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This case describes the ESG journey of Pro-invest Group, an asset management and investment firm specialising in private equity real estate across the globe. It begins in 2017, when the Group is launching its second hotel fund, Pro-invest Australian Hospitality Opportunity Fund II (in parallel to managing Fund I) and there is a growing appreciation of the financial and competitive benefits of strong environmental, social and governance considerations. As investor interest in ESG standards rises, Dr. Sabine Schaffer, co-founder and co-CEO Europe, commits to implementing them at every level of the company. The case describes how she drove these efforts, from achieving the GRESB Real Estate Assessment (formerly Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark) to the adoption of a standardized third-party-administered ESG certification scheme across the Group's hotel assets in Australasia. The case ends in 2021 with Pro-invest looking at certification schemes for potential investments in the UK and Europe. It highlights the decisions that were taken, the challenges faced, and the key learning along the way.

Case B presents the choices the company made and the execution issues it confronted. It shows that the CEO put online revenue growth at the center of the strategy. He also used "test and learn" budgeting process to avoid investing too much in stores. The case enables participants to see how the CEO reorganized parts of the organization to drive strategy execution. This case clearly shows how strategic decisions are crafted, executed and modified. It demonstrates the execution challenges a firm might face when transforming in a competitive marketplace and shows the dramatic transformation and improvement in the firm's financials. It also shows the rare success of a retail digital transformation.

This case details the struggles of a traditional retailer (Matas) wrestling with the changing retail landscape. The Matas management team recognizes that the company's offline retail business is under serious pressure. Top-line growth has flattened, and bottom-line profitability has declined. The online market is expanding rapidly but is a tiny portion of the business. The team is aware that the company needs to grow the online business. However, this shift will be financially difficult because the margins for the online business are near zero and it represents less than 3% of total business. As the market leaders, whatever Matas management chooses to do will inevitably affect its core "in-store" business. The company needs the cashflow from the in-store business to pay dividends to investors. In this situation, the new CEO sets out three priorities (i) reignite store growth, (ii) build new growth paths, and (iii) grow online. Investors are unhappy with this direction and the stock has sunk to an all-time low. The question is whether this new strategy will enable Matas to survive or transform?

Lex Machina, a legal analytics start-up, needed cash to drive its continued growth trajectory, and had an appealing Series B term sheet in hand. Founded initially as a joint public interest project between SLS and Stanford's computer science department, Lex Machina had spun off to create a language processing software and machine learning platform to glean insights from legal documents, to support decision making at each stage of the litigation process. Similar to other start-ups, Lex Machina's investors held preferred stock, its founders held common shares, and employees received options granting them the right to buy common shares. After an informal acquisition offer from Bloomberg, the Lex Machina board explored competing acquisition bids. LexisNexis, a longtime leader in the legal database field, emerged as the highest bidder. Should Lex Machina pursue the Series B - or was this the right time to consider acquisition offers? What would be the best option for the company's future - and for the existing stakeholders?

This case describes Salesforce's development of Sustainability Cloud, a suite of software tools built to help companies measure, track, and report carbon emissions and other sustainability metrics. The goal of this case is to provide students with a background and foundational knowledge of three topics: software as a service (SaaS); environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards; and carbon accounting. The case places students in the role of the fictional Salesforce vice president of sustainability, who is deciding whether or not to recommend the development and launch of Sustainability Cloud 2.0. She is pondering many issues. Since Salesforce was able to become a world leader in SaaS software, could it become a leader in sustainability software, as well? After analyzing the decision at hand, students should be ready to meet with Salesforce executives and make a recommendation about next steps for the company's sustainability software products.

This note describes the exponential growth of semiconductor technology over the last 40 years, as well as the evolution of the semiconductor value chain. Semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) are essential to all modern electronic equipment and are used in virtually every industry, including consumer electronics, office equipment, appliances, and automobiles. Semiconductor complexity and processing power has increased exponentially, resulting in commensurate increases in the sophistication of and upfront costs associated with fabrication processes. The industry has evolved from a vertically integrated model of integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) to a disaggregated model of "fabless" technology companies that focus on research and design and rely on off-shore pure-play semiconductor foundries for production. An entire generation of US-based fabless semiconductor manufacturers, such as Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Cirrus Logic, have blossomed and thrived by taking advantage of high-quality, low-cost foundry services provided by the likes of TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries. The recent COVID-19 crisis and escalating US-China trade tensions have exposed the fragility of this ecosystem, and US technology companies must learn to manage an emerging set of risks. The note highlights how the natural evolution of an industry, in response to competitive and market pressures, may result in highly efficient but fragile value chains.

In August 2021, Singapore Airlines Group (SIA) was at a critical juncture in its history. Since early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had forced commercial travel to almost a standstill, requiring SIA to idle most of its fleet. The group's overall revenues had declined by 76 per cent in the 2020/21 financial year, resulting in a loss of S$4.27 billion. The massive cash bleed forced the group to issue new capital, thus diluting the stake of its existing shareholders. Although SIA's results had improved for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, the emergence of new virus variants and continued travel restrictions meant that the group needed to make critical decisions that would have implications for both its short-term survival and its long-term performance.

