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In 2019, the director of the newly minted Digital Services Lab at JOB Co. found himself on the brink of a crucial meeting with the company's chief executive officer. The focal point of their impending discussion rested on the stagnation of progress in the Mentor 2.0 project—an initiative conceived to embody an agile paradigm in digital transformation, championed by an inventive Scrum team. Despite the project's noble intentions, the journey towards agility had proven to be riddled with formidable challenges for the team. The director, acutely aware that the destiny of Mentor 2.0 was intricately intertwined with the prosperity of the Lab, the linchpin of JOB Co.'s digital metamorphosis, grappled with the necessity of explaining the situation accurately. The imminent meeting stood as a decisive moment for him to carefully consider the most effective strategy. He understood that the future path of the Mentor 2.0 project held significant implications for the Lab—a pivotal force guiding JOB Co.'s digital evolution.

Creditas Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (Creditas), a debt-collection and recovery start-up, had revolutionized the loan recovery process in India by combining data and technology to educate and empower its consumers. Ethera, its software-as-a-service platform, was a great success, and the company was on track to make $7.39 million in the financial year 2021–22. In order to increase its customer base and profits, the company was now faced with two challenges. First, it needed to determine how to convince its clients to accept a new fee structure. To establish additional and consistent revenue streams, the company was attempting to implement a licensing-based monetization model rather than its current recovery amount–linked model. Second, it needed to determine how it should plan for business expansion. The company had received queries from banks in west and southeast Asia, creating expansion potential abroad, and it was also contemplating entering other banking operations, such as lending and insurance. The chief executive officer wondered which of these growth strategies made the most sense for the business at this moment. Should the company increase its services in the areas of lending and insurance or expand to a global market?

The Royal Belgian Football Association was a non-profit organization based in Brussels, Belgium that had a goal to organize, develop, and promote all forms of football in the country. To achieve this goal, it regularly interacted with many stakeholders including fans, commercial partners, association members, referees, and brand stewards. In 2021, the association was eager to digitalize these interactions through the use of its mobile app and added many features to the app over the next two years to support a fluid road map. However, during those two years, the performance of marquee teams was disappointing. More than ever, it seemed important to engender continuous digital engagement with stakeholders as a basis for further commercial growth. In March 2023, the director of marketing and communication and the director of digital, innovation, and technology were reviewing and assessing the association’s digital strategy, especially during the previous two years, and strategizing about the future. Their assessment revealed several important questions about how to prioritize digital initiatives in the future.

Global health and wellness industries worldwide have been changing rapidly. In China, traditional Chinese supplements brand Guanzhan was founded in 2014 with the aim to provide younger consumers with new types of supplements that would satisfy their changing needs. The company employed a “New Retail” model to best serve the targeted consumer groups, who, compared to their older counterparts, knew little about traditional medicine and had higher taste and convenience requirements for supplement products. As of when the case was written, Guanzhan's ready-to-eat fish maw products had become one of the leading supplement product categories in the Chinese market. Looking into the future, the company sought to expand their footprint offline and develop new products that would satisfy the offline markets.

Outland provided a global communication and exhibition platform for artists and collectors. Outland conducted art transactions in the form of cryptocurrencies, addressing challenges prevalent in the traditional creator economy. Renowned artist James Jean collaborated with Outland in 2022 to release a new hand-drawn digital art series called Fragments. The series received widespread acclaim. The fans had high expectations for Fragments’ narrative derivative work, "Adrift," set to launch in 2023. The platform aimed to establish a fan community centred around Jean and his work. However, fans wanted to interact with the artist and participate in the secondary creation of his work, while also receiving better financial returns. How would Outland establish an intellectual property licensing mechanism to increase non-fungible token (NFT) creators and holders an enhanced financial return?

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.

In February 2023, SZ Dà-Jiāng Innovations Science and Technology Co. Ltd. (DJI) was included in the list of the “Top 100 Global Innovators.” At the same time, the 200-metre DJI Sky Pixel—the world’s first asymmetrical suspension steel structure ultra-high-rise building—was achieving remarkable success in the 2023 China Architectural Awards. The building seemed to symbolize DJI’s meteoric rise. In 2023, DJI was a leading company in the global drone industry. From DJI’s inception in 2006 to the first University Student Robot Training Camp in 2013, and up to its current status in 2023, DJI had dedicated 17 years to the development and perfection of drones and more than a decade to the field of education. In its early days, DJI had to overcome serious technical challenges to achieve astonishing success and navigate the strong competition in the market. In 2023, the biggest hurdle DJI was facing was global trade tensions. What other issues were awaiting DJI on its path forward?

