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Fast Retailing Co. Ltd.’s UNIQLO brand (UNIQLO) was planning to relaunch +J, its collaboration with the legendary high-end designer Jil Sander in the fall of 2020; however, the COVID-19 pandemic began in March of that year, causing many consumers to spend less on clothes and more on essentials. Just like the first launch of the +J collection in 2009, this launch would once again happen during a global recession. The affordable street fashion brand faced a challenging decision regarding whether to reintroduce the higher-priced collaboration brand amidst this unprecedented situation.

Follows the journey of lawyer Marsha Simms from her childhood in racially-segregated St. Louis to the upper echelons of the New York legal community. Describes her education, career choices, accomplishments, and setbacks. Highlights significant moments such as her decision to attend law school; discovering a practice area she excelled at; failing to advance to partner at one firm; moving firms and achieving partnership; and joining her first board of directors. Explores how she navigated a majority-white, male-dominated industry as a Black woman and contextualizes Marsha's career trajectory within the history of racial and gender discrimination in the legal field.

Blu-Smart Mobility Pvt. Ltd. (BluSmart) was India's first company to foray into the electric mobility space. Launched in 2019, BluSmart offered ride sharing, car sharing, and shared charging services, and aimed to make India a pollution-free country by providing customers with a complete urban mobility solution. Within a year, BluSmart had garnered investors' attention and received millions in funding to grow its fleet. It also planned to expand its three services to other Indian cities. However, BluSmart's future in India was not without challenges. How would these constraints affect BluSmart's growth, and how could it expand in the Indian market?

Founded in November 2014 and based in Shanghai, NIO designed, jointly manufactured, and sold premium "smart" EVs. Its mission was to "shape a joyful lifestyle by offering high-performance smart electric vehicles and being the best user enterprise. At NIO Day 2021, Founder William Li shared plans for the company to expand to 25 different countries and regions by 2025, including the automobile juggernaut nation of Germany. Would users in other markets and cultures embrace his user enterprise and high-touch model? NIO faced tough competition ahead in the race for EV supremacy.

Blu-Smart Mobility Pvt. Ltd. (BluSmart) was India’s first company to foray into the electric mobility space. Launched in 2019, BluSmart offered ride sharing, car sharing, and shared charging services, and aimed to make India a pollution-free country by providing customers with a complete urban mobility solution. Within a year, BluSmart had garnered investors’ attention and received millions in funding to grow its fleet. It also planned to expand its three services to other Indian cities. However, BluSmart’s future in India was not without challenges. How would these constraints affect BluSmart’s growth, and how could it expand in the Indian market?

Ebidding, Shanghai Huizhao Information Technology Co., Ltd.’s key product, was China’s only “Internet+” integrated bidding and procurement service provider, integrating supply chain management consulting, project implementation, and electronic bidding platform operation. Its main business was to provide enterprises with a full-process electronic bidding and procurement solution. The Ebidding team had developed a full-process electronic bidding platform in 2012, and it had been upgraded and developed regularly since then. A business expansion opportunity emerged for Ebidding as a result of shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of precautions to combat COVID-19, offline bidding and procurement across China were severely curtailed. Electronic bidding procurement projects were also stalled due to the inability of experts to evaluate online bids. To seize this market opportunity, gain competitive advantage, and grow its business in the face of significant uncertainty, Ebidding would have to determine how to quickly develop a remote decentralized bid evaluation system, gain acceptance for it, and lead customers to accept the new system.

When Puneet Chhatwal took over as CEO of Taj Hotels in 2018, he faced an onerous task: improving the financials in a hyper-competitive environment marked by the arrival of foreigners such as Starwood Hotels and online entrants Airbnb and OYO. He perceived that the focus on employee empowerment and welfare (as the basis of service excellence) conflicted with the need to emphasize cost cutting to improve profitability. These inconsistences left managers and staff unsure of the overall strategy. In an attempt to resolve them, the hospitality veteran balanced a top-down drive for change with bottom-up involvement in the strategy-making process. Adept in recognizing and adjusting resource allocation to ensure the parent company IHCL achieved its goals, he delegated tasks to the leadership team and employees but kept them focused on the deliverables. With input from many managers across the organization, a new strategy emerged organically - Aspiration 2022 - that resonated with the entire staff. By late 2019, staff were reporting a stronger sense of direction in day-to-day operations. With this came increased profitability and stock performance in line with group targets. With the success of the turnaround, the CEO seemed set to pursue his strategic vision through 2022. Little did he know that the strategy-making processes he had put in place would be subjected to upheaval as a result of the imminent COVID-19 pandemic.

