perspective of Florent Menegaux, COO of Michelin, and other senior leaders at the company. Michelin had recently undergone a company wide reorganization, and Menegaux was tasked with how to maintain the company's relevance and competitiveness in a changing global marketplace, particularly as customer needs and expectations around service were becoming more specific and demanding. Given that Michelin was a large French company with a long operating history, Menegaux and others pondered what would the best approach be to implementing changes throughout the company to adapt to a more digital and customer-centric business landscape while still preserving and embracing the company's rich culture and proud history. One necessary element was the need to hire more "entrepreneurial" talent from outside the company (as opposed to the company's tendency to promote from within) in order to pursue several initiatives outside, but still related to, the core tire business.

Headspace in 2018 examines the company as it charts a new trajectory. The case follows the point of view of Randhir Vieira, Head of Product at Headspace, and dives into several challenges and opportunities from a Product Manager's perspective. Topics include boosting customer retention rates, finding and testing key metrics, incorporating new technologies, employing the "jobs to be done framework," and evolving the platform.

This case examines a series of challenges facing the Wikimedia Foundation as it sets its strategic course for the next decade. Topics include mission alignment, non-profit revenue models, technology evolution, regulation and the freedom of knowledge, and building and managing web ecosystems.

Long before Spotify had become a household name, and when Netflix was still mailing off DVDs to customers' homes, Tien Tzuo had foreseen a major transformation in the business world: from one-off sales to subscription business models. He realized that no one was making billing software to serve the complex needs of such companies, so he founded Zuora in 2007 to automate billing, commerce, and finance operations for companies built on a recurring revenue model. Initially, Zuora catered mostly to start-ups, but the world rapidly evolved. By 2017 its customers included companies such as Box, the Financial Times, Ford, GM, GE, Caterpillar, and Zendesk. In 2016, Zuora had crossed a major threshold: $100 million in annual recurring revenue. In 2017, Tzuo could see that Zuora was positioned to hit $300 million, and before then, he believed he would take Zuora public. The company was growing rapidly, and Tzuo had begun that he needed to approach this next phase of scaling more deliberately than he had with Zuora's early growth. "A company that is going from $100 million to $300 million has to be different than a company going from $30 million to $100 million," said Tzuo. "That $30 million to $100 million was a sprint; making the transition from $30 million, we were not so thoughtful. I wanted to be more thoughtful this time." In 2014, Tzuo had identified four major areas in which the company needed to transform: sales, finance, products, and people. Tzuo knew the transformation plan meant he would have to make a wave of leadership changes, managing hirings and terminations. And he would have to change his own leadership style to match the company's increasing size. Meanwhile, he had to think strategically about how Zuora could fend off challenges both from software behemoths like Salesforce.com and Oracle, and nimble upstarts. To successfully IPO, and satisfy investors over the long term, Tzuo knew that Zuora had to deliver consistency and predictability.

AB InBev, the world's largest beer company, faced serious challenges in 2017. First, large food and beverage companies were under-pressure due to shifting consumer preferences towards healthier products and increasing price pressure from retailers. The beer category, in particular, showed signs of stagnation in developed markets, such as the United States and Europe. Moreover, several major trends - e.g. localization of consumption and rise of craft beers- were quickly transforming the industry. Finally, technological innovations, such as e-commerce platforms and deep data-analysis enabled new players and emptied the effects of mass-marketing. The strategy designed by the owner of legendary brands like Budweiser, Stella Artois and Michelob Ultra, was multifaceted. On the one hand, the importance of renovating the core business was undeniable, especially via improvements to the portfolio and modernization of sales capabilities. On the other hand, the company needed to catch up on the new trends and become a disruptor itself; craft beers, e-commerce, home-brewing, and innovative business models were some of those. All while preserving its powerful internal culture and keeping its shareholders satisfied.

In 2017, significant changes were sweeping the global automotive industry: the rapid growth of electric vehicles, the race to develop commercially reliable autonomous cars and the ride-sharing phenomenon. Those trends were magnified by technological advancements around connectivity between drivers and their vehicles, as well as changes in consumer preferences, especially related to waning interest in car ownership. Additionally, China's increasing influence in the global markets and aggressive push for automotive innovation were shaking the industry. Daimler, manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz cars and one of the long-standing industry pioneers, started to react in order to preserve its leadership. Wilko Stark was made CEO of a new business unit called CASE, in charge of developing solutions to address the new trends. The multifaceted efforts in research, product development, strategic planning and technology investments faced several challenges, however. Notably, issues emerged regarding need for new talents and skills, relationship with labor unions, brand preservation, experimentation with new sales and distribution models and intense competition from traditional and new players.

Supplement to case E572. Between 2013 and 2017 PayPal had grown from $8 billion to almost $11 billion in revenues and had a market cap of over $70 billion. In addition, the product and cultural transformations of the organization made the firm feel like an entirely new company from the one that existed several years prior. Outside of the company, major trends continued to impact PayPal: e-commerce conducted on mobile devices in the United States accounted for just under 12 percent of all e-commerce transactions in 2014 and were forecast to rise to almost 45 percent by 2020, thus further changing how customers conducted business and paid for goods and services. The case explores how PayPal leadership has continued to evolve the organization and product lineup in order to compete in an extremely competitive landscape.

The Medium Corporation seeks to change how people author, consume and engage with content on the Internet. Founded by Ev Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, the company developed a digital publishing platform and set of social network tools that allow people to spend substantive time with weighty issues facing society, business and politics. Fighting the trend of quick engagement with short-form content on the Internet, Medium wrestles with how to deliver an experience that advances important topics with ease, flexibility, and meaning, while working to build a large and successful company. The challenges of building a successful digital media company, balancing tool development with content curation, and developing a successful monetization model are the core topics facing the firm's leadership team.

