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Burro was a growing start-up in Ghana with a mission to provide “tools for a better life” to Ghanaians by distributing products that addressed local needs. In February 2015, after seven years of operation, the company had finally become profitable. Demand for Burro’s sustainable products was growing quickly in the booming Ghanaian market. The country manager wanted to determine a strategy for growth to maximize the success of Burro's future.

In late May 2014, the founder of Liyu Ethiopia Tours was considering his options to grow the company. The small but reputable tour company had become successfull in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in only seven months. The founder, who faced the challenge of continuing to grow the business on a limited budget, was considering several strategic decisions: should he increase the company’s online presence by using the services of Google AdWords or TripAdvisor; expand local and national partnerships with hotels or with tour companies in neighbouring countries; or participate in a major trade show, with the hope of developing international partnerships. The founder wondered how to align his company’s goals with its capabilities.

Chef Wolfgang Puck oversees a disparate business empire that includes fine dining restaurants, a catering business, and various licensed products that run from cookware, to soup, to fast-casual restaurants. His businesses activities are divided between three separate entities-Wolfgang Puck Fine Dining Group, Wolfgang Puck Catering, and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide-that share some formal and informal linkages. But the key person holding this all together is Wolfgang Puck himself. Now in his late 60s, Puck wonders what he needs to formalize-in terms of systems, processes, and management-to ensure that his different businesses will endure long after he is no longer involved in the day-to-day management of these three businesses.

In 2005, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) began investing in Canada, when it acquired 16.69 per cent equity of MEG Energy Corp., a private Calgary-based energy company. In 2011, it acquired OPTI Canada, a Canadian oil company that had gone bankrupt, followed in 2013 by the contentious acquisition of Nexen Inc., a Canadian oil and gas company. Despite this enticing potential market and the desire to fuel China's rapidly growing economy, CNOOC faced low oil prices, slow economic growth in Canada, fierce competition from other multinational oil companies, and pressure from environmental non-governmental organizations. Given these challenges, how could CNOOC achieve success in Canada?

In mid-2015, India-based Titan Company, a joint venture between Tata Group and Tamil Nadu Development Corporation, was active in several retail businesses: watches; jewellery; eyewear; and youth accessories (e.g. backpacks and helmets). As of July 2015, Titan Company operated 1,300 of its own stores in 240 Indian cities and towns, and its products were being sold abroad through 2,300 third-party retail outlets in 32 countries. Titan Company's board of directors had developed an ambitious target—revenues of INR300 billion by 2020. The chief executive officer and his team needed to outline a strategy to achieve this goal. In particular, they needed to decide whether Titan Company should continue to launch new businesses or instead focus on consolidating its existing businesses.

This case is a role-play exercise intended to give participants an opportunity to experience board meeting dynamics and logistics, determine how to scale a nonprofit for maximum impact, learn about governance best practices, and become generally familiar with nonprofit financial statements, dashboards, and new board member recruitment strategies. There is no right answer or correct outcome to the exercise; the value lies in participants' analysis of the situation, dialogue with one another, and post-meeting self-reflection.

Malaysian palm oil company IOI Corporation Berhad (IOI) developed from a plantation company in Malaysia to become a vertically integrated manufacturing company with a range of higher value manufacturing businesses across Asia, Europe, and the United States. The rapid expansion into what the chief executive officer (CEO) called a “mini-multinational” placed greater demands on IOI and its leadership. The CEO had struggled to simultaneously achieve growth, innovation, control, and coordination, and the company had experienced a sustainability crisis in 2016. In early 2017, the CEO needed to decide whether to approve an ambitious growth strategy—proposed by IOI’s specialty oils and fats team, which led most overseas operations and handled IOI’s most innovative products—to be achieved by 2025. While he was eager to expand IOI and strengthen its position as a widely admired Asian family multinational, he also needed to weigh the constraints. He could not risk growing the company faster than the leadership’s ability to control it.

In 2017, bike sharing was one of the hottest technology trends in China. Since its inception two years earlier, Mobike had quickly become one of China’s leading bike on-demand companies because of its bicycles’ superior quality, and the company’s intelligence capability, open innovation, alliance strategies, and big data applications. Mobike expanded aggressively to take advantage of opportunities in this emerging market and the need for efficient, green, and sustainable solutions to short-distance urban transportation. However, Mobike's aggressive expansion faced tough challenges, including shared bicycle operations and management, competition from rivals, and government regulations. By late 2017, several bike-sharing services had gone bankrupt. How could Mobike avoid the same fate, generate profit, and continue to prosper?

