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The founders of SENS Foods (SENS), a Czech sustainable-food small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), wanted to expand the business beyond their home market. SENS was operating in the rapidly growing alternative-protein market using products derived from edible crickets. Due to its increasing profitability and international expansion potential, SENS saw an opportunity to expand into one of more Nordic markets—Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. SENS had to explore the possible modes of entry and evaluate the most suitable ones. In the short term, SENS had a sustained competitive advantage with its Thailand-based Cricket Lab Ltd. farm and its brand name. SENS’s intangible resources—business positioning and messaging, innovation, and research—represented a temporary competitive advantage. For market selection purposes, five cluster criteria were proposed to assess the attractiveness of the identified markets: estimating the level of primary competition, market maturity, market size, country environmental performance, and transportation costs. The founders needed to evaluate the four Nordic countries using these five selection criteria to identify the top two countries for further examination regarding mode of entry and level of competition.

Makoye Safaris, a jungle safari tour company based in Tanzania founded by Vicent Makoye, offered fully guided, safe, and environmentally friendly tours largely to international tourists. The tours were private, custom designed, and flexible and included airport pick-up and drop-off, accommodation, transportation, and three meals daily. Makoye wanted the company to grow and acquire a larger market share. However, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide, and Tanzania’s tourism sector went into a downturn. Although the number of tourists started to increase in 2021, Makoye Safaris needed a good marketing plan to achieve its target of doubling the number of international tourists it served by 2025.

In 2008, Goldwind bought 70 per cent of Vensys’ shares through its German subsidiary to obtain a range of strategic assets, including a professional research and development team and associated design capabilities, intellectual property rights of permanent magnet direct drive (PMDD) technology, and corresponding wind turbine designs. Over the years, the post-merger integration (PMI) process of an emerging market multinational enterprise (EMNE) and a developed country multinational enterprise (DMNE) saw many conflicts. By the end of 2021, the general manager of Goldwind Germany needed to strengthen the integration process between the two companies to facilitate its growth in Europe and elsewhere.

Breadfast is an online grocery delivery retailer founded by Mostafa Amin, Muhammad Habib, and Abdallah Nofal in Egypt in 2017. The three co-founders are now contemplating international expansion into new markets to further grow their revenues and diversify geographically. They have decided to investigate expanding into nearby Tunisia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Therefore, they must examine the macroeconomic environment and the food and beverage industry in those two countries to determine if the conditions are favourable to ensure a successful international expansion. In addition to identifying the criteria of attractiveness for each country, the co-founders must select the most appropriate market entry strategy. The online grocery retail market in Tunisia and KSA has been growing as a result of evolving consumer preferences and the COVID-19 pandemic. Both countries have favourable and unfavourable factors. Given the risks and trade-offs in each country, Breadfast must determine which market to enter and which mode of entry will increase its the chance of success.

Makoye Safaris, a jungle safari tour company based in Tanzania founded by Vicent Makoye, offered fully guided, safe, and environmentally friendly tours largely to international tourists. The tours were private, custom designed, and flexible and included airport pick-up and drop-off, accommodation, transportation, and three meals daily. Makoye wanted the company to grow and acquire a larger market share. However, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spread worldwide, and Tanzania's tourism sector went into a downturn. Although the number of tourists started to increase in 2021, Makoye Safaris needed a good marketing plan to achieve its target of doubling the number of international tourists it served by 2025.

ASML Holding NV (ASML) was a leading technology company headquartered in the Netherlands that specialized in the design and production of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment. It had a global presence, with operations in Asia, Europe, and North America. Its unique chip manufacturing technology was essential for the development of technology products from military equipment and laundry machines to the smartphones in peoples’ pockets. ASML produced complex and consequential products that were the foundations of the modern economy. Because of this, ASML played a significant role in global geopolitics and found itself in the middle of the West’s increasing efforts to control exports of semiconductor technology to China. In December 2022, a couple of months after the US government unilaterally restricted exports of chip technology to China, ASML faced a strategic crossroads: should it maximize company profits and ignore Western policy by engaging China, or should it weigh the pitfalls of ignoring the West’s political decision to block China from essential technology and disengage from its business with the People’s Republic of China?

Kyrö Distillery Company (Kyrö), founded in 2012 in Isokyrö, Finland, focused on producing rye whisky from Finnish rye. However, it took an average of three years for one batch of whisky to be produced and ready for sale, so, to cover their costs and stay afloat, the founders decided to start producing gin, which could be produced faster. As luck had it, in 2014, Kyrö’s rye-based Napue Gin was named the best gin in the gin-and-tonic category in the UK-based International Wine & Spirit Competition, and Kyrö now had two promising products in its roster: rye whisky and rye-based gin. <br><br>Kyrö exported its products to overseas markets, including Japan, where its results had so far been modest, but it planned to expand and grow its businesses in Japan. As an underdog in an industry dominated by major global players, Kyrö had to work to increase its market share. It relied on its authentic brand image, original products, and brand ambassadors. In September 2022, as one of Kyrö’s co-founders travelled to Japan to meet with the company’s main Japanese distributor, he wondered, How could the company gain growth in a market that was highly competitive and dominated by well-established local companies?

