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The events in this case, which are fictional, provide a background for class discussion about problem-solving, critical thinking, stakeholder management and crisis management. The case puts students in the position of senior managers of an Indonesian geothermal energy company. Following an earthquake near the company's main geothermal power plant (there is some suspicion that it may have been caused by the geothermal power plant), the managers are asked to devise strategies and solutions to a series of problems to satisfy various stakeholder groups. With the CEO temporarily trapped in a lift, they must come up with recommendations to handle the crisis by the time their leader arrives.

In the year 2000, only 2% of women in India used menstrual hygiene products. Almost a quarter-billion relied on cloth rags and many rural women were banished to a hut during their monthly cycle. In these unsanitary conditions, 62.4% had experienced at least one reproductive tract infection, with the result that teenage hysterectomies were not uncommon. The lack of menstrual products was linked to a high drop-out rate from school, forced teenage marriage, teenage pregnancy, illiteracy and often a lifetime of subservience. Yet despite the severity of the problem, taboo kept it largely hidden. Indians did not discuss menstruation. Arunachalam "Arun" Muruganantham changed this by innovating a new business method: micro-factories where women produced and sold sanitary napkins directly to other women. The case discusses how he solved a previously unaddressed problem in a way that created a new market, overcame deep social taboos, challenged centuries-old traditions and bettered women's lives, resulting in the creation of over 3,500 small businesses. It highlights how enterprises can be economically profitable and a force for good. And why, contrary to conventional thinking, innovation does not need to be disruptive but can be based on nondisruptive market creation.

In June 2018, the wedding dress industry in Suzhou, China, was confronted with "the harshest clampdown," which required all unqualified wedding dress factories to move out within one week. The initiative from the local government had been expected, although its speed and force were surprising to the founder and chief executive officer of Suzhou Beibao E-Commerce Co. Ltd. (Babyonline). Established in 2012 and engaged in cross-border e-commerce of wedding dresses, Babyonline was unlikely to be affected by the clampdown. However, changes across the wedding dress industry as a result of the initiative had started the founder thinking about issues in the management of his company. At the end of 2015, Babyonline had moved to a make-to-stock system, which lowered costs but seemed to have raised inventory issues. Particularly in recent times, selective selling by some sales representatives had led to structural inventory problems. The founder wondered how he should resolve the inventory issue.

A social entrepreneur running a business in Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, South Africa, made and distributed healthy bread-based products for consumers in a poor community through his social enterprise, the Spinach King. His aim was to improve consumers' eating habits and help them improve their health. In early 2014, after facing and overcoming many difficulties related to starting this social enterprise start-up in a resource-constrained context, this entrepreneur had a successful business. The business model had evolved over time, and while it was still small in scale, the owner was convinced that it was ready to scale. He needed to determine what business model would be most appropriate going forward and how he could implement it.

MoviePass provided a subscription-based service that allowed its users to see films in theatres for a monthly fee. The company rose to stardom between 2016 and 2017, but in mid-2018, it suffered crushing financial losses when operating costs increased and ancillary revenues were too slow to materialize. The company's subscription base shrank sharply following the introduction of restrictions on its service and an announcement of a price increase. Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. (H&M), MoviePass's parent company, would be de-listed if its stock price remained below the threshold stipulated by the NASDAQ Composite Index (i.e., US$1 per share). The chief executive officer of MoviePass and its management team had to keep the company afloat while trying to regain MoviePass's lost momentum. How could they revitalize the once-promising upstart and prevent H&M from being de-listed?

In 1993, when the Chinese economy was in a major recession, Beijing's Greatwall Enterprise Institute was founded by six consultants. The company eventually found its niche providing strategic and operational consulting to the governmental agencies (administrative committees) that managed science and technology parks. These agencies had witnessed explosive growth in China since the early 1990s. In 2019, with more than 350 consultants, headquarters in Beijing, 12 branch offices throughout China, and an annual revenue greater than ¥200 million (US$30 million), Greatwall Enterprise Institute faced new threats and opportunities: its success with so many government administrative committees meant that there was little room for it to grow in this area. The company wondered if it should expand to other local governments and their agencies in China. Or would business firm clients and the international market offer new opportunities?