Rodolphe Saadé was the chief executive of the CMA CGM Shipping Co., Ltd. a giant in the maritime industry that was long criticized by customers for its lag in digitalization. Realizing the importance of digitalization, Saadé defined digitization as a key strategic priority for CMA CGM’s development. This case traces CMA CGM’s digital transformation process and discusses how Saadé and CMA CGM successfully addressed different challenges to gradually launch a series of digital innovations to the company’s processes, products, services, and business model. However, as new waves of technology, from autonomous vehicles to smart data continued to emerge, how could CMA CGM leverage the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the shipping industry? How could CMA CGM make full use of big data to optimize business operation decisions?

Tianjin Motor Dies Co. Ltd. (or “Tian Qi Mo”; TQM) was a China-based automotive technology supplier that specialized in the research and development (R&D), design, manufacturing, and distribution of automotive body panel dies, welding tools, and automobile body stamping fixtures. Although TQM had struggled during China’s reform toward a market economy, the company’s persistent focus on and investment in R&D, innovation, and technology enabled it to survive and thrive, eventually growing to become an industry leader in China. A key pillar of the company’s strategy was information technology (IT). The company’s focus on IT had enabled it to establish a solid foundation for growth. In today’s age of digital disruption, TQM sought to leverage IT to transform its traditional product-based business model into a hybrid model that included not only products but also a platform that enabled different stakeholders in the automotive industry to transact and collaborate. The vision was promising, but TQM faced many challenges in its implementation.

Founded in 1964, Brøndby IF (BIF) was a professional Danish football club located in Brøndbyvester, in the capital region of Denmark, and had won eleven Danish championship titles. In 2015, BIF embarked on a journey of incorporating sports data into its organization and building its sports analytics capabilities. By the end of 2022, sports data had become an integral component of the club’s activities and had enabled BIF to establish itself as a leader in sports analytics in Northern European football. However, BIF and its analytics capabilities were contending with the ever-changing landscape of modern sports characterized by rapid digitalization and internationalization.

In 2021, Shein’s app was ranked as the most downloaded shopping app in the e-commerce space, surpassing that of the technology giant Amazon.com Inc. A driver of Shein’s high adoption was how it leveraged technology throughout its business model: from analyzing consumer data to designing garments and manufacturing products to shipping clothing in a timely manner, Shein disrupted the fast-fashion space through its use of information technology. With exponential growth came complex challenges. Shein faced questions related to sustainability and social responsibility. What were some future opportunities and challenges for Shein? How could the company balance its technology-enabled strategy and sustainability? What initiatives should Shein implement to integrate sustainability into its supply chain and promote circularity among customers?

In January 2022, Stephanie Owens, the administrative leader at StateU, an LGBTQ+-welcoming university in the United States, participated in a kick-off meeting for the pronoun project as the project lead. The goal of the project was to develop a centralized system for collecting and disseminating the personal pronouns of StateU’s students, staff, and faculty. The university embarked on the pronoun project to foster a community that recognized and celebrated the self-authorship of individual identities. It also saw personal pronoun data as useful to directing funding to initiatives that fostered justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. These goals were important for Owens, who had always been a champion of student success and an advocate for historically marginalized student communities.<br><br>At a pivotal moment after the kick-off meeting, tensions emerged around possible technical solutions: while members of the technical team supported a more efficient, secure, and reliable solution that would include a drop-down list of pronouns, the stakeholders on the team—many of whom worked directly with LGBTQ+ students, staff, and faculty and had lived experiences that had exposed them to the potentially harmful effects of predefining pronouns in a drop-down list—were strongly in favour of using a free-form text field for pronouns. Faced with escalating conflict, Owens asked both teams to prepare outlines of the advantages and disadvantages of their solutions and any other potential solutions. Owens was reviewing these materials as the next meeting approached. She had to weigh all arguments and decide for herself first: should StateU implement the drop-down list, the free-form text field, or the validation table solution?

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product W31027.

Spreadsheet to accompany product W31026.

