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Supplement to 9B20M174.

Supplement to 9B20M174.

Supplement to 9B20M174.

Supplement to 9B20M174.

On a cold Monday morning in January 2018, the founder and chief executive officer of dcs plus was sitting in a taxi on his way to catch a plane to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In Dubai, he would be visiting the Middle East subsidiary of his company, a Romanian technology start-up focused on business-critical enterprise software for the travel industry. The one-year-old subsidiary, which was responsible for marketing, sales, and customer support in the Middle East region, had experienced performance problems and managerial issues since the start, leading to major changes in the local management team. The Romanian company was planning to open two new subsidiaries in São Paulo, Brazil and in Singapore, so it was important to avoid similar problems to those incurred in Dubai. The founder was reflecting on the dcs plus approach to internationalization for the overall organization, as well as how to manage a subsidiary.

In April 2020, amid the global pandemic resulting from the spread of Covid-19, the president of the Broadway League, which represented theatre owners, producers, presenters, and general managers for Broadway and across North America, faced a challenge. On March 12, 2020, Broadway had suspended all plays and musicals. The president and her team needed to determine when Broadway might be able to reopen, what the Broadway League should be communicating to producers and guests, and what the reopening of Broadway would look like amid the global coronavirus pandemic. However, to reach these decisions, she first needed to determine the reliability of the recently released New York State antibody study and estimate the true prevalence of antibodies in the population.

Maliks, a major stationery retailer and provider of photocopy and printing services, had operated in Beirut, Lebanon, for over 25 years. The company's founder was considering the most suitable strategy for his goal of 100 branches by 2020. He was assessing the advantages and disadvantages of adopting the franchising business model as an expansion strategy and wondered what operational problems he would encounter. The Maliks management team was also assessing the viability of using the franchise model to expand beyond the greater Beirut area to achieve substantial growth. The company enjoyed strong brand-name recognition, but there were still many questions about the company's next steps, including whether the franchise business model was the most suitable strategy for Maliks. Did the company have the necessary resources and skilled management team to adequately monitor and support prospective franchisees? How would prospective franchisees be selected? What marketing and operational costs was the company likely to incur as a franchisor? Most importantly, did the Maliks management team have the required skills to effectively manage the franchise model?

Maliks, a major stationery retailer and provider of photocopy and printing services, had operated in Beirut, Lebanon, for over 25 years. The company’s founder was considering the most suitable strategy for his goal of 100 branches by 2020. He was assessing the advantages and disadvantages of adopting the franchising business model as an expansion strategy and wondered what operational problems he would encounter. The Maliks management team was also assessing the viability of using the franchise model to expand beyond the greater Beirut area to achieve substantial growth. The company enjoyed strong brand-name recognition, but there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including whether the franchise business model was the most suitable strategy for Maliks. Did the company have the necessary resources and skilled management team to adequately monitor and support prospective franchisees? How would prospective franchisees be selected? What marketing and operational costs was the company likely to incur as a franchisor? Most importantly, did the Maliks management team have the required skills to effectively manage the franchise model?

In 2018 the majority ownership of publicly owned Wilderness Safaris, the leading high-end ecotourism company in Africa with safari operations in eight countries, was acquired by The Rise Fund, one of the world's largest private social impact investing funds, and by FS Investors, a private equity investment firm. This is a follow-on case to "Wilderness Safaris: Ecotourism Entrepreneurship," (HBS No. 9-318-040) which focuses on the company's origins, growth, and distinctive 4C business model based on Commerce, Conservation, Community, and Culture. The two cases can be used sequentially or independently. The current case provides an opportunity to examine the investment rationale of the impact funds and their methodology for measuring and assessing nonfinancial impact variables, such as avoided deforestation and the social cost and pricing of averted carbon emissions. Changes and effects in governance resulting from the buy-out and the subsequent taking the firm private are presented. The case poses strategic investment decisions in Rwanda and Angola, which is the source of the Okavango Delta and the second largest forested region of the world. Questions of business decision making based on the preservation of natural capital and the management of the region's protected areas are reviewed. It ends with the challenges from the emergence of the COVID 19 pandemic in March 2020.

Over the last decade, experimentation has become integral to the research and development processes of technology companies-including Yelp-for understanding customer preferences and mitigating innovation risks. The case describes Yelp's journey with experimentation, from running a few experiments across various teams to building a centralized experimentation platform that standardized and improved the experimentation process. Concurrently, the case describes a pivotal experiment to evaluate the impact of geographically constrained adverts on user experience and revenue. The results of the experiment are not included in the case but are part of supplementary data (courseware no. 621-703); instructors can either provide the data to the students or give the results in a table as part of the assignment questions. Based on the results, the protagonist must determine an appropriate course of action, carefully managing the various trade-offs.

In 2017, the chief executive officer of Rawayeti Foods, a Pakistani company dedicated to ensuring the purity and quality of its spices and pulses, was considering the future of his family-owned business. The company had experienced great success since its inception in 2011, but Rawayeti Foods was planning to expand its operations into other parts of the company. Formalized management practices, job descriptions, and performance management systems were not in place, but the chief executive officer and his sons knew expansion would be successful only if the company formalized its human resources management policies and practices for consistent country-wide implementation. Had the time come to shift focus from operational matters to management and human resources concerns? Could Rawayeti Foods gain buy-in from its employees and introduce a new performance management system that was seen as fair, equitable, and motivating?