Many companies study the management strategies of others, adapting and learning from the experiences of large multinationals. But global corporations also need strategies that are capable of adapting to changing markets and profitability. Is it possible for these corporations to develop new and powerful insights from smaller firms? The Toyota Motor Corporation's philosophy and business strategy, known as the "The Toyota Way" is globally recognized as an industry leader, and its managerial values and business methods are regarded as benchmark practices, guiding the processes and strategies of organizations worldwide, e.g., Toyota's Kanban method, of inventory control which facilitates just-in-time manufacturing, is seen as the optimal approach to inventory control. Founded in Japan in 1937, the company grew rapidly. But a series of issues, resulting in a drop in vehicle sales and profitability left Toyota's president, Akio Toyoda, considering how the company could find a more sustainable way of growing and how to incorporate this new philosophy into its existing business model. Toyoda is now a strong advocate for an alternative philosophy known as the "Nenrin or tree ring" strategy. He credits a small company, Ina Food, which makes agar, a traditional ingredient in Japanese food, as the source of Toyota's ongoing success. Finding inspiration in Ina Food's 55 years of sustainable growth and profit, Toyoda now follows many of its key initiatives. The corporate giant has become one of the largest corporations globally, while still promoting the virtues of slow and steady growth on an ongoing basis.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 720378.

GLAMI was launched in October 2013 in the Czech Republic as a fashion search engine with a focus on providing consumers with an accessible platform. It operated a neatly organized online fashion catalogue that consisted of combined products from fashion e-shops that functioned throughout various countries. Through its five years of existence, GLAMI had expanded throughout Europe and Asia. Fashion retailers and e-shops partnered with GLAMI as free or priority members, and had their items placed throughout GLAMI's website. The company's business model functioned through a cost-per-click (CPC) model, where GLAMI would charge priority members according to how much they were willing to pay per click. In August 2018, due to its success and the increasing size of the fashion industry and the online retail space, GLAMI was looking to expand beyond its current boundaries to a high-growth area-Latin America. However, considering the vast differences among Latin American countries, GLAMI was finding it difficult to narrow down the list of countries in which to explore international expansion.

WittyFeed, an emerging digital content and technology company, was launched in September 2014 by three friends in the small Indian town of Indore. Within four years, the company had become one of the world's largest creators and distributors of content that was followed and circulated online. In the process of scaling up and becoming larger, WittyFeed's founders faced many challenges in areas like technology, distribution, and talent. These internal and external market issues interacted in a constantly changing environment. In January 2018, the founders were in the process of finding strategic solutions that would help their company double its existing number of monthly impressions to achieve 1 billion touchpoints, while becoming independent of its dominant revenue source, Facebook. What strategies could the founders deploy to reach this target?

In 2015, a Shanghai businessman contacted the director of ObiSoft, an American software company, to request becoming the company's partner in China. Over the next two years, they proceeded to develop the partnership and grow ObiSoft's business in China. The Shanghai businessman became ObiSoft's partner and master reseller in China. In 2018, the Shanghai businessman proposed moving the company's research and development on software to China, and ObiSoft scheduled an August 2018 board meeting to discuss this issue. What should ObiSoft's board decide regarding the company's software development and future in China?

Student spreadsheet to case W19644

The case describes how Lemonade, a notable insurance technology (insurtech) startup, created and developed a novel business model with social impact. The case also explains how entrepreneurs leverage their experience, creativity, and more importantly, knowledge from behavioral science to tackle challenges in a century-old industry. For undergraduate or master's students, the instructor can stimulate discussion on how to develop creative business ideas and how to improve the robustness of a novel business with scientific knowledge, especially social sciences such as social psychology. Another fascinating aspect of this case is that Lemonade organically integrates social impact into its core business model without engaging in public relations-like campaigns. For a deeper discussion, the instructor can introduce a few fundamentally debated topics in business schools. For example, can a business be scientifically guided? Simply put: is running a business art or science?

This case, which has been taught successfully in a Darden online class, allows for an introductory application of the Tableau analytics platform. In 2012, Carvana Co., an e-commerce platform for buying used cars, hosted a competition called "Don't Get Kicked!" wherein 570 teams competed to predict if a car purchased at auction was a "kick" (i.e., a bad buy)-a vehicle with a major defect. To compete, teams downloaded Carvana's data from Kaggle's website. At the time of the competition, data science was a burgeoning field, and industry watchers wondered if machine learning could help a company such as Carvana develop a competitive advantage. This case analyzes the US used-car market, Carvana's history and Kaggle's role in its development, and the viability of data science-particularly visual analytics-in guiding business and consumer decisions.

This case continues the story of Dr. Robert Pearl, who had guided the Permanente Group of Northern California through challenging years in the health care industry. While Kaiser Permanente had a long history and well-established reputation on the West Coast, creating a profitable health care system in the mid-Atlantic region proved difficult for a number of reasons. For one, Kaiser Permanente had not made a mindful transfer of the history, culture, and mission from Northern California to the operations of its Kaiser Permanente Mid-Atlantic States. And market dynamics were different on the East Coast, making it difficult for Kaiser Permanente to compete on its core strength: care delivery. To address these problems, Dr. Pearl dispatched seasoned physician leaders from Northern California, assigning them help transform the mid-Atlantic operations. He focused on a strategic and operational plan to provide 15 to 20 percent better quality and service and 10 percent lower price compared to the competition, and on recruiting dedicated primary care physicians willing to be more flexible about their scheduling and the specific hours they worked.

