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This case presents the initial difficulties encountered by Teaology, an Italian skincare products manufacturer seeking to penetrate the Canadian market. Well known in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the brand was unknown in Canada. Aware of their lack of experience in this market and that North American culture differed greatly from Europe's, the owners launched a joint venture with a Montréal-based partner.

Welspun India Limited (Welspun) was a global leader in home textiles, supplying to top global retailers like Costco Wholesale Corporation, IKEA, Tesco plc, and Bed, Bath and Beyond, Inc. Welspun undertook many sustainability actions like eliminating freshwater usage through a sewage treatment plant in Anjar, improving energy efficiency in manufacturing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, using transportation modes to leave a smaller carbon footprint, and creating products out of waste material. In order to move forward, the chief executive officer needed to decide how to use sustainable fashion to gain a competitive advantage. Was becoming a circular company the answer? If so, what steps needed to be taken for Welspun to become circular?

At the start of 2020, the main strategic challenge for UBits (a start-up focused on online corporate training in Latin America) was how to continue to scale up the operation. Although UBits had gained a foothold in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, the company had no presence in Brazil-Latin America's largest economy-or in any other major regional economies, including Chile and Argentina. UBits was offering only one type of service-subscription-based courses for corporate clients. The management team was contemplating targeting individual customers directly to leverage the growing UBits library that held more than 300 locally produced courses. However, the ideal strategic direction for the company's expansion was unclear, and its current financial situation did not permit pursuing all options.

In 2020, the three cofounders of Holaluz, a newcomer to Spain's electricity retail market, are preparing to launch a new offering: installing and managing solar panels on households' roofs at no extra cost for the consumer, who would still benefit from the energy savings stemming from the panels' production. Holaluz would fund the installations via a special purpose vehicle and use the surplus energy to power neighboring Holaluz clients at lower costs. There were many challenges in the new venture, like how to market the offering and if investors would buy into the new business. And what if Holaluz went a step further, got rid of all its tariff offerings and disrupted the market with a monthly "unlimited" flat rate for electricity consumption like telecom operators did with mobile phones bills? Was the market ready?

In March 2020 the United States was facing an outbreak of the highly infectious and potentially life-threatening COVID-19 virus that had already spread throughout much of Asia and Europe. As medical facilities prepared for the worst, it became clear that ventilators, the medical device used to "breathe" for patients in severe respiratory distress, were in short supply. Following a presidential declaration of a federal emergency on March 13, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began coordinating procurement and distribution of medical supplies and equipment, including mechanical ventilators. The process required that state authorities send requests to FEMA-however the process soon proved imperfect with states receiving only a fraction of the ventilators they ordered.

In the spring of 2018, the marketing team at Nike Inc. (Nike), based in Oregon, was faced with a decision regarding whether to follow the suggestion of the company's long-standing advertising agency to sign Colin Kaepernick as the face of its upcoming "Just Do It" promotional campaign commemorating the 30-year anniversary of the slogan. Kaepernick was an NFL quarterback who had famously begun kneeling during the US national anthem in 2016 to protest social inequality and police brutality. At this juncture, the US political climate was extremely polarized, President Donald Trump had spoken out very negatively about Kaepernick's "take-a-knee" protest, and the campaign would mark the first time in Nike's history that the company adopted a clear political position in its promotional messaging. The company had to carefully weigh several issues, including the impact using Kaepernick would have on sales and on Nike's brand image. Should Nike partner with Kaepernick on its campaign or pick a less controversial spokesperson? What market segments would be affected, and how? What were the implications for company sales and brand image?

The case considers the entry of Germany's leading retailer, Kaufland Warenhandel GmbH & Co KG (Kaufland), known for its hypermarket retail format and low prices, into the Australian market. Before entering Australia in 2016, the retailer had only expanded into Eastern European countries. Australia was its first developed market. In April 2019, a change in chief executive officer (CEO) took place at Kaufland, with the new CEO, Klaus Gehrig, demanding more centralized decision making. In Australia, Kaufland was struggling to get approval for its larger stores. Competitors in Australia, such as Woolworths and Coles, were also gearing up for the competition, with Coles sending a team of executives to study Kaufland's operations in Germany. In November 2019, after a series of weather-related issues in Australia, the retail price of several grocery items increased. Kaufland was still searching for suppliers and working on opening its stores. Experts felt that Kaufland Australia had the potential to make an impact on the grocery market, as higher prices offered by other retailers would lead consumers to shift to it. Going forward, Gehrig faced a challenging decision: Should he revisit the decision to expand into the Australian market? How might his competitors retaliate?

