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Formed in 1997, Star Alliance was the first global airline network or constellation. Its aim was to shift the airline industry away from a network of loose bilateral agreements between individual airlines to a more comprehensive network of multilateral agreements between members. A wave of deregulation in the industry in the 1970s and 1980s, which opened free travel between countries, led to the creation of three major global constellations: Star Alliance, Oneworld, and SkyTeam. These networks conferred many benefits on their members, such as cost sharing, loyalty program management, and increased flight load. However, in early 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had devastating effects on the airline industry. The focus of airline alliances thus shifted from greater connectivity between members to survival in the new global landscape. Would this strategy help airlines survive the COVID-19 crisis? Was group-based competition needed to thrive during a pandemic? Their main concern was whether or not the powerful frameworks they created would be able to help member airlines survive this crisis and regain their pre-pandemic financial stability.

Isaac Park was only six weeks into the role of leading all technology operations for Primal Leadership Solutions, a global leadership advisory organization that offered consulting services and executive recruitment. The lifeblood of the business was its database, which contained the critical and comprehensive information for all of the organization's past and current projects as well as its employees, clients, and recruits. The legacy system had to be replaced by a single, efficient, and reliable database. Although implementing a new database sounded straightforward, about halfway through implementation, pandemonium had broken out. The project's leader was asked to step aside, and Park was asked to step in as the new leader. Park knew that going back to the old system was not the right answer; it was imperative that the company find a way forward. Both Park's own credibility and the credibility of the project were on the line.

In 2016, the University of Calgary (U of C) was celebrating its 50th anniversary with a variety of events, such as the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences, which brought visiting scholars from across the globe. At the same time, Alberta, ON, had been hit with significant forest fires, and many residents that were evacuated from northern communities had moved into U of C residences. The campus was alive with activity when its information technology (IT) systems were encrypted in a ransomware attack. The university's emergency response team had to act quickly to identify and isolate the root cause of the problem and to decide how to contain it, whether to pay the demanded ransom, and what to tell members of the university and the wider community. The university's response to this threat and its management through the crisis would ultimately shape the IT team and future investment decisions.

inFeedo leveraged its understanding of artificial intelligence (AI), NLP, and machine learning (ML) techniques to develop a chatbot named Amber. With CEO sponsorship within client organizations, Amber engaged with employees at pre-defined periods as a "virtual assistant of the CEO." The aggregated chat sentiment provided employee engagement analytics to the leadership team. The platform predicted disengaged employees and identified the attrition risk. Besides, compared to the annual engagement surveys, the broad-based sentiment analysis was more effective in reporting employee engagement. Employee engagement measurement involves massive spending by organizations. However, these engagement surveys are costly, face delays in translating information to action, and lack actionable insights for the practitioners. The case touches upon issues such as the use of "Amber" as a replacement for the conventional practices within HR, the changing role of HR, the efficacy of the use of AI in transactional HR work, ethics of using AI, and challenges of instituting a culture change within the HR divisions. Can leveraging AI help the function break out of its "administrative" image and emerge as a strategic contributor to the organization's direction-setting exercises? Additionally, the ethics around the use of AI-based chatbots and the resulting data analytics present challenges to both the users and the advocates of this new system.

Totgars' Co-operative Sale Society (TSS) is an arecanut marketing co-operative headquartered at Sirsi in Uttara Kannada (UK) district of Karnataka, India. As on March 31, 2019, it had more than 30,000 members (including both primary agricultural co-operative societies (PACS) and individuals), total turnover of ₹5047.87 million, and net profit of ₹21.03 million. The primary objective of TSS is to undertake the marketing of the agricultural produce of its members. It has several other objectives that have direct or indirect bearing on the lives of arecanut growers in UK district. The key activities of TSS could be broadly classified into those which are directly related to arecanut marketing and the support services. Activities directly related to arecanut marketing include managing the sale yard in a regulated market, trading arecanut, manufacturing value-added products, and providing storage facilities. Support services include credit, agri-inputs, extension services, animal husbandry, rice milling, transport facilities, health services, consumer goods, and guest house. The business and service portfolio of TSS is highly diversified. The co-operative balances the interests of various stakeholders such as members, employees, traders, and state agencies. This case presents how TSS integrates various businesses and services to provide benefits to its member farmers, while creating value for other stakeholders. Several lessons can be drawn from the experience of TSS.