This case illustrates the perils of implementing top-down, macro economic reform measures at the local level, in response to curbing national fiscal deficits, without taking into account the local, meso/micro or technical ground level realities in the process of implementation. It details a specific instance of economic reforms during the post-90s economic liberalization of India. This case depicts what went behind one such reform in the mining sector - the closure/abandoning of the copper mines of Hindustan Copper Limited at Ghatsila, East Singhbhum district, Jharkhand. The closure was dictated by an extract in a report of the Government of India's Committee on the Tax Reforms (Chelliah Committee) recommending the closure of uneconomic mines in the eastern sector, in its push towards lowering import duties on refined copper. Continual low LME (London Metal Exchange) prices of copper precipitated this decision. With the LME prices picking up towards early 2000 and the predictable growth in the demand for copper, a decision was taken to re-open these mines. Since these mines were summarily abandoned and sealed, this process turned out to be extremely difficult and costly. The case gives the points of view of the stakeholders on the ground - the local management at the mines during the time of closing and the mining trade union workers along with technical experts.

Paul Markovich felt that a time bomb was ticking inside his industry. Each year, the cost of healthcare was rising steadily, while incomes were only inching upward. In 2018, the median income for a family of four in the United States was $65,000. His company's most popular health insurance product for such a family? A package that would cost them $16,000 a year -- a whopping 26 percent of their gross pre-tax income. That was almost three times the cost of such a plan in 1999. In the San Francisco Bay Area, where Blue Shield of California (BSC) was headquartered, the situation was even worse. "If you have a Silicon Valley engineer, it would cost the company more to pay for the health benefits of that engineer [in the United States] than to hire one in India for a year," said Markovich, the CEO of BSC. The problem with insurance companies, Markovich thought, was not out-of-control administrative expenses or fat profit margins. For every dollar that Blue Shield of California customers paid, 87 cents went to pay directly for health care costs, taxes and fees. And as one of the largest not-for-profit health care insurers in the United States, Blue Shield of California capped its profits at just 2 percent per year. "Just being more efficient as an insurance plan is not going to solve the affordability crisis," Markovich believed. "Even if we eliminated our profit and our administrative costs, that would only buy us three years [before costs caught up again]." Something much more fundamental needed to change, Markovich reasoned. Insurers like Blue Shield of California needed to reimagine their role. No longer could they simply define themselves as middlemen who tried to bring together tens of thousands of scattered physicians, hospitals and pharmacies into a network, and make arrangements for treatment and payments.

The case starts by describing the transformation of ING Netherlands from a traditional bank with functional hierarchies to an organization that embraces digitalization and 'Agile' principles. Then it illustrates how the bank is re-organized around self-managed teams without traditional managers. Finally, the narrative recounts how employees are empowered to make decisions.

The case starts by describing the transformation of ING Netherlands from a traditional bank with functional hierarchies to an organization that embraces digitalization and 'Agile' principles. Then it illustrates how the bank is re-organized around self-managed teams without traditional managers. Finally, the narrative recounts how employees are empowered to make decisions.

Supplement to case IN1530 and IN1533

Supplement to case IN1530 and IN1533

Supplement to case IN1530 and IN1533

Supplement to case IN1530 and IN1533

Supplement to case IN1530 and IN1533

In late 2015, the chief people officer at IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, a joint venture with two public sector banks in India, faced a new challenge. The company’s managing director and chief executive officer communicated the company’s goal to become India’s largest insurance provider and to be among India’s top five insurance companies by 2020. The chief people officer was tasked with ensuring the company had the organizational capabilities in place to achieve this goal. Although the chief people officer was confident he could complete the task, he needed to devise a plan, roll it out, and deliver it promptly to meet the pressing expectations of achieving the new vision.

In 2017, a strategic analyst with the Ontario Ministry of Energy, was asked to evaluate the potential for decommissioning the Ontario Power Generation's Pickering Nuclear Generating Station (Pickering) in Pickering, Ontario, at the scheduled end of the plant’s operations in 2024, instead of waiting until 2054. Decommissioning Pickering would require $5.264 billion in 2016 terms. Storing the spent fuel would cost another $4.3 billion, for a total of $9.564 billion. Ontario Power Generation had set aside $2.75 billion for decommissioning Pickering and for long-term storage of its spent fuel. To bridge the gap between what it had contributed and what was required, Ontario Power Generation was investing in a decommissioning fund and assuming that its investment would increase in real terms by 3.25 per cent a year. The strategic analyst had to examine what it would cost to decommission Pickering in 2024 versus what it would cost in 2054.

In late 2015, the chief people officer at IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company, a joint venture with two public sector banks in India, faced a new challenge. The company's managing director and chief executive officer communicated the company's goal to become India's largest insurance provider and to be among India's top five insurance companies by 2020. The chief people officer was tasked with ensuring the company had the organizational capabilities in place to achieve this goal. Although the chief people officer was confident he could complete the task, he needed to devise a plan, roll it out, and deliver it promptly to meet the pressing expectations of achieving the new vision.