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Over a 10-year period, from 2008 to 2018, Indian tire production increased from 80 to 180 million units. Indian tire companies were thriving and investing heavily abroad. Four Indian tire companies were among the top 30 tire makers in the world. Although India was expected to experience high or hyper-growth in tire manufacturing, growth at such a fast pace brought uncertainties and risks. In addition to competition from low-cost tires imported to India, the industry was challenged by volatile pricing for the raw materials used in tire production, government initiatives that were having unintended consequences on tire sales, environmental considerations, and protectionism in India’s largest export markets. What strategies did the industry need to reach profitability despite the ups and downs of the supply market, its dependence on large customers, changes in government policies, and environmental protection initiatives?

In September 2018, WaterEquity, a US-based investment vehicle for both financial and social returns, had to raise US$50 million in total funding capital. The sales team had to propose sales pitches for alternative investments for three types of investors. From a financial perspective, the investment was essentially a risk-free asset with an annual return of 3.5 per cent. However, this investment could also positively affect four developing countries—India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Cambodia—by providing clean water solutions for billions of people. Through the lending facilities of the local microfinance institutions of these four countries, WaterEquity could offer support to the poor and empower more women, generating both financial and social returns. Different groups of investors might be attracted by different levels of these social returns as well as the financial returns. The sales team planned to use a simple extension of the standard Markowitz portfolio theory framework to incorporate social returns and account for two distinct types of returns, customizing the sales pitches for each of three groups of investors.

In January 2015, the founder and chairman of Sunyuki Agricultural Co., Ltd. (Sunyuki), was considering a major change to his company. Founded in 2010, Sunyuki was one of the first online fresh-food retailers in southwest China, providing safe, fresh, organic foods to high-end consumers who had a strong preference for high dietary quality. Since its launch, Sunyuki had achieved soaring average annual growth rates of almost 100 per cent. However, it was becoming difficult to attract new customers through online channels alone. Therefore, the founder was considering the option of opening physical stores as an off-line channel to complement the company's successful online sales and distribution channel. Because of rapid growth in the fresh-food industry and intensifying competition, the founder needed to carefully consider the company’s next steps. If Sunyuki opted to expand off-line, how should it proceed? Specifically, how should the company manage a new online and offline strategy in an omnichannel sales and distribution environment?

In early 2015, the chief executive officer of Bumbox Logistics Private Limited (Bumbox) faced a challenge. The company, launched in Singapore, provided smart lockers for use by delivery companies and consumers to ensure the safe and timely receipt of online purchases. The lockers offered an attractive opportunity, given their ability to resolve last-mile delivery problems that plagued both logistics companies and online consumers. Despite the promising business concept, 18 months after launching, the business had not gained much traction—or revenue. The chief executive officer was fully aware of the company’s multiple challenges: because parcel lockers were a new concept in Singapore, consumers needed to be educated on their use; the company faced competition from other companies, including the nation’s post office; and while increasing the number of smart lockers would help the company succeed, expanding the network could only be justified once the lockers were being widely used. The company had tried to target three segments—online shoppers/consumers, logistics companies, and e-tailers—but because of limited resources, it needed to focus on one segment only. What strategy should the chief executive officer follow to take Bumbox to the next level?

SenseTime Group Limited was founded in Hong Kong in 2014 to commercialize artificial intelligence for digital recognition of images, particularly human faces. After only three years in business, the company was profitable, with annual sales revenue of about US$100 million. In 2018, it employed over 2,000 workers and was referred to as the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence start-up, with a valuation of US$7.6 billion. China had become the largest market in the world for facial recognition technologies, with its share of global sales expected to grow from 29 per cent in 2017 to 45 per cent in 2023. And the global facial recognition market was forecast to be worth US$6.5 billion by 2021. SenseTime Group Limited aimed to empower more industries throughout the world with its artificial intelligence platform. A key question in early 2019 for the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer was how to adapt its strategy to achieve that mission in an increasingly fraught global environment.

In June 2019, the founder and chairman of Shandong Moris Chemical Co. Ltd. (Moris), a leading chemical production group, had to decide whether Moris should diversify into an unrelated industry. Moris’s main business had been the production and processing of brine chemicals. With several of its chemical products dominating worldwide markets, Moris had become a hidden champion in these industry segments. Through the company’s most recent diversification move into water treatment and land improvement, the founder had stretched Moris’s corporate umbrella beyond purely chemical businesses, hoping to transform the negative corporate image associated with chemical industries. Now, he had to determine whether the cultural and creative industries would fit with this strategic aspiration, especially since a move into this area would be the first unrelated diversification for the company.