VA Tech Wabag, an Indian MNC firm was an industry leader in total water management. The case presents an alternative method of talent development that focuses on leveraging an individual's strengths against the practice of focusing on functional and behavioral competencies and develops training need analysis (TNA). This approach appears to be contrary to the ongoing deficit culture, which concentrates on weaknesses. The HR head of the organization resists the paradigm shift in the approach to capability development. The case addresses three principal issues. 1. Understanding the strengths-based approach to capability building 2. Clarifying the competency-based approach to talent management 3. Building leadership capabilities by understanding and leveraging individual strengths and appreciating the role of competencies in enabling success. All of this raises the question of the role of competency frameworks, the TNA approach's limitations, and synergizing both ideologies. Some specific questions raised by this case are: Is it possible to build capability by adopting either approach? What are the challenges of adopting strengths-based approach for recruitment? How can the organization leverage team strengths? Understanding these dichotomies can help L&D functions manage the best out of their talent and build effective leaders.

This case describes the rise of Mary Kay, the founder of the worldwide cosmetics company. As a young single mother, Mary Kay had to overcome many obstacles to start her business and guide it to success. Today, there are more than 3.5 million Mary Kay beauty consultants selling Mary Kay products in 36 countries. The company is still privately owned. Students will learn how Mary Kay navigated life's choices to leave a lasting impact on the world.

This case follows Christophe Weber, President and CEO of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, a leading pharmaceutical company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, as Takeda considers acquiring Shire Plc, a biotech company based in Ireland. The acquisition would turn Takeda into a top ten global pharmaceutical company; however, other pharma companies were showing initial interest in acquiring Shire, and the acquisition would require a large amount of funding. Other concerns about the bid were nonfinancial. Over the last two decades, Takeda had aggressively pursued globalization and was now a global company with two thirds of revenue raised outside Japan and a diverse management team. What was the implication of acquiring Shire? Was now the right time to take such a big step? Was the acquisition in line with the company's goals? How would the combined company be managed? Would the acquisition put an end to Takeda as a Japanese company?

Explores the tradeoffs between climate change action and economic development from the perspective of Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark. Greenland lacks autonomous decision-making authority in several key international fora, including the United Nations international climate negotiations. The Paris Agreement was a milestone in international climate negotiations, and an important step towards limiting global greenhouse gas emissions. Greenland, as part of wealthy Denmark, would be considered under the Paris Agreement obligations of the European Union and Denmark. The central conflict explored in this case is whether Greenland should participate in the Paris Agreement or request a territorial exclusion from Denmark. The Paris Agreement was widely accepted by the international community, with signatories ranging from the wealthiest nations to the least-developed nations. However, countries are not equally responsible for historical emissions. With a population of approximately 56,000 (90% indigenous Inuit), Greenland has contributed a negligible amount of historic emissions, but is experiencing disproportionate impacts from climate change, including rapid melting of its ice sheet. During the case, Greenland is in the process of nation building. Greenland's economy historically has been dependent on fisheries, but with climate change transforming the landscape, Greenland has an opportunity to pursue economic development by tapping into its abundant natural resources, including minerals, oil, and gas, or developing other sectors like tourism. This development is seen as the key to Greenland's economic growth and ultimate independence from Denmark. Many in Greenland's government are concerned that joining the Paris Agreement would limit Greenland's ability to achieve economic growth and independence. Others were in favor of participating in the Paris Agreement to demonstrate Greenland's active participation in global efforts against climate change.

