個案總覽

China's agricultural sector is undergoing rapid transformation, but with growth come serious problems such as labor shortages, soil compacted by machinery, and chemicals (pesticides) that pollute the earth. In parallel, therefore, a major technological transformation is underway. The case follows JIFEI (XAG) Technology as it pivots from making consumer drones to agriculture drones, eventually becoming an agriculture tech company. It describes the automation and digitalization of the agriculture sector in China using JIFEI as an illustration of value innovation, penetration of the agricultural market, and a shift in core competences.

In September 2021, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president of HealthCare atHome India Pvt. Ltd. (HCAH India), based in Mumbai, India, was concerned about his company's future. Founded in 2012, HCAH India provided a wide range of health services at home, including intensive care, step-down beds, post-operative care, nursing, physiotherapy, attendant services, and elderly care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company was growing at a rate of 60 per cent month over month. While the COVID-19 virus continued to strain the country's health care system, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president faced numerous organizational and social challenges. HCAH India had responded quickly to address the home health care needs of patients during the pandemic. It was even recognized for its excellence by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry as the best home health care provider. However, how could the organization evaluate its options and focus on internal capabilities, while building on its strengths to meet future challenges?

At one time, Bed Bath & Beyond was one of the most successful specialty retailers in the United States-it's growth and profit margins far exceeded both peer retailers in the home goods market as well as many other discount retailers. But in 2014, its stock price peaked, growth slowed, and margins began to shrink. By 2018, it was losing money and sales were declining as online and discount retailers (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair) entered the industry. Noting the underperformance, a group of activist investors tried to replace the entire board and leadership team in early 2019. Although they did not succeed, the company replaced five directors, asked the founders to retire, and appointed a new CEO named Mark Tritton in October 2019. About a year later, Tritton and a newly installed leadership team announced a new strategy "to unlock growth and drive significant shareholder value." They also announced a new "financial roadmap" and capital allocation framework to deliver strong and sustainable total shareholder returns. The question is whether this turnaround plan could save the once-venerable retailer and help it regain a competitive advantage in the new, more competitive retail environment.

Spreadsheet supplement to 722408.

Huanglongxi, a historic town in Sichuan Province, topped the list of "China's Iconic Cultural Tourism Towns 2020." In October 2017, Zhang Dafan, the executive director of the Huanglongxi Overseas Chinese Town Group (OCT), had led his team in initiating a smart cultural tourism project in Huanglongxi against the backdrop red-hot rivalry between China's ancient towns. In just three years, the project had led to the remarkable transformation of Huanglongxi into a smart, award-winning ancient town. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic had left the tourism industry in limbo. To emerge from these difficult times caused by the pandemic, Huanglongxi the OCT had to assess how to strengthen the depth and breadth of its Huanglongxi's smart cultural tourism construction offer in order to bring draw travellers back. How had Huanglongxi overcome the homogeneous competition it faced to develop into a unique, smart ancient town in 2017? Given the new challenges it faced, how could it do so once again?

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) company NIO had launched Battery as a Service (BaaS), in a competitive bid to reduce vehicle price and make its products more attractive to its consumers. By 2021, almost 40% of its consumer base had switched to using BaaS, and NIO had plans to expand its BaaS services further. BaaS offered four key benefits. Firstly, it reduced the price of the EV by about US$ 10,800. Secondly, it allowed consumers to do multiple battery swaps for a nominal US$ 152 monthly subscription fee. Thirdly, it allowed consumers to swap their batteries in a short time of 3 to 5 minutes, as opposed to 45 minutes recharge at a charging station. To support its BaaS program, NIO had installed 301 battery-swapping stations across China by July 2021, and had plans to complete 3000 swapping stations globally by 2025. Fourthly, BaaS supported a circular economy, as it potentially helped recycle batteries in a more controlled fashion, which could then be reused in other industries (like for solar panels in homes). However, NIO's BaaS entailed a few shortcomings despite its promise. Its implementation involved the construction of swapping stations, deployment of automated technology, and maintenance of battery stocks at stations, which was an expensive affair. Besides, technology for batteries had started to advance, and batteries could last longer in terms of miles travelled based on a single charge, reducing the need for frequent recharge at swapping stations. Given the scenario, was NIO's BaaS venture a sustainable business model? Could it provide NIO with a strong competitive advantage?

