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The case tells the story behind "My INSEAD Story" - a unique book for children based on the INSEAD MBA experience of their parents. Sian Bentson and Ankur Grover came up with the idea as part of their final assignment for the "SPSD: Creative Thinking" course. It subsequently became the basis of a commercial product and, ultimately, a company, StoryPie (storypie.co) - which creates storybooks from the personal experiences of parents. Ankur Grover shares the behind-the-scenes journey, describing the rollercoaster ride from concept development to product launch. The case explains how innovation projects (even for simple products) are carried out - from gathering user insights to ideation, prototyping, and testing - and the sources of uncertainty that a project leader has to manage during the innovation journey. There are two versions of the case. Part 1 describes the product conceptualization as part of a 10-day course assignment. The complete version covers the journey over the two months that followed the course to develop it into a commercial product.

By early 2018, Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. (Amazon), one of the world’s most valuable companies and the largest online retailer in the world, had grown dramatically since its beginnings in 1994. The company that had started as an online bookseller now sold merchandise and digital content in more than 30 categories, including electronics, clothing, books, furniture, and streaming music and video. It sold its own products and listed products for sale by over two million third-party sellers. It provided on-demand cloud-computing services and offered fulfillment and shipping services to businesses, and it had recently entered grocery retailing through its purchase of Whole Foods Market. With 2017 shipping costs that exceeded $21 billion, the company was working to establish greater control over its supply chain network and capabilities. Amazon was selling a huge variety of products in many formats, and the chief executive officer needed to determine how to structure the company’s supply chain in order to support its strategy and growth objectives. What supply chain capabilities would Amazon need as its business model continued to evolve?

In December 2012, less than two years into the founding of their music-streaming platform Anghami, cofounders Elie Habib and Eddy Maroun found themselves evaluating an unorthodox term sheet. Habib and Maroun needed to make a decision vis-à-vis the proposal put forth by the MBC Group, the region's largest media network. The offer was a media-for-equity deal, which would provide Anghami with advertising towards the media giant's millions of viewers and boost its chances of competing with the likes of iTunes and Spotify in the Middle Eastern market. However, the deal would also cost the cofounders a significant share of their company, and might place them in the middle of a rivalry between MBC and Rotana, the region's largest music label. The case takes the reader through the co-founders' journey, from the founding of the company to the successes and challenges they have faced navigating product launch, scale-up, and partnerships.

In November 2016, the co-founders of Poppy Barley Inc. (Poppy Barley) had just finished discussing the company’s fiscal projections and sustainability goals for the upcoming 2017 year. Poppy Barley, a made-to-measure footwear retailer in Edmonton, Alberta, had grown rapidly. The co-founders, who were sisters, wanted to further both their product line and their commitments to corporate sustainability. Would becoming certified as a sustainable business publicize their commitments and values, and improve their triple bottom line? If so, which certification should they choose? On the other hand, given the company’s growth stage, would directing finite resources toward certification detract from other important business areas?

Since the founding of Ontario-based Social Focus Consulting (SFC) in 2011, its founder had led a team of over 100 members to work on more than 30 projects for over 30 non-profit organization (NPO) clients from London to Ottawa. SFC’s competitive market included NPO consulting firms that were more established, larger, or offered pro bono services. SFC set itself apart by exclusively hiring undergraduate and graduate students. The organization specialized in youth-oriented marketing strategies that helped NPOs raise more funds and awareness in a highly fragmented multi-billion-dollar Canadian market. Although SFC had achieved some success, the founder wondered if SFC's recent declining revenues and failure in new project acquisition meant that its business model was not feasible over a long-term horizon. In September 2017, he had to decide whether to continue running SFC with long-term goals for success or avoid the risk of ruining his professional reputation and wasting time and money by ending his work with SFC.

