The Future Ready Food Safety Hub (FRESH) was a Singapore-based food safety research organization with a global reputation as an authority on assessing the safety and suitability of novel food products meant for sale in the Singapore market. As Singapore had become the first country in the world to approve the sale of laboratory-grown chicken, more and more companies were approaching FRESH for guidance in their safety dossier submissions to the Singapore Food Agency. With a small team of 10 members to keep up with the growing demand for its services, FRESH considered two options: engaging companies one-on-one to address the specific challenges they faced to meet novel food safety requirements, or adopting a consortium approach engaging multiple companies to collaboratively identify and prioritize common problems and develop optimal solutions for the industry. FRESH had to decide which option would best achieve its goals in advancing food safety research and building the novel food ecosystem.
In October 2021, UnaBiz Pte. Ltd., a Singapore service provider of Internet of Things technology for the aviation industry, secured US$25 million in series B funding. In April 2022, it acquired the French start-up Sigfox and later doubled its series B funding. The company’s managing director was then planning a series C funding round for June 2023 but had to make a decision regarding the company’s future growth and expansion from two potential paths. The first option was to focus on the aviation sector, in which the company could leverage major clients such as Changi Airport Group and Airbus SE. However, there were serious concerns regarding vulnerability and regulatory challenges in the aviation sector. The second option was a broader strategy that involved diversifying into logistics and supply chain, with aviation as a subset. This option presented significant market opportunities but required convincing stakeholders to adopt new technologies and to navigate a fragmented landscape. The managing director had to make a critical decision before presenting his expansion strategy for UnaBiz Pte. Ltd. to potential investors.
St. Luke’s Hospital (SLH) started out as a community hospital (CH) to help rehabilitate patients who had undergone or were undergoing treatment at acute-care hospitals. By 2016, SLH’s range of services had increased manifold, making SLH one of the few CHs with a comprehensive suite of services, such as rehabilitative, wound, and dementia care. Beyond inpatient care, SLH also offered outpatient and support services such as day-patient rehabilitation, diagnostics and laboratory services, and home-care services. To meet the growing health-care needs of an aging population, Singapore adopted the CH concept for its national health-care master plan, which projected a tripling in the number of CH beds over the next 10–15 years. As more new public CHs were established, especially in the western region of Singapore—where SLH used to operate as the only CH—SLH had to review its role and future direction. To sustain its competitive advantage, should the organization invest its resources into strengthening its existing capabilities, or diversify into new areas of growth? Tan had to provide his recommendation at the next quarterly board meeting.
SATS Ltd., an airline service provider headquartered in Singapore, was the largest air cargo terminal operator at Singapore’s Changi Airport. As a key player in the Asia-Pacific region, it had built its reputation as one of the top air cargo terminal operators in the world. With meticulous strategic planning, it had developed technological capabilities to navigate through many challenges and stay ahead of its competitors. In 2019, multiple challenges were arising from the external factors that had transformed the nature of the global air cargo value chain. An impending labour crisis, coupled with changing customer expectations and the threat of substitutes, meant that the company faced a fresh set of challenges. To fight these challenges, it had to decide whether to further develop its automation capabilities or to focus on driving digitalization within its operations to improve its operational efficiency.
In 2019, SATS Ltd. (SATS), the primary ground handling and inflight catering service provider at Singapore’s Changi Airport, was considering its growth strategy for the next five years. China and Japan were identified as target markets in the cold chain logistics sector. Should the company consider the Chinese air cargo market, which was in a stage of high growth but fraught with bureaucracy? Or should it focus on the Japanese air freight industry, which was more established but challenging for foreign investments? The senior vice-president of SATS needed to choose between the two opportunities.
By late 2018, a Singapore-based non-profit organization, billionBricks, had completed seven projects, rehabilitating more than a thousand homeless and disaster-stricken people in Asia. Its tent product was widely accepted and could, it was projected, meet the needs of millions of homeless people. Despite these achievements, the co-founder and chief executive officer felt that the company’s performance had not met his expectations. A key challenge was communicating with those who needed homes: the company’s traditional methods of communication were ineffective in reaching out to a marginalized population challenged by illiteracy and access to information. However, the prime minister of India had just announced his ambitious plan to end India’s homelessness and sought entrepreneurs for idea generation and execution. Should billionBricks participate in the government housing project to grow its Indian customer base, even if doing so included the risk of potential failure? Or should the company focus instead on other projects and risk being locked out of future housing projects in India?