TikTok was a short-video sharing app based in China. On November 9, 2017, TikTok's parent company, the Chinese tech company Beijing ByteDance Technology Co. (ByteDance), announced a strategic acquisition of Musical.ly, a popular short-video sharing app based in the United States. With more than 100 million users and similar features to TikTok, Musical.ly was a powerful competitor for TikTok's international expansion into the North American markets. For ByteDance and TikTok, the closing of the Musical.ly acquisition in August 2018 was not the end goal, as it would create another new challenge. Would it be better to keep Musical.ly as a separate platform, as Musical.ly had achieved a good reputation and millions of users in the United States? Or should Musical.ly be replaced to create a global app under the TikTok brand, which was relatively new to the US market?

In 2019, TripAdvisor was one of the best known online travel brands and for nearly 20 years founder and CEO Steve Kaufer had steered TripAdvisor to growth and profitability, but recently the company's pace of growth had started to slow. Most of the company's revenue was generated by users clicking from its site to hotel booking sites. TripAdvisor relied on Google for both free and paid traffic. As Google began to build up and promote its own travel search services, the company sought to diversify by offering bookings for vacation rentals, restaurants and experiences. In addition, Kaufer created a new team called Core Experience (CoreX) to coordinate TripAdvisor's branding and create a coherent product strategy across its business units. Could Kaufer and his executive team turn TripAdvisor's overcome the Google threat and reinvigorate growth?

The case is set in September 2019 and the protagonist is Tim Cook, the CEO at Apple, Inc. In 2019, Apple had revenues of $260 billion; yet, net revenues were down by 7 percent over the same period. Much of the decline in Apple's revenues is a result of decreased sales of the iPhone, which contributed 62 (!) percent of Apple's total revenues in 2018, and declined to 54 percent in 2019. The case highlights the problems Tim Cook faces as demand of the iPhone slows, and Apple has failed to introduce any major new product since the iconic iPhone was launched in 2007. Trade tensions between the United States and China, moreover, are also negatively impacting the company. Over the past few years, the Chinese market accounted for 25 percent of Apple's total revenues. Apple is exposed to the trade tensions in two ways in particular. Moreover, the threatened imposition of tariffs on Chinese goods by the United States would further hurt Apple by raising the effective cost of Apple products in the United States because almost all of their manufacturing is done in China by Foxconn. Finally, Apple recently entered the video-streaming market, with its Apple TV+ service, which will develop original programming as well as act as a pipeline for other channels. This is a crowded market with strong existing players such as Netflix, Hulu (controlled by Disney), and AT&T's HBO. Other notable new entrants into the content streaming market include Disney+.

Recently booming academic interest in digital transformation aims to provide continuous support to managers in dealing with this important issue. However, as with all new fields, the scholarly literature is characterized by increased variability and diversity of topics covered, constructs used and relationships between them, resulting in an unclear and blurry understanding of the whole of digital transformation. Our article closes this gap by identifying distinctive digital transformation strategies in terms of two critical dimensions: usage of digital technologies and readiness of a business model for digital operation. The result is a typology of four generic digital transformation strategies that essentially differ in the primary motivation and target of transformation, leadership style, importance of skills like creativity and entrepreneurial spirit among employees, risks and challenges faced in the process, consequences of potential failure and available tactics for improvement. By providing heuristics and a systematic basis for comparison of different strategies, it is our belief that the proposed framework will be useful to researchers and managers responsible for and interested in digital transformation.

In mid-2019, a year after German conglomerate Bayer Group closed its acquisition of U.S.-based seeds giant Monsanto, the leadership of Bayer's Crop Science division (which absorbed Monsanto) is reflecting on the opportunities ahead. Some observers have questioned Bayer's decision to buy Monsanto, citing potential reputational and financial liabilities; in the last year, Bayer's stock price has suffered. However, the leadership team expects the combination of Monsanto's and Bayer Crop Science's seed, crop protection, and digital agriculture technologies and expertise to deliver huge value to farmers and shareholders. A key focus is The Climate Corporation, Monsanto's (and now Bayer's) digital agriculture unit, which collects data from farmer-customers' operations and uses it to provide tailored farming advice and to inform internal research and development. Bayer Crop Science is digitizing its entire R&D operation in order to fast-track innovation, with the goal of producing the game-changing products needed to feed the growing global population while protecting the environment. The Bayer team aspires to lead the digital transformation of agriculture. Is this achievable, and is Bayer the right firm to lead it? Will farmer distrust, competition, merger-related challenges, or other hurdles prove insurmountable?