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The most promising candidates in your company may not be where you expect.

In September 2019, Thomas Cook Group Plc (Thomas Cook), an iconic 178-year-old travel company based in London, United Kingdom, ceased its business after a failed negotiation to fund its huge debt of £1.7 billion (US$2.25 billion). The collapse caused about 9,000 employees in the United Kingdom to lose their jobs and made it necessary to repatriate about 150,000 holiday travellers. The company had experienced several profit warnings during the tenure of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Manny Fontenla-Novoa, who was replaced as CEO by Harriet Green, an outsider, in 2012. Between 2012 and 2014, the company’s share price rose from historic lows of about £14 to £130. However, the board unexpectedly asked Green to leave the company before completing her turnaround strategy and appointed Peter Fankhauser, an insider, as the new CEO, calling the departure a “hand-over from a turnaround specialist to a travel expert.” Despite his efforts, Fankhauser also failed to revive Thomas Cook. Who or what led to the collapse of Thomas Cook? Among the three CEOs, who should be held responsible, and on what grounds?

Ford Resource and Education Centers (FRECs) were established as a partnership between the Ford Motor Company Fund and GlobalGiving. The FREC in Bangkok, Thailand, housed eight non-governmental organizations, social enterprises, and foundations. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, just a few months after the FREC had opened in the city, FREC Bangkok and its collaborators found themselves paralyzed by the thought that all they had worked for in their Bangkok neighbourhood could be lost. With lockdowns in place, what could FREC Bangkok do to continue providing the necessary aid to community members? It might need to change the way that it served Bangkok. What would be the risks of shifting its focus? How could it mitigate those risks? How could FREC Bangkok continue to provide aid, and what would that aid look like for local residents? How could FREC address the community’s new concerns, and what would its strategy for addressing these concerns look like? Crucially, what would be the role and importance of FREC’s various stakeholders going forward?

Ford Resource and Education Centers (FRECs) were established as a partnership between the Ford Motor Company Fund and GlobalGiving. The FREC in Bangkok, Thailand, housed eight non-governmental organizations, social enterprises, and foundations. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, just a few months after the FREC had opened in the city, FREC Bangkok and its collaborators found themselves paralyzed by the thought that all they had worked for in their Bangkok neighbourhood could be lost. With lockdowns in place, what could FREC Bangkok do to continue providing the necessary aid to community members? It might need to change the way that it served Bangkok. What would be the risks of shifting its focus? How could it mitigate those risks? How could FREC Bangkok continue to provide aid, and what would that aid look like for local residents? How could FREC address the community's new concerns, and what would its strategy for addressing these concerns look like? Crucially, what would be the role and importance of FREC's various stakeholders going forward?

The liner shipping industry transported the bulk of the world’s cross-country semi-finished and manufactured goods and was fundamental to global trade, economic growth, and prosperity. Despite its importance, the industry suffered from poor profitability. Common explanations were that shipping rates were too low and industry capacity too large. The COVID-19 pandemic also negatively affected the industry, followed by a quick recovery in the second half of 2020 that led to increased cargo volumes, and in 2021, the highest rates in almost two decades. Amid growing optimism, the question was whether the industry was on a long-term path to sustained profitability.

This case provides a three-pronged opportunity to explore a process for establishing an initial talent development plan for a growing and successful company desirous of investing in its existing managers and other potential management personnel. Students are presented with a generalized talent development framework, along with some company-specific facts and then are asked to flesh out pertinent parts of that framework in ways they see as purposeful and pertinent.

The dematerialization and servitization of products being brought about by the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) is making it imperative for platform businesses to look at consumers and suppliers from a lifetime value perspective. This technical note compares two fundamental strategic marketing perspectives: the push strategy and the pull strategy, using simple systems-dynamics and agent-based models. The models, developed using Vensim and NetLogo software, illustrate the efficacies of push and pull marketing strategies at the individual customer level. Specifically, they demonstrate the possibilities of market failure due to excessive pushing and consumer community formation.

The program head for retail talent acquisition at Yes Bank Limited needed to improve the talent acquisition process to fill vacant positions for relationship managers—a critical position within the business unit. Competition for talent was severe, with multiple positions at competing organizations open to suitable candidates, and screening the necessary number of candidates to ensure recruitment success was time-consuming and frustrating for everyone involved. One of the bank’s business leaders, particularly frustrated with the hiring process and the lack of consistency with candidate selection, was pressing for an urgent solution.<br><br>One option was to use an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, which centralized the candidate applications and improved the screening process by using machine learning to review videotaped candidate interviews. AI ranked the candidates, providing access to a larger talent pool and a quicker path to acquiring the needed talent. The process would resolve the bottlenecks that job aspirants typically faced in the traditional interview process, but would the tool dehumanize the entire process and undermine the interactions that ultimately led to better conversions and future integration with the brand and values of Yes Bank?

On June 9, 2021, the owner and director of S.I.T. Car Rental, which was located in Trinidad and Tobago, was considering whether he should upgrade his fleet of cars. The COVID-19 pandemic had negatively affected his sales in 2020 and 2021, although the owner was hopeful that he could increase demand by the end of 2021, once the need for pandemic-related lockdowns had ended. He had recently retired one of his older cars and so needed to decide whether he should purchase a new car to replace it or downsize his fleet. If he decided to purchase another car, he had to choose between a used economical vehicle and a new luxury vehicle.

