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This case series focuses on the challenges faced by prestigious arts organizations when confronted with new cultural arts consumption modes, especially those created by the explosion of digital consumption opportunities. In 2012/13, the Wiener Staatsoper (the Vienna State Opera) enjoyed a 99 per cent occupancy rate but, apart from the national broadcasting network, lacked a presence in the digital arena. In contrast, performances by New York’s Metropolitan Opera could be viewed in movie theatres around the world. The Staatsoper also faced financial challenges shared by opera houses around the world. Should the Staatsoper enter the digital arena? If so, what adaptations would be required in its business model?

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Licensing is a strategy for technology transfer; and an approach to internationalization that requires less time or depth of involvement in foreign markets, compared to exports, joint ventures, and foreign direct investment. This note examines when licensing is employed, risks associated with it, intellectual property rights, costs of licensing, unattractive markets for licensing, and the major elements of the license agreement.

Licensing is a strategy for technology transfer; and an approach to internationalization that requires less time or depth of involvement in foreign markets, compared to exports, joint ventures, and foreign direct investment. This note examines when licensing is employed, risks associated with it, intellectual property rights, costs of licensing, unattractive markets for licensing, and the major elements of the license agreement.

This exercise revolves around the rivalry between two financial analysts. Upset by their constant game of one-upmanship, an advisor to the governor of the Reserve Bank of India came up with a challenge for them to prove who was better. He provided them with financial data for the financial year ending March 2014 from 10 anonymous companies and asked them to match the financial data with specific industries given in a list. The challenge was timed, and the winner was to be determined on the basis of who could come up with the right combination first.

The founder of the Access to Medicine Foundation, based in the Netherlands, had a goal to research and publish a biannual, global survey of pharmaceutical companies and their rankings, in terms of their effects in providing needed medicines to people in developing countries. When the first two iterations of the Access to Medicine Index (ATMI) were published in 2008 and 2010 (see case A), the most prominent challenges were engaging stakeholders—government, pharmaceutical firms, nonprofit organizations, investors, and others—and securing funding to support ongoing research and analyses. <br>In 2016, the founder was preparing for the ATMI’s fifth iteration (see case B, 9B17M011), and he had a three-point focus: to improve engagement with pharmaceutical companies in an effort to increase the effect of the ATMI on companies’ practices; to incorporate the views of patients into the ATMI; and to engage with governments and regulators in the developing countries, where citizens were in need of access to medicines.

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In May 2012, the director of human resources at Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited was involved in negotiating a long-term collective agreement between management and the unions at the large public-sector oil corporation in India. The negotiations had begun in 2009 and were stalled largely because of wage issues. Due to time-bound promotions and open-ended pay ranges, workers’ salaries had spiralled out of control. When economic conditions changed from an administered price mechanism with government subsidies to one in which the corporation was expected to compete with national and multinational private-sector companies, the issue of high operating costs had to be addressed. After 13 rounds of discussions, there was still no agreement. The management team needed to decide which of the issues originally identified were essential for resolution and which were only desirable. The team also had to decide how to approach the negotiation in order to secure agreement from the unions.

In 2016, the chief operating officer (COO) of InteraXon Inc., a Toronto-based technology start-up in the health and wellness sector, needed to put together a revised supply chain that was consistent with the company’s new strategic plan. InteraXon’s flagship product was a lightweight headband called Muse, aimed at measuring the wearer’s brain activity. The COO needed to keep in mind two major requirements of the new plan: a) the company would be relocating the production of Muse from China to the United States and b) it needed to quickly scale up its manufacturing and marketing operations. What plan of action should the COO develop?

As a small-scale hospital located in the city of Faridabad in northern India, Drishti Eye Center (Drishti) had recently expanded its operations by diversifying into pharmaceutical sales. The founder and managing director of the hospital soon faced conflict among the members of his sales force when a young sales representative received a poor performance evaluation, which he viewed as unfair. In response to this situation, the salesman decided to join a union, a move that was completely unprecedented at Drishti. Facing a high-performing team that now found itself operating in a hostile environment, the hospital’s director had to decide how best to manage the conflict.