Kyrö Distillery Company (Kyrö), founded in 2012 in Isokyrö, Finland, focused on producing rye whisky from Finnish rye. However, it took an average of three years for one batch of whisky to be produced and ready for sale, so, to cover their costs and stay afloat, the founders decided to start producing gin, which could be produced faster. As luck had it, in 2014, Kyrö's rye-based Napue Gin was named the best gin in the gin-and-tonic category in the UK-based International Wine & Spirit Competition, and Kyrö now had two promising products in its roster: rye whisky and rye-based gin. <br><br>Kyrö exported its products to overseas markets, including Japan, where its results had so far been modest, but it planned to expand and grow its businesses in Japan. As an underdog in an industry dominated by major global players, Kyrö had to work to increase its market share. It relied on its authentic brand image, original products, and brand ambassadors. In September 2022, as one of Kyrö's co-founders travelled to Japan to meet with the company's main Japanese distributor, he wondered, How could the company gain growth in a market that was highly competitive and dominated by well-established local companies?

NSGC Information Technology Co., Ltd. (NSGC Technology) is both a cybersecurity enterprise engaged in technological innovation and a software firm focusing on cyber range construction and cybersecurity talent cultivation. It boasts a long history of doing business with the military industry, and it has produced a wide range of competitive cyber range products. At its inception in 2014, NSGC Technology initiated XCTF, a CTF (capture the flag) competition ranking first in Asia and second in the world, which earned the company a strong international reputation. NSGC Technology started to tap the global market in 2017 and has fostered an international outlook over many years of overseas practices. Its products and services are now available in more than twenty countries. While competing with leading global manufacturers, it has developed insights into the cyber range sector and become the only internationally competitive Chinese enterprise in this field. However, as the company marched from the military industry into non-military fields, it became trapped in low-level industry competition in 2021. In addition, the company’s overseas business has been severely impacted since 2020 by the COVID-19 outbreak. At the beginning of 2022, facing challenges at home and abroad, NSGC Technology had to carefully examine the relationship between domestic and global markets and formulate a new corporate development strategy.

This experiential exercise is designed to teach students how joint ventures can entail inherent tensions that resemble a real-world prisoner’s dilemma. In the context of a (hypothetical) international collaboration in the global bicycle industry, students are put in the position of the parent firms’ decision-makers and must decide between accessing the other’s knowledge versus wanting to acquire (i.e., own) it. Students are thereby incentivized to act in self-interest, which ultimately leads to worse outcomes than if they had acted in the interest of the group. The exercise provides a lively, visceral learning experience and is complemented with an in-depth discussion of assumptions and implications as described in this teaching note.

In 2022, food prices around the world were rising rapidly, and the war in Ukraine was threatening supplies of fertilizer and grain. In addition to this looming food crisis, in 2019 the EU had passed the European Green Deal with the objective of transforming the EU into a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy. The Green Deal included the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy, which aimed to make food systems healthy and environmentally friendly. The objectives of the F2F strategy included reduced dependence on pesticides, antimicrobials, and fertilizers; increased organic farming; improved animal welfare; and a reversal of biodiversity loss. The F2F strategy was expected to significantly reduce European grain production and increase prices. It was also expected to lead to more locally produced protein crops in Europe and reduced imports of protein crops (mainly soybeans) from South America.

Swedish brewer Mikael Larsson finds himself in a conundrum. By chance, he has come across an extraordinary opportunity: Contacts with North Korea's dominant brewery open up new possibilities for getting into business with a company producing a truly exotic premium beer. That would dovetail with his own beer business. However, as the partner brewery is located in Pyongyang, North Korea it opens a can of worms: How to proceed given the political, economic and legal issues any actual collaboration would entail? First, he needs to sort out the context of having a potential partner in a reclusive country currently under international sanctions. He needs to understand the overall environment in which the prospective partner operates. Second, Mikael needs to figure out what Taedonggang brings to the table. Third, what practical steps would be required if he decides to proceed, or are there any creative alternatives? All the while when considering the future, he is dogged by ethical and legal concerns as well as by the economic opportunities beckoning if this could be pulled off.