In 2018, the Singapore-based telecommunication operator StarHub Ltd. (StarHub) acknowledged that in 2017 its total revenue was relatively flat and its net profit had declined. In the face of rising competition and a slowing global economy, the company needed to explore new sources of revenue growth. Two areas of growth seemed promising. The first area involved the launch of StarHub's smart retail analytics for small and medium enterprises in the retail food and beverages industry, which had been experiencing a high churn rate. The second area would apply StarHub's new robotics and automation solutions in the labour-intensive hospitality industry, which suffered from an oversupply of properties and would likely see exits and consolidation. StarHub needed to choose between the two investment options.
In December 2017, the corporate vice-president of Microsoft Corporation’s Devices division was considering two options to chart a strategic course for the next few years. Since first joining Microsoft Corporation in 2004, one of the vice-president's key roles had been to oversee the strategic direction of the personal computing hardware business. The company, which was headquartered in Washington State in the United States, had a multitude of products and services that presented both opportunities and challenges for its future. Microsoft Corporation had to decide between two project options that represented growth in different business areas in Asia Pacific. The first option was to launch new products from the company's Surface division in the Asia Pacific market. This could be Microsoft Corporation’s opportunity to showcase its holistic devices ecosystem to prospective customers in the region. The second option was to intensify efforts to market and sell the firm’s cloud solutions. This could further differentiate Microsoft Corporation as an early mover enabling enterprises to migrate to the cloud.
Kapap Academy Pte. Ltd. (Kapap Academy) was established in 2007, following the tragic death of the founder’s older brother, with a mission to empower everyday people to learn realistic self-defence skills. The founder and his apprentice-turned-business partner formulated a simple yet functional brand of self-defence, which they named the Modern Street Combatives method. Kapap Academy’s social mission was evident in its provision of both heavily discounted and completely free training sessions for needy and vulnerable segments of society—in particular, women who were victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault, as well as the elderly. Kapap Academy was able to sustain this social mission with a dual income stream. After its 10th-year anniversary, Kapap Academy was looking to export its brand of Modern Street Combatives overseas. This posed various challenges; in particular, whether to adopt a licensing model or a franchise arrangement. Each model had its pros and cons, but a decision had to be made.
In 2017, the president of Fujitsu Asia Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, a subsidiary of Japanese conglomerate Fujitsu Limited (Fujitsu) needed to decide between two project options that represented growth in different industries in Asia. Both projects represented Fujitsu's vision of connected services and could potentially be much-needed engines of new growth for Fujitsu Singapore over the next 5 to 10 years. The first option was to offer its Japanese-engineered cloud-computing platform to engage small and medium enterprises in the manufacturing industry. Given the high costs of customizing the existing platform for local use, the president wondered whether small and medium manufacturers would generate sufficient demand to justify such a costly investment. The second option was to leverage the success of Fujitsu’s intelligent agricultural cloud-computing project with the Japanese government to offer vertical farming to Singapore and other Asian cities that faced similar space constraints but valued food resilience. But was it the right time to enter the agricultural industry? The president had limited time and resources, and needed to make a decision very soon.
Established in 2013, Glints was an online job search service for new graduates, marketing itself as “LinkedIn for youth.” The Singapore-based company was founded by three 21-year-olds who chose to put their university education on hold and forfeit their scholarships in order to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions. Using the lean start-up approach, Glints pivoted its business model several times before finding a suitable position in a resegmented job-search market. As a young company, Glints’ biggest challenge was growth. Having raised seed capital of SG$475,000 from its investors, Glints was expected to sustain its exponential growth in revenue base and the number of subscribers. Its young co-founders had to identify ways to make that growth happen.
In 2010, two entrepreneurs launched Joyful Frog Digital Incubator (JFDI), Southeast Asia’s first start-up accelerator in Singapore. They aimed to help develop Singapore’s start-up environment through a structured program that provided access to early stage funding and mentorship. More than 70 start-ups had graduated from the program, and more than half had raised substantial funding. However, five years later, in 2015, JFDI faced challenges as a result of Singapore’s small market size, the more than 20 accelerators that had entered the market, and an uncertain macroeconomic climate. The founders wondered whether JFDI should open up new revenue streams by diversifying into advisory and consultancy services, such as in-house accelerator programs in established corporations. Alternatively, should the company expand geographically to broaden its access to capital, talent, and new markets? Or were there still other options that the founders should pursue?