This note is designed to introduce students to the fundamental concepts of leading innovation in established organizations. Reinvention is a process whereby organizations respond to changes in the environment that threaten their core business model, technologies, cultural values, and/or operational norms. Reinvention represents a managerial paradox for organizations that have experienced several years of success: leaders must preserve some elements of the business that once made it successful and simultaneously change other elements that, if left unattended, could render the organization obsolete. The Note outlines four elements associated with organizational reinvention: 1) Understanding technology lifecycles and s-curves: What are technology lifecycles and s-curves?; 2) Reinvention by extending existing capabilities: How do leaders extend existing organizational capabilities in response to new technologies?; 3) Reinvention by adopting new capabilities: How do leaders adopt new capabilities in response to new technologies?; 4) Readying your organization for reinvention: How do leaders develop the right mindset and the right team to engage in a reinvention effort? Finally, the Note includes several diagnostic tools that students and executives can use to analyze an organization's readiness for reinvention.

In 2019, the president of On Track St. Thomas (OTST), was considering the future of St. Thomas Elevated Park, a public park built on an abandoned railway bridge and now under the care of OTST. The park was built after much lobbying and community fundraising, and a decision had to be made on its future. What was going to happen to the park? Who would take responsibility for it? The president’s options were to recommend a gift of it to the city of St. Thomas, create a paid membership for members of the community, or attract corporate sponsors.

In October 2019, BYD Company Limited (BYD), a leading Chinese company in the new energy vehicle industry, was pursuing the goal of building a business ecosystem. The firm and its partners jointly launched a blockchain-enabled green ecosystem that delivered new value to customers by issuing carbon points to users who had made efforts to reduce their daily carbon emissions. Users could spend carbon points at partner merchants and get rewards. Blockchain, as the core infrastructure of the project, provided an ideal environment to cultivate a healthy and efficient business ecosystem that benefitted all stakeholders, including the firms, its users, and the environment. With the program still in its early stages, how could BYD and its partners further utilize the green ecosystem’s potential to achieve greater economic and environmental value?

During the early 1980s, young gay men in urban centers such as San Francisco and New York City began contracting a mysterious illness that would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. A diagnosis meant almost certain death, with a less than 1% survival rate. Conflicting priorities and agendas within a range of institutions-such as federal and local governments, the medical bureaucracy, incentive structures, and religious convictions-resulted in a failure to mitigate the outbreak. HIV/AIDS infections grew to pandemic proportions leading to one of the largest public health crises in American history.

In 2017, the general manager and head of business conglomerate Mahindra and Mahindra Limited (M&M)’s largest factory in Igatpuri, Maharashtra, faced several challenges related to the company’s goal of achieving zero-waste-to-landfill certification from an environmental agency. Since the Mahindra Group’s chief executive officer had decided to focus on sustainability as a key to long-term growth, M&M had to find practical ways to manage waste in the Igatpuri factory. Reducing the waste produced in the factory would require the company to deal with both production-related hazardous waste such as toxic camshaft-grinding waste and other waste such as the cotton gloves iemployees had previously discarded after every shift. The general manager knew that diverting a high percentage of waste from the landfill could produce material savings and cost reductions and boost M&M’s image as a sustainability-focused global brand. He wondered how best to embed waste management policies into the factory’s processes.

In 2007, Trek Bicycles (Trek) entered the Indian market. Although Trek’s market share in India was small compared to its global presence, India held an important position in Trek’s global aspirations, and the country’s potential for growth drove Trek to enter that market. The company strongly believed in innovation and in delivering value to customers through a bundle of services and schemes. Trek operated in the country through a partnership with an Indian distributor and in 2017 set up its Indian subsidiary. The company had a first-mover advantage with respect to the sale of super-premium bicycles in India, but in 2019, after more than a decade, how could the company increase its retail network and grow the community that was connected with cycling?

In late 2018, the chief executive officer and founder of Tunaiku, a new digital consumer-lending financial technology (fintech) company in Indonesia, faced a dilemma. Although he had set out in 2014 to revolutionize Indonesia's consumer lending by providing people in the underserved lower segment of society with small unsecured loans, he now faced his most crucial challenge—dealing with Indonesia’s changing regulatory environment. When he had launched the venture in 2014, fintech was unknown, and the founder had eventually decided to offer the product through a bank. But after Indonesia introduced a new fintech regulation, he needed to reconsider his earlier decision. Should Tunaiku move to a fintech licence or remain as a bank?

This case is set in 2018 in China and follows Daimler’s efforts to compete in the Chinese automotive market amidst fast paced changes which are underpinned by state driven efforts at fostering innovation. Testing its leverage as the world’s largest and most profitable auto market, China is aggressively pushing foreign and domestic auto manufacturers towards new and ambitious targets for electrification. At the same time, Daimler has to be responsive to the particular tastes of auto consumers in China, especially their preferences for on-line connectivity which are creating space for players like Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu to become real competition, threatening traditional car companies’ ability to control the car interface.

The aspiration of addressing maternal deaths in Nigeria, which were mostly caused by blood shortages, led Temie Giwa-Tubosun to found LifeBank in 2015. LifeBank developed an online platform that enabled hospitals to connect and purchase blood from local blood banks and fulfilled those orders through an around the clock team of dispatch riders. Over the years, LifeBank delivered a range of essential medical products including blood, medical oxygen canisters and medicines. However, the company had yet to break even and now needed to raise additional funding. LifeBank aimed to become profitable by 2022 and planned to grow its revenues 24x over three years. To achieve such growth the company needed to raise 10x more than the total amount raised since its inception. Giwa-Tubosun wondered how to achieve such growth and funding targets. What were LifeBank's growth options? More importantly, what kind of funding opportunities were available to the company?