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Shantanu Bhattacharya, Professor of Operations Management at Singapore Management University (SMU), observed how waste in Singapore was incinerated before it was poured into the country's only landfill. The government wanted to maximise the country's limited land resources by using waste-to-energy (WTE) plants that would decrease the volume of waste that was deposited in landfills. Additionally, the heat generated could be used to generate electricity. In 2005, Keppel Seghers was awarded a public-private partnership (PPP) contract to develop the country's fifth WTE plant. This would be the first incineration plant in Singapore to employ technology from a local company. The PPP structure would allow the government to save on the capital outlay and capitalise on private sector expertise. Keppel Seghers would have to ensure that it would be able to provide sufficient incineration capacity. Bhattacharya supported the waste management strategy but knew the landfill had a limited lifespan. He hoped to study more innovative waste management solutions in the future.

At EY, Jeff Wong served as chief innovation officer beginning in 2015. In this role, he was responsible for driving innovation and inoculating EY against potential threats to its $45 billion revenue global business. Wong's role advanced and grew with his success in launching initiatives for EY around artificial intelligence, blockchain, Web3, and automation among others. Through it all, Wong built the Global Innovation team at EY from a $5 million budget to hundreds of millions of dollars, returning $5 to $6 to EY for every $1 invested-within a year from when the investment was made.

Although Mary Barra, chief executive officer (CEO) of General Motors Company (GM), had faced her fair share of challenges while leading GM, Tesla Inc. (Tesla) posed a tougher competitive challenge than anything that had come before. Despite groundbreaking progress with electric vehicles (EVs), autonomous driving, and sustainable development, GM was now living in the shadow of Tesla, which, to some extent, had leapfrogged industry incumbents to become the most valuable car manufacturer in the United States. Further, major EV developments from old rivals from Detroit, Europe, and Asia, as well as blooming EV start-ups—some backed by technology giants—only compounded Barra’s worries. GM had achieved significant success in adapting to the coming age of EVs, but it also faced a number of questions: Was GM’s current strategy sufficient to sustain the company’s success? What technologies, capabilities, or products would be needed for GM to thrive in the new era of global mobility?

The mobile phone industry is notorious for its lack of sustainability. Fairphone started as a campaign to draw attention to 'conflict minerals' and the plight of tantalum miners. It became a social enterprise by launching its first 'fair phone', the FP1, with conflict-free tantalum. The FP2 was more broadly sustainable, with a five-year lifespan, replaceable parts, and recycling of old handsets, but it was expensive and appealed mostly to die-hard 'dark greens' who valued sustainable living over functionality. When Eva Gouwens joined as CEO in 2017, she was charged with making Fairphone more commercially oriented, while staying true to its ESG mission. The case describes the changes made and the make-or-break product launch of the FP3. Despite positive initial results, Fairphone had some way to go to turn the FP3 not only into a commercial success but an example to the rest of the industry. https://publishing.insead.edu/case/fairphone-3-commercializing-radical-sustainability

Although Mary Barra, chief executive officer (CEO) of General Motors Company (GM), had faced her fair share of challenges while leading GM, Tesla Inc. (Tesla) posed a tougher competitive challenge than anything that had come before. Despite groundbreaking progress with electric vehicles (EVs), autonomous driving, and sustainable development, GM was now living in the shadow of Tesla, which, to some extent, had leapfrogged industry incumbents to become the most valuable car manufacturer in the United States. Further, major EV developments from old rivals from Detroit, Europe, and Asia, as well as blooming EV start-ups-some backed by technology giants-only compounded Barra's worries. GM had achieved significant success in adapting to the coming age of EVs, but it also faced a number of questions: Was GM's current strategy sufficient to sustain the company's success? What technologies, capabilities, or products would be needed for GM to thrive in the new era of global mobility?

Corporate giving exceeds $21 billion annually, but new research into the corporate foundations of the Fortune 100 reveals a significant lack of disclosure in their racial justice giving compared with other aspects of environmental, social, and governance spending. This negatively impacts the efficacy of spending, accountability, and the value it generates for companies or their stakeholders. Company leaders can take three steps to enhance transparency.