This case profiles the National Hockey League (NHL), the most prestigious professional hockey league in the world. It presents the league's history, highlighting facts inherent to professional sports in North America. It also examines the NHL's value proposition, sources of revenue, and major expenses. Finally, it looks at the strengths and weaknesses of the league's business model, speculating about the future.

Axis Bank was the fifth-largest bank in India, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. In 2006, the bank set up a trust, Axis Bank Foundation, to manage its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. In Phase 1 of its CSR journey, it had followed three of the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations and achieved the mission of “generating one million livelihoods in a sustainable manner,” ahead of schedule. Encouraged by the success of Phase 1, Axis Bank planned to include three additional Sustainable Development Goals to guide Phase 2 with the mission of “generating livelihoods in a sustainable manner for two million households.” Rajesh Dahiya, who oversaw Axis Bank’s CSR initiatives, was faced with several key decisions for framing the CSR strategy for Phase 2 based on an evaluation of the performance in Phase 1 and the lessons learned in that phase.

The founder of Jucai Human Resources Development Co., Ltd. had witnessed the development of China's human resources service industry over the previous 20 years. In the company's early stages, it had mainly relied on the advantage of information asymmetry of the Internet to carry out online recruitment services. But from 2015, the founder became interested in and confident about the prospects of providing a talent assessment service for public institutions and thus decided to start such a service. After five years of development, the company had become a leading enterprise in the domestic talent assessment service for public institutions. However, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, talent assessment services for public institutions suddenly stagnated. The founder realized that this service was too dependent on government policy support, although income from this service accounted for 70 per cent of its revenue. If public institutions shifted their talent assessment business from outsourcing assessment to independent assessment, the company would face a severe challenge. Therefore, the founder had to consider how his company could reduce its dependence on policies and achieve sustainable development by using existing data resources.

This case describes TerraCycle's history as an innovative recycling platform and focuses on the business model of its newest endeavor, Loop. After significant growth of TerraCycle and successfully orchestrating recycling solutions for hard-to-recycle materials through relationships with sponsor brands, logistics companies, and recycling processors, Loop was launched to address the global waste crisis at the root level. The key insight upon which Loop's value proposition was built is the notion that no one needs or wants to own the containers their goods were packaged in after the product has been used. With inspiration from the traditional milkman concept, Loop set out to leverage its extensive brand network and logistics relationships to orchestrate a reuse model.

Ascend Behavior Partners provided applied behavioral analysis (ABA) services to families with children with autism. The growing autism services market presented a massive opportunity for Ascend to provide quality care to families in need. Ascend's delivery model relied on board certified behavior analysts (BCBAs), who were the backbone of providing care to families with children with autism. But the severe imbalance between supply and demand for these critical skills posed a challenge for companies like Ascend looking to hire qualified BCBAs. After struggling with its BCBA offer acceptance rate, Ascend made a counter-intuitive decision in December 2018 and altered its BCBA hiring process to make it substantially more challenging and time-consuming. The new process was designed to give applicants a chance to experience Ascend's culture in a more meaningful way throughout the hiring process. The epicenter of the revamped hiring process was an in-person, full-day interview, where applicants spoke with a range of employees across the company. Almost immediately after implementing the change, Ascend saw its offer acceptance rate spike from 50 percent to 90 percent. This case discusses how to create a hiring process that accurately conveys the culture of a company.

Set in June 2021, the case documents the evolution and outcomes of CALISTA, a trade facilitation platform launched by Global eTrade Services (GeTS), Singapore, in 2018. With an affordable subscription model, CALISTA aided smooth trade flow by enabling single window management of the compliance, logistics, and trade finance. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted international trade flows and altered consumer behaviour, spurring the boom of eCommerce. The scenario prompted the trade community to embrace trade automation in its quest for predictability, visibility and efficiency. Consequently, CALISTA's sales nearly doubled. However, driven by a legacy mindset, many SMEs were still doing trade the old-fashioned way. Kok Keong Chong, the Chief Executive Officer of GeTS, wondered how he could bring on board more customers to CALISTA.

This business case is about the battle between Amazon Marketplace and Shopify in the competitive and fast-growing e-commerce market. It uses the decision-making process of the Pizza Pilgrims, a chain of pizza restaurants in London who pivoted to e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic. The case explains how the two platforms define their target customer and value proposition, how they make money and their strategies to scale. Students will be encouraged to study the differences between transaction, innovation, and hybrid platform models, understand the strengths and weaknesses of each, and reflect on the application of platform strategies to other industries. They will also consider what strategy Amazon Marketplace and Shopify might adopt for future growth and reflect on whether one model might be more successful than the other. Platform strategy is deployed by the most valuable companies in the world to create value by opening their platform to third parties with complementary innovations like Apple iPhone or Sony PlayStation, or by connecting demand and supply of a given market like Uber or Airbnb. The success and growth of platforms depends on a deep understanding of the types of platforms, monetization strategies and the complex dynamics of network effects. Pizza Pilgrims' choice of Shopify over Amazon Marketplace demonstrates how Shopify developed a compelling value proposition to help merchants build their brands and leverage direct relationships with their customers across multiple channels. This matches their strategy to design an asset-light, open innovation platform where an ecosystem of developers helps merchants innovate, allowing the value capture (revenue and shopper insights to fuel future innovations) to be shared across all sides. By contrast, Amazon Marketplace is designed to offer variety, low prices, and fast delivery to shoppers; this matches with their strategy to design a transaction platform where value is extracted from merchants and offered