The chief executive officer of Scotbar Proprietary Limited (Scotbar) in Queensland, Australia, decided to develop a process to convert sandstone to sand, a technique that large multinational mining companies failed to perfect. The stakes could not have been higher, with global environmental disaster looming and the world quickly depleting its reserves of construction sand, severely affecting coastal communities and destroying marine ecosystems in the process. After spending years and millions of dollars on research, Scotbar appeared to have developed a process to produce construction sand, although more expensive than natural sand. Scotbar decided not to patent its process in hopes that more companies would adopt it and thereby reduce the harmful impact of mining on the environment. Was Scotbar's approach to sustainability through innovation an effective response to the environmental legacy of more traditional mining processes? Was the company's approach to intellectual property appropriate in this context?

In November 2016, the co-founders of Poppy Barley Inc. (Poppy Barley) had just finished discussing the company's fiscal projections and sustainability goals for the upcoming 2017 year. Poppy Barley, a made-to-measure footwear retailer in Edmonton, Alberta, had grown rapidly. The co-founders, who were sisters, wanted to further both their product line and their commitments to corporate sustainability. Would becoming certified as a sustainable business publicize their commitments and values, and improve their triple bottom line? If so, which certification should they choose? On the other hand, given the company's growth stage, would directing finite resources toward certification detract from other important business areas?

Since the founding of Ontario-based Social Focus Consulting (SFC) in 2011, its founder had led a team of over 100 members to work on more than 30 projects for over 30 non-profit organization (NPO) clients from London to Ottawa. SFC's competitive market included NPO consulting firms that were more established, larger, or offered pro bono services. SFC set itself apart by exclusively hiring undergraduate and graduate students. The organization specialized in youth-oriented marketing strategies that helped NPOs raise more funds and awareness in a highly fragmented multi-billion-dollar Canadian market. Although SFC had achieved some success, the founder wondered if SFC's recent declining revenues and failure in new project acquisition meant that its business model was not feasible over a long-term horizon. In September 2017, he had to decide whether to continue running SFC with long-term goals for success or avoid the risk of ruining his professional reputation and wasting time and money by ending his work with SFC.

In 2015, Cerana Beverages Pvt. Ltd. launched Bira 91 (Bira), India’s first handcrafted beer. It was introduced to fill a gap in the market between Indian brands and expensive imported beers. The handcrafted beer was priced lower than several premium beers but was more expensive than the market leaders. This allowed Bira to develop price leadership in the premium beer segment. By setting a new price range, Bira executed “high quality, low price” appeal and became capable of influencing customer product evaluations. With its intention to replicate this pricing strategy in its global expansion, now Bira would have to successfully design a proactive strategy to meet the associated challenges.

Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (Jio) launched JioMoney, a mobile wallet (m-wallet) service, in May 2016. Jio was a new entrant in a market populated by established services. Six months later, when the government of India announced demonetization of two high-value currency notes, India’s cash-driven economy was pushed toward digital payments, providing Jio and its competitors with an opportunity. Jio had advanced technology supporting its service. But to leverage the opportunity and its technology, Jio would have to access the 72.2 per cent of India’s population that lived in rural areas. Many of these people did not have bank accounts, and most of them had no experience with digital transactions. Further, despite the availability of the latest 4G cellular technology—which was necessary for successful digital money transfers—a great number of people in India still used phones that were two generations older and unable to take advantage of the m-wallet industry. How could JioMoney overcome the challenges to take advantage of the opportunities?

TCNS Clothing Company Limited (TCNS), the owner of women’s fusion-wear brands W, Weve, Aurelia, and Wishful, had built up a strong retail brand presence in India since its founding in 2002. By 2017, its product innovation, proactive customer need fulfillment, and extensive retail reach had enabled it to grow into a ₹11.5 billion company. The W brand had been building its online presence, but this was still contributing only single-digit shares to sales. Faced with issues of declining loyalty and increasing expectations of digitally influenced consumers, retailers in India were moving toward omni-channel strategies. In early 2018, this seemed to have become an imperative for W as well. Was it now time for W to pursue an omni-channel retail strategy to offer its customers an unbeatable experience? An infusion of funds from two major investors had given the company significant financial muscle to pursue aggressive marketing. Yet, the challenges of going omni-channel were considerable. How should W proceed?

