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In 2018, ITC Hotels, a chain of luxury hotels based in India, achieved a distinct positioning with its branding, "ITC Hotels: Responsible Luxury." The company intended to communicate its image of being environmentally sustainable, responsible to the local communities and society, and responsible for the safety and comfort of guests and employees. This strategy shaped many of its operational decisions and processes. However, the executive director of ITC Hotels, felt cautiously optimistic about its positioning in the market. Could ITC Hotels succeed in balancing responsibility with luxury? Could this business strategy and positioning counter the intensifying competitive threats from India's other major luxury hotel chains?

In February 2020, Apple Inc. (Apple) was fighting litigation by one of the oldest patent troll firms (a non-practicing entity) in the United States, VirnetX Holding Corporation (VirnetX). VirnetX targeted innovative and cash rich firms and had begun to use specific US locations with patent troll-friendly courts as major hubs for filing litigation. For targets such as Apple, this meant resources intended for innovation were wasted in fighting legal battles. In collaboration with its competitors, Apple took several initiatives, including pre-emptive litigation and appeals to both the US and the European Union governments to improve patent laws and prevent patent trolling. How could Apple's chief executive officer encourage innovation at Apple amid patent trolling issues? What strategies should he take to fight against non-practicing entities?

Between 2015 and 2018, competitors in China's two-wheel e-vehicle industry were embroiled in a price war. Yadea Group Holdings decided to differentiate its brand from competitors and move away from further price reductions, opting instead to raise prices and adopt a distinctive high-end product strategy. It planned to offer its products to Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in China, and to expand into the international market. With upgraded product and service offerings, the company was becoming a market leader in China's two-wheel e-vehicle industry. However, its founder was well aware that competitors would soon imitate the company's high-end product strategy and could potentially overtake its market position. In the current Internet-based business environment, new sales and rental models were constantly emerging, which meant Yadea Group Holdings risked losing market share to both domestic competitors and international investors. Therefore, the founder decided that the company needed to choose between two potential five-year plan options for the future: take advantage of the existing market or take the lead in a new high-end market.

The General Electric Company's (GE's) iconic Appliances division enjoyed a significant role at the company throughout the 20th century, representing one of the most recognized engines of the GE brand. By the 21st century, GE had changed its focus to technology and infrastructure businesses, and GE Appliances' contribution represented less than 5% of GE's revenue and profit. This case examines GE Appliances' journey through a failed sale/spin process into a decision to invest in new products, renovated factories, and people to run the business better. The focus is the unavoidable interconnection of business strategy and organizational capability, and the three teaching notes included with the case offer exploration from business strategy, new product introduction (NPI), and industrial engineering and supply chain management perspectives. Discussion points also include optimization, making versus buying, human resources, change management, and workforce development.

This technical note discusses competitive dynamics: the various and evolving actions and reactions of two firms engaged in a rivalrous relationship. By allowing us to analyze interactions at this dyadic level, the competitive dynamics perspective provides valuable insights into a firm's behavior in a variety of competitive situations and contexts.

The case tracks the rapid evolution of Yes Bank from a new private sector bank in 2003, to being regarded as a highly successful mid-size bank a decade later, to finally going through significant governance challenges that eventually led to burgeoning non-performing assets (NPAs) and a potential collapse necessitating a rescue by the government. It also briefly discusses the details of the bailout plan to rescue the bank. The case is useful for a discussion on the choices made by the founder of the bank over the years which led to phenomenal growth but may have also led to its eventual collapse. This allows for a discussion on the role of various corporate governance mechanisms that operate in an organization (such as the board of directors, legal rights of shareholders, auditors, external observers, and regulators), and the extent to which each mechanism can satisfy the commonly expected governance objectives. The case also presents an opportunity to debate the justifications for a regulator, especially when they potentially limit the rights of shareholders in an organization.

