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In 2015, Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd (Mapletree), a real estate and capital management company headquartered in Singapore, was due to launch its new Five-Year Growth plan. The key decisions that the company needed to take were: should Mapletree extend its reach geographically outside Asia? Should it also consider going into any of the new asset classes-student accommodation, corporate housing and data centres-that it was currently evaluating? The case is divided into two parts. Case A is set in December 2014, and discusses the strategic decisions the company needs to take for future growth. It has several possible options - grow in the existing markets, expand its product portfolio, or enter a new market. Adopting a hybrid strategy, Mapletree decided on a mixed approach that included some geographical diversification as well as a strong push for new products in existing markets. Case A also discusses how Mapletree put together its initial five-year plan and expanded in Asia before venturing into Western markets. Case B is set in 2019 and focuses on how Mapletree achieved its second phase of growth. The key takeaway here is how the company organised itself internally to deliver growth. Discussion points in the case are around the elements of shared incentives, clearly aligned plans, and a team culture of successful execution. The case also elaborates on how Mapletree put together its new five-year plan with a clear and ambitious goal of doubling its assets under management (AUM), and then backed it up with specific geographic and product market initiatives.

In 2015, Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd (Mapletree), a real estate and capital management company headquartered in Singapore, was due to launch its new Five-Year Growth plan. The key decisions that the company needed to take were: should Mapletree extend its reach geographically outside Asia? Should it also consider going into any of the new asset classes-student accommodation, corporate housing and data centres-that it was currently evaluating? The case is divided into two parts. Case A is set in December 2014, and discusses the strategic decisions the company needs to take for future growth. It has several possible options - grow in the existing markets, expand its product portfolio, or enter a new market. Adopting a hybrid strategy, Mapletree decided on a mixed approach that included some geographical diversification as well as a strong push for new products in existing markets. Case A also discusses how Mapletree put together its initial five-year plan and expanded in Asia before venturing into Western markets. Case B is set in 2019 and focuses on how Mapletree achieved its second phase of growth. The key takeaway here is how the company organised itself internally to deliver growth. Discussion points in the case are around the elements of shared incentives, clearly aligned plans, and a team culture of successful execution. The case also elaborates on how Mapletree put together its new five-year plan with a clear and ambitious goal of doubling its assets under management (AUM), and then backed it up with specific geographic and product market initiatives.

Sonoma Raceway, located north of San Francisco, had a long history of hosting premier motor racing events. However, after decades of growth, fan attendance and viewership had started to decline in the 2010s. Fan demographics were changing, with younger fans looking for a different experience than traditional fans. These challenges confronted the entire motorsports industry. As 2020 began, Sonoma Raceway was in the midst of a major shift in its business strategy, impacting all aspects of its operations. The coronavirus pandemic forced the cancellation of all of the raceway's major events, putting additional stress on the raceway.

In the first quarter of 2019, A.T. Kearney Inc.'s managing partner had to find a strategy that would help the company move into the top tier of the world's management consultancy firms. The new leader was only the ninth managing partner in the firm's history, having succeeded the previous leader one year earlier. He was a member of the firm's board of directors and had previously led the company's global Communications, Media & Technology practice. He had also been named one of The Top 25 Consultants by Consulting magazine. After his appointment as managing director, he announced that A.T. Kearney Inc. would continue to be committed to helping its clients with their biggest and most important challenges. However, the firm faced a major challenge of its own: how to become a US$2 billion management consultancy titan as quickly as possible and compete against the industry's giants. A.T. Kearney Inc. had to determine what would be the best option for the future of the company.

AfreecaTV Co. Ltd. (AfreecaTV) was a pioneer in the business of live video streaming, as well as in using voluntary donations as a monetization strategy. In August 2020, AfreecaTV's co-chief executive officer (CEO) and its largest shareholder, was facing a strategic crossroads. After battling global live-streaming giant and Amazon subsidiary Twitch to a standstill in AfreecaTV's domestic Korean market, the co-CEO had to decide whether to pursue several risky strategic initiatives, including moving into foreign markets like the United States, further developing the company's video-on-demand service, expanding advertising on the platform, and generating new, proprietary content (e.g., the company's own K-pop group). He wondered which would be the best direction to take AfreecaTV in the coming years.

