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In December 2020, Mary Kay Inc. Chief Marketing Officer Sheryl Adkins-Green considered several strategic dilemmas. Founded in 1963 by Mary Kay Ash, Mary Kay was a direct sales company whose Independent Beauty Consultants purchased its beauty and cosmetics products at wholesale and sold them to end-consumers at retail. As the coronavirus pandemic spread in 2020, Mary Kay worked to equip its Consultants with digital tools and strategies to help them run their businesses remotely. Adkins-Green and the Mary Kay team were now looking for ways to continue refining the company's digital approach and product sampling strategy. Looking beyond COVID-19, Adkins-Green and her team had several other big questions to consider around product innovation, the competitive landscape, navigating the digital world and its implications for retail, and communicating its brand values to the next generation-all while honoring and staying true to the rich history, heritage, and culture that had served as the foundation of Mary Kay for the past 57 years.

The case is about a decision problem facing a young analyst on identifying the relative mispricing in bonds issued by RCom in Indian Rupees (INR) and US Dollars (USD) and its stock price. As RCom's debt troubles had increased over time, with lawsuits filed by some of its largest lenders, its stock price and credit rating had been falling consistently. On the other hand, the yields on its INR bonds had hardly moved in the meantime. After giving a brief background on RCom's difficulties in establishing itself as one of the largest telecommunications operators in India, the case describes the behaviour of yields on RCom's INR and USD bonds over time. It provides additional relevant financial information about RCom, including its stock price, credit rating and balance sheet variables.

In November 2018, Sarah Robb O'Hagan is reeling from an unceremonious exit as CEO of Flywheel, a chain of indoor cycling studios. In the past, Robb O'Hagan had led transformational change across companies throughout the sports and fitness industry, including as President at Gatorade and Equinox. As a highly passionate fitness enthusiast, stepping into the CEO role at Flywheel felt like the pinnacle of her career, one that she would be extremely passionate about. But somewhere along the way, something went wrong, though Robb O'Hagan couldn't quite put her finger on it. Her tough experience left her questioning: She was 20 years into her career, had seemingly reached the pinnacle-only to find that this isn't what she wanted. Thinking about the next 20 years of her career was dizzying, and her ideal dream job wasn't revealing herself. What should Robb O'Hagan be looking for? What should the next step in her career and life look like?

The case describes the development of artificial intelligence (AI) enabled recruitment automation software Talkpush and how it leveraged the technology of open application programming interface (API) to address changes in consumer's communication preferences, and create a software as a service (SaaS) business. In 2021, Talkpush was handling 12 million hiring conversations per annum, forming one of the largest conversational databases in recruitment. It applied speech recognition to convert audio to text, and recognized over 45,000 "intents" through natural language processing (NLP). Recognizing the vast amount of data-voice, text, and images-that could be mined for business insights or used as training data for machine learning, Talkpush's founder Max Ambruster was eager to look for a strategy to extract value from the company's growing data assets.

This case explains how a researcher, Javier Marcipar, became an entrepreneur by developing a business idea on the outcome of a research project and founded BuildAir, a company of inflatable structures. However, after 7 years of selling magnificent structure to clients of the event sector, BuildAir was still not economically viable. So, Marcipar needed to look for a way to make his startup profitable. Initially, the case focuses on analyzing different alternatives for making BuildAir's business in the event sector viable. Afterwards, the case centers the attention on analyzing the opportunity of selling inflatable hangars in the aeronautical sector and on the development of a suitable business model to make this new business viable. Furthermore, the case delves into the future growth options of BuildAir.

This case describes the growth of the Asian ports industry between 2015 and 2020 and the impact of escalating US-China trade tensions and rising Chinese direct investments on regional port competition. Throughout the 2000s, the volume of Asian shipping steadily increased on the back of an expanding Chinese economy. The case focuses on how the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and new Chinese-funded mega-ports like the Malacca Gateway Port would affect the competitive dynamic between the Port of Singapore (PSA) and regional competitors such as Malaysia's Port of Tanjung Pelepas (PTP). The PSA has been the dominant transshipment hub in the region but has been ceding market share and has lost its position as the busiest port in the world to the Port of Shanghai. In planning for the future, the PSA has to work within Singapore's diplomatic framework of balancing Eastern and Western interests on the geopolitical chessboard of the South China Sea region. The case provides an example of how national interests and international relations have to be considered when making business decisions.