As a global leader in healthcare technology, Philips had an important role to play in the COVID-19 pandemic. The surge in demand for life-saving medical equipment by hospitals around the world presented high-stakes opportunities for the company. At the same time however, national governments in most countries were compelled to implement safety measures that greatly affected commercial activity. The production and flow of physical goods were heavily impacted, leading to widespread disruption of global supply chains, which pulled a great deal of media focus on the topic of supply chains generally. The lockdown in China alone caused a global supply shock that many companies were ill-prepared for. Philips' Healthcare business units, particularly in diagnostics and respiratory equipment, faced critical supply challenges during the Corona crisis which garnered media attention both at home and abroad. In order to capitalize on the high demand for medical equipment, CEO Frans van Houten knew that Philips needed to overcome several hurdles to produce and deliver enough inventory to meet that demand. Furthermore, subsequent pandemic waves and other forms of crises could well cause future supply chain disruptions of the same scale and severity within the healthcare sector and beyond. Aware of the many challenges ahead, van Houten had to decide whether to revise the company's global sourcing strategy to future-proof it in a post-COVID-19 world - and, if so, how.

In late 2017, the founder of Maple Tree Cancer Alliance faced a new challenge. In 2011, she had launched the non-profit organization to improve the quality of life for cancer patients by providing them with individualized exercise training programs, nutritional guidance, and emotional support during and after cancer treatment. In six years, the organization had expanded to 10 locations in Ohio and Pennsylvania; however, the founder wanted to strategically extend the organization throughout the United States, crossing the geographical and administrative boundaries of the healthcare system. One of her biggest challenges was to identify a growth model to stay sustainable. How could she position the organization for further growth?

As the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, Huawei has been building telecommunications networks and services since its inception in 1987. Leveraging its close relationship with other telecommunications service providers, Huawei entered the consumer mobile devices market, supplying mobile phones and other white-label products for telecom service providers in the mid-2000s. In 2010, Huawei also began designing, manufacturing, and selling the first smartphones under its own brand, targeting middle-to-high-end consumer segments. By 2015, Huawei ranked first in China and third in the world in the smartphone market. By the first quarter of 2020, Huawei also became the largest smartphone vendor of the world, overtaking the title from Samsung for the first time. This case study explores the strategies that have resulted in Huawei's fast to rise to the top in the consumer business even as many of its competitors scaled back their footprint. In parallel, however, this remarkable success has been tinged with the challenges and headwinds faced by its telecom equipment business. In recent years, the company has been subject to increasing sanctions led by the US government related to some of its 5G telecom equipment business practices. In May 2020, the Trump Administration announced a new direct product rule (DPR) that effectively blocks Huawei's access to advanced semiconductors for all its products. Sanctions of this magnitude have put the company into crisis mode and has caused a rethinking of its supply and value chain strategies. This case highlights some lessons for Chinese companies as they attempt to globalize their brands and operations in a world that still perceives them as a threat. The case also highlights the need to evaluate supply and value chain risks from the strategic standpoint and not just an operational view.

In February 2020, an entrepreneur and his team in China created a mobile application called Tong Cheng Lian Kang (TCLK), which crowdsourced information on publicly known cases of COVID-19, enabling users to find out if they might have been exposed to an infected individual. The application leveraged blockchain technology to record and validate user submissions of COVID-19 cases to ensure that submission and validation data were immutable, transparent, and decentralized. Users could volunteer to submit publicly recorded cases of COVID-19 or to validate the submissions of others in exchange for digital tokens on the blockchain platform, which they could use to redeem small gifts. As the number of new COVID-19 cases decreased, the entrepreneur wondered how to expand the blockchain concept to build a more sustainable business model. He was considering three options: expanding internationally, which would require building trust with users who lacked familiarity with Chinese applications; diversifying within the healthcare industry by expanding to a business-to-business model, possibly by linking prospective patients to hospitals and health care; and applying the blockchain concept to address issues in industries outside of healthcare. How could he best ensure the sustainability of TCLK?