In the midst of intensifying public and political attention towards the market power of big technology, Epic Games in 2020 challenged the status quo that has existed for years in the Apple iOS and Google Android mobile application marketplaces and payment systems. Apple and Google removed Fortnite from their app stores after its developer Epic Games intentionally introduced an unauthorized payment system. Epic Games sued Apple and Google, alleging their monopolistic control over the distribution of apps and the unreasonable commission rate for in-app purchases. Epic rallied other application developers and its 350 million Fortnite users in its fight. The case begins with a brief history of Epic Games and some background on the antitrust issues around mobile platforms. Then, the case details the many actions taken by each side in the ensuing legal and public relations battle. The case provides context on future technologies, like cloud gaming, that will hinge on the issues already being fought over in 2020. The case challenges students to think about strategy for both the smaller complementor and the larger incumbent platform, and how to challenge and maintain market power respectively, in the context of looking forward to the future.

Suning Logistics, a retail logistics enterprise, was located in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China. As a subsidiary of Suning Holding Group (Suning), Suning Logistics represented the core competitiveness of Suning in occupying the leading position in China's retail landscape. Suning Logistics was registered as a company in 2012 but was a subsidiary of Suning before growing into Suning Logistics Group (Suning Logistics) in 2015. During the 30-year development process, Suning Logistics had repeatedly iterated and upgraded its logistics model to support the transformation from a physical retailer to online retailer. With the China's new retail wave, experiential shopping and digital consumption brought challenges to the logistics upgrade. To win competitive advantage, the general manager of Suning Logistics had to make a choice between two transformational directions: Should the company improve the logistics efficiency of multi-scenario retail? Or, should it explore the reverse supply chain with emerging technology?

High-speed rail (HSR) is a high-performance transportation technology that is time competitive with airplanes and automobiles, and is an environmentally preferable alternative due to its low carbon dioxide emissions. Brightline is a Florida HSR system in Phase II of its development and aims to connect West Palm Beach and Orlando. As construction continues, Brightline needs to determine to what extent it should target the leisure and business traveler segments when Phase II launches. Given a limited marketing budget and high upfront investment, it is critical for the company to gain ridership quickly and establish a foothold in relevant consumer segments. This decision is contingent on evaluating not only consumer characteristics and needs for each market segment, but also pricing strategies and potential incentives Brightline could offer.

Supplement to case W20831

Supplement to case W20831

Supplement to case W20831

Supplement to case W20831

Supplement to case W20831

The Maple Leaf Foods (MLF): Changing the System case explores how a major food processor pivoted its vision and operations in an attempt to become the world's most sustainable protein company. Instead of focusing solely on financial goals, the organization's new purpose clearly recognized MLF's potential impact on both society and the natural environment. In the anchor case, senior leaders considered the background and progress of this initiative. The supplemental cases (A to E) offer the perspectives of five stakeholders, each of whom is critical to the MLF initiative. Since an organization is part of an open system, these views allow a consideration of how the different parts of the system may experience, and impact, any change attempt.

On a cold Monday morning in January 2018, the founder and chief executive officer of dcs plus was sitting in a taxi on his way to catch a plane to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In Dubai, he would be visiting the Middle East subsidiary of his company, a Romanian technology start-up focused on business-critical enterprise software for the travel industry. The one-year-old subsidiary, which was responsible for marketing, sales, and customer support in the Middle East region, had experienced performance problems and managerial issues since the start, leading to major changes in the local management team. The Romanian company was planning to open two new subsidiaries in São Paulo, Brazil and in Singapore, so it was important to avoid similar problems to those incurred in Dubai. The founder was reflecting on the dcs plus approach to internationalization for the overall organization, as well as how to manage a subsidiary.