In January 2021, Entomo Farms (Entomo), a family-owned Ontario-based Canadian cricket producer, received additional funding to support its growth and prepare for the entry into Canada of what would be its biggest competitor. As Canada’s largest and only organic cricket supplier, Entomo generated most of its revenue as a supplier of crickets as raw material to food manufacturers; however, due to anticipated industry changes, Entomo was increasing its consumer-level presence by producing and selling more of its own brands as consumer packaged goods (CPGs). To support this decision, Entomo’s chief operating officer needed to develop a strategic marketing road map for growing the revenues from the company’s CPG segment.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W26997.

Herend Porcelain Manufactory Ltd. (Herend) was an almost 200-year-old porcelain manufactory located in western Hungary. The company had weathered multiple social and political changes, world wars, and hardships and had variably experienced prosperity, international recognition, and, on one occasion, bankruptcy. However, under the current chief executive officer, Herend had become a stable and profitable organization. Then, in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented challenges. Government-mandated lockdowns—an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19—restricted consumers from shopping in person at Herend’s shops and diminished the use of porcelain in hospitality and gastronomy where the porcelain sets would be used. The health safety of employees, production disruptions, and decline in orders were other concerns. How could Herend prepare for and survive this extraordinary challenge?

Most managers in an international business are likely to be involved with international joint ventures (IJVs) during their career. IJVs have a greater chance of success if the businesses involved have good advisers on their teams. However, it can be a challenge to know what advisers to hire and how best to utilize their expertise. Drawing on their extensive career experience, the authors recommend best practices for hiring and working with international joint venture advisers based on three perspectives: legal, business, and academic. The possible roles of advisers, value versus cost of advisers, and what to look for and avoid when hiring advisers are outlined and framed within specific business examples.

The chief executive officer of McLaren Racing (McLaren), is considering the next strategic investment for the upcoming Formula 1 (F1) 2020 racing season. With goals to win the World Constructors’ Championship and challenge the top three F1 teams, the McLaren team must consider the benefits and challenges of two options: changing engine suppliers for radical improvement, or staying with the current engine supplier for incremental innovation. Adopting a new engine (Mercedes) would offer comparatively more speed than staying with the old engine; however, millions of data points collected from the old engine would no longer be applicable for future iterations. Alternatively, staying with the old engine (Renault) would allow McLaren to incrementally improve upon its existing car, but the fast innovation cycles in F1 mean McLaren must carefully weigh the possibility of diminishing benefits associated with this option.<br><br>In a highly uncertain environment with fast-paced design cycles, F1 offers a unique setting to understand how organizations in an innovation-based industry balance the competition between radical and incremental innovation. The trade-offs offered by these two approaches are further compounded by competitive innovation cycles, high costs, tight timelines, and planning limitations due to a considerable degree of luck on the race tracks.

Mantra Ayurveda (Mantra), established in India in 2020, manufactured and marketed luxury Ayurvedic skin care and hair care products. The brand’s equity in the Indian market was low, its performance marketing efforts were not leading to expected revenue gains, and the revenue from direct-to-consumer (DTC) initiatives had experienced a negligible uptick in financial year (FY) 2020–21. In April 2021, the chief executive officer would have to convince the board and investors about his plans for achieving fourfold revenue growth from the DTC channel in FY 2021–22. He needed to propose a choice that would build the brand for long-term sustenance while delivering on short-term revenue goals, considering key strategic pillars: an international DTC market launch to expand; offline marketing to increase brand awareness; in-house and outsourced performance marketing to optimize digital efforts; and discounts, promotions, and the launch of smaller package sizes to drive trials. Making the right choice could lead to an expanded international brand presence and deeper penetration into the Indian luxury market. However, the wrong choice could mean an early exit of a major investor, leaving the company cash-starved and plunging both the company and the future of his career into uncertainty.

In June 2018, the government of Canada passed the Cannabis Act, paving the way for the legalization of recreational cannabis cultivation, acquisition, possession, and consumption on October 17 of that same year. This move set off a flurry of activity as existing companies, investment firms, and entrepreneurs sought to establish an initial position within the burgeoning industry. Mīhī Cannabis and its chief executive officer needed to navigate the complex patchwork of government regulations and other market factors to establish a launch strategy for the company that would differentiate it from the anticipated competition and support the normalization of the industry in the eyes of the communities in which it operated.