Hitachi must decide whether to make a British executive, who has successfully built its European rail business from scratch, head of its global rail division even though the bulk of revenues for the unit still come from Japan. The case describes the history of Hitachi Rail as the provider of trains for the Japanese Shinkansen and its struggles to build a European business with expatriates before the success of an outside hire, Alistair Dormer, in winning major contracts in the UK. By 2014, Hitachi is wondering whether to make Dormer CEO of the global rail business in order to further globalise the unit. Will an outsider and a foreigner be the correct choice for a Japanese company? How can the values of the Japanese company be preserved as it globalises? What changes are necessary to further globalise the business?

This supplement describes the strategy and organisation changes made by British executive, Alistair Dormer, after he is made head of Hitachi Rail's global business. The company acquires an Italian company, continues to win contracts in the UK, but struggles to bring its greenfield manufacturing facility up to speed as knowledge transfer from Japan proves difficult. Dormer creates a new global organisation structure with executives based in different geographies and tries to maintain the traditional Hitachi values in the new organisation.

This case analyzes the University of Michigan (U-M) Endowment Fund's capability and potential responsibility to divest from fossil fuels. Similar educational institutions, such as the University of California system, had cut fossil fuels from their portfolios, posing the question of whether U-M President Mark Schlissel would be able to do the same amid the university's stakeholder pressures. The university endowment managed $12.4 billion through 235 investment managers operating independently. A central question in the case is whether agents of a public university can shift to make more socially responsible investments while still delivering the desired revenue. President Schlissel had committed to carbon neutrality, but the university was still far from achieving the goal.

The case describes Dangote Cement's history, growth and business model. Dangote Cement is the main subsidiary of Dangote Group, a leading African multinational and the country's largest conglomerate. Starting as a trading firm, the group has branched out into several sectors (e.g., cement, sugar, flour, salt, FMG, agriculture, oil & gas, transport, etc) and Aliko Dangote, the Group's founder, has become Africa's wealthiest person and leading industrialist. Dangote Cement's strategy involves a unique set of choices along the value chain in order to deliver a distinctive value proposition across several African markets. The company has become a top 10 global Cement company and the leading cement manufacturer in Africa through a highly integrated business model that responds to the particular challenges and opportunities present in the developing African continent. Currently, the Group is investing heavily across different sectors (e.g., agriculture, fertilizer/chemicals, oil & gas, etc) and taking advantage of the multiple opportunities in the market. It is also consolidating its leading position in the African Cement industry, by entering new markets every year with a disruptive force. However, as Dangote Group grows far and wide, as the African market develops and as competition for local and foreign players heats up, should the Group change the strategy that has worked so well?

By the end of 2019 the adidas Group was solidly the world's second largest multinational in the sportswear manufacturing industry. Following the successful implementation of a digital transformation initiated in 2015, the company enjoyed years of sustained growth and high profitability in the 2016-2019 period, strengthening its brand desirability and increasing sales volumes, especially in the online space. It ended fiscal year 2019 stronger than ever and its chief executive officer (CEO), Kasper Rørsted, was very optimistic about what the future would hold. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 radically changed the business landscape. adidas was severely hit by the lockdowns imposed by governments. The new measures of social distancing were expected to have a lasting impact on consumer habits and consequently on the operations of companies such as adidas. Thus, unimaginable only few months before, the company's first earnings call of 2020 led by Rørsted focused on the negative results obtained in the preceding few months and the high degree of uncertainty looking forward. Aware of the many challenges facing the company, Rørsted had to decide which strategic initiatives he should prioritize to future-proof the company and keep it on a steady growth trajectory in a post-COVID-19 world.

After nearly five years in operation, Doctor Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Corporation (Minerva), was reflecting on the company's next steps. In a few short years, she and her small team had managed to develop a nanoparticle process for testing new drugs that was orders of magnitude faster than traditional approaches. Using this process, they had discovered the mechanism that caused 96% of all breast cancers and identified families of small molecule therapeutics that were effective in blocking this mechanism in live cells in the laboratory. Moreover, Bamdad did not think it would be long before the company could offer an early warning diagnostic for breast cancer, which would allow less invasive treatment of the condition. The company had filed several families of patent applications in support of these claims, but the challenge was funding. To date, Bamdad had relied on Federal Government grants and angel investors to fund the research, but the next steps would require much larger investment. Should Minerva seek to commercialize its drug development technology to help fund the riskier steps of drug development? Should it focus on a diagnostic which would make current treatments more effective? Should it license its small molecule therapeutics to one of the many well-funded companies seeking cures for cancer? Or should Bamdad raise capital to support tests in mice in order to reach the Federal Drug Administration IND (Investigational New Drug) application stage of drug discovery? This would allow clinical trials in humans, which would require more capital, but an IND would increase the value of Minerva's intellectual capital substantially. What should Bamdad do?