In October 2022, Bruce Taylor (HBS MBA, 1981), Chairman and CEO of Taylor Farms, the leading producer of salads and healthy fresh foods in the United States, wondered whether this was the right time for Taylor Farms to venture into the Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA). Taylor Farms' operations involved farming, processing, and distributing about 50 million pounds of fresh produce every week. To accomplish such a feat, Taylor Farms faced a number of ongoing challenges related to features such as food safety, climate change, labor shortages and wages, input prices, and logistics. CEA, either in high-tech, single-level greenhouses or vertical farms (multi-layer indoor crop cultivation systems), could not entirely help address environmental and logistic challenges, but its smaller geographic footprint enabled operations closer to consumption sites. Indoor farms were promoted as using far less water and requiring less transportation than traditional farms, but they required more power and were more expensive to build and run. With these solutions still under development, Bruce harbored some qualms about their actual benefits. After all, Taylor Farms had been able to sustain double-digit revenue growth rates by sticking to conventional agriculture. Yet, he did not want the company to fall behind in new technologies that could render its operations more efficient. Moreover, CEA producers might turn into a threat for Taylor Farms, eating into its market share by catering to consumers who favored "environmentally-friendlier" products. Was this the right time for Taylor Farms to venture into the CEA space, or should it wait for the technology to evolve further or the industry to consolidate?

Kinbor, a pioneer and top brand of creative planner journals in China, was launched in 2015 by Guangbo Group (Guangbo), a leading stationery manufacturer and worldwide exporter. In January 2022, Jessie Yu—Kinbor’s, founder and general manager— was facing several urgent issues in moving the start-up forward. Like many intrapreneurial projects, Kinbor was only contributing a small fraction to Guangbo’s total annual revenues, so pressure to boost sales and scale up the operation was mounting. In addition, Kinbor’s incongruence with the parent company’s business model was making integration a challenge. Externally, major stationery industry competitors were launching their own creative planner journal brands, thereby intensifying the market’s competition. Kinbor had to find the right strategy to address these issues.

Marfrig, one of the world's leading meatpackers, strived to comply with its commitment to have a deforestation-free value chain in Brazil by 2030. The company also pledged to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases in accordance with the guidelines set by the Science-Based Targets Imitative (SBTi). Controlling shareholder and chairman Marcos Molina, and Director of Sustainability and Communications for South America Paulo Painez, must figure how to achieve these goals while dealing with increased pressures from NGOs, customers, and foreign governments. The pair believed that a solution to the company's-and the sector's-challenges would only be achieved by working together with other stakeholders of the Brazilian beef industry: cattle ranchers, NGOs, the government, and civil society at large. Aligning the interests of the different players, while keeping Brazil's lead as the world's top beef exporter, was especially challenging given the country's fraught political environment and its tarnished image abroad.

The transition to a low carbon economy introduces many risks and opportunities for businesses. Risks emerge from regulatory actions, such as carbon taxes and cap and trade systems, technological innovation that develop alternatives for customers making existing products and services obsolete, changes in market preferences, such as consumers shifting purchases towards low carbon products, and liability concerns, from litigation connected to the physical impacts of climate change. Opportunities arise from new products and services that will be needed for the world to decarbonize (i.e., renewable energy, battery storage, hydrogen, plant-based protein, carbon capture and storage etc.). The business analysis of climate-related risks and opportunities will be critical for the optimal allocation of resources inside organizations and markets. This paper presents a generalizable framework for such analysis. Risks create demand for decarbonization solutions which in turn create opportunities for the supply of these solutions. Central considerations include the measurement and analysis of organizational carbon exposure, sensitivity, and adaptability.

On March 17, 2022, Greg Norman, CEO of LIV Golf, announced the 8-tournament schedule for the inaugural season of the LIV Golf Invitational Series. Norman, a retired professional golfer and former world #1, was helming the league to compete with the PGA Tour, which was the dominant affiliation for professional golfers. On June 9, 2022, the first LIV Golf event teed off outside of London, England. Immediately following the official start of the London tournament, Jay Monahan, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, released a memo stating that all 17 PGA Tour players participating in the LIV Golf event were suspended and ineligible to compete in PGA Tour events. Tensions continued to rise over the summer, as more players "defected" to LIV, lost sponsorships, and lost the ability to earn points on the world rankings. LIV Golf filed an antitrust lawsuit accusing the PGA Tour of anticompetitive practices, and the Department of Justice also launched an investigation. Both sides expected the conflict to escalate in the years ahead.

When researchers asked employees what their supervisor could do to help alleviate the uncertainty that arose from the pandemic, the data revealed five categories of actions managers can take to help workers cope. The study also found that different employees want different kinds of support delivered in different ways during a crisis, including some that managers can't realistically provide. Consequently, managers must prioritize two behaviors: individualized consideration and building trust.