In August 2018, a recent Canadian business school graduate was excited about starting her dream job at a global financial consulting firm headquartered in the United Kingdom. However, on her first day, she learned from discussions with co-workers that newly hired women (including herself) were offered lower salaries than men who were newly hired for the same positions. She later learned, in an onboarding session, that the company had a strict policy prohibiting pay discussions among employees. The new employee faced a difficult decision in considering what to do next: What were her responsibilities and options? How could she expect the human resources department to respond? Could her choices possibly put her or her colleagues at risk?

Tea Connect, a chain of five tea cafés in India, had ended 2019 with sales revenues of ₹48.1 million. The co-founder of Tea Connect had the ambitious target of opening 20 cafés and achieving sales revenues of ₹200 million by 2020. The co-founder planned the renovation of the cafés to improve the speed of service, but he also wanted to launch Tea Connect–branded consumer packaged products. Three franchising offers for stores in Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Mount Abu were also under consideration. He was wondering whether renovation would help to enhance the customer experience and whether this was the right time to launch consumer packaged goods. Also, was it the right time to explore the franchise route of expansion?

In March 2012, the head of compensation for Colgate-Palmolive (India) Limited was reviewing five resumes. He had been asked to determine appropriate pay scales for the five candidates, and he knew that the decision had ramifications far beyond the salary of a few employees. The giant corporation, which was well established in India, had opened other plants in India in the past, but the new toothbrush factory in Sri City had just started operations. The head of compensation would need to define an appropriate pay philosophy and strategy that would enable the organization to attract, motivate, and retain the right talent for the Sri City plant. That strategy would have to be consistent with the existing culture at Colgate-Palmolive (India) Limited.

In the mid-1990s, Thyrocare disrupted the Indian medical diagnostic industry and steadily gained market share over the next two decades to become one of the top five competitors in India. Thyrocare built and sustained a competitive advantage and entered closely-related businesses. By 2017, the diagnostic industry had become extremely dynamic and competitors were attempting to replicate the unique operating model of Thyrocare. Stand-alone companies were scaling, online and digital aggregators were growing, substitutes such as self-test kits were emerging, and regulations were being tightened, resulting in severe margin pressures. How could Thyrocare preserve its unique model and competitive advantage in such a dynamic industry setting?

In 2015, the Department of Health for the province of Gauteng, South Africa, deinstitutionalized patients in need of long term health care in an effort to reduce costs. The residents were moved from an established health care facility experienced with providing the care these patients needed to non-governmental facilities. Many of these facilities were unlicensed and lacking the skills and resources needed to provide the necessary care. The project was poorly planned with inadequate notice and patients were transferred without identification, medication, or medical records. From March to June 2016, 1,712 patients were transferred; many of them were lost in the system and 144 died—most from malnutrition, abuse, or neglect. The health ombudsman investigated and released a report in February 2017, placing the blame for the tragedy on three senior leaders in the health care system. A new member of the executive council was appointed upon the release of the report. In 2018, her challenge was to determine what happened and plan changes to ensure such a tragedy would never be repeated.

The co-founder and chief product officer of Miutcánk, a promising sharing-economy platform dedicated to neighbourhood networking and services, was analyzing the growth of the platform since its creation in 2014. Miutcánk had more than 43,000 registered users in December 2018, and it was time to think about the best way to monetize the platform. What kind of paid services should be included in the platform? Which revenue model was the most suitable for the platform’s growth? The co-founder and chief product officer wanted to ensure that the company was making the most efficient move toward becoming profitable, without discouraging users from participating on the platform.

On March 14, 2019, the convenience business unit manager of Greenyard Frozen was in his Roeselare, Belgium office preparing for a management meeting that would discuss current challenges facing the company. Greenyard Frozen had to decide on the market positioning of its cauliflower rice and how to promote the new product. The project, which was a great example of co-operation in the value chain and of open innovation for sustainability, had resulted from the unique collaboration of several key contributors: Greenyard Frozen, two cauliflower growers, a machine builder, the agricultural research group Instituut voor Landbouw-, Visserij- en Voedingsonderzoek, and the Flanders’ Food platform. Greenyard Frozen had to decide whether to emphasize the product’s sustainability benefits or simply position the cauliflower rice as a healthy, low-carbohydrate alternative to rice or other food products. What steps could the company take to remain ahead of its competitors, who were innovating at a relentless pace?

