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Peter Alkema, chief information officer of Business Banking at First National Bank in Johannesburg, was puzzling over ways to ensure that codeFest, the event he had inaugurated, would continue to thrive beyond 2018 without his direct involvement. His brainchild had begun in 2015 as a one-day hackathon with 100 participants. Three years later, it had grown to become a six-day coding and innovation extravaganza. Now, in May 2018, Alkema wondered what features of codeFest should continue into the future. What should be improved upon? And what novelties should be injected to take the event to the next level?

The chief executive officer and founder of Global Metal Company (GMC), had been in the business of antique reproduction hardware for more than three years, having quit his successful corporate career to start GMC in his hometown of Aligarh in northern India. After seeing the initial response to the business, he was confident that within three years, GMC would realize the annual revenue of US$1 million he had envisioned. In 2018–2019, upon completing three years in business, GMC closed the year with $0.15 million in annual revenues. The CEO wondered what had gone wrong in those years. Had his target of $1 million been over-ambitious? Or had his assessment of the overall market potential been off the mark? During those three years, he had expanded his operations in baby steps from Europe—which was overly price competitive and served by a large number of exporters from Aligarh—to the United States. Now he was wondering whether he should plunge deeply into the US market to grow GMC, or seriously consider quitting this business and moving back into his corporate career.

Between 2016 and 2019, the India-based budget hotel start-up Oravel Stays Private Limited (OYO) expanded into nine countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States. However, OYO faced several crises in its home country: contracted hoteliers of OYO threatened to file lawsuits against the start-up for breach of contract, and customers raised service quality issues. Critics believed that with such rapid internationalization, OYO’s founder was simply burning through the cash of venture capitalists. Nevertheless, the founder was determined to expand internationally while enhancing OYO’s service portfolio in India. Should he reconsider his decision to focus on international markets instead of the domestic market? Could legal issues in OYO’s home country create impediments to this growth plan? How should he deal with these issues?

In January 2016, the three partners of CampusHash Technologies LLP (CampusHash), an Indian start-up focused on conducting software training programs, had to make some pressing strategic decisions. CampusHash’s revenues had not grown as expected and the partners had to decide whether to continue with the existing business model or choose to pivot. While pivoting could potentially lead to a significant improvement in CampusHash’s performance, it could also lead to wide-spread organizational change and disruption, risking the survival of the start-up. Despite their constrained resources, the partners had to decide whether to pivot or not in the next two weeks, when they would present a business plan to angel investors to raise much-required funding.

Sun Quan Education Inc. faced a variety of challenges on its path to expanding its customer base and building profitability through the operation of the We-GO club, a strategic business unit aimed at promoting education and training about the Go game in southern Ontario. Some of these challenges came from the low awareness of Go compared to other more popular intellectual products in Canada, the relatively late entry to the market of educational services, and more critically, the need for the company to develop a comprehensive and effective marketing plan starting with a clearly defined target segment. What was the right direction for the company’s marketing plan?

In 2018, Game of Thrones, a widely popular television series, had inspired a significant increase in tourism to one of its filming locations: Dubrovnik, Croatia. The economy in Croatia, in general, and Dubrovnik, in particular, relied significantly on tourism. However, the popularity of the television series had led to overwhelming tourist traffic in the area. During the peak tourist season, the city now suffered from serious overcrowding. In addition, the city was at risk of losing its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In response, the city had begun to engage in demarketing efforts. Would these efforts be successful in both managing the high demand for tourism in the area and creating a sustainable tourism industry?

In 2016, Chinese football club Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club (Evergrande), which had recently been crowned the most valuable football club in China by Forbes magazine, with a valuation of US$282 million, simultaneously had a market capitalization in China of over US$3.3 billion. The team had yet to earn a profit, so these valuations raised questions regarding how this team in particular was valued and how sports franchises were valued in general. Many sports teams tended to lose money as they built their talent base, and investors often valued such assets in a way that was similar to the valuation of technology stocks. A football fan who was interested in investing in the Evergrande club was concerned about the high price for its shares. He wondered whether the club was really worth this much money and whether its stock price could continue to rise in future. To answer these questions, he needed to understand how the team was valued.