This highly engaging exercise is designed to give participants a keen understanding of Blue Ocean Leadership and how to achieve high impact at low cost while saving time as leaders. Participants are introduced to a scenario-based exercise focusing on the fictional company Dunamis, an American video game company, and its recently appointed Director of Development, John Kedge. Kedge's first challenge is to create and produce a differentiated and low-cost mobile game. But during the production phase, Kedge finds out that all his good employees are leaving. Turnover is high. People are demotivated. He has to hire massively and still keeps missing deadlines. Now Kedge is really behind schedule and getting pressure from his boss. The scenario-based exercise is an engaging way to learn how to apply the theory of Blue Ocean Leadership and its tools to achieve high-impact leadership fast and at low cost. The exercise comes with a Teaching Note and templates for participants to apply.

At the end of 2019, Ignacio Galán, the Chairman and CEO of the world's third largest utility, Iberdrola, relected on his almost 20 years at the company. He managed a portfolio of three very different businesses, each with their own specific opportunities and challenges. From the outside, the Renewables business appeared to be the flagship business, with engineering projects constantly increasing in scope and size. Less high profile but no less strategically important was the Networks business, which was characterized by its regulated nature and provided a stable financial base for the company. Finally, the Wholesale and Retail business developed customized and innovative solutions for customers. Iberdrola had invested early in renewable technologies to position itself as a leader in driving the electric industry's role in the fight against climate change. Over time, Iberdrola had honed the skill of constantly monitoring new technologues and strategically deciding when to make its move. Faced with the decision to invest in green technology, heralded as a key technology in the fight for net zero, Galán and his team were weighing up their options.

By the end of 2020, Ambuja Cement Foundation, the corporate social responsibility arm of Ambuja Cements Ltd., based in Mumbai, India, had been uplifting its communities through social development goals for the past 25 years. The specific focus of its activities had been water harvesting, agriculture development skills training, health, and education. However, the foundation faced the consistent challenge of measuring the impact of its corporate social responsibility projects with reference to the social development goals selected by the company in terms of performance or improvement at the village level. In December 2020, the vice-president of Ambuja Cement Foundation needed to determine which measurement the foundation should use to measure the performance of its community development programs and its alignment with the social development goals. Should it go along with the existing measurement tools or adopt a new model to measure performance and impact?

The blockchain revolution has taken longer than expected to pick up steam. But now, says Ravi Sarathy, author of Enterprise Strategy for Blockchain, it has reached a maturity level that merits the attention of large incumbent companies. In this interview, Sarathy explains what has held blockchain back and why the time is right to start using it. He explores blockchain's most promising applications and explains how companies can develop and deploy it as a capability.

The signs say the global economy is headed for a recession, but downturns are not destiny. Companies that bolster their resilience, local agility, and portfolio agility now can improve their competitive position and enhance their future performance during the next recession. This article describes practical, evidence-based steps that leaders can take to help their companies capture the upside of the next downturn.

In early June 2021, an independent investigation team released its report into the way Japan-based Toshiba Corporation (Toshiba) had conducted its 2020 annual shareholder meeting, finding that the company had mishandled the annual general meeting with respect to shareholder rights. As a result, Toshiba had to deal with the immediate problem of putting up a new slate of nominee board directors to be put to a vote at the next annual shareholder meeting to be held on June 25, 2021. Toshiba also had to deal with the long-term problem of improving the company’s corporate governance and re-establish trust in the way the company was run. The board had one week in which to prepare a plan to present at the annual general meeting that would restore trust in the company.

Webtoon Entertainment, a subsidiary of Korea's dominant search engine, Naver, with over 60% of the market share, is a prime example of how a company creates and captures new market opportunities in the era of digital transformation. With its humble beginning as a free service to increase user traffic to the portal site by providing digitized comics for web surfers, Webtoon Entertainment reinvented the comic book industry by changing the way comics are created, distributed, and consumed. Briefly, Webtoon Entertainment is a platform that connects creators and users of digital comic content in the form of a vertical layout that is optimized for PC and mobile browsing. The company now boasts 82 million monthly active users on its digital comic platform across the globe. The case explores the key milestones of Webtoon Entertainment to show how the company transformed the comic industry and became the largest storytelling platform in the world. More specifically, it describes how the company unlocked new creative talents and built an ecosystem for webtoon business based on a platform economy, monetized the once-free content into a billion-dollar business, and then rolled it out globally despite cultural and language barriers. Finally, the case describes the challenges ahead that Webtoon Entertainment faces in the lucrative yet competitive comics industry. Interestingly, the case has multimedia materials, including first-hand interviews and infographics, directly embedded between the written content. Students are able to access these materials via QR codes and are visually stimulated while elevating their comprehension of the case. This will be a whole new reading experience for students that immerses them in the evolution of Webtoon Entertainment at a different level, ensuring an active and rich class discussion. The case is suitable for teaching innovation, entrepreneurship, digital transformation, platform strategy, and globalization strategy.