In May 2019, a retail investor in the Philippines had to decide whether or not to immediately sell his shares in Holcim Philippines, Inc (HPI). The San Miguel Corporation had just announced the acquisition of around 86 per cent controlling interest in HPI. The price of HPI had increased considerably in the months leading up to the acquisition announcement, and this investor was anticipating a large gain. Now, he needed to run a fair value estimate of HPI's price using both the capital-asset-pricing-model-based discounted cash flow method and the comparable multiples method in order to decide what to do: Should he sell his shares at the prevailing market price, wait until the future potential tender offer, or hold his shares indefinitely?

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.

In February 2020, companies around the world contemplated their next moves as the pandemic news grew more grim each day. For Savannah Informatics, one of the first information services firms in Africa's health care sector, the uncertainties and immediate supply chain challenges prompted nimble moves to make sure the technology continued to perform, but also served as a call to innovate further, and add new digital offerings. This case study addresses the challenges of new product development in the health care sector, and the complexities of meeting the needs of medical providers, insurance companies, and individual customers. How would the company prioritize its next moves, and expand its technology platform? How could Savannah use its existing data on health care spending in Kenya to map out new products, including health information, telehealth and prescription services, and disease care management? And how could it distinguish its services from new competitors who also saw new demands for innovative health care solutions arising as the COVID-19 pandemic continued.

Cataracts robbed an estimated 65 million people around the world of their vision. In the Himalayas, where hundreds of thousands of people went needlessly blind from cataracts, doctors Sanduk Ruit and Fred Hollows began to tackle this health crisis in 1995 with the Himalayan Cataract Project, believing they could adopt new techniques and lens technology to scale high-quality, high-volume, and low-cost cataract operations in remote communities. This case study details the development of the Tilganga Institute of Ophthalmology (TIO) in Kathmandu, Nepal, including efforts to establish cost-effective cataract treatment centers and ophthalmic education programs to train current eye care technicians and specialists, as well as the next generation of eye care leaders. Students will also understand the time-driven activity-based costing analysis process, as TIO needed to calculate resource needs as the institute expanded services into rural areas, where eyecare needs were high but patient resources were limited. What would this analysis reveal about ways to ensure safe, effective cataract surgery in other low-income countries-and were there also takeaways that might inform cataract surgery practices in the United States and other high-income countries?

In 2020, just after closing a $34 million Series B financing round, Dave Salvant and Songe LaRon consider how to adjust their business, Squire Technologies, to the new realities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their barbershop technology, including tools to run a shop and a mobile app for customers was growing swiftly, but with nearly all barbershops shut down to prevent the spread of the disease and no revenue coming in, should they cut back, or take the opportunity to build up?

Fynd is a fast-growing venture that in 7 years since its founding has become India's largest omnichannel retail company with real-time access to over 9,000 stores' offline inventory. It started as a B2B business supporting retailers who didn't have an online business, but pivoted to a B2C platform that allowed customers to shop directly from nearby retail stores through its website and app. Over time, Fynd continued with its B2C platform, scaled up its organization, and added new B2B platforms. But funding this was difficult, with investors raising questions about the business model and growth. In its next phase of growth it sought and failed to receive funding from venture capitalists. In 2018, the founders took a strategic investment from Google. But the subsequent departure of their sponsor from Google meant they needed to look at other avenues for funding. As they were poised for their next phase of growth, the founders were faced with a series of decisions about the pace of scaling, the business model, and how to fund the expansion. In 2019, Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of one of India's largest private conglomerates, and one of their key customers offered to invest $42 million for an 87% stake in the company, and is willing to negotiate terms of the deal. Should the founders accept the offer? What should the terms of the agreement be? How will this impact their business model, their growth trajectory, and also the future of the founders at the firm?

The Hospital de la Misericordia (HM), today HOMI Foundation, is a children's hospital located in Bogotá (Colombia). It was founded by José Ignacio Barberi, Great Grandfather Barberi, in fulfillment of his wife's last wish: to build a hospital for children. It officially opened its doors in 1906. Great Grandfather Barberi conceived HM as a non-profit organization to be led by the members of the Barberi family. After the founder, three generations of Barberi family members have assumed the direction of HM: Rafael Barberi Cualla (Grandfather Barberi), Rafael Barberi Zamorano (Father Barberi), and Mauricio Barberi Abadía. Mauricio Barberi (appointed Director of HM in 1992) had to face a demand-based health system, under which HM was paid according to the amount of patients treated and there were not more subsidies from the State. Therefore, Mauricio had to begin a process of reengineering in HM, in order to become a competitive organization within the health market. HOMI was later impacted by the health system crisis, which delayed the payments it had to receive for its services. The case is established in April of 2014, in the midst of the health sector crisis. Despite the situation, Mauricio Barberi decided to analyze two options to expand the services: to build a Pedatric Center to expand the facilities outward in the north of Bogotá, or to build a Childhood cancer center in the current location. The risky context that surrounds this decision begs for multiple questions about his persistence on this idea and the suitability of said decision for HOMI Foundation. Even more, although Mauricio does not consider to do nothing, as a third option, the case invites to consider it in the last step in the discussion of the case, because this option is also viable from a perspective that does not consider family issues. The answers to these questions lie in the power of the family firm's legacy and entrepreneurial legacy, which is the focus of the case.

