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Rodolphe Saadé was the chief executive of the CMA CGM Shipping Co., Ltd. a giant in the maritime industry that was long criticized by customers for its lag in digitalization. Realizing the importance of digitalization, Saadé defined digitization as a key strategic priority for CMA CGM’s development. This case traces CMA CGM’s digital transformation process and discusses how Saadé and CMA CGM successfully addressed different challenges to gradually launch a series of digital innovations to the company’s processes, products, services, and business model. However, as new waves of technology, from autonomous vehicles to smart data continued to emerge, how could CMA CGM leverage the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the shipping industry? How could CMA CGM make full use of big data to optimize business operation decisions?

Nicole Rotumah, chair of the Tweed Aboriginal Co-operative Society Limited, which ran the Minjungbal Museum and Cultural Centre (MMCC) in Tweed Heads, Australia, and the museum manager, Tina Pidcock, were standing in the middle of their beloved museum looking at the worn flooring, dusty artifacts, general state of disrepair, and stark absence of visitors. It was August 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic had brought tourism to a standstill. However, both Rotumah and Pidcock knew that the museum’s problems ran far deeper than the absence of visitors during the pandemic, and that something had to be done to revitalize this Australian cultural treasure. The question was what. Was MMCC functioning in the museum, tourism, or cultural experience industry? Who were its main stakeholders and competitors? Was it correct to measure success according to revenue or the number of visitors, or was protecting cultural heritage a sufficient goal?

In February 2023, Irene Cameron was preparing to launch her property technology (proptech) start-up Geo-Registry Integrated Datachain Inc. (GRID) in eastern Ontario. She had identified several problems with the real estate process and planned to disrupt the industry with a one-stop blockchain platform. The platform would integrate all the steps and processes in buying and selling real estate, including the services provided by professionals such as real estate agents, mortgage brokers, lawyers, and municipalities. Cameron had completed extensive validation and now had to decide what business model to test out and which revenue model to leverage.

<p align="justify">On May 5, 2023, Vicky Poirier received a call from Daniel Chen, vice-president of finance at Freeze Inc. After receiving an internal tip, Chen was calling to ask her to investigate a potential case of collusion involving one of his colleagues. As president of Quantum Juricomptable Inc. (Quantum), Poirier had to discuss the issues and challenges of this potential mandate with her team before deciding whether to accept it. Quantum’s investigation team, including forensic accountants, planned and performed an investigation to verify whether these allegations were true and prepared a forensic accounting report for a special committee at Freeze. The consequences of this report would be significant for the organization. How should the Freeze react to the report’s findings? What were the issues and challenges underlying any decision to dismiss the wrongdoers? Should Freeze dismiss them?<br><br>This case extends into a supplementary B-case, which introduces a new decision point (see product W33372).

<p align="justify">At the end of December 2022, the chief executive officer of Logic Fruit Technologies (LFT), a product engineering research and development company, was trying to decide which of three partnerships to pursue to double the company’s profit margin percentage by 2025. LFT was headquartered in Gurgaon, India, and provided end-to-end solutions in electronic design outsourcing. LFT’s board of directors wanted to make a decision at its meeting on January 30, 2023.

By September 2022, Elizabeth Hooper had been working for 100 days as chief human resources officer at AccelleWell, a contract development and manufacturing organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just before her arrival, AccelleWell was acquired by the private equity firm Evenhuis Equity Partners. The company’s chief executive officer who hired Hooper was fired shortly after she started and was replaced by a new “fixer” who was brought in to turn around the company. Initially, Hooper thought that she could work well with the new leader, who voiced his support for Hooper publicly at an all-staff meeting and approved her plan to add new positions to the human resources team. However, he soon proved to be a toxic leader, making sexist and ageist comments and firing various executive team members. Hooper wondered if she could hold on to her own job. Was there any hope that she could still be successful as part of the executive team that had transformed AccelleWell into a leading life sciences employer?