On April 5, 2017, the lead link at Liip AG, in Lausanne, Switzerland, was reflecting on the past seven years. The digital services organization had gone through a rapid development, from a company with a team-based structure led by a top management team to a holacratic organization. A holacratic structure was based on a skeleton of roles and processes, with individual employees self-defining their work with the intent to help the company fulfill its purpose. However, was a holacratic structure sustainable over the long term for a growing company? What potential inefficiencies might Liip AG face under a holacratic structure and how could the organization overcome them?

In September 2021, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president of HealthCare atHome India Pvt. Ltd. (HCAH India), based in Mumbai, India, was concerned about his company’s future. Founded in 2012, HCAH India provided a wide range of health services at home, including intensive care, step-down beds, post-operative care, nursing, physiotherapy, attendant services, and elderly care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company was growing at a rate of 60 per cent month over month. While the COVID-19 virus continued to strain the country’s health care system, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president faced numerous organizational and social challenges. HCAH India had responded quickly to address the home health care needs of patients during the pandemic. It was even recognized for its excellence by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry as the best home health care provider. However, how could the organization evaluate its options and focus on internal capabilities, while building on its strengths to meet future challenges?

Two women entrepreneurs' early-stage company achieved notable success when they introduced an innovative zero-sugar product into the highly competitive beverage market. After navigating a rebrand, the co-founders were poised to scale their company through product line extension, thereby entering the even more competitive ready-to-drink beverage market. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated their direct-to-consumer marketing strategy. The co-owners had to determine both the timing of the new product launch and the marketing strategy.

Huanglongxi, a historic town in Sichuan Province, topped the list of “China’s Iconic Cultural Tourism Towns 2020.” In October 2017, Zhang Dafan, the executive director of the Huanglongxi Overseas Chinese Town Group (OCT), had led his team in initiating a smart cultural tourism project in Huanglongxi against the backdrop red-hot rivalry between China’s ancient towns. In just three years, the project had led to the remarkable transformation of Huanglongxi into a smart, award-winning ancient town. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic had left the tourism industry in limbo. To emerge from these difficult times caused by the pandemic, Huanglongxi the OCT had to assess how to strengthen the depth and breadth of its Huanglongxi’s smart cultural tourism construction offer in order to bring draw travellers back. How had Huanglongxi overcome the homogeneous competition it faced to develop into a unique, smart ancient town in 2017? Given the new challenges it faced, how could it do so once again?

In May 2021, Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, a company that provided labor market analytics for a variety of markets, navigates his company's transition from data company to product company. Burning Glass originated as a service that used artificial intelligence to match resumes to job postings, then expanded to offer a comprehensive map of the labor market, and then ultimately developed models to provide insight into specific market segments, skills, geographies, college majors, and career paths. However, Sigelman believed that the company could have greater impact if it transformed from a company that sold data to a company that sold products based on its data. Rather than providing reports, the new products offered client companies specific suggestions based on their own labor force. After pivoting from a data company to a product company, Sigelman faced strategic decisions regarding scale, new product development, and competition. At the conclusion of the case, he must decide whether to continue licensing the company's data or focus exclusively on developing and selling their new suite of products.

Following a weekend strategy retreat in October 2018, the vice-chair and group CEO of Kuwait-headquartered mobile telecommunications company Zain, was proud of the company’s performance over the previous year. Zain Group had much to celebrate, having blazed a trail in advancing women’s empowerment and inclusion in the workplace—a double challenge in a technology industry that was also based in a region heavily influenced by traditional gender values. Its strategy included the launch of the Women Empowerment Network initiative (WE Initiative) in November 2017, a strategic master plan aimed at achieving gender equality, empowering women, and advancing women’s careers at Zain. However, a great deal of progress remained, and new challenges were emerging. The company had put significant emphasis and resources toward women’s empowerment and development, leaving some of the male colleagues feeling overlooked and left out. As well, other groups, such as people with disabilities and younger generations, also had barriers to overcome. How could the company continue its efforts to support women while also being inclusive and considering the needs of all its employees?

Spreadsheet for product 9B19M119.

Founded in 1984 in Vancouver, Aritzia has been a massive success story, expanding across Canada and into the United States with no signs of slowing down. In March 2020, however, with the COVID-19 pandemic spreading rapidly through North America, the women’s fashion retailer was forced to shutter all its 97 boutique stores and shift sales to the e-commerce channel, while making other key financial and operating decisions to respond to the pandemic. In May 2020, with Aritzia given the green light to begin slowly and cautiously opening its locations, the CEO and the executive team needed to decide how to move forward in a time of crisis and continue its growth plans.

In May 2010, a year after becoming President and Managing Director for Southern Europe at Discovery Inc., Marinella Soldi faces a make-or-break meeting with Discovery's global Executive Committee. Her region is about to lose half of its revenues in a contract renegotiation with Sky Italia. Hired from outside the organization with a mandate to turn the region around, Soldi energizes the local team and proposes a new strategy that involves bypassing Sky's content distribution and broadcasting some channels through Digital Terrestrial Television. The move represents a radical change to Discovery's business model, from B2B to B2C, and means abandoning the partners with whom Discovery has grown into a global business. This implies not only a digital transformation but changing the corporate culture. This case illustrates the interplay between digital transformation, talent management, and efforts to encourage diversity and inclusion. The focus is on challenging the distinction between strategic and cultural change. To change business strategy often involves confronting cultural assumptions and biases that keep legacy strategies in place. External hires, up-and-coming talent and members of minority groups are seen as more able to do something different, because they are different and unencumbered by established traditions. Yet because they are different they are subjected to stronger scrutiny and push-back. Despite being hired to confront longstanding traditions, they are pressured to conform to them.

Case Supplement for Case IN1799