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As leaders develop strategy for a future that has been reshaped by the pandemic, they need to rethink their fundamental assumptions about what customers want. The truth is, people still want personal service but it doesn't have to come from a person. The author identifies five assumptions companies often make about what their customers want and offers questions to consider to help prepare for the post-pandemic era.

As a leading short-video social and livestreaming app in China, Kuaishou Technology's Kuaishou application (app) was facing various challenges, including fierce competition from ByteDance Ltd.'s Douyin. In June 2018, to sustain its long-term growth, Kuaishou needed to evaluate the possibility of entering the livestreaming e-commerce market, as livestreaming was becoming one of the hottest ways to sell to Chinese consumers. The co-founder and chief executive officer of Kuaishou Technology needed to decide whether Kuaishou should launch a livestreaming e-commerce business. If so, should Kuaishou cooperate with an existing e-commerce platform or build its own e-commerce ecosystem? What potential challenges might Kuaishou face in its livestreaming e-commerce business expansion?

This fictional case introduces an M&A deal structuring exercise. Two strategy consulting companies, East Coast Strategy Consultants Inc. (EAST) and West Coast Strategic Management Advisory Corp. (WEST), are contemplating acquiring a company in the accounting and advisory services sector, either Ocean & Whistle Accounting (OW) or LeDosh (LD). Students, either individually or in groups, play one of the four companies (i.e., one of the acquirers or one of the sellers/targets). Students are presented with basic financials on each of the companies and other key considerations including potential synergies, valuation multiples, and financing options. As part of the exercise, they must decide which company to acquire (or to sell to) and at what price, identify the key risks involved, and develop a deal structure to mitigate these risks. Students negotiate with the two other respective parties and reach agreement on the terms of the acquisition.

On February 1, 2020, Jessie Gaeta, the chief medical officer for Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP), received news that a student in Boston had tested positive for the novel coronavirus virus that causes COVID-19 disease. Since mid-January, Gaeta had been following reports of the mysterious virus that had been sickening people in China. Gaeta was concerned. Having worked for BHCHP for 18 years, she understood how vulnerable people experiencing homelessness were to infectious diseases. She knew that the nonprofit program, as the primary medical provider for Boston's homeless population, would have to lead the city's response for that marginalized community. She also knew that BHCHP, as the homeless community's key medical advocate, not only needed to alert local government, shelters, hospitals, and other partners in the city's homeless support network, but do so in a way that spurred action in time to prevent illness and death. The case study details how BHCHP's nine-person incident command team quickly reorganized the program and built a detailed response, including drastically reducing traditional primary care services, ramping up telehealth, and redeploying and managing staff. It describes how the team worked with partners and quickly designed, staffed, and made operational three small alternative sites for homeless patients, despite numerous challenges. The case then ends with an unwelcome discovery: BHCHP's first universal testing event at a large city shelter revealed that one-third of nearly 400 people there had contracted COVID-19, that most of the infected individuals did not report symptoms, and that other large city shelters were likely experiencing similar outbreaks. To understand how BHCHP and its partners subsequently popped up within a few days a 500-bed field hospital, which BHCHP managed and staffed for the next two months, see Boston Health Care for the Homeless (B): Disaster Medicine and the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Jessie Gaeta, the chief medical officer for Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP), learned on April 7, 2020 that the City of Boston needed BHCHP to design and staff in 48 hours one half of Boston Hope, a 1,000-bed field hospital for patients infected with COVID-19. The mysterious new coronavirus spreading around the world was now running rampant within BHCHP's highly vulnerable patient population: people experiencing homelessness in Boston. A nonprofit community health center, BHCHP for 35 years had been the primary care provider for Boston's homeless community. Over the preceding month, BHCHP's nine-person incident command team, spearheaded by Gaeta and CEO Barry Bock, had spent long hours reorganizing the program. (See Boston Health Care for the Homeless (A): Preparing for the COVID-19 Pandemic.) BHCHP leaders now confronted the most urgent challenge of their long medical careers. Without previous experience in large-scale disaster medicine, Gaeta and her colleagues had in short order to design and implement a disaster medicine model for COVID-19 that served the unique needs of people experiencing homelessness. This case study recounts the decisive actions BHCHP leaders took to uncover unexpectedly widespread COVID-19 infection among Boston's homeless community in early April 2020. It details how they overcame their exhaustion to quickly design, staff, and operate the newly erected Boston Hope field hospital for the city's homeless COVID-19 patients. It then shows how they adjusted their disaster medicine model when faced with on-the-ground realities at Boston Hope regarding patients' psychological needs, limited English capabilities, substance use disorders, staff stress and burnout, and other issues.

Companies need a plan of action if they are to meet their moral and business obligations in the event that their operations intersect with labor abuses or other human rights violations. The article explains different types of abuses and provides a framework for understanding a company's exposure to reputational risk. The authors also map out a decision tree that can help managers work out potential courses of action and their implications.

