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Founded in 1885, Crayola has since established itself as US-based iconic brand with a wide array of quality products and deep connections with consumers, retailers, and licensing and business partners. By March 2020, Crayola had achieved category leadership and was outselling the majority of its competitors. It was on trend with new products and online content for educators, parents, and children-all with the goal of inspiring creativity among children. Crayola had also created strong relationships with and earned the respect of retailers, who had come to value the role Crayola played in their business, especially during the two most important retail seasons: back-to-school and Christmas. At the beginning of the second quarter of 2020, Crayola had to make some critical decisions. The rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus across the United States had led to business and school closures across the country (and the world), as well as personal physical restrictions. Crayola needed to immediately focus on three key areas: maintaining company culture, collaborating with partners to preserve the volume of back-to-school revenue, and ensuring a strong supply chain to meet consumers' needs. These three actions would ensure that Crayola could take advantage of key opportunities and continue creating strong and sustainable relationships with educators, parents, and children.

By 2021, the mindfulness app wars reached their apex. Over 2,000 meditation apps were available to consumers, but two apps, Headspace and Calm, dominated the space, jointly holding about 70% of the total market. Headspace had established itself as the approachable educator for novice meditators. Headspace also invested heavily in athletics partnerships, business-to-business services, and in creating Headspace Health, which they hoped would gain FDA approval and become the first prescription meditation app. Meanwhile, Calm had earned a reputation as the soothing sleep app. Calm was also known for its numerous partnerships with A-list celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey, Harry Styles, and Idris Elba. Indeed, Calm was focused on becoming the leader in "calmtainment" and making a home for itself in Hollywood. What does the future hold for the rivalry between Calm and Headspace? Will both brands continue to co-dominate the mindfulness and meditation space or will one ultimately prevail? What should the brands do to maintain their co-dominance or edge out the other and claim the number one spot?

Innovative US apparel retailer Everlane Inc. (Everlane) employed "radical transparency," disclosing detailed information about the costs it incurred and the factories that manufactured its clothes. The company also claimed to prioritize ethics and sustainability. For example, Everlane committed both to supporting its suppliers by addressing their needs and to eliminating virgin plastics from its entire supply chain by 2021. The company's approach had been successful: since its founding in 2010, Everlane had seen growth in its customer base and revenues. However, in 2020, the company faced a public relations crisis, encountering backlash after laying off a number of employees. While these layoffs were purportedly due to the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, they coincided with employees’ unionization efforts. In addition, many former employees reported that the company was not, in fact, ethical but was anti-Black and anti-union and had a toxic internal culture. As the company had built its business on its image and its promise of ethics, transparency, and sustainability, the crisis called into question the foundation of the organization. How could Everlane move forward according to its stated values and continue to both meet the needs of its customers and to earn a profit?

When members experience service failures, they get more upset than nonmembers. Here's how to mitigate the damage. plus BLM and the fortunes of black entrepreneurs, how knowledge work has changed in the pandemic, and more.

Kalahut: The House of Arts (Kalahut) was an Indian e-commerce site that connected instructors specialized in traditional Indian arts and cultural forms with customers interested in these services. Since its launch in July 2020, it had mainly served customers in India; however, it had also seen modest engagement on social media platforms and its website from individuals outside of the current customer pool. As the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in both increased web traffic to e-commerce sites and an increase in the number of people looking for new activities while in lockdown, Kalahut hoped to take this opportunity to expand into a new market. In late 2020, Kalahut's co-founder needed to decide which of three potential market countries to enter. Which would be the most suitable avenue for expansion?

Kalahut: The House of Arts (Kalahut) was an Indian e-commerce site that connected instructors specialized in traditional Indian arts and cultural forms with customers interested in these services. Since its launch in July 2020, it had mainly served customers in India; however, it had also seen modest engagement on social media platforms and its website from individuals outside of the current customer pool. As the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in both increased web traffic to e-commerce sites and an increase in the number of people looking for new activities while in lockdown, Kalahut hoped to take this opportunity to expand into a new market. In late 2020, Kalahut’s co-founder needed to decide which of three potential market countries to enter. Which would be the most suitable avenue for expansion?

Distinct Software (disguised name), a global enterprise software company, is at an important point in its growth trajectory where the luster of its mantra of "grow and win at any cost" has dimmed with increasing competition and margin pressures. To help navigate its sales organization through this difficult phase and improve sales productivity, the firm has hired Sam Chadwick, a digitally savvy industry veteran as its new Global Sales Head. Chadwick would like to use the power of AI to get the job done but is expecting stiff resistance from his sales organization. Chadwick thinks his best shot to demonstrate the power of AI is to use it to predict the chances of winning three specific deals as detailed in the case. Students can use the accompanying large-scale dataset of the firm's win/loss analysis to develop AI models for predicting probability of winning deals and provide guidance to the firm on whether or not to pursue each of the three specific deals.