In 2016, Toronto entrepreneur Andy Hoang was working to launch a new business, Aviron Interactive Inc., a developer and marketer of interactive rowing machines that would use gamification to allow users to work out with others through a virtual connection and an innovative, remotely-activated resistance adjustor. Hoang wanted to create the new business by wrapping an outsourced services model around a central core that included the key business insight, key differentiating product and technology features, and the leadership of a founding team. The other elements required of a startup—engineering, product design, product development, software coding, testing, quality assurance, marketing, sales, and so on—would be outsourced to various niche suppliers, and the central core would oversee the governance of the supplier portfolio. Hoang knew the company would be competing with similar video-based rowing machines as well as indoor rowing apps. He had a limited budget and wanted to design, develop, and launch the product quickly, to stay ahead of his competition. Would a traditional business model or a lean, agile model be best for this project?

In January 2018, the chief executive officer (CEO) of logistics company Supergroup Limited (Supergroup), considered the ideal weighting of Supergroup’s offshore activities given a weak South African rand and slow growth in the country. The company had nearly become bankrupt in 2009, and the CEO had been hired as the “turnaround” leader who headed its steady recovery, stabilizing the company and building its initiatives toward growth. Now that Supergroup had made a successful recovery, shareholders were asking the CEO whether Supergroup should be focusing its investment strategy outside Africa. The CEO, too, was concerned about the group’s concentration in Africa. Although he and the executive team preferred organic acquisition growth to dividends, they were grappling with the question of what their future focus of acquisitions should be.

AWARD-WINNING CASE - Latin American Business Cases Category, 2019 European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition. Cinépolis S.A. de C.V. (Cinépolis), an innovative private Mexican firm—and one of the largest movie theatre companies in the world—had developed an over-the-top (OTT) streaming product, KLIC, and launched it in Mexico. But by late 2017, the Mexican OTT market had become competitive and crowded, with Netflix, Claro Video, Blim, Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, and others in the space. KLIC initially faced challenges with finding a proper niche and had not yet achieved profitability. Cinépolis wanted to make the product successful and hoped that interesting synergies between its movie theatre business and the new streaming unit could be found.

In June 2017, the two founders of Nilgai Foods Private Limited reintroduced Cocofly—a fresh, healthy, and pure coconut water—at the lowest price point among competing brands. The initial response to the product when it was first introduced in 2016 was overwhelmingly positive. However, the two founders were concerned in 2017 that Cocofly might be unable to sustain its success for the future. Some important questions were worrying the two founders: How could they avoid the commoditization of their product? How would they differentiate Cocofly from its competitors? Was price differentiation a sustainable strategy? What was the right marketing strategy for a market dominated by unorganized competitors and some early entrants? How should they expand their market across India, especially in the coastal cities of the country, where coconut water was readily available through unorganized companies?

Guanxi, political connections in China, can provide unique competitive advantages, but can expose business leaders to regulatory and political risks in the region. The fictional case focuses on how U.S. banks in Hong Kong, a major financial center for the Chinese market, are pinned upon the horns of a dilemma. Banks can abide by the letter of the law and not win any business; alternatively, they can break the law, in spirit if not actually the letter, and win business at the cost of incurring legal jeopardy and possibly violating one's own sense of morality by hiring the children of well-connected senior management of a Chinese business who can direct substantial mandates to the employers.

Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited (Fairfax), the Canadian insurance and investment company, made an offer in 2016 for a majority stake in the Catholic Syrian Bank Limited (CSB), a regional private bank in India. Despite its initial enthusiasm for the deal, the CSB rejected the offer because of low valuation. At the behest of the Reserve Bank of India, the CSB made a counter-offer to Fairfax for a majority stake at a substantially higher valuation. Should Fairfax take the offer?

OpenSky.tv was founded in 2016 with the objective of getting people back to watching video content on television. The founder wanted all video content to be accessible through an Internet connection on the viewer’s television. His company’s platform located and brought together programs and videos that were of interest to each viewer, so viewers could have their own personalized video channel. One full year after its launch, OpenSky.tv wanted to focus on the Cantonese market, and then concentrate on Mandarin and English audiences. The founder was wondering what his platform’s business model should be. How could he achieve his initial objective of creating a business-to-consumer (B2C) recommendation platform?

