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In March 2019, Kais Marzouki, Chairman and CEO of Nestlé Philippines Inc. (NPI), wanted his company to reach plastic neutrality at the earliest possible time. Globally, including in the Philippines, more and more consumers, governments, NGOs and media were concerned by plastic waste and pollution. Mark Schneider, Nestlé's global CEO, had recently stated his vision that none of Nestlé's packaging, including plastics, would end up in landfill or as litter. A few weeks earlier, Schneider had announced internally the group's ambition to have all of Nestlé packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025. How could NPI lead the way and mobilize all key stakeholders to achieve his objectives?

Banking Circle (A): EQT, a global investor in private equity, infrastructure, real estate and venture had a long track-record of supporting the development of companies with significant growth potential. Its Venture equity unit had discovered Banking Circle, a fintech involved in the underlying payments infrastructure and disrupting the traditional correspondent banking industry. However, it passed on the investment. After Banking Circle showed significant growth, EQT Private Equity unit re-looked at the potential investment and had to figure out the right structure to hold the investment. Banking Circle (B): EQT invested in Banking Circle, and held it across two of its funds - a Venture fund and a Buyout Fund. It also led to a Growth strategy. After good growth from EQT, it was time to decide what to do with the investment - take profit and sell, or hold for the long term.

Between 2013 and 2019, Natura undertook a set of initiatives to begin its digital transformation and accelerate the global expansion that resulted in it becoming the world's fourth-largest beauty group. Along with its traditional door-to-door operation, Natura opened new channels including e-commerce, mobile apps, and physical stores, while it accelerated its international expansion with the acquisition of the Australian brand Aesop in 2013, followed by The Body Shop from L'Oréal in 2017, and Avon in 2019. In the A case, the challenge for Natura CEO João Paulo Ferreira was to find the right balance between the direct-selling and other channel formats to market Natura, to enable it to thrive in the face of intense competition in the beauty and personal care market in Brazil. In this B case, Natura's business is back on the growth track as the company has successfully aligned the new digital channels with its door-to-door operations, but the details of the omnichannel transformation and digital transformation are still complex. The case set is appropriate for use in an MBA, Executive Education, or undergraduate course on marketing, digital transformation, financial services, distribution channels, brand management, or marketing metrics, and it would work well in any course module focused on sales management.

In 2021, the world's fourth-largest beauty group, Natura &Co, was in the middle of a digital transformation process. Originally a direct-selling company, Natura transitioned to a multichannel business through online and offline channels, while acquiring strong brands such as Aesop, The Body Shop, and Avon. In the A case, the challenge for Natura CEO João Paulo Ferreira's challenge was to find the right balance between the direct-selling and other channel formats to market Natura, thus enabling it to thrive in the face of intense competition in the beauty and personal care market in Brazil. In the B case, Natura's business was back on the growth track as the company successfully aligned the new digital channels with its door-to-door operations, but the details of the omnichannel transformation and digital transformation were still complex. In this C case, Natura's executive team decided to make progress in its digital ecosystem and undertake a digital transformation process by developing a financial-technology (fintech) business. Their choices were mainly between partnering with an existing fintech, buying a solution created by an existing fintech, or creating their own fintech. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading. The case set is appropriate for use in an MBA, Executive Education, or undergraduate course on marketing, digital transformation, financial services, distribution channels, brand management, or marketing metrics, and it would work well in any course module focused on sales management.

This case is a follow-up to ""NASCAR and the Confederate Flag (A)"" (UVA-E-0441). It outlines how National Association for Stock Car Automobile Racing (NASCAR) leadership announced on June 10, 2020, that the Confederate flag was no longer welcome at race events and venues. Reaction was both positive and negative. However, despite this decisive move, questions remained, including: How would each track enforce the ban? What steps could NASCAR take to move past this controversy and get fans-and some employees who disagreed with the ban-to focus on the sport? How could NASCAR grow its demographics beyond the conservative, white Southerners who had comprised much of NASCAR's fanbase over history, and how could the organization become more inclusive?

Case Supplement for Case SMU013

Case Supplement for Case SMU013

Case Supplement for Case SMU013

Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.

Meesho is a three-part case that highlights the ups and downs, and the twists and turns, of a typical entrepreneurial journey. It follows the experiences and decisions of Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, two IIT Delhi graduates, as they build their venture - Meesho. The idea that they begin with, morphs substantially as they go through the process of finding a product-market fit. Each time they face a hurdle, they dig deeper into the needs and challenges of their customers, until they arrive at what could potentially be product-market fit. Even then, they struggle to monetize and decide to pivot yet again, in order to unlock the value created by their venture. The case provides rich material to discuss the iterative, non-linear nature of venture building. It reinforces the importance of continuously measuring and responding to metrics.