In May 2021, SHEIN overtook Amazon as the most downloaded shopping app on the US iOS and Android app stores. During the pandemic in 2020, SHEIN achieved substantial sales growth and is now catching up with the fast-fashion giant Zara. This case first briefly discusses the apparel and fast-fashion industry and the creation of the fast-fashion model by Zara. Then it covers SHEIN's historical development and its "fast-fashion 2.0" business model-using big data and algorithms to identify customers and their preferences. The case also discusses various perspectives of SHEIN's business operations: products and pricing, marketing and branding, and supply chain management. The case further discusses several challenges that SHEIN faces: product quality, transparency of company disclosure, environmental impact, and geopolitical risk. In the last section, the case presents several options that SHEIN may be able to pursue in the future. The case is suitable for MBA, EMBA, and undergraduate students who are interested in competitive strategy, technology or digital strategy, innovation, blue ocean strategy, China strategy, global strategy (cross-border e-commerce), and the fashion industry. The case can be used in core strategy courses at different levels, as it covers various topics.

Bunge, one of the world's leading agribusiness traders and processors, strives to comply with its commitment to having a deforestation-free value chain by 2025 while it considers potential new business growth areas. After a complex turnaround, which involved one of the biggest corporate reorganizations in Bunge's 203-year history, the company finally has surplus cash to invest. CEO Greg Heckman and Chief Sustainability Officer Robert Coviello must figure out if they can turn sustainability into a profit maker for the company or if it will remain as another cost of doing business.

This case focuses on a key business decision taken by The Boeing Company to counter competition from its rival Airbus - in a duopoly market. The pressure to stay relevant, be competitive and bag a large market pie in the burgeoning aviation sector, led Boeing to make a series of untimely decisions that resulted in two plane crashes, followed by an exposé of several safety and regulatory practices and processes. The case presents Boeing's flagship 737 MAX 8 aircraft; throws light on the popularity of the model; provides an overview of the aviation market; and the context surrounding the two crashes that occurred when the 737 MAX aircraft were released; and the ensuing communication debacle that followed.

The case traces the digital journey of the Vikatan Group, a Tamil media conglomerate in India. The case can be used to build a process-based framework for ensuring organizational longevity, especially when the environment is dynamic. Vikatan faced a continuous onslaught of technological changes which at first sight are peripheral to the magazine publishing industry. However, these digital disruptions later became the defining media for news and entertainment. Vikatan made some decisions early on to follow where its customers went. It encouraged low stakes experiments with new technology. It ensured that the top management was open to inputs from the successes/failures of the experiments. Finally, it built flexibility into its organizational core to ensure that it successfully overcame the digital disruptions. The case provides the facts of this digital journey and helps the student identify how organizational longevity can be built into the firm through conscious strategic decision making.

L'Oréal, the world leader in beauty products, began to rethink its vision for the industry. The world was on the cusp of a digital future full of possibilities. For a company known for its consumer-pleasing beauty products and owner of some the world's most iconic brands, this meant thinking about innovation in a different way. It would no longer mean only providing the best products but also continuously adapting the industry to market needs. Through a combination of goal setting, training and communication, the digital transformation began, first with efforts in marketing, sales and consumer outreach, but supply chain quickly moved to a prominent role in helping address questions about how digitalization would affect the company's products and consumer expectations. Starting with a vision of the CEO, Jean-Paul Agon, the company found itself on a journey to challenge its culture, its approach and even what its value proposition was. Along the way, the supply chain became a force for bringing together the different functions of a large, complex organization to identify and implement new business models in the digital age that cut to the heart of the company's operations.

Ben Van Weelden, Manager of Scenic Floral, was considering providing direct-to-door delivery to Northern Ontario stores for its main customer, Metro Inc. Scenic was looking for ways to increase sales and profit, but also had its eye on providing coast-to-coast delivery of cut flowers in Canada, with the help of its partner-shareholder, Petals West. However, it would need to be advantageous for both Scenic and Metro to make this a viable option.