The case describes two transformation journeys for ABN AMRO bank. The first transformation is cultural and the second is digital. It explores the interplay between these two journeys from the perspective of the head of the Personal Banking. The case goes into detail regarding how to bank rebuilt its internal operating model. The hierarchy was delayered and replaced with agile ways of working, employee empowerment, and a new performance management approach. At first, there was a lot of chaos, but, after some time for adjustment, benefits started to appear, such as higher NPS scores, and better financial results. The new approach also helped the bank cope with the COVID-19 pandemic as many of the changes were linked to remote working for employees and technology-mediated service provision for customers. Yet, the case describes the appearance of some new challenges. While some teams embraced the new ways of working, others had trouble letting go of legacy approaches. There were some inconsistencies and confusion around performance measurement. Despite improving performance in some areas, multifunctional teams were not necessarily delivering the best customer experiences. Sick leave was increasing, and there were signs that employee engagement was falling. The reader is placed in the shoes of the head of Personal Banking must to come up with solutions to these challenges.

In March 2020, the founder of an auto mechanic shop in a Toronto suburb was contemplating a five-year growth strategy. Given the disruptions in both the auto mechanic sector and the automotive industry at large, she wondered whether her plan was realistic. Should the founder execute the growth strategy according to plan or change the plan and lead the business in a completely different direction?

On January 12, 2020, Michael McCain, the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., posted four tweets on the company's social media platform, venting his anger at the US administration over a civilian airplane shot down in Iran. Specifically, he expressed his anger at the loss of life-including that of the wife and 11-year-old son of an employee of Maple Leaf Foods-which, according to McCain, stemmed from "a needless, irresponsible series of events in Iran." McCain cast blame on US president Donald Trump for escalating tensions with an "ill-conceived plan to divert focus from political woes." Should McCain, as CEO, have expressed his personal views on Maple Leaf Foods' Twitter feed? Would his tweets damage the company's brand and destroy shareholder value?

The case aims to exercise skills in decision-making, negotiations, and conflict resolution in extreme crisis management. It is a multi-party negotiation: CEO of the company that produces the spill, national government and municipal government, port authorities, and environmental associations. There is also a multivariable agenda to negotiate: an emergency level to be declared, cleaning operations to be deployed, additional environmental recovery work, provisions in the port area, and compensation mechanisms for the affected communities. The multimedia format allows adding information to extend the discussion of the case to an extreme experience design format with recordings of people involved, filming of affected residents, news in the media, and the impact of social networks.

On August 24, 2015, Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, and Francois Hollande, president of France, met in Berlin to discuss solutions to what had become known as the European refugee crisis. The vast influx of refugees was the result of thousands from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq leaving their war torn countries to travel across the Mediterranean Sea or overland to seek refuge in European Union (EU) countries. The crisis had been building since the beginning of the year, leaving some countries-particularly those at the EU borders-overwhelmed with refugees. In the meantime the Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF), Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, announced it had ratified an order suspending the Dublin convention, a 1990 protocol which forced refugees to apply for asylum in the first EU member country in which they set foot. "Germany will become the member state responsible for processing their claims," a government statement said of the refugees, largely from Syria. As a result, Germany quickly became the first-choice destination for Syrians. Word of Merkel's suspension of the Dublin protocol spread quickly among refugees-Syrian and otherwise-who were heading to the EU or already waiting in camps. Indeed, Hungary's ambassador to Germany, Peter Györkös, later claimed that on August 26, Serbian police found thousands of discarded passports on their side of the border. "From that moment on, every refugee was a Syrian," he told The Guardian.

Logitech has sold billions of computer mice and other computer peripherals over the 38 years of its existence. It was a typical growth company profiting on the success of the PC with an unprecedented history of top and bottom-line growth. With the decline in PC sales, Logitech needed a new strategy. Under the lead of new CEO Gerald Quindlen, the company developed a "Four- Screen" strategy and introduced two major post-PC products: a smart-TV-device named Logitech Revue (based on Google TV) and Lifesize, a high-end video collaboration solution. Both attempts failed dramatically and left the formerly highly successful company in a crisis.

New management under CEO Bracken Darrell transformed Logitech into a company with a design-led focus. The product and brand portfolio are diversified with a strong focus on audio, video, gaming and other cloud-connected devices. This ultimately leads to a significantly lower dependency on the PC market, financial success, a transformed corporate culture, and high recognition in the industry. The strategy is not fundamentally different from the previous attempts, but the leadership style and strategy execution are radically changed. With the departure of key executives, Logitech and its CEO in 2019 are again at crossroads and are looking for new ways to grow.

