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The owner of Leisure Gardens, a restaurant and accommodation business in a small town in Ghana, faced problems with his business. Approximately 40 per cent of his restaurant customers were paying on credit and not paying on time, causing cash flow problems. His sole employee was unreliable, often absent when the restaurant was busy. This two-part problem hindered the restaurant's success and owner's ability to expand the business. Moreover, the owner faced external pressures from competitors in the restaurant market. The owner was considering three options to sustainably reduce bad-debt accounts and ensure profitability in the future: implementing an employee contract, changing the payment options, and expanding the business to generate more revenue. Which option would be the best course of action for the future of Leisure Gardens?

In early 2019, The Progressive Corporation (Progressive), the USA's third-largest auto insurance writer, reported earned premiums were up 20% in 2018 compared to the previous year, and net income was up 64%. Direct sales of personal auto policies rose 21%, while agent sales, which had, until recently been slowing, grew 16%. Homeowner policies were up 30% on a small base. For CEO Tricia Griffith, appointed on July 1, 2016, this was a clear indicator that her commitment to accelerating growth was bearing fruit. In the ten years from 2005 to 2015, Progressive's earned premiums had grown at 4% per year. They then grew 13% in 2016, 15% in 2017, and 20% in 2018. In 2018, Progressive captured 10% of the auto insurance business in the USA. Griffith commented that Progressive was in 10% of U.S. homes and would double that "in short order." This would make it larger than 2018 industry leader, State Farm. But the auto insurance business was plagued with hundreds of competitors and had historically been very cyclical. Would Griffith's strategy be enough to sustain double digit growth? The markets seemed convinced; in July 2019, Progressive's stock price had almost doubled in two years.

The case examines an industry in decline as the emergence of new technologies is changing consumer behaviors and threatening to make the business obsolete. In 2018, the Hollywood film industry is facing tough headwinds. Fewer and fewer Americans are going to movie theaters, opting instead to watch movies on demand in the comfort of their own homes or on portable devices. Adam Aron, the head of the world's largest movie theater chain, AMC Entertainment, is employing an aggressive strategy to bolster the moviegoing experience by adding new amenities including plush reclining seats, reserved seating, and upscale food and beverage options. He is also placing a special emphasis on expansion overseas where the market is growing. Will his actions allow the company to successfully compete in a mature industry under assault by new digital competitors? With the growing popularity of entertainment subscription services like Netflix and Spotify, should AMC adopt a similar business model?

The (B) case describes how AMC reacted to the threat from the subscription service MoviePass and provides AMC's second quarter fiscal year 2018 results.

Branded Lifestyle Holdings Limited (Branded Lifestyle) was an Asian apparel retail company that emerged in 2011 after Fung Retailing Limited acquired Hang Ten Group Holdings Limited, a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. With five apparel brands, Branded Lifestyle was profitable in most of its Asian markets. However, it was struggling in China and had reported annual loses until the acquisition. In 2014, a new managing director of global brands was appointed at Branded Lifestyle. Looking at the evolving apparel industry in China, and reviewing the company's weak performance over the past years, the managing director knew he needed to develop a strategic plan to turn around the company's operations. His aim was to build a strong and sustainable business in the Chinese market.

Supplement to case SM266A

Researchers from INSEAD and Kellogg conducted a statistical analysis of R&D spending and growth, using data on the world's top 2,500 companies. This revealed that consumer packaged goods firms often see better returns on R&D spending when they focus on small changes (such as modifications to packaging) rather than on ambitious "moon shots." Companies operate under two distinctly different philosophies, the researchers found. "The motto of companies with big R&D budgets is 'bigger, better, faster,'" they say, whereas firms with modest R&D budgets "seem to do extremely well by tweaking and improving things in their brands and creating a lot more sales."

This case describes the situation faced by a Trust named ArthaKranti. ArthaKranti (meaning economic revolution) was formed in 2005 to offer an unconventional taxation proposal based on Banking Transaction Tax (BTT). The BTT proposal is radical in nature, with minimum role of the state and with increased efficiency and reach. The vision of ArthaKranti Pratishthan is aligned to the concept of "Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam" or "Global Family-hood". The case provides an opportunity for participants to step into the shoes of the founder Anil Bokil (Bokil) and build a strategy to get BTT implemented. Participants use data on BTT and the public awareness attempts made so far and make reasonable assumptions with the use of SWOT analysis and Pros and Cons analysis to examine the feasibility of BTT. Bokil's lack of experience in politics as well his appealing to all political parties, provides an interesting background context for a rich case discussion.