The case describes the champagne house Krug and their turnaround process. In the late '90s, the house had a troubling financial situation. After being acquired by the French conglomerate LVMH, and despite the efforts and investments, the house did not seem to recover and, by 2008, was once more suffering financial distress. In 2009, Margareth (Maggie) Henríquez arrived as CEO. Based on her previous turnaround expertise in larger firms, Krug seemed like a less challenging project. However, her first year at Krug, with continuous declining sales, proved that Krug's situation was more complicated than anticipated. The case allows a discussion of the real complexity in setting the strategic rationale of a turnaround. It describes the initial missteps and the search for guidance in the roots of the house, which brought Maggie on a journey of discovering the visionary approach of its founder, Joseph Krug. The case is rich in detail across all firm facets to allow a discussion on all the transformation measures taken and its rationale. It is well suited to a debate on strategy implementation. Likewise, it might also be appropriate to discuss the adjustment of the marketing policies for a turnaround. Lastly, the case emphasizes the role of Maggie as a transformational driving force - a woman from a different culture in a selective, and to a certain extent, conservative market. Her strategic approach and her decisive leadership in challenging traditional policies are also fundamental pillars of the transformation.

At the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, following reports of dozens coronavirus infections among its Sioux Falls, South Dakota, pork-processing employees Smithfield Foods, Inc., the nation's largest hog-processing company, closed the plant "until further notice. Less than one month later, the plant was sanitized and retrofitted to the best of its abilities and reopened. This emergency situation opened the door for Smithfield and other meat processing plants to reevaluate capital expenditures on plant automation and related employee protection investments. Since meat processing was usually a low-margin business, companies were wary of overspending on equipment-- but people were sick and some workers had died.

This case describes Visa Inc's (Visa) challenges in light of the growing influence of financial technology companies (fintech) in the payments space. In 2018, Visa had firmly established its leadership in the industry with its ubiquitous network of merchants, customers, and financial institutions in 200 countries. However, the rise of fintech over the past two decades had led to an explosion of new competitors and new methods of payment. While Visa found it easier to collaborate with the big tech (e.g. apple) and payment ecosystem (e.g. Paypal) companies in adopting new technologies and offering new payment solutions, it found it challenging to partner with emerging fintech's (e.g. TransferWise and Paytm) fast evolving business models. In less-mature markets, the emerging fintech's low go-to-market cost often bypassed the need for expensive physical payments infrastructure. And, in mature markets, new technologies leapfrogged the traditional card payment infrastructure by building direct connections with merchants and customers through alternate networks. How should Visa proceed vis-à-vis these start-ups that were seeking to redefine the payments industry? Should it preserve its legacy position by competing against these fintechs or should it seek collaborations with them to avail of mutually beneficial market opportunities? Or should it take the lead as a facilitator, actively invest in the start-ups, partner with them, and drive innovation in the payments industry?

This case describes the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by the Walt Disney Company and the subsequent launch by Disney of three streaming channels to compete with Netflix.

The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) was founded in 2010 to develop a common set of sustainability standards for the apparel, footwear, and home textile industries. The organization was an example of pre-competitive collaboration, a strategy in which companies within an industry band together to tackle shared challenges. The SAC created the Higg Index to help companies, organizations, and consumers better evaluate and track value chain and product sustainability performance for both environmental and social issues. By providing visibility and transparency across apparel industry value chains, the tool allowed companies to benchmark their performance with peers and identify areas for improvement. However, companies using the Higg Index were not allowed to publicly publish their Higg ratings before a fully developed third-party verification program was established, delaying the very transparency that the tool intended to promote and opening the SAC up to criticism. The case opens with Sean Cady, the newly appointed chairman of the SAC board of directors, pondering how to respond to requests for greater Higg Index transparency from Human Rights Watch, a non-governmental organization.