The case deals with the international expansion of Jollibee across Asia, USA and Europe along various dimensions (in particular its brands portfolio)

The world's first truly global AI crisis came at a time when no one expected. In the summer of 2020, after college exams were cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions, tens of thousands of students received nonsensical grades, which were determined using undisclosed AI models trained on the class of 2020 and prior years students' data. Few things mattered more in life than where one went to college, and for many young people, their career, relationships, network, income, and, generally speaking, life was to be determined by what the UK's prime minister Boris Johnson labeled as the "mutant algorithm." Much like COVID-19 itself, this situation was repeated nearly identically in multiple countries, but the first instance of the crisis was with the International Baccalaureate Organization headquartered in Switzerland, which, on July 5, 2020, was the first to release its grades before individual countries released theirs. This public-sourced case examines the grading scandal, how it happened, and how it affected students worldwide.

Traditional manufacturers in the digital era are under pressure to create customer value in an environment of rapidly changing customer buying patterns, and their existing connections with customers no longer give them sustainable competitive advantages. Therefore, the ability to deliver value to customers and get customers engaged in the creation of business value has become a crucial objective in achieving sustainable business growth. As a leading enterprise in liquor production, Wuliangye Group holds an important position in the traditional liquor market. In this case, digital transformation started in the company's marketing function because it is the closest to the market, and can benefit from data asset acquisition as well as value creation and acquisition. Firstly, this case details the Group's practical journey on the path to digital marketing. This path includes organizational changes, profit distribution, customer participation, distribution channels, data resources and much other content. Secondly, the case highlights the Group's acquisition of substantial data assets and its formation of digital capabilities, starting with marketing, along with the actions that have laid a foundation for digital transformation of other business areas. This progressive strategic renewal may mitigate the resistance to digital transformation. In the course of driving deeper digital reform, further discussion and analysis should focus on whether Wuliangye Group can realize effective use of data resources and digital transformation of the enterprise as a whole based on data acquired from marketing.

By March 2020, Philip Morris International (PMI) had defined its purpose, "[to] create a smoke-free future and ultimately replace cigarettes with smoke-free products" and had validated PMI's materiality matrix. PMI's statement of purpose (SoP) was first published in the form of a letter from the board of directors to the company's shareholders and was published in its proxy statement of March 2020. PMI's sustainability leadership team (Huub Savelkouls, Chief Sustainability Officer and Jennifer Motles Svigilsky, Director of Social Impact & Sustainability) were working on the company's first ever integrated report (IR) due for publication by June 2020. Connecting a sound sustainability materiality assessment, a concrete SoP and a detailed IR would, they thought, bring together actions and words, and convey exactly how the company's strategy would create value for society and shareholders. They had the difficult task of setting realistic but ambitious targets, with a timeline to achieve them. They knew that targets - or a timeline - that were too ambitious and that the company could not deliver on could cause blowback for the team. At the same time, targets that were too conservative could lead to disengagement and exacerbate stakeholders' mistrust and undo all their hard work since 2015. The case is about a company in one of the so-called sin industries that has committed to phase out cigarettes in favor of a smoke-free future based on reduced-risk products.

Hijo Resources Corporation (Hijo) was a conglomerate based in Tagum, Davao del Norte, Philippines. Hijo began as an abaca plantation in the 1940s and ventured into the cultivation and exportation of Cavendish bananas in 1968. Alongside its agribusiness operations, Hijo had diversified into a conglomerate with business interests spanning a broad range of sectors. However, Hijo was no longer able to operate its business as usual due to changing economic, environmental, and societal challenges. The company's current initiatives were fragmented and existed in silos within each strategic business unit (SBU). In April 2018, Hijo's president and chief executive officer needed to determine how to holistically integrate sustainability practices into the company's value chain, cutting across different issues and encouraging collaboration across Hijo's different SBUs.

The chief information officer and head of human resources at Hero MotoCorp Limited, India's largest two-wheeler company, was responsible for overseeing the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Under his leadership, the company's CSR team had started an ambitious project to provide livelihood and skills training to girls and women from marginalized socio-economic backgrounds. By March 2019, the program had helped many women become financially independent by providing training and opportunities to earn a living. These women otherwise lacked the resources and family support to gain employment or start their own business. However, the head of CSR wondered whether or not the company had done enough for women to reach their goals and become independent. Although the various CSR programs at Hero MotoCorp Limited had been successful, how could the company scale up its CSR programs for greater impact to help more girls and women?