In June 2018, an intern at an investment firm was given the task of assessing the financial condition of Bon-Ton Holdings, Inc. (Bon-Ton), a leading US department store chain. In January 2018, it had entered into forbearance agreements with some of its lenders and announced store closures at 42 locations as part of its rationalization program. On February 4, 2018, it filed a voluntary petition for protection against bankruptcy and for reorganization. With the US retail industry already having witnessed more than 15 bankruptcies in 2017—the most in the last six years—would Bon-Ton survive? What measures could the company take to fight bankruptcy? What actions might put the company back on track?

Vertu Corporation Limited (Vertu), a manufacturer and retailer of luxury mobile phones, was founded as a subsidiary of Nokia in 2000. It was later acquired by a Swedish private equity firm in 2012, and then sold to Godin Holdings in 2015. Despite these multiple corporate ownership transitions, Vertu had remained uniquely positioned, differentiated by its phones’ bejewelled embellishments and a worldwide concierge service available at the touch of a button. The luxury phones were sought after by ultra-high net worth individuals as instantly recognizable status symbols akin to luxury watches. However, in the early 2000s, the introduction of luxury-priced, full-featured iPhones; the decline of conspicuous consumption among ultra-high net worth individuals after the financial crisis; and the anticorruption movement in Asia rendered Vertu’s business model unsustainable. Or was it? In July 2017, Vertu’s new owner faced a critical decision upon the liquidation of Vertu. Should he sell or license the remaining brand assets to a luxury brand owner or retrench in China to focus on existing customers without taking into consideration the ethical and reputational implications to the brand in the rest of the world?

In April 2017, BMW AG (BMW) faced a big decision regarding which plant should receive the mandate to produce the first electric version of BMW’s iconic Mini car. The leadership team of BMW’s UK operations was determined to keep the Mini at its historical home base in the United Kingdom. However, given the uncertainty arising from the United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union—a move commonly known as “Brexit” —how would the team be able to convince corporate headquarters?

In early 2019, Asahi Glass Co., Ltd. (AGC), a diversified Japanese company, was at a critical juncture in its evolution. Three years earlier, AGC had released its Vision 2025, which set a goal for the company to continue as a leading global provider of materials and solutions that improved the daily lives of people around the world. Its financial performance had improved significantly over the previous five years, but profitability remained modest, with operating profit margins slightly above 8 per cent. The modest profitability of the company belied a strong base of technologies in glass, chemicals, electronics, and ceramics. AGC could potentially use these strengths to develop and market high value-added products in varied sectors such as mobility, construction, new energy, and life sciences. To effectively exploit future opportunities, however, the company needed to devise and implement novel strategies, overcome competitive challenges, and align its internal organization. Specifically, it would need to extend or modify its globalization strategy by developing a differentiated strategy for combinations of products and countries, develop new competencies in areas such as biologics, and choose the appropriate entry modes to balance financial and strategic implications. How should AGC proceed toward achieving its Vision 2025 goals?

In May 2018, Walmart Inc. (Walmart) announced its acquisition of a 77 per cent stake in the Indian e-commerce company Flipkart India Pvt. Ltd. (Flipkart). It was the largest acquisition of an Indian company and the world's largest purchase of an e-commerce company. The deal would provide Walmart with the opportunity to expand globally in competition with its old rival, Amazon.com Inc., and it would provide Flipkart with additional capital to operate in a hypercompetitive environment and an opportunity to leverage Walmart's omni-channel retail expertise. However, despite the strategic alignments, several factors could complicate the deal. Were Walmart's detailed analysis and due diligence prior to the acquisition sufficient to ensure a successful acquisition, or could human resources considerations affect the expected outcomes of the acquisition?

Samsui Supplies & Services Private Limited provided 1.8 million meals annually to long-term care facilities in Singapore through the company’s flagship project, Samsui Central Kitchen. The company had won accolades for its work, and in April 2018, the director felt that the time was right to expand the project. He wondered, however, how he would illustrate to the organization’s key stakeholders the social impact Samsui was having in the SG$89 million market of providing meals for long-term care facilities. To gain support for scaling up Samsui’s initiatives and maximizing the social impact the company was delivering, the director needed to quantify the impact of the company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives in a clear and simple message to its various stakeholders.