In a short span of five or six years, CHANEL embraced CSR (corporate social responsibility) and ESG (environmental, social, governance) initiatives that stretched far beyond its established comfort zone of artistic direction and creative output. The progression of these initiatives culminated in March 2020, when the company launched CHANEL Mission 1.5°, a strategy for embarking on a decarbonization journey across the business as well as the value chain. In keeping with the timeframe of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the "1.5°" represented the commitment to help limit average global mean temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Entering the 2020s, Global CFO Philippe Blondiaux felt confident that CHANEL was primed to execute on its vision and usher in a "decade of delivery" in sustainability. The Group was about to transform every aspect of its business; help its partners do the same; innovate at every point in the value chain; and support change beyond its own operational footprint. Yet a host of challenges loomed on the road ahead: (1) Could an industrial group that was highly decentralized continue to spearhead initiatives and shape an integrated sustainability strategy? (2) In addition to creating a cultural glue and a shared sense of inspiration and purpose, could accountability trickle all the way down the organization with a worldwide workforce of nearly 28,000? (3) In the long term, was the company in a position to live up to the commitments it had encapsulated in the CHANEL Mission 1.5° document, and was there sufficient clarity on what the sustainability push would mean in the long run for CHANEL, as a luxury brand, as we know it?

For decades, Titleist was the dominant player in the golf ball industry partly due to its strong technical performance and popularity among professional golfers. As a result of its technical superiority and the mystical image it had cultivated, Titleist's brand was revered by consumers. Its domination began to fade in the 2010s, however, as its competitors introduced balls that offered similar quality, but at a more affordable price. Moreover, Titleist lost several major patent infringement lawsuits. Finally, in February 2020, the golf industry's regulatory authorities, who were in charge of establishing the specifications to be met by ball manufacturers, announced that they would be investigating the possibility of adjusting existing specifications, a move that could harm manufacturers, such as Titleist, that were trying to differentiate their products through R&D.

Founded in 1996, Dalian Leasun Food Co., Ltd. had become one of the largest canned food manufacturers in northeast China by 2020. In 2016, it began a digital transformation, adopting digital technologies such as data mining and cloud computing. The company also revised its internal operations and adopted an omnichannel sales strategy. Digital transformation enabled Dalian Leasun Food Co., Ltd. to move beyond the traditional retail and distribution market, which was becoming oversaturated. Its successful transition also helped the company maintain a stable sales growth rate during the COVID-19 pandemic. The next stage for its digital transition however, presented a dilemma. One option for the chairman of the company was to develop a customer-oriented platform and create value for customers. The other option was to digitalize the company's supply chain and internal management system. The chairman had to decide which direction to follow.

After almost a year of rebranding and renovations, the Bitter Sisters Brewery opened to rave reviews on February 14, 2020, in Calgary, Alberta. Just 29 days later, the COVID-19 pandemic would force the brewery's doors shut for over three months. Two further closures would come in 2020, and times remained uncertain as of December of that year. The owners had to pivot-and quickly-to ensure the viability of their business in volatile times.

Student Spreadsheet for Case W25167

In July 2021, Duolingo became one of the few mission-driven education-technology companies to list on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the US. Founded in 2011 by Luis von Ahn, a Carnegie Mellon professor from Guatemala, and his doctoral student, Severin Hacker, the start-up was born with a social mission to make language learning universally available. A large part of Duolingo's value proposition was underpinned by free access to all content, game-like lessons, and keeping learners motivated - a recipe that boosted user retention and increasingly, the conversion to paid subscription. Duolingo had enjoyed resounding success, pulling in close to 40 million active monthly users around the globe on its platform. Not only did the firm's value creation resonate with users (including Bill Gates and Syrian refugees), its exponential growth and positive free cash flow indicating the company's liquidity - had attracted major investors including Google. In a space where listed firms played to the tune of investors' quest for more revenue, how could Duolingo balance public markets' demands for growth and profitability while maintaining its original mission of free education moving forward?

Perfect Day was a rising cellular agriculture company specializing in lab-based milk. Its founders had created and patented a formula for an ingredient that could produce authentic-tasting non-dairy products. At the beginning of 2020, the US-based firm received US$140 million in funding, and the founders had to navigate a complex operating and stakeholder environment to map out a growth strategy. The complex situation required them to answer related questions that were easy to understand but difficult to answer. First, the founders would have to chart the expected evolution of the lab-based milk industry as it moved to the full roll-out of products. The founders would next have to decide on Perfect Day’s positioning in its changing industry. Finally, they would have to assess the myriad players, both as stakeholders and as potential alliance partners, in order to support the strategic positioning decision.

