• Time Out: A New Global Strategy to Bring Back Profit

    In June 2016, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the United Kingdom-based Time Out Group PLC (Time Out), had just taken the company through an initial public offering, raising much-needed capital for investment and growth. Time Out, which provided consumers with information, tickets, and access to theatre, concerts, and events, as well as food, drink, and cultural experiences in its Time Out Market, had reported significant losses in 2014 and 2015. However, there was momentum in new market areas, and the recently launched Time Out Market in Lisbon, Portugal, had seen revenue growth of 67 per cent between 2014 and 2015. Now, with £59 million to invest, the CEO had to lead the company back to profitability. He needed to balance foreign direct investment in physical Time Out Markets with digital transformation of the company’s offerings. At the same time, he had to find ways to reinforce the new organizational culture he was building at Time Out as a way to help fulfil his corporate vision of Time Out as a disruptive force.
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  • ROQ.AD and the Ad-Tech Industry

    By August 2015, Berlin-based advertising technology venture Roq.ad had grown from a chance encounter between its two co-founders to become a revenue generating operation with 18 full-time employees in Germany and Poland -- in just 10 months. Their goal was to develop new cross-device, user-recognition technology that would enable advertisers to accurately target consumers across a range of devices such as personal computers and peripheral devices. Roq.ad’s co-founders had decided from the beginning not to seek out venture capital and instead to retain tight control of their business. Given the lead time needed to develop technology, they had also decided to use an industry-standard agency model for generating revenues that would be used to fund the development of technology and the eventual launch of the program. As Roq.ad approached the end of its first year in business, the co-founders faced an important strategic challenge: How could they successfully transform the company from its initial mobile-advertising agency model to become Europe’s number one provider of cross-device, user-recognition technology?
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  • Tesla: Internationalization from Singapore to China

    Elon Musk, the CEO of the U.S.-headquartered Tesla Motors (Tesla), was considering how the company should enter the Chinese market. Less than a year earlier, Tesla had exited Singapore after disappointing results only six months after entering that promising market. There were several questions that the company would have to answer in order to formulate an appropriate entry strategy for China. First, could the company learn from its experiences in the United States and Singapore and apply this learning to China? Second, was it the right time to enter the Chinese market? Finally, how could Tesla prevent a repeat of the Singapore experience in China? There were several questions that the company would have to answer in order to formulate an appropriate entry strategy for China.
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