In April 2020, Alisha Moopen, Deputy Managing Director of Aster DM Healthcare, a network of clinics, hospitals, and pharmacies in the Middle East and India, must create her company's budget for the 2021 fiscal year in light of the onset of Covid-19. The pandemic had forced Aster to indefinitely cancel elective procedures, which represented 70% of the company's revenue. Meanwhile, materials costs increased as the Aster team had to procure enough personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep frontline staff safe from the virus, even as revenue from clinics and pharmacies declined. To offset the impact of the pandemic, Alisha and her team must decide whether to implement austerity measures, such as temporary salary decreases, whether to request temporary rent reductions from their landlords, and whether to renegotiate their debt covenants with their lenders. They must also decide what assumptions they can make about revenue: when elective procedures will resume, whether their new telehealth practice will gain traction, and when clinic and pharmacy revenue will recover.

In 2000, Eaton Corporation was a broadly diversified industrial conglomerate. But its strategy was evolving and its focus was narrowing around "power management" and more recently on "intelligent power," the use of digitally enabled products and services designed to enhance efficiency and reliability. To implement this transition, Eaton had acquired more than 70 companies and divested another 50. Such active portfolio management required Eaton to regularly assess the prospects of each business unit-the profit and growth potential-and to explore opportunities to enhance its capabilities through acquisitions. In January 2020, Eaton got an offer from Danfoss, a Danish conglomerate, to buy its hydraulics business for $3.3 billion. Recently appointed CEO Craig Arnold must decide whether this deal makes sense strategically and financially. In particular, he must decide if $3.3 billion is a fair price for the firm's hydraulics business. This abridged version is shorter than the original version (HBS Case #221-006) and does not contain the appendix that explains and derives the formulas for the WACC using the capital asset pricing model (CAPM).

In 2014, Ifeoma Fafunwa, an award-winning playwright and director, founded iOpenEye, a commercial production company dedicated to driving social change through performance art. iOpenEye's flagship theatrical production was called "Hear Word! Naija Woman Talk True," which shared narratives of Nigerian women's struggles. By 2019, "Hear Word!" had debuted internationally, playing sold-out shows at distinguished venues like the American Repertory Theater and at the renowned Edinburgh International Festival. By spring 2020, COVID hit and venues closed, offering Fafunwa new possibilities, such as streaming content and reconsideration of production scale. What steps would it take to have iOpenEye and "Hear Word!" be successful five years down the line? Fafunwa contemplated her next move knowing that whatever it was, it had to be an iOpenEye 2.0 business model.

The case opens in August 2020 as Moulay Mhamed Elalamy (Mhamed), CEO of the Saham Group (the Group), a pan-African investment company that operates a variety of businesses out of Morocco, contemplates the Group's identity, its investment strategy, and how to navigate the existing businesses through volatility. Since Mhamed's father Moulay Hafid Elalamy (Moulay Hafid) had laid the foundations of the Group in 1995, its insurance arm became the largest insurance company in Morocco and expanded into the rest of Africa, and the Group diversified to include call centers, real estate, and agriculture. In 2013, Moulay Hafid Elalmy left his executive duties to take on the role of Minister of Industry, Trade, and New Technologies. The case talks about Mhamed's entering the family business at the age of 23 and his rise through the ranks to eventually assume the CEO position. In 2018, Mhamed decided to sell the insurance businesses, the Group's crown jewel, and the Group became a private equity house. Since then, Mhamed and his sister Anissa Elalamy were focused on making sure that business continued to prosper. While the Group was settling into its new identity as a family office focused on private equity, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the difference between the father and son's risk appetite and management styles: Mhamed was focused on value preservation and risk-reward analysis, while Moulay Hafid's saw opportunities everywhere. This raised questions for the future and the family contemplated its risk tolerance and allocation, governance, and succession. The case introduces the different family members and executives and their points of view and asks: What difficult conversations did the Elalamys need to have to ensure shareholder value and continued success in the upcoming generations?