In 2011 Katrina Lake launched a new type of online retailing, Stitch Fix, a personal styling service based on a mix of human creativity and artificial intelligence, and grew it into a $3.6B company. Like many other successful retail businesses, it rapidly caught Jeff Bezos's eye. And nothing good comes when Jeff Bezos notices you and decides to compete. After a first attempt to challenge Stitch Fix in June 2017 with Prime Wardrobe, Amazon unveiled Personal Shopper in 2019, a new service that worked similar to Stitch Fix. Will Bezos do to Lake's Stitch Fix what he did to Barnes & Noble with books? Or will Stitch Fix be able to fend off the retail giant Amazon?

California-based Intel Corporation (Intel) was one of the world’s leading semiconductor circuit firms. In July 2020, manufacturing delays with Intel’s 10 nanometre (nm) and 7 nm chips were adversely affecting the company’s customers at a time when demand for personal computers and laptops was at its peak. Unlike its competitors, Intel was vertically integrated. Competitors such as Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. had outsourced their chip manufacturing to leading contract manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC) and were experiencing better market capitalization growth by focusing on designing chips for PCs and other product categories. TSMC had become the leading contract manufacturer for chips globally. Intel’s former chief executive officer (CEO) believed that Intel’s chip quality was the best because its manufacturing facilities were in house. At the same time, geopolitical issues between Taiwan, the United States, and China meant that regulatory authorities in the United States were not in favour of outsourcing critical chip manufacturing. In January 2021, Intel’s newly appointed CEO would have to decide whether Intel should outsource chip manufacturing to a contract manufacturer like TSMC and whether, in the long run, Intel should remain a vertically integrated unit or spin off its manufacturing division.

"The case focuses on strategy and governance issues at SWVL, a tech-enabled mass mobility marketplace. It describes the journey of CEO and Chairman Mostafa Kendil on his journey from founding to the company's listing on Nasdaq. Since its founding in Egypt in 2017, Swvl produced a series of great successes with its innovative solution that promised safe, reliable, and affordable mass commuting trips in markets where such a service was unavailable. In a short time, Swvl was able to raise notable amounts in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) investor funds, expand geographically to neighboring and faraway markets, and become the fastest growing unicorn in the region. Expanding the company's existing regional footprint, Kandil and his team were pursuing their ambition to become the world's number one mass mobility provider. They worked with Queen's Gambit, a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company), to take the company public on Nasdaq. They established both statutory and advisory boards that would not only guide the company on its growth plans but also showcase its strong compliance agenda-a priority from the outset. Once listed, Swvl would become the second and the youngest MENA-based company to ever go public on Nasdaq. With this, Swvl accepted a challenging responsibility: it would have to position itself among well-established U.S. public companies on one hand and overcome the notorious reputation MENA-based companies had for corporate governance on the other. To emerge successful in global financial markets, Swvl had to ensure that its marketplace design was lean enough to allow the company to grow profitably without compromising customer experience on its rides. Swvl also had to assess its expansion strategy, particularly in terms of how fast and how far it could launch in new markets without mishap.

Anthem Inc. (www.anthem.com) was a leading health care insurance provider and the largest insurer in the Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) network. In October 2017, it approved the establishment of captive subsidiaries or global capability centers (GCCs), called "Legato," in India and the Philippines. The first captive was established in India. From January 2018 to June 2021, the two Legato entities had ramped up their head count to over 15,000 full-time employees (FTEs). This number well exceeded the initial approved business plan of a little over 3,000 FTEs. As a result, the parent organization accrued substantial cost savings. This also helped the company create a foundation to use low-cost internal talent to enable additional objectives, such as supporting digital transformational objectives and improving end-to-end process efficiency. Anthem developed an initial organization chart and reporting structure to establish the new companies. As the entities grew, Anthem made changes to better align them with US processes and strengthen governance and risk management. In 2021, Anthem established a new objective for Legato. As a cost center, Legato had firmly established itself in Anthem's value delivery chain, successfully setting up several information technology (IT) and business process practices. Anthem decided to use this capability by pursuing IT and business service revenue from other BCBS players in the US. It could now offer a suite of IT and business process services from Legato-essentially a profit and loss (P&L) role. The addition of this new P&L role brought up the following questions: Should the existing leaders' role be expanded to take on the additional responsibility of delivering to external customers? Should an entirely new division be established to take on this new P&L role? Or was there any other option to consider?