Godrej Appliances Division (GAD) of Godrej & Boyce manufacturing company limited - which had been around for more than 60 years and was the first company to manufacture refrigerators in India - began to face intense competition in the early to late 2000s due to the entry of multinational companies (MNCs), such as LG and Samsung, after liberalization of the Indian economy. GAD had been among the top-3 players in the industry until the entry of the MNCs, and subsequently, their market share fell by half to 13% in the late 1990s and further decreased to 6% by 2010. To improve their competitiveness, to benchmark with industry best practices, and to get feedback from the assessment process, GAD chose to participate in the Confederation of Indian Industry's (CII) Business Excellence (BE) award, modeled after EFQM, from 2011 onward. The objective was to use this feedback to identify their internal gaps vis-à-vis the competition and improve the respective processes in order to regain their market share. The case describes how GAD made use of the EFQM philosophy and the award criteria to completely revamp their processes and bridge gaps with the competition. They focused on the five enablers: (1) Leadership (2) Strategy (3) People (4) Partnerships & Resources and (5) Processes, Products & Services, to improve their business and organizational processes. These efforts paid off, and GAD progressively improved their products and processes during the next several years, finally achieving the CII-BE award in 2019. The case A ends with a list of operational capabilities that GAD acquired in the process and how they can exploit them, just when COVID-19 pandemic hit India. Case B then goes on to describe how GAD made use of these capabilities to quickly develop and introduce new products that were urgently needed in the country, to address the challenges posed by the pandemic.

Case Supplement for Case IN1799

In May 2020, SoftBank executives, having invested nearly $2 billion in Katerra, decided the vision of an end-to-end, vertically-integrated construction process was worth saving-with some major changes to company structure. The SoftBank Vision Fund invested $200 million in Katerra as part of a company restructuring in which cofounder Michael Marks stepped down as CEO, and former oil industry executive Paal Kibsgaard was promoted from chief operating officer to CEO. However, by June 2021, Katerra had initiated the bankruptcy process. Should Katerra's failure be attributed to mistakes made by the company's management team? Or did the company encounter a series of misfortunes that made it impossible to continue forward?

Jessie Gaeta, the chief medical officer for Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP), learned on April 7, 2020 that the City of Boston needed BHCHP to design and staff in 48 hours one half of Boston Hope, a 1,000-bed field hospital for patients infected with COVID-19. The mysterious new coronavirus spreading around the world was now running rampant within BHCHP's highly vulnerable patient population: people experiencing homelessness in Boston. A nonprofit community health center, BHCHP for 35 years had been the primary care provider for Boston's homeless community. Over the preceding month, BHCHP's nine-person incident command team, spearheaded by Gaeta and CEO Barry Bock, had spent long hours reorganizing the program. (See Boston Health Care for the Homeless (A): Preparing for the COVID-19 Pandemic.) BHCHP leaders now confronted the most urgent challenge of their long medical careers. Without previous experience in large-scale disaster medicine, Gaeta and her colleagues had in short order to design and implement a disaster medicine model for COVID-19 that served the unique needs of people experiencing homelessness. This case study recounts the decisive actions BHCHP leaders took to uncover unexpectedly widespread COVID-19 infection among Boston's homeless community in early April 2020. It details how they overcame their exhaustion to quickly design, staff, and operate the newly erected Boston Hope field hospital for the city's homeless COVID-19 patients. It then shows how they adjusted their disaster medicine model when faced with on-the-ground realities at Boston Hope regarding patients' psychological needs, limited English capabilities, substance use disorders, staff stress and burnout, and other issues.

This case describes the entrepreneurial journey of two college friends - Anchal Taatya and Abhiram Nukalapati. While studying at IIM Ahmedabad, they saw an opportunity for aggregating credit card discounts and launched a pilot in February 2019 under the name Circles. Circles helped discount seekers and credit card holders to connect and make transactions. Case A outlines their journey until the launch, where they faced the dilemma of choosing between a B2B and a B2C business model. Case B outlines their struggles in launching a B2C product and eventual shutdown of the venture. The key objective of this case is to understand the business formation stage of a college start-up, and how they arrived at opportunity identification. The case is aimed at enabling classroom discussions on the role of trust in platform businesses and how regulations - or lack thereof - can shape the destiny of new ventures.

Resolves the questions raised in Troverie (A); recounts pivots and efforts to raise capital from strategic investors and sell Troverie; and shares the founder's post-mortem reflections on what went wrong and what he might have done differently.

Case Supplement for Case E768A

This two-part case looks at flowcasting at Princess Auto, going beyond a simple presentation. Case A describes the challenges of implementing this system and its impact on the accountabilities of employees who are responsible for store replenishment, while Case B describes situations that are specific to Princess Auto, such as stocking surplus items (a unique strategy to attract customers to its stores) and the challenges of e-commerce.

Case Supplement for Case HEC304