Set in 2017, the case describes the evolution of Yash Raj Films (YRF) in the Hindi-language movie industry, popularly called Bollywood, in India. In the year 2000, the Government of India officially recognized Bollywood as an industry. This policy change ushered in the corporatization of Bollywood. Set against this backdrop, the case describes how Aditya Chopra, the current chairman and managing director of YRF, led the firm's evolution from a boutique production company into a full-fledged studio. Students analyze the firm's pursuit of fit among different activities and evaluate the challenges involved in sustaining the fit, amidst ongoing developments in the industry.

Set in 2018, the case describes the evolution of the Indian Premier League (IPL), a franchise-based professional cricket league in India. Since its inception in 2008, the IPL has enjoyed huge popularity among players and fans, despite being dogged by controversies. Students must analyze the team-design strategies of the franchises profiled in the case. This analysis helps uncover different models of team design, including their pros and cons, in human-capital-intensive contexts. Relating team design to team performance helps understand the significance of star performers and complementarity among team members.

In December 2016, Jodi Butts, executive director of Rise Asset Development (Rise), sat at her desk pondering whether to take a more aggressive, strategic, and proactive approach to scaling the organization throughout Canada. While an aggressive expansion would ensure that Rise would serve many more people with mental health issues, it required a significant increase in resources and carried many risks to the viability of the organization. Located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Rise offered microcredit loans, training, and mentorship to people experiencing mental health and related poverty issues. The organization encouraged entrepreneurship among its clients to ease their transition from isolation and poverty to productive work and self-sufficiency. Rise currently operated in four cities in the Province of Ontario: Toronto, Ottawa, London, and Kingston.

Best-selling author and regular on the Thinkers50 ranking of the world's most influential management thinkers, Daniel Pink discusses why timing is everything. He describes the bi-modal pattern that we all experience each day; the effects of these 'peaks' and 'troughs' on an organization; and why beginnings, mid-points and ends are so important to us. He then provides some practical advice for leaders that incorporates these lessons.

The authors argue that a thriving environment for innovation contains eight characteristics, and that assessing them properly sets the stage for a start-up to flourish. After describing the eight characteristics, they use them to compare Toronto with Silicon Valley as a location for start-ups to thrive. In the end, they show that ignoring the eight factors may lead founders to pick the wrong location, resulting in difficulty attracting the necessary funding, talent, suppliers, partnerships and customers.

At some point in their careers, most-if not all-executives aspire to become the CEO of their organization. And why not? These individuals tend to be highly ambitious. However, as with most things in life, aspiration is one thing, and execution is another. The author, who has worked closely with CEOs for 30 years as a board director, describes what it takes to be a CEO today. He shows that any would-be CEO must develop four particular 'directional' skills: upwards, downwards, outwards and outside-in, which enable him/her to be a Chief Relationship Officer, Chief Strategic Officer, Chief Communications Officer and Chief External Officer for the organization.

The author, a senior partner with the Boston Consulting Group, set out to answer the question, 'Is strategy still relevant?' He found that not only is it relevant, but doing things in a differentiated way is more important than ever. The trick is to figure out three characteristics of the environment you operate within: unpredictability, malleability and harshness. Ranking a business on these factors leads to one of five strategic approaches: classic strategy; adaptive strategy; the visionary approach; the shaping approach; or strategic renewal. In the end he shows that you can generate value by engaging with each opportunity with the right framing and awareness.

Anti-bias training is extremely popular in Silicon Valley, where tech titans like Facebook and Google mandate it, but a similar trend is on the rise among Fortune 500 corporations. To help root out bias, the authors developed ACE, a framework that codifies employee potential and can be used to analyze bias in assessments of potential. They describe the six elements of the ACE model and go on to provide a three-part strategy for uprooting bias in every organization.

Innovation clusters like San Francisco and Boston have long had an outsize impact on the global economy, and their influence keeps growing. In 2017, for instance, America's 10 largest tech hubs accounted for 58% of U.S. patents. Globally, cities such as Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Seoul produced a similar proportion. The increased geographic concentration of innovation activity poses a challenge for firms based in suburban industrial parks. To stay relevant, they need to tap into urban hotbeds, but setting up operations there can be extremely expensive. In his work on global talent flows, Harvard Business School's Kerr has seen organizations try three solutions: At one extreme, they can relocate their headquarters to a hub, as GE recently did (but make them much smaller). A less expensive strategy is to create an innovation lab or corporate outpost in a talent cluster, as Walmart did with Walmart Labs. The most conservative strategy is to run executive retreats and immersions in talent clusters--a tactic Vodafone uses effectively. These three options aren't mutually exclusive. Given the need to stay in touch with multiple clusters, companies may want to try them all. Each one involves substantial risks that executives must manage. But together they offer a good playbook to firms that are finding themselves outside the action as the clout of a handful of cities grows.