James "Hondo" Geurts, the Acquisition Executive for U.S. Special Operations Command was in the middle of his Senate confirmation hearing in 2017 to become Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition. The questions had a common theme: how would Geurts's experience running an innovative procurement effort for U.S. Special Forces units enable him to change a much larger-and much more rigid-organization like the U.S. Navy? In one of the most secretive parts of the U.S. military, Geurts founded an open platform called SOFWERX to speed the rate of ideas to Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces, and the like. His team even sourced the idea for a hoverboard from a YouTube video. But how should things like SOFWERX and protypes like the EZ-Fly find a place within the Navy writ large?

In June 2016, Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart Private Limited (Flipkart) faced a common issue among online retailers: the firm needed to optimize its product return rates to reduce losses caused by returns. Accordingly, Flipkart changed its return policy, including raising the commission fees charged to sellers by an average of 5 per cent. Many sellers resented the policy change, and more than 1,800 led an online protest against Flipkart, which was unprecedented in India. These sellers made their accounts inactive and removed the product listings for nearly 1 million product units. Seeing an opportunity, Amazon India decreased its commissions on various product categories by 2–7 per cent to lure disgruntled sellers to its platform. While its competitors experienced rapid growth, Flipkart struggled to keep the market share it had acquired so far. The company experienced a massive drop in its valuation during fiscal year 2015–16, and had not registered any profit since its inception in 2007. Flipkart had to reduce its losses resulting from a high number of returns without displeasing both of its key stakeholders—sellers and customers.

TruCar.in (TruCar), established in 2014, was an emerging online car portal in India. The online car portal industry was highly competitive, with a few established players and several new entrants due to low entry barriers. Most competitors were focused on the online auto classified segment (providing information about cars) or the used-car segment (buying and selling used cars). TruCar was instead focused on assisting consumers in evaluating cars and selecting car dealers with attractive discounts and instant availability. TruCar highly valued transparency for both consumers and dealers. Despite its innovative value proposition, TruCar was facing challenges to becoming a key competitor in the online car portal industry. TruCar’s founder was contemplating identifying key target segments and positioning his company against both established and emerging companies in the marketplace.

Muskaan, a social enterprise based in Delhi, India, trained adults with intellectual disabilities to help bring them closer to mainstream society. The organization firmly believed that the “human mind is designed for learning,” and that everyone, including those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, had the potential to succeed in doing great things in life. Muskaan had two revenue sources: grants, and income from the sale of goods produced by intellectually disabled craftspeople. In 2016, more than 11,000 Indian non-governmental organizations lost their licenses to receive foreign funding. Dr. Shanti Auluck, Muskaan’s founder, worried that the funding needed for her business model might also soon dry up. To survive, grow, and ensure the sustainability of her social enterprise, Auluck had to change her business model and prepare a new business plan.

TruCar.in (TruCar), established in 2014, was an emerging online car portal in India. The online car portal industry was highly competitive, with a few established players and several new entrants due to low entry barriers. Most competitors were focused on the online auto classified segment (providing information about cars) or the used-car segment (buying and selling used cars). TruCar was instead focused on assisting consumers in evaluating cars and selecting car dealers with attractive discounts and instant availability. TruCar highly valued transparency for both consumers and dealers. Despite its innovative value proposition, TruCar was facing challenges to becoming a key competitor in the online car portal industry. TruCar's founder was contemplating identifying key target segments and positioning his company against both established and emerging companies in the marketplace.

The case narrates the experiences of a fresh MBA graduate, Ryan, from a top business school in India. After graduating, he joined his traditional family business with the aim to transform it, accelerate growth and start a new business line. Ryan starts several initiatives over one year but his efforts are met with failure. The case focuses on the decisions he takes and the difficulties he has in making career choices. The case lends itself to discussion on taking charge of a business, change management, training next generation family business leaders and career choices by young management graduates.

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.