Afrigen Biologics (Pty) Ltd. (Afrigen) was a biotech firm with a track record of solid performance in the sector with its leadership in sharing mRNA technology and developing a vaccine for COVID-19. By August 2024, with the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic under control, the firm was ready to capitalize on its track record and pivot. Petro Terblanche, CEO of Afrigen, needed to decide, therefore, what the firm’s next steps would be. What should the company's new business model be after the end of the current mRNA technology transfer program? How could Afrigen position itself in the African biopharmaceutical value chain? How could it leverage its existing alliances? Should Afrigen pursue international licensing or position itself to be acquired?
In January 2024, the LEGO Group (LEGO) welcomed a new chief sustainability officer. The role promised to position LEGO as an industry leader in sustainability but would also bring challenges. For instance, LEGO’s commitment to manufacturing its toy bricks entirely from sustainable materials by 2032 had encountered a setback (and media scrutiny) just months prior, when a promising material sourced from plastic bottles had failed expectations. The fervour evoked memories of the 2014 backlash from environmental activists for LEGO’s long-standing partnership with Shell plc, a global oil and gas corporation. Stube thus had to define a vision that would keep the company on track for its ambitious sustainability goals while avoiding past mistakes.
This experiential exercise is designed to teach students how joint ventures can entail inherent tensions that resemble a real-world prisoner’s dilemma. In the context of a (hypothetical) international collaboration in the global bicycle industry, students are put in the position of the parent firms’ decision-makers and must decide between accessing the other’s knowledge versus wanting to acquire (i.e., own) it. Students are thereby incentivized to act in self-interest, which ultimately leads to worse outcomes than if they had acted in the interest of the group. The exercise provides a lively, visceral learning experience and is complemented with an in-depth discussion of assumptions and implications as described in this teaching note.
In March 2020, the German online travel experience platform GetYourGuide faced an abrupt drop in revenues in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the drop, the company had been thriving, grown from a simple idea thought up by a group of friends in a student dormitory into a market-leading company in the travel experience industry with a valuation of over US$1 billion (a “unicorn” start-up) and more than 600 employees across fifteen global offices. Co-founder Johannes Reck and his team needed to determine a path forward—but how to prioritize responses to the crisis? What would the impact of any responses be on the company’s longer-term strategy? And how could the responses be aligned with the company’s values, which centred on entrepreneurial vision and commitment to employees? Whichever action plan was chosen, decisions would have to be made swiftly.