Cynet Systems Private Limited (Cynet) was a subsidiary of Cynet Corporation, a technology services firm providing staffing support for US clients. The Cynet team in India was based in smaller Indian cities such as Karnal and Dehradun. When a lockdown was announced in early March 2020 to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the country, the recruiters working for Cynet had to shift to remote work. This was a dramatic shift for the young recruiters, most of whom were recent college graduates. The onus of ensuring the client deliverable was met was on Shyam Sharma, the team leader at Cynet. At that time, the company created a centralized data reporting team, and in December 2021 the organization was still looking to enhance an analytics dashboard to better predict employee performance; further analytical insights would allow Cynet's top management to make better predictive outcomes versus what was currently being measured to evaluate performance.

Cashify, a start-up incorporated in 2013, is a reverse commerce (re-commerce) company in India with first-mover advantage in the re-commerce of electronic goods. In its contribution to the circular economy (CE), it claims to handle 100,000 used smart phones a month and plans to grow the figure to 200,000 by 2023. The company contributes to the CE by adding value to used electronic devices, particularly smart phones, and extending their lifespans. This ensures that products enter into repeat economic transactions before finding their way to landfills. However, the re-commerce model that gave Cashify a competitive edge became obsolete in 2022 because of emerging competition that leveraged technological advancements to create value in the sector. The company’s founders now find themselves facing difficult questions: Should they include new electronic products in their portfolio? In 2022, after two years of COVID-19-related impacts on the economy, overall circular growth was slipping, as consumers preferred to buy new products instead of recycled, refurbished, and reused goods. Can consumers be incentivized to return to the CE and appreciate the value of remodelled goods? Should the company diversify into new products entirely, including automobiles, home appliances, textiles, apparel, and plastic packaging?

As a top-ranking hospital in Western China, Huaxi (which means West China in Chinese) Hospital of Sichuan University (Huaxi Hospital) had been navigating a digital transformation journey. In the early phases, Huaxi Hospital focused on the development of setting up a digital foundation. Specifically, it created the relevant supporting departments and built eighteen digitalized systems. In 2013, when Weimin Li became president of Huaxi Hospital, he prompted the expansion of digitalization. Telemedicine services, hospital services using smart technologies, and online hospital services represented examples of the digital innovation adopted. More recently, the COVID-19 epidemic further accelerated the process of hospital digitalization, and Huaxi Hospital continued to advance and keep up with the rapid changes. Artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis and big-data platforms were implemented during this later phase. However, despite its success and facing an increasingly turbulent and complex health care industry, Huaxi Hospital needed to continually explore future digital transformation strategies. What could the future of Huaxi Hospital look like in the digital age? How should the hospital prioritize its different initiatives plans and design a road map for its future digitalization?

In March 2022, Nemus, an environmental planning, development, and sustainability consultancy based in Lisbon, Portugal, released a series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) through its Nemus Earth initiative with the goal of supporting reforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The company purchased at-risk land in rainforests, created collectible NFTs, and used proceeds from the NFT sales to support reforestation and economic and social development in the region. While some purchasers praised the company for the NFTs, other stakeholders, such as activists, government officials, and Indigenous groups, questioned the efficiency and legality of the project. By July 2022, Nemus faced a decision: should it continue with its mission, or should it leave it up to governments and non-governmental organizations to lead the way on climate action? Could NFTs be effective in protecting rainforests, or were there better alternative paths?

Scuderia Ferrari SPA, the racing division of the auto manufacturer Ferrari, was the oldest and most successful team in Formula One. Since the inception of the sport of Formula One in 1950, Ferrari had never missed a season. Having navigated many technological changes over the past seven decades, Ferrari faced the latest innovations in sports and beyond: data and digitalization. What were the opportunities and roadblocks ahead? The Maranello-based company founded by Enzo Ferrari needed to make some strategic decisions about its use of data and technology.

In the 2020s, with the emergence of a variety of digital technologies, Prada Group was interested in developing a new digital strategy. The global leading luxury fashion house headquartered in Milan, Italy, was recognized for its innovation and creativity. It sought a strategy that reflected the values and legacy of the company, while considering the sense of exclusivity that consumers of luxury brands desired. Prada Group was considering a digital strategy involving either the Metaverse or Web3 through the launch of a non-fungible token or by offering branded headsets and other equipment for customers to enter the Metaverse. Both the Metaverse and Web3 were relatively new technology concepts, not commonly known for interacting with luxury fashion brands. The company had to decide if it should explore an opportunity involving the Metaverse or Web3, or if it should instead find a way to remain relevant to customers by pursuing another digital strategy.