As Switzerland's largest retailer, Migros is operating in an industry with negative growth, sales developing towards online and fierce competition. The Swiss healthcare industry on the other hand is growing with an average growth of 3.0% over the last 10 years, with a growing importance on household budgets, making up for 12% of GDP. Migros operates with an organically grown structure, regrouping 10 regional cooperatives, which are owned by 2.2.m members (Swiss residents) and gathered under the Federation of Migros Cooperatives (MGB) which acts as headquarters. According to the vision of its founder, Gottlieb Duttweiler, the group is pursuing a social mission and profitability targets are set defensively. Since 2015, with the acquisition of Medbase, the group started building a footprint in healthcare, gradually expanding with the acquisition of paramedical services and pharmacy chains. The company announced to further expand its footprint by organic expansion whilst it started a strategic partnership with a health insurer. The company disposes of key capabilities such as reach and brand awareness which can be leveraged to make an impact in the health industry. In its current form, the health arm is being developed as a separate vehicle (Medbase) and kept away from the Migros brand. There is a conscious direction to minimize damage to the Migros brand in case there is a strategy shift in the future. The healthcare industry is growing rapidly but the market has significant inefficiencies and needs an overhaul to remain sustainable. It is a high margin business as compared to the retail industry and also comes with the potential to position Migros as the provider of a single-owned, health insurance solution which could serve as a catalyst to a necessary transformation of Migros.

Nima Gohil, head of the new digital and creative consumer research department at L’Oréal USA (L’Oréal), was preparing for the upcoming January 2016 board meeting at L’Oréal’s research and innovation headquarters in Clark, New Jersey. L’Oréal’s competitors were using new digital media to highlight beauty products to current and new users, and L’Oréal was under pressure to develop a better way to connect with consumers to maintain—if not grow—market share. Top management had also urged Gohil’s department to reduce time and costs when collecting insights from consumers. Gohil focused on the hair care consumer segments, where she thought it was critical for L’Oréal to address and fully commit to the digital transformation that was being adopted by many other industries. She had only a few weeks to complete her assessments of L’Oréal’s digital strategy and assets and to prepare a functional recommendation to upper management.

Nima Gohil, head of the new digital and creative consumer research department at L'Oréal USA (L'Oréal), was preparing for the upcoming January 2016 board meeting at L'Oréal's research and innovation headquarters in Clark, New Jersey. L'Oréal's competitors were using new digital media to highlight beauty products to current and new users, and L'Oréal was under pressure to develop a better way to connect with consumers to maintain-if not grow-market share. Top management had also urged Gohil's department to reduce time and costs when collecting insights from consumers. Gohil focused on the hair care consumer segments, where she thought it was critical for L'Oréal to address and fully commit to the digital transformation that was being adopted by many other industries. She had only a few weeks to complete her assessments of L'Oréal's digital strategy and assets and to prepare a functional recommendation to upper management.

Borusan Cat is an international distributor of Caterpillar heavy machines. Esra Durgun (Director of Strategy, Digitization, and Innovation) and Ozgur Gunaydin (CEO) seem to have bet their careers on developing Muneccim, a new predictive technology that is designed to reduce downtime of heavy construction machines that Borusan Cat sells. While they have been able to manage to develop the technology to a level that beats any human expert in predicting machine failures, they still have not been able to find a way to monetize the technology. After spending a few years and millions of dollars developing the technology, they are both under pressure from Borusan Group, Borusan Cat's holding company, to show monetary results. Sales have been declining due to the economic downturn in Turkey, and the Company has been losing market share to their strong domestic competitors. Gunaydin and Durgun must decide about their monetization strategy for Muneccim and pick which segment of the market they want to target with this technology.

Kia Motors India (Kia) had tasted success in India within a year of the launch of its product Seltos. Kia's managing director and chief executive officer was quite happy with the sales figures for Seltos, the mid-sized sport utility vehicle (SUV) launched in August 2019, and was fairly confident that Kia's compact SUV Sonet would follow the same path. Kia's positioning strategies had worked very well thus far, and the company had been able to cultivate a brand image of a premium automaker whose products were considered aspirational. However, Kia's competitors seemed to have learned from Kia's success in realizing what worked for Indian consumers and were starting to launch new variants of existing models. In the face of this competitive onslaught and slowing economic growth in India, the chief executive officer had to formulate strategies that would keep Kia's growth trajectory on track. Could his understanding of the dynamics of the SUV segment in India enable him to frame effective positioning and growth strategies that would continue to work for Kia?