The case opens in November 2019 as Eyad Alkassar and Mahmoud Fouz, co-founders of Iran's first and leading ride-hailing platform, Snapp, find out about Apple's and Google's decisions to remove all Iranian apps from their respective application stores. The case takes us through the founding story of Snapp in 2014 to how the company grew to reach two million daily rides in Iran servicing 30 million customers through its two million registered drivers in 100 cities in Iran. The case then goes into detail about how the removal of all Iran-based apps from application stores limited Snapp's operations and its go-to-market channels. Next, the case chronicles how the co-founders focused on finding operational and technological solutions to minimize Snapp's reliance on U.S. technology following the U.S.' withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in May 2018 and instating the secondary sanctions on Iran. The case highlights the challenges of operating under sanctions and the different ways the co-founders try to find to keep Snapp alive in a market that had been out of reach for Western investors. In 2019, Snapp had become the largest Internet company in the Middle East yet it was increasingly difficult to navigate the operational hurdles. The co-founders could not help but think whether it was now time to reach out to major media outlets and launch a public relations campaign to create awareness around the unexpected decision that had put the very existence of many companies at risk, including Snapp's. Alkassar and Fouz needed to weigh it against Snapp's realities. The case then asks: Should they go public with their story, or would it be better to stay under the radar and focus on efficiency and sustainability of operations?

In March 2020, Chris Abkarians and Nikhil Agarwal were in the midst of preparing the annual auction for their student loan assistance startup, Juno. Both current MBA students at Harvard Business School, the duo founded Juno in 2018 to leverage student bargaining power to negotiate better student loan terms with private lenders. Their business model involved soliciting bids from banks through an annual auction; the lender who submitted the best terms then received the right to exclusively market their loan products to Juno's members. The co-founders held their first official auction in 2019, and anticipated receiving several competitive bids from large banks in 2020. However, several weeks before the auction was scheduled to begin, a new entrant to the private student loan market, Eager Bank, expressed a strong desire to become Juno's 2020 loan partner. Eager requested that Abkarians and Agarwal cancel the auction and negotiate directly with them. In exchange, Eager offered several attractive terms, such as involving Juno in the underwriting process. Abkarians and Agarwal must decide whether to partner with Eager, hold the auction as originally planned, or pursue both options simultaneously.

The global fashion industry was among the hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, facing major disruptions on an unprecedented scale. On the retail side, challenges included store closures as part of government lockdown measures, as well as sudden shifts in market demand since many consumers were largely confined to their homes and facing economic uncertainty amid a deepening recession. On the supply side, complex and vulnerable global value chains proved to be ill-prepared for factory closures, prolonged shipping delays and reduced labor capacity due to lockdown measures, as well as sudden order cancellations due to a halt in customer demand. While these supply and demand shocks were triggered by the events of the global pandemic, they came on the back of a laundry-list of sustainability issues for which the fashion industry had since long been widely criticized, such as the environmental impact of textile waste and exploitative labor conditions for workers at the bottom of the value chain. A global leader in apparel, PVH Corp. (hereafter referred to as PVH) - parent company of iconic fashion brands Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein - found itself in the same boat as many players in the fashion industry. PVH suffered significant declines in revenue and earnings, and was forced to make difficult decisions, including permanent store closures as well as substantial lay-offs and furloughs. Stefan Larsson, the president of PVH, who would succeed Emanuel Chirico as CEO in early 2021, had major strategic issues to address, not only to get the company through the COVID-19 crisis but to future-proof it in a challenging post-pandemic world.

The case describes the creation and evolution of Brazil's first low-cost airline - GOL. From the outset GOL was driven by innovation and within a few years of operating had become the country's leading airline. Although initially a low-cost carrier, over the years it became increasingly customer-centric, striving to improve the customer experience by removing the pain points of air travel. As competition from new low-cost entrants intensified, could GOL maintain its lead in the domestic market? Was it destined to become the Uber of the airways, in a segment between low-cost and full-service offerings, relying on innovation to keep costs down? The case discusses GOL's options for growth, specifically its potential for international expansion.

The case describes WeWork's by-now-infamous fall from grace, during the turbulent autumn of 2019. Governance, financial strategy, and ethics are all prominent themes. WeWork had been a dominant player in the coworking office space market and had tried to create an ecosystem that allowed tenants of its office space to collaborate easily with one another, as well as one that offered third-party services. The case allows instructors to discuss commercialization strategies, boundaries of the firm, and issues related to investors in private versus public markets.