A young Canadian entrepreneur had established a digital medical tourism concierge service in Armenia--GetTreated CJSC--and in 2019 was evaluating the opportunities for the company's growth. While the company was experiencing steady growth, the founder felt that the growth rates were not reflective of the potential that was present in the market. Something had to be changed about how the company was acquiring its customers. The company's promotional strategy also needed work in the face of increasing competition locally and globally.

In 2019, the founder of Anjelo’s Confectionaries, a commercial bakery in India, faced two difficult situations. The founder had created the Juicy Cakes brand to represent the company’s standard cakes, differentiating the product from the bakery’s specialty cakes and ice cream cakes; however, the Juicy Cakes name had limited exposure and lacked mass recall for consumers, as a result of poor distribution and reach. The second challenge was the unused capacity of the company’s large automated plant. Although cake sales were seasonal, the founder wanted to utilize the company’s excess capacity throughout the year. The entrepreneur founder needed to fine-tune the trade-off between a product-based strategy and a place- or distribution-based strategy. How should the founder proceed to ensure his company’s future?

In 2018, the founder and owner of the Karatu Coffee Company needed to decide what to do next with his company. He was considering several options: increasing the tourism part of the business, growing the original farm, pursuing a property development project in the capital city, or simply selling out and walking away. The company, located in Tanzania, began as a coffee farm, expanded into tourism with a remote, idyllic coffee lodge, and then brought coffee and tourism together with a bustling inner-city coffee house, which also housed a boutique hotel. The final phase of expansion included the purchase of high-quality coffee equipment and highly-prized roasting facilities to capture a larger share of the coffee value chain. The owner's decision would require insights into both the coffee industry and Tanzania itself.

Founded in 2016, Critterati was India’s first luxury hotel for pets, located in one of the most prominent residential and commercial areas of Gurgaon, India. The basic philosophy of the hotel was that pets provided unconditional love to their owners, so they deserved more than just basic care in return. The number of customers visiting Critterati over the previous three years had increased consistently from 500 in the first year to 1,200 in the second year and 2,600 in the third year. In a short time, the start-up had become a self-sustaining business. By early May 2019, the hotel’s top luxury Critterati Suite was already booked for most of June and the overall hotel was nearly fully booked for the next two months. The Critterati differentiator was an annual membership plan that had been carefully crafted to provide a package of services for one year at a cost effective flat rate. However, the number of customers who chose the membership plan was still low, at around 250, but 1,000 memberships were needed to break even. How would pet owners be convinced about the benefits of the plan? Partnering with other service providers would also increase brand awareness, but which partnerships were most important?

In April 2018, more than one year after the chief executive officer (CEO) of Danby Appliances Inc. launched a private sponsorship program to support Syrian refugees in their integration into Canada, the CEO and others were starting to raise some questions. Although the program seemed to have had an overall positive impact on Syrian refugees, Danby's board of directors wondered about the impact of the program on the appliance business. The settlement program continued to take up a considerable amount of the CEO's time and may have even been a drain on other Danby resources, such as staff time. With competition intensifying in the appliance manufacturing industry, the board asked the CEO to assess the impact of the settlement program on Danby, the refugees, and the community, and to recommend whether the program should continue. The CEO knew it would be difficult to collect precise numbers and wondered how he should start to quantify the true impact of the settlement program.

In spring 2018, the chief supply chain officer of Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, was visiting a supplier in in Changzhou, China. He was meeting with the supplier the next day but had not fully decided how to manage the meeting. The supplier was responsible for a large portion of the company’s supply of grills but was also positioning itself as a competitor by tooling, designing, and producing knock-off products that were then directly marketed to consumers in the company’s strongest market—the United States. Although the supplier denied any involvement in the knock-off grills, the chief supply chain officer knew the tooling and styling were impossibly similar to his company’s products and there was no other facility in that supplier's area with the capability to make look-alike grills at that level. The chief supply chain officer had to decide how to deal with the rebellious supplier.

Wow! Momo Foods Private Limited (Wow! Momo), a quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain, was a Kolkata-based start-up that sold a variety of momos, a Tibetan food. The restaurant’s specialty was a pan-fried variety of momos prepared to suit the Indian palate. In late 2018, the founders were reviewing the company’s financials and considering how they could improve the company’s growth. Their goal of becoming a widely recognized brand, both nationally and internationally, seemed elusive. How could Wow! Momo make momos a front-line fast food like pizza and burgers? Should they create a niche market, or should they seek to make Wow! Momo a mainstream fast food? And, ultimately, how could they first make Wow! Momo a national brand alongside other leading multinationals in India before expanding the business internationally?