Lending Club follows the path of founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche as he scales his successful P2P lending company both pre- and post-IPO. From debating with bankers on the proper valuation metrics for the company, to managing customer acquisition costs as the competitive landscape rapidly changes, the Lending Club case explores several key challenges that come with operating a fin-tech company at scale.

The LiveRamp case follows the story of Anneka Gupta, Chief Product Officer of LiveRamp, from her early days with the company as a spinoff from Rapleaf, to the present day, where she manages a large product management team responsible for developing cutting edge data onboarding products.

Supplement to case E622A. The LiveRamp case follows the story of Anneka Gupta, Chief Product Officer of LiveRamp, from her early days with the company as a spinoff from Rapleaf, to the present day, where she manages a large product management team responsible for developing cutting edge data onboarding products.

In 2009, brothers Patrick and John Collison began working on a start-up called Stripe that made it simple for companies to send and receive money around the world. By the end of 2016, Stripe had expanded far beyond an online payment mechanism. Fueled by a belief that the Internet and developers would drive rapid economic growth across the world, Stripe created tools for social commerce and online marketplaces, as well as products to facilitate the creation and management of new businesses. Having raised nearly $450 million, Stripe was sufficiently funded to take advantage of a variety of industry tailwinds, including growth in global e-commerce, the proliferation of smartphones and mobile applications, and a rise in social media usage, among others. "Stripe: Increasing the GDP of the Internet" explores the challenges and opportunities faced by Stripe as it expanded from a small start-up to a company valued at $9 billion. Specific obstacles addressed in the case include: evaluating business opportunities, prioritizing new customers and markets, and assessing competition in a rapidly changing market. In a world with seemingly endless opportunities, the Collison brothers would have to be ruthless in prioritizing Stripe's product pipeline, geographical expansion, and partnerships, while continuing to provide value for Stripe's existing customers.

As of 2016, Mathias Döpfner, chief executive officer (CEO) of Axel Springer SE, had successfully transitioned the German publishing house through a major digital transformation in the world of journalism. Given the massive disruption that had occurred over the previous two decades with how people consumed news, this was no small feat. During this time, many newspapers, magazines, and journals failed to keep up with the rapidly changing industry. Historically, print advertising constituted the majority of revenue for large publishers. But the digital revolution in journalism meant that print advertising revenues dropped precipitously. This downward trend in print advertising revenues happened around the globe, with traditional publishers cutting thousands of jobs. Many publishers were forced to declare bankruptcy during this period. In spite of these industry headwinds, Axel Springer was thriving. Döpfner had transformed Axel Springer through a two-stage digital transformation strategy process. Starting in 2006, Axel Springer first focused on organic growth and late-stage digital acquisitions, which infused digitization into Axel Springer's corporate culture. In 2013, the second stage centered around Döpfner's mission to become "The Leading Digital Publisher"; Axel Springer would be defined not by its distribution channels, but by its (content) brands and services. Having successfully transformed Axel Springer from a print-only company to a thriving print and digital media conglomerate, Döpfner wanted to accelerate Axel Springer's growth even further. He believed that Axel Springer was well positioned to succeed not only in their core German market, but also more broadly on the world stage. Yet he knew this path to becoming a global media powerhouse would not be straightforward, especially given the rapid changes occurring within the media and publishing realm. In a world in which people were consuming content from a variety of sources-traditional print

In the digital age, software has enabled innovators like Uber and Tesla to gather crucial data about customers and create revolutionary offerings to serve them. Meanwhile, many well-resourced incumbents struggle to develop extended digital relationships with customers. That's partly because it's hard for companies to change their established business models. But the authors point out another inhibitor--there are repercussions up and down the value chain. The authors explain that successful upstarts do not just capture and use new data effectively; they also break from traditional reliance on outside partners for sourcing inputs and distributing and servicing products. They keep more functions in-house--a necessary part of launching an innovation. But if incumbents do likewise in their own efforts to take advantage of digital technology, they risk upsetting longtime relationships with suppliers, distributors, and other collaborators. To navigate this new world, the authors advise managers in traditional companies to think about the macro trends that will shape their industry in the future, agree on a digital strategy to address customers' needs in the long term, and develop better metrics to monitor progress. Incumbents must also create new business opportunities for partners so that everyone benefits from the new ecosystem.

Supplement to case E528. 500 Startups continued its expansion of accelerators and venture capital to cover a global footprint for underserved entrepreneurial markets between 2014 and 2016. As investment returns began to occur, the organization looked to grow and expand beyond Silicon Valley and increase its presence in locations that were underserved by traditional venture capital. The case tells of the activities of McClure and the leadership team as they spread their activities across Asia and the Middle East, and became increasingly active in the venture and accelerator landscape.

The purpose of this case is to look at Autodesk's cultural and technological challenges as the company faces a changing industry. With various innovations such as the cloud, the Internet of things, and various new manufacturing processes affecting every aspect of the company's future, students will be introduced to the various decisions and challenges a corporation has to face in order to remain ahead of massive industry disruption. The case analyzes Autodesk's three major branches: (1) Architectural and Engineering, (2) Manufacturing, and (3) Media & Entertainment and how all three branches are adjusting to meet the future. Of particular focus is the shift to a subscription business model, the cultural ramifications of such a shift, the arrival of activist investors to the company's stock, and the various disruptive innovations in Autodesk's markets.

Lending Club follows the path of founder and CEO Renaud Laplanche as he scales his successful P2P lending company both pre- and post-IPO. From debating with bankers on the proper valuation metrics for the company, to managing customer acquisition costs as the competitive landscape rapidly changes, the Lending Club case explores several key challenges that come with operating a fin-tech company at scale.