Abbey Wemimo and Samir Goel founded Esusu in 2018 to help low-to-moderate-income renters build credit history. Esusu, a for-profit impact focused venture, collected rental payments from property managers and reported this data to major credit bureaus, which helped renters improve their credit scores. In April 2020, only six months after closing their first institutional round of capital, New York state issued a lockdown to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. During this period, the Esusu leadership team addressed numerous priorities-transitioning their team to operate online, managing employee health concerns, calling clients and investors while still running the company's day-to-day operations. Ultimately, Wemimo and Goel must decide whether to cut costs in order to keep Esusu's existing business afloat or build new products and leverage new partnerships to serve renters and property managers during a time of crisis. In this case, students are encouraged to examine the history and evolution of the credit-scoring models used in the U.S. The case also explores the impact that a lack of credit records may have on American families in particular among minority groups. The case chronicles how Esusu sought to tackle these challenges in a time of crisis, as well as the strategic decisions they faced along the way.

This note provides background on Title 47 US Code § 230, the section of federal law that protects internet companies from liability for the content shared by users, and for the moderation and even removal of that content if considered objectionable. So central is this law to the debate over online speech and content policy that it is commonly referred to simply as ""Section 230,"" even though nearly every one of the 54 titles in federal law also contains a section 230. Passed as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Section 230 ended a ""moderator's dilemma"" that resulted from a 1995 court decision. If that decision had not been overturned, it would have meant internet companies that restricted access to objectionable content became liable for any and all content on their platforms. This technical note is particularly useful when used to facilitate discussion of the case ""Trump v. Twitter, et al."" (UVA-S-0360). The case explores the period in 2020 in which the social media activity of Donald Trump, then president of the United States, started to be moderated by some social media companies, receiving warning labels and even being removed for violating content guidelines.

During a 30-day window between late May and late June of 2020, President Donald Trump earned international attention not only for the content he posted to social media sites such as Twitter, but also for the ways in which social media companies responded to his posts. For the first time in history, social media posts from a sitting president were receiving warning labels, and in some instances were even deleted for violating Twitter's content guidelines, "The Twitter Rules." The substance of a debate over online content that began 25 years earlier had come full circle as a host of social media platforms-initially imagined to help people share group text messages and photos with friends-were now being referred to as the 21st century equivalent of a public square. Had Twitter's executive team gone too far by placing a warning notice on the president's tweets? Would social media companies be able to adapt if the Trump administration's recommendations led to meaningful changes in the law that made "The Twitter Rules" actionable? How will companies prepare for an environment within which content policy is not simply a legal concern but a strategic decision?

The Washington Post (The Post) is one of the world's most respected news-media organizations. After joining The Post as CEO and publisher in 2014, Fred Ryan worked with owner Jeff Bezos and The Post's executive team to bring about an extraordinary digital transformation at the global news organization. Despite all its success, The Post faced several significant business challenges in 2021, including new competitors, a growing number of channels through which readers consumed news, and rapidly changing consumer behavior. In response, The Post developed a digital-product mindset, rebuilt its newsroom, redesigned core business processes, built a software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology platform that functioned as a very profitable "business within a business," and announced the creation of Next Generation-a new initiative to accelerate the acquisition of younger and more diverse audiences through new products, practices, and partnerships.

With the arrival of a digital era, digitalization has penetrated into every aspect of production and life, and brought many new opportunities and challenges. Under such circumstances, traditional enterprises have launched digital transformation one after another. It's worthwhile to draw on the experience of these enterprises in addressing the pain points and difficulties encountered in their chosen strategic path and the progress of digital transformation. Beiqi Foton Motor Co., Ltd. ("Foton Motor" for short), established in 1996, kicked off digital transformation in the integration of informatization and industrialization (IoII). After 2015, Foton began to step up efforts in digitalization, established the "114" digital system architecture, and built an automotive ecosystem integrating vehicle manufacturing, core parts, auto finance, Internet of Vehicles and e-commerce for the commercial vehicle market. This case focuses on the process of Foton Motor's digital transformation.

At luxury fashion house Maison Chloé, minds were focused on the first collection of new Creative Director, Gabriela Hearst, which was just hitting the stores. Chloé's CEO, Riccardo Bellini, had recruited Gabriela, known for her commitment to sustainability through her own brand, to epitomize the Maison's new responsible purpose. Riccardo, along with Sustainability Director Aude Vergne, had been swift to accelerate Chloé's purpose-led transformation in an industry that materially contributed to the planet's environmental and social problems. They had focused particularly on the social aspects of ESG in order to impact the environmental ones. But the "S" was definitely harder than the "E." The case explores the transformation steps put in place across Chloé's supply chain, design, governance of the sustainability transformation, and B Corp certification application. Transforming in less than two years was a sprint, and the stress had taken its toll. The case closes asking whether the transformation would make a difference: Would lower impact products be welcomed by consumers, and was Chloé doing enough to ensure the continuing desirability of luxury in rapidly changing times? For luxury-focused classes, the case emphasis can be on discovering what it takes to become a purposeful luxury brand.

Procam International, set up by brothers Anil and Vivek Singh, has been working in the field of sports management in India for over two decades. Procam was the first organiser of large-scale long distance running events in India, including the 2004 Mumbai Marathon. The case discusses Procam's approach to introducing large-scale participatory sports events in a country dominated by spectator sports. They began with a large-scale city marathon at a time when India had few distance runners and had not witnessed a major city event involving thousands of participants.