LINE Corporation was started in 2000 as a local company in Japan focused on developing a mobile communication application. It later expanded its reach to operate a wide range of products and services in various markets including retail, entertainment, financial technology, and artificial intelligence. LINE Corporation was operating in two global markets-Asia and North America-with its top four strategic business units. The LINE mobile messaging application was the cornerstone of the company, launched in Japan shortly after the Great East Japan earthquake in 2011 to allow individuals to connect with loved ones, participate in relief efforts, and express their feelings through emojis and stickers. LINE FRIENDS INC. was a standalone entity created to sell and distribute character-related merchandise featuring the popular animal characters Brown, Cony, and Sally. LINE PLAY Corporation, the company's popular avatar-building game, had over 75 million registered users, but some users saw it as merely a cash-grabbing game. LINE Next Inc. was a venture focused on developing and expanding the global non-fungible token ecosystem. In 2023, the main issue that LINE Corporation was facing was how best to allocate budget and resources to the two markets (Asia and North America) and to its top four strategic business units.

China’s counterespionage laws open up foreign executives to the risk of being detained in the country in the event of a business dispute. It is increasingly common for foreign businesspeople to face an exit ban or commercial hostage situation as a result â€" which means companies doing business in China should prepare for such a possibility. This article explains how to develop a plan of action should such a situation arise.

In 2023, the fast-fashion industry found itself under attack on several fronts: a growing poor reputation regarding its significant negative social and environmental impacts; the increasing prevalence of online shopping and the entrance of many new competitors who were not burdened with expensive bricks-and-mortar retail networks; and the evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in helping to identify future fashion trends. Industria de Diseño Textil SA (Inditex) and its flagship brand Zara had just come off a record 2022, with industry-leading sales, gross margins, and profits. They were also ahead of the industry with 25.8 per cent of sales through their online channels. However, the challenges the fast-fashion industry faced were significant for Zara and required a long-term strategic response.

In 2015, Hubang chili sauce was launched in China's highly competitive emerging condiment and sauce market. Instead of undertaking direct competition and a costly price war in traditional retail channels already dominated by a market leader, Wenjin Lu, a local entrepreneur and the chief executive officer of Hubang, developed a unique strategy to achieve breakthroughs via online-to-offline (O2O) food delivery platforms, whose consumers were made up of a fast-increasing consumer base of Internet and mobile users. By 2020, Hubang had achieved an annual sales milestone of US$29 million and secured series A financing. Lu faced a new dilemma: Should Hubang keep strengthening its unique O2O channel through market penetration and product expansion, or should it reposition to enter the retail market with its existing products?

On October 18, 2021 a Zomato app user wanted a refund for a missing item in his online food service order and contacted the company’s customer care agent over Twitter. The customer was from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where Tamil was the native language and a matter of parochial pride. What had started as a minor food order detail escalated into an online nationwide language debate with the accompanying hashtag #Reject_Zomato. The entire episode and ensuing online debate lasted less than 24 hours. But the matter created an indelible trail of negative publicity and scathing media coverage for Zomato, denting the company’s reputation. Was Zomato’s public response to the issue appropriate? Should the company review its use of Twitter as a customer care channel? More broadly, what changes should be considered for Zomato’s customer support function to deal effectively with culturally-attuned customer communication in a diverse market of 1.4 billion people with many different regional identities, cultural pride levels, and spoken languages?

R&D leaders and CTOs are well placed to instigate changes that will ensure that future products and services have a lower carbon footprint, but they must have a clear mandate to do so. Reducing the negative impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may mean using alternative raw materials, reimagining product designs, and implementing more climate-friendly technologies. The authors assert that every R&D conversation should now take GHG into account.

Metaza SA (Metaza) was a family business created by two brothers who later invited their younger siblings to join the firm. Metaza operated in the steel sector, a capital-intensive business with fierce competition. The industry had experienced several mergers and acquisitions led by international players. To remain competitive, Metaza had changed its strategy, moving away from being a steel dealer and toward being a value-added producer. However, these changes generated debate within the family business, which operated with a low level of institutionalization. Consequently, the brothers hired a family business governance consultant for assistance. Metaza’s chair and chief executive officer needed to learn how to implement these strategic changes so that he could pass the torch of a healthier organization.

Aglaia Kong, the founder and chief executive officer of Guangdong LeapFive Technology Co. Ltd., a Chinese fabless chip design start-up, is facing a broken supply chain, with issues running from electronic design automation and core internet protocol through to fabrication, packaging, and testing in bringing up her Internet of things chip sets for industrial applications. Using fifth-generation open-source reduced instruction set computing instruction set architecture, she must assess a supply chain buffeted by severe bullwhip shortages and political headwinds, analyze her company’s strategy, and plot a course to assure it will be among the 2 per cent of Chinese chip start-ups that do not fail.