Founded in 1984 in Vancouver, Aritzia has been a massive success story, expanding across Canada and into the United States with no signs of slowing down. In March 2020, however, with the COVID-19 pandemic spreading rapidly through North America, the women’s fashion retailer was forced to shutter all its 97 boutique stores and shift sales to the e-commerce channel, while making other key financial and operating decisions to respond to the pandemic. In May 2020, with Aritzia given the green light to begin slowly and cautiously opening its locations, the CEO and the executive team needed to decide how to move forward in a time of crisis and continue its growth plans.

The case explores the journey of Marek Claassen, a German art lover who transformed a passion for building databases for local art galleries into a commercial venture that ranks artists worldwide. Artfacts seeks to rank all artists as transparently as the facts allow. Instead of focusing on transactions, which are often shrouded in secrecy, rankings are weighted according to the attention artists received from experts in the art world such as curators, art historians, art critics, gallery owners and collectors. Generated by an algorithm that is updated on a weekly basis, rankings capture the entire spectrum of art from the intellectual to the psychological, the spiritual to the aesthetic. Twenty years after starting Artfacts, Claassen hired a CEO, Jonas Almgren, and CMO Andrew Antoniades to launch an online mobile app. 'Limna' takes advantage of Artfact's world-class database to estimate the value of artwork coming onto the market. Buyers and gallery owners can use it to assess and negotiate the price of an artwork.

In 2021, Slack was acquired by Salesforce. While widely viewed as the best corporate collaboration and messaging software, Slack was being challenged by Microsoft, which was giving away its competitive product, Microsoft Teams, for free with a subscription to Microsoft's Office software suite. The purpose of this case is explore how to compete with "free." The case examines the advantages and disadvantages of bundling and how to build an enterprise software platform.

Dare2Compete was a global platform connecting students, professionals, educators, colleges, and companies through innovative challenges, events, and gamified hiring assessments. It catered to two markets-students and companies. For students, it provided information on competitions, and listed internships, scholarships, and hackathons. For companies, it was an employer branding consultant and recruitment service provider. Dare2Compete was one of the largest networks of college students in India. Prospective employers could discover, engage, and hire students through the platform, facilitated by competitions, quizzes, hackathons, business simulations, and case studies. In 2020, after five successful years of operations, Dare2Compete's founder, Ankit Aggarwal, believed it was time to grow and was deciding on a growth strategy to pursue for achieving his objective of doubled growth for Dare2Compete in the coming year. He was considering three directions for growth: penetrate further into the market, expand globally into new markets, or develop a new product for the existing market.

In early June 2020, the owner of BYKlyn, an exercise bike fitness studio in New York, was considering her response to the business disruption that the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had caused the health and fitness industry. BYKlyn had recorded consistent annual growth since its launch in 2014. The fitness studio owner had been confirming her business expansion plans by moving into a larger space in the city when the pandemic struck in early 2019. Consequently, she was forced to shut down the business in mid-March 2019, in compliance with COVID-19 regulations. After a two-month lockdown, the New York state government announced phased-in reopening plans, and the fitness studio owner was considering three options for restarting her business: reopen at the existing premises; move to a virtual environment with a new business model; or set up an outdoor fitness club, which would offer fitness club members a completely new workout format.

The Hill & Levene Schools of Business (HLSB) Paul J. Hill Business School at the University of Regina, were considering widely divergent strategic alternatives, in what was expected to be a new and permanently altered post Covid-19 competitive environment, for business schools and higher education learning. The case considers three alternatives: 1. a return to the classic business model, with a new state-of-the-art building; 2. specialize as a virtual business school, for maximum national and international student access; or 3. Take advantage of the learning during the Covid-19 crisis and excel as an adaptive hybrid business school. Each alternative has strategic, marketing, operational and financial implications.

Relying on expert panels to judge which innovation projects should get the go-ahead for funding produces mixed results. The authors' study of how R&D projects are green-lighted reveals multiple flaws in the process that can result in biased and poor decisions. The article details potential problems and suggests alternative ways that companies can review and decide on new projects. These newer approaches are aimed at mitigating bias and often involve engaging a wider variety of perspectives.