Alibaba is not a retailer in the traditional sense. It doesn't source or keep stock, and logistics services are carried out by third-party providers. Instead, Alibaba is what you get if you take all the functions associated with retail and coordinate them online into a sprawling, data-driven network of sellers, marketers, service providers, logistics companies, and manufacturers. Indeed, Alibaba does what Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Google, FedEx, all of the wholesalers, and a good portion of manufacturers in the U.S. do, with a healthy helping of financial services for garnish. Alibaba achieves this by leveraging the new technologies of network coordination and data intelligence. It harnesses the efforts of thousands of Chinese businesses to create an ecosystem that is faster, smarter, and more efficient than traditional business infrastructures. This is an emerging business model that Ming Zeng, the chair of Alibaba's Academic Council, calls smart business. Players in the ecosystem share data and apply machine-learning technology to identify and better fulfill consumer needs. This article provides a framework for transforming a company into a smart business.

This case series charts the evolution of the hostile battle for Allergan and its ultimate sale to a white knight, Actavis. David Pyott had been the CEO of Allergan since January 1998; only the third CEO in the company's 60-year-plus history. Allergan was primarily known for Botox, the aesthetic anti-wrinkle product, but the company, which had started out in eye care, had developed Botox into a US$2 billion multipurpose drug. By 2014 the company, which enjoyed double-digit growth, had over 11,000 employees, sold its products in 100 countries and had 40 direct-selling subsidiaries. The business mix included eye care, neurosciences, medical aesthetics, medical dermatology, breast aesthetics and urologics. R&D was the backbone of the company and it had strong cash reserves. In April 2014 it came as a shock to Pyott and the Allergan board to learn that that pharma company Valeant, in partnership with Pershing Square Capital Management, had announced its intention to make a hostile takeover of Allergan. The ensuing battle was hostile, attracting media interest, hostile and supportive stories in the papers, and 'games' to force Allergan into negotiating a sale. Tricks included hacking emails in an attempt to find out information on the fight team's strategy and moves. Pyott and the board had managed to drive up the share price over several months in their attempt to keep Allergan independent. In November 2014, a Californian judge accepted Valeant/Pershing Square's demand that shareholders should be allowed to vote on its bid. Case A follows the battle from the initial announcement to the court judgement. Case B then illustrates what happened next. Pyott and the 'fight' team realised that they were not able to keep Allergan independent and looked for a white knight to make a higher bid for the company. They successfully identified and negotiated with Actavis, a fellow pharma company. The sale was announced later in November. While Allergan no longer remained an independent

This case series charts the evolution of the hostile battle for Allergan and its ultimate sale to a white knight, Actavis. David Pyott had been the CEO of Allergan since January 1998; only the third CEO in the company's 60-year-plus history. Allergan was primarily known for Botox, the aesthetic anti-wrinkle product, but the company, which had started out in eye care, had developed Botox into a US$2 billion multipurpose drug. By 2014 the company, which enjoyed double-digit growth, had over 11,000 employees, sold its products in 100 countries and had 40 direct-selling subsidiaries. The business mix included eye care, neurosciences, medical aesthetics, medical dermatology, breast aesthetics and urologics. R&D was the backbone of the company and it had strong cash reserves. In April 2014 it came as a shock to Pyott and the Allergan board to learn that that pharma company Valeant, in partnership with Pershing Square Capital Management, had announced its intention to make a hostile takeover of Allergan. The ensuing battle was hostile, attracting media interest, hostile and supportive stories in the papers, and 'games' to force Allergan into negotiating a sale. Tricks included hacking emails in an attempt to find out information on the fight team's strategy and moves. Pyott and the board had managed to drive up the share price over several months in their attempt to keep Allergan independent. In November 2014, a Californian judge accepted Valeant/Pershing Square's demand that shareholders should be allowed to vote on its bid. Case A follows the battle from the initial announcement to the court judgement. Case B then illustrates what happened next. Pyott and the 'fight' team realised that they were not able to keep Allergan independent and looked for a white knight to make a higher bid for the company. They successfully identified and negotiated with Actavis, a fellow pharma company. The sale was announced later in November. While Allergan no longer remained an independent