In 2010, amid a flurry of new discoveries, Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Corporation (Minerva), raised $6.6 million to test her new cancer drugs in mice. It had been more than 6 years since she had announced that she and her small team at Minerva had identified the mechanism that caused 96% of all breast cancers and had discovered a number of small molecule drugs and antibodies to block it. Funding the next stage of development had proven very difficult, but, undeterred, Bamdad had raised enough to keep her laboratory open and continue her research work. In the process, she made the startling discovery that the "cancer" mechanism she had discovered was an integral part of the production of all human embryonic stem cells, and that cancer was a result of this mechanism going awry. As a result, Minerva developed the ability to produce high-quality stem cells, which opened up a whole range of new commercial opportunities for the company, including advanced therapeutics and processes for growing and replacing human cells of all types. However, resources were limited. Where should she focus her efforts?

In March 2020, Dr. Cynthia Bamdad, founder and CEO of Minerva Biotechnologies Inc. (Minerva), was reviewing the first results of human clinical trials for the company's novel CAR-T drug therapeutic, one of the first ever to target solid cancer tumors. The results looked promising. CAR-T therapeutics were a new field attracting a lot of scientific interest. They involved genetically re-engineering a patient's T-cells, a key element of the human immune system, to attack the cancer. The first CAR-T treatments for cancer were developed for the relatively small field of blood cancers, 7% of all cancers. For instance, early pioneer Kite Pharma Inc. (Kite) developed a treatment for a special type of lymphoma that only affected 7,500 patients a year. Still, the financial interest was huge, and Kite was acquired by Gilead Sciences Inc. in August 2017 for $11.9 billion. Similarly, Juno Therapeutics Inc. was acquired by Celgene Corporation for $9 billion in January 2018. Minerva's therapeutics targeted 96% of all breast cancers and 46% of prostate cancers, a market that was orders of magnitude larger. After 21 years, Bamdad believed that Minerva was on the threshold of something really big. Should Bamdad sell the business and work within a larger organization? Or should she IPO and continue to develop the company's long-term pipeline of therapeutics and diagnostics?

In June 2020, GreenFire Energy Inc. (GreenFire) presented its report to the California Energy Commission indicating that its proof of concept project to demonstrate its new geothermal electricity generation technology, ECO2Gâ„¢, had been a success. While conventional geothermal electricity only supplied 0.5% of US demand, the new technology promised to increase this to 25% by drilling much deeper. Moreover, it was a closed-loop system which didn't involve fracking like conventional geothermal and promised to be much more cost effective. Unlike other renewables, ECO2G could also provide baseload power 24 hours a day and be adjusted quickly to match demand. CEO Joseph Scherer likened it to the beginning of the oil rush. "When the oil industry first started, prospectors focused on places where oil was seeping out of the ground. Now, they drill for it in deep oceans. Same with geothermal, but geothermal is much easier to find, and there is a lot more of it!" Now Scherer and John Muir, brother of founder Mark Muir, had to choose how they would commercialize the technology. They had many choices.

As businesses navigate the reopening of the economy during a global pandemic, a lot will be different. Many executives have expressed a desire to 'do the right thing'. But what is the right thing? The authors argue that the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals can serve as guidelines. The 17 'SDGs' range from affordable and clean energy to climate action to partnerships to achieve the goals. One thing is certain, they say: Leading a company after COVID will require dealing sensitively with the pain, loss and financial consequences of the pandemic for stakeholders across the board.