Niya Jones, a Partner at a major management consulting firm, must review the work of two of her mentees--Joseph Park and Elena Ramírez--for their first end-of-year performance review as new Project Leaders. Both have produced strong results in their new roles, but neither Park nor Ramírez could be more different in how they went about leading their respective teams. How should Jones evaluate these Project Leaders according to the criteria developed by her firm?

Set in September 2020, the case talks about marketing an accessible (affordable) luxury watch brand, 'August Berg', by a luxury-product distribution company, Norbreeze, based in Singapore. The company's founder, Anders Peter Juel Sauerberg, was sceptical about the launch of a new collection of the watch brand, as it had seen limited sales in one year since its inception. Sauerberg had set up a kiosk store of the brand in an iconic luxury mall in the city and adopted social media platforms and influencer marketing to promote the brand with little success. The brand represented the ethos of Danish design - minimalism and high quality and targeted a niche category of millennials, i.e. young parents and professionals. The brand was also attached to a corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative that supported the education of children from low-income families. While Norbreeze had seen success in the Singapore market with the distribution of other accessible luxury watches and jewellery from Danish brands like Skagen and Pandora, it had failed to see similar results for its own in-house brand, August Berg. The 'lipstick effect' of the market due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lack of brand awareness for the new watch brand were identified as the key reasons for low sales. Given the financial constraints of operating as a start-up, how could Sauerberg enhance the brand awareness of August Berg? What digital and social media marketing strategies could he implement to promote his brand?

Short videos are the new trend in entertainment and social networking. TikTok/Douyin is the undisputed leader of short video-sharing apps. Less than four years after it launched in China, TikTok shot to global prominence thanks to an addictive user experience. In 2020-21, despite a challenging geopolitical context, it maintained strong growth momentum to become the world's most-downloaded, best-rated, highest-earning app. Kuaishou, TikTok's strongest domestic competitor, dominated the Chinese market until 2018. Like TikTok, it began to expand overseas in mid-2017, but stumbled. With backing from Tencent (one of China's pioneering internet giants), Kuaishou gained fresh momentum in China and global markets and took steps to going public in February 2021. As the two companies go head-to-head in China and globally, their products and strategies are converging. The case compares their respective strategic positions, operations and development. It reveals the success story behind TikTok's exponential growth and expansion, the emergence of the short-video industry, the parent company ByteDance, and its current and future challenges.

GSH Conserves was an artisanal jam producer in Singapore that specialised in using tropical fruits, such as dragon fruit, lychee, mango, etc., to handcraft high-quality jam in small batches. Founded in 2013 in a home kitchen, the demand for GSH Conserves jam and bottled fruits had grown organically through word-of-mouth over the years. In 2016, GSH Conserves moved to a new factory that could cater to a larger production capacity in order to meet growing demand. However, Edwin Lim, a partner at GSH Conserves, observed that his workers and equipment were often idle. He had to examine the company's current operations, identify inefficiencies and suggest improvements. How would the increase in demand and production batch sizes affect production capacity? Would adding resources help to eliminate bottlenecks? How can he redesign the production process to enhance efficiency without affecting product quality?

In 2018, the owner of a Sasol Limited (Sasol) fuel retail franchise in Pretoria, South Africa, was facing the challenge of how to continue growing her business by retaining her existing customers and offering the products and services they expected. A woman entrepreneur in a male-dominated industry, the franchisee had worked her way up the corporate ladder in the financial services industry and, after being retrenched from her position at a bank, had purchased a fuelling station. She now wanted to gather information on her customers' needs in order to make an informed decision about how to scale the service offerings at her site to increase revenue, but she was unsure as to how to go about gathering this information. Various brands in the service station industry had seen decreased customer visits, and in this competitive environment, it was important to increase her efforts in building loyalty among her service station's customers.

This exercise provides the financial data of eight major companies operating in Pakistan in 2019 and listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange. It also provides a list of eight of the country's main industries. Identify which company operated within which industry to test your understanding of how a company's financial data can be specific to a particular industry. Using only financial figures, can you identify within which industry each company operated?