Set in July 2020, this case talks about ZENXIN Organic (Zenxin) - an organic farming company of fresh produce in Malaysia, and traces its evolution using the brick and mortar retail supply model in a nascent market where customers liked to "see and feel" fresh produce before purchasing them. Zenxin used a 'Farm to Fork' approach to expand its brick and mortar retail business to become the largest supplier of organic produce in Southeast Asia. The company acquired more farmland to increase supply, widened its produce variety to include a selection of 200 products with affordable price points, established supply partnerships with more than 100 supermarkets, opened 12 brick and mortar retail stores, and an agro-tourism recreation park under its brand name. Zenxin ventured into delivering organic produce online in late 2018, about a year before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced millions of consumers to switch to online mode of purchase for their daily needs. While Zenxin was presented with the opportunity of tapping on this demand through its recently launched ecommerce platform, its digital marketing strategy to sell its products was still evolving. The company had implemented an improved ecommerce website, an updated Google My Business profile and social media accounts to build brand awareness and drive online sales, and seen some positive results. However, it was still struggling to build a strong, regular, online customer base. The firm's CEO, Sengyee Tai, wondered how he could further improve on Zenxin's digital marketing and e-commerce marketing strategies to attract more customers.

In the wake of George Floyd's killing in May 2020, and widespread protests for social justice in the United States, OneTen was formed by a coalition of 40 large companies to provide one million jobs for African-Americans in 10 years. The case describes the background of the labor market in the U.S. and specifically the disparity in opportunities for Black Americans, which was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes the effort by government agencies and particularly a nonprofit-YearUp-to address the labor market gaps. The case asks students to analyse the underlying problems and formulate recommendations. The case allows students to understand and distinguish between a system level problem and one that manifests itself at an organizational level. It calls for action planning at an organizational level but one calling for considerable coordination and collaboration across the entire labor supply eco-system.

Founded in 2015, GreedyGame Media Pvt. Ltd. (GreedyGame) had a mission to develop culturally relevant gaming content into which ads could be seamlessly integrated so as not to compromise the user experience. Through this approach, organizations would also be able to target their users more sharply. The market looked promising, and the opportunity was ample, but gaming as an industry was still new to India, especially for its inclusion in business. There were many challenges from both the gaming side and the advertising side. GreedyGame had to find the right business model to create an ecosystem with cost-sharing between multiple stakeholders and to expand revenue streams beyond advertisers. In 2017, the company's co-founders wondered what their go-to-market strategy should be. Should they raise funds and continue on the same path they had been on, or should they look to find new collaborators and partners?

Founded in 2015, GreedyGame Media Pvt. Ltd. (GreedyGame) had a mission to develop culturally relevant gaming content into which ads could be seamlessly integrated so as not to compromise the user experience. Through this approach, organizations would also be able to target their users more sharply. The market looked promising, and the opportunity was ample, but gaming as an industry was still new to India, especially for its inclusion in business. There were many challenges from both the gaming side and the advertising side. GreedyGame had to find the right business model to create an ecosystem with cost-sharing between multiple stakeholders and to expand revenue streams beyond advertisers. In 2017, the company’s co-founders wondered what their go-to-market strategy should be. Should they raise funds and continue on the same path they had been on, or should they look to find new collaborators and partners?

In late 2018, the chief executive officer and president of Domino's Pizza Japan Inc. was convinced that a substantial expansion in the Japanese market was needed and feasible for continued growth. His company had already grown to nearly 550 stores across Japan, which was over double the number only five years earlier. The company had numerous opportunities to grow further, including opening new markets; opening stores closer to the company's customers; and building on customer insights, new menu offerings, and a new marketing approach. In particular, the chief executive officer wondered whether priority should be given to new markets in Japan that the company had not yet entered, or if priority should be given to greater penetration in Japanese locations where it already operated. What strategy was the best option for expansion in the Japanese market?

Agrawal's 420, a cottage industry started in 1962 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, setup several companies by 2016. Papad business revenues were at INR 70 crores plus. The reasons for setting up the company, its guiding values, facing intensive competitive rivalry, journey of growth, manual manufacturing process, mechanising the process, product portfolio and development, setting up and managing sales distribution system, and challenges of growth to go national are featured here. The case can be used for exploring the factors that impact entrepreneurial motivation to sustain a small business in a highly competitive market, and growing from a small single brand one product local business to a large multi-product multiple brand national one.

Chinese companies have been more successful in catching up with and sometimes surpassing, their global competitors in some industries but not all of them. This holds true for markets in China and international markets. In this article, we show how both the demand and the supply sides of an industry explain these differences, in terms of the existence of market and capability ladders that can help a new competitor climb from the low end, though the middle, and to the top. We then propose several alternative strategies that multinational companies can follow to respond to growing Chinese competition and recommend strategies with the most potential for a particular market and industry.