The impressive growth in web-mediated organizational relationships has created an escalating interest in how to manage virtual teams successfully. As organizations increasingly expect their managers to lead employees in these online groupings, it becomes imperative to identify and train them in the skills to do this effectively. The purpose of this article is to organize and present strategies that organizations have found successful in helping their managers lead virtual teams. While all successful managers must ensure that they have provided the basic organizational support for their employees, especially effective leaders also ensure they build trustworthy relationships. Thus, we emphasize how each strategy contributes to building and sustaining a climate of trust in virtual teams.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Emerging markets such as China and India have become the growth drivers of corporate research and development initiatives from all around the world. Although there is growing evidence that Chinese companies are shifting their innovation focus from cost saving to knowledge-based research, the view by many in the West remains that companies based in emerging markets are not ready to take over the role of leading innovators from their Western competitors. As a result, Chinese multinationals have been at a competitive disadvantage, particularly in strategic technology industries. What can Chinese multinationals do to overcome Western barriers to entry in strategically important technology industries in which "Made in China" or "Designed in China" are viewed as negatives? What dynamic innovation capabilities - or, put another way, what culturally specific processes - should companies focus on to gain acceptance in the competitive global marketplace? To answer these questions, the author studied Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., the Chinese telecommunications company that has recently made significant inroads in Europe's mature and strategically important telecommunications industry, making it a potential role model for companies in China and other parts of Asia hoping to make a similar transition. In Europe, the author notes, Huawei has typically relied on the same strategy it used to build its market position in China. It has (1) offered customized technologies that meet the practical needs and resource constraints of target customers; (2) built customer loyalty by enhancing practical innovation with longer-term joint innovation partnerships; and (3) enlisted the support of governments, universities, and other industry stakeholders by customizing further innovation investments to their priorities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. The global appetite for Korean entertainment - movies, TV shows, and music videos - has exploded in recent years. For non-Korean-speaking viewers, subtitles are crucial to the experience. Enter Viki Inc., a company that hosts content for streaming and provides subtitles and closed captions. Viki both eliminates language barriers and introduces the content to an otherwise unserved audience. Traditionally, subtitles are created by a bilingual translator hired by the producer or broadcaster. But the process is expensive and slow to scale. To overcome these challenges, Viki developed a business model leveraging a community of more than 150,000 volunteers. This model allows Viki to crowdsource subtitles for Asian content in numerous languages. Viki rewards volunteers with gamified badges, the ability to view videos not otherwise available in their region, early access to new shows, and an advertising-free, high-definition experience of the content. The combination of rapidly increasing internet video adoption rates and a greater appetite for foreign content - both in Asia and globally - has become a big opportunity for Viki, which was acquired by Tokyo-based Rakuten Inc. for a reported price of $200 million in 2013. The authors argue that Viki's story exemplifies a larger trend playing out in Asia. They see Viki as an archetype of a new generation of companies leveraging business model innovation to drive growth in Asia. But to understand this type of business model innovation in its proper context, it's important to understand Viki's forerunners. The authors describe two distinct, yet overlapping, waves of business innovation from emerging markets in Asia in recent years: one decades old and still going, and another that is newer and includes companies like Viki.

Discussion between Coca-Cola, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focused on how Coca-Cola's supply chain knowledge could be harnessed to improve the distribution of essential medicines and health supplies in Africa. This led to Project Last Mile, a pilot project that aimed to deliver sustainable improvement in distribution of essential medicines and health supplies in Tanzania.

Cervus Equipment Corporation, the major Canadian dealer group for John Deere and Peterbilt Motors Company equipment, had grown from CA$56 million in 2004 to close to $1 billion in 2014. It had achieved these results through an aggressive acquisition and growth-oriented strategy, by purchasing heavy-equipment dealerships representing John Deere, Bobcat, and other high-end original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The company’s move into the long-haul trucking industry, beginning with the acquisition of 16 Peterbilt truck dealerships in 2013, was timely, as the agricultural and construction sectors entered what many believed would be a prolonged downturn in its base in western Canada. However, these acquisitions and this move into the trucking industry presented significant challenges related to integration, leadership and management skills at the dealer level, OEM partner control, and the presence of established competitors that served the major vocational and fleet markets. The bottom line: Cervus Equipment required its transport division to drive profitable growth in 2016 and beyond.

In the spring of 2016, Cyklop Packaging Systems India Private Limited (Cyklop) was facing the critical situation of high employee turnover. One out of every two employees was leaving the company each month. Although most employees were leaving voluntarily, some were being asked to leave because of below-par performance. The problem was not grave for major competitors as they were able to retain most of their employees. Cyklop’s managing director, was concerned about the impact the turnover would have on relationships with key clients. He was also worried about increasing managerial and other costs. He asked the head of human resources to analyze the problem and provide an action plan for containing turnover in the service domain.

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - INFORMS Case and Teaching Materials Competition</strong></p><br>Founded in 1972, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was the governing body of three professional men’s tennis circuits: the ATP World Tour, the ATP Challenger Tour, and the ATP Champions Tour. In addition to the ATP World Tour tournaments, there were four highly coveted and extremely competitive Grand Slam tournaments, one of which was Wimbledon. In 2014, two professional tennis players sought to determine their respective odds of placing first at Wimbledon, by using an understanding of probability, stochastic modelling, and Markov chain application. Both players were ranked outside the top 100 and faced a momentous task.

In 2015, Snapdeal, an e-commerce company in India, faced a supply chain situation in reverse logistics. In conforming to the industry trends, the company had a policy on assured product returns, which led to most customers returning to an online merchant for future purchases. However, by the end of 2015, the estimated worth of products returned under the Indian e-commerce platform was $800 million to $1 billion. The rate of returns of online products could add substantial logistics costs to each product return, hampering the industry’s growth. Snapdeal had some serious questions to address. Should it reverse its policy and not give customers a chance to return products? Should the company connect organizations and retailers with customers and derive valuable feedback from them? Should Snapdeal alter its product return policy in favour of a free returns or no questions asked return policy? Would corrective action be required for the e-commerce industry so companies like Snapdeal could create a return policy for customers who had legitimate reasons to return products?

In April 2016, Canopy Growth Corporation, one of Canada’s top producers of medical cannabis, was planning a strategy for its future. The government of Canada had just announced its plans to introduce a bill to legalize recreational cannabis use in 2017, followed by a rollout of the policy in early 2018. The company’s chief executive officer needed to plan a strategy that addressed three main issues: product messaging for recreational cannabis, establishing a retail footprint in recreational cannabis, and building an international business.

Founded in 1972, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was the governing body of three professional men's tennis circuits: the ATP World Tour, the ATP Challenger Tour, and the ATP Champions Tour. In addition to the ATP World Tour tournaments, there were four highly coveted and extremely competitive Grand Slam tournaments, one of which was Wimbledon. In 2014, two professional tennis players sought to determine their respective odds of placing first at Wimbledon, by using an understanding of probability, stochastic modelling, and Markov chain application. Both players were ranked outside the top 100 and faced a momentous task.