Tianjin Motor Dies Co. Ltd. (or “Tian Qi Mo”; TQM) was a China-based automotive technology supplier that specialized in the research and development (R&D), design, manufacturing, and distribution of automotive body panel dies, welding tools, and automobile body stamping fixtures. Although TQM had struggled during China’s reform toward a market economy, the company’s persistent focus on and investment in R&D, innovation, and technology enabled it to survive and thrive, eventually growing to become an industry leader in China. A key pillar of the company’s strategy was information technology (IT). The company’s focus on IT had enabled it to establish a solid foundation for growth. In today’s age of digital disruption, TQM sought to leverage IT to transform its traditional product-based business model into a hybrid model that included not only products but also a platform that enabled different stakeholders in the automotive industry to transact and collaborate. The vision was promising, but TQM faced many challenges in its implementation.

In April 2022, the founder of Camncloud, a pioneer in surveillance service based in New Delhi, India, was facing a dilemma about hiring a potential candidate for his new venture. Camncloud offered an end-to-end remote streaming service targeted primarily at preschools. The company’s founder wanted to use his electronics background to carve a niche segment in India’s competitive technology market, but needed help in achieving that goal. Specifically, he was hoping to build a loyal, dynamic, and committed team of high-level experts who faced difficulty in paying competitive salaries to a potential workforce of candidates that were in high demand, with constant offers from competitors. After the early departure of all three of his employees, he was being more cautious in choosing new team members who would be more committed than the previous team. However, while in the process of offering a position to a highly recommended new candidate, he encountered a roadblock. How could he resolve this difficult recruiting dilemma?

In March 2018, the executive committee of the Shree Sharanam Co-op Housing residential society in the state of Gujarat, India attempted to bring transformation at the community level. The committee members knew that water was a precious natural resource that had to be used judiciously. Everyone wanted water to be available as and when required, but the challenge was to apply principles to people’s behaviour. The residents agreed that water conservation was essential but did not have any impetus to this common cause because it involved a price—both monetary and non-monetary—along with other daunting tasks of organizing resources and managing resistance. The committee gathered evidence and decided to propose installing water meters in each household of the residential society to curb the misuse of fresh water.

Refiloe Molefe, affectionately known as Mama Fifi, was a humane agripreneur running an urban organic vegetable farm, Fifi’s Veggie Farm (Bertrams Inner City Farm), in Johannesburg, South Africa. Molefe’s vision was to empower the nearby urban communities and ensure food security by selling fresh vegetables, teaching the community how to plant organically, and employing community members to work on the farm. She successfully implemented farming activities through partnerships with various governmental institutions, companies, and universities. Many organizations recognized her work on the farm, which received donations, won competitions, and obtained multiple awards.<br><br>Around 2019, while Molefe’s agribusiness was gaining momentum in the area and beyond, the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality was planning to build a multipurpose centre on the farm premises as part of its strategic objectives. In early May 2022, she was invited to discuss the demolition of the building and the municipality’s decision to move her to a new place in Eikenhof, on the city’s outskirts. Molefe was informed that, on May 26, 2022, the mayor would be handing over the premises to the contractors, and she would have to move to the new location. The new site did not have adequate infrastructure to support organic farming practices and would require her to share the location with farmers who used chemicals, potentially contaminating the soil and endangering her organic farming practices. Not wanting to depend on the government, she was weighing another option: to operate at a local church south of Johannesburg. She had to decide whether to accept the municipality’s offer, use the local church premises, or buy land she could own for a more sustainable future.

The Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding was a world-renowned giant panda research institution and tourism destination and had successfully attracted millions of tourists since its opening. The surge in tourists, however, had also increased pressure to provide a tourist-friendly experience, and long wait times generated more complaints than any other issue. Tourists experienced long queues at the ticket offices and at the entrances of the panda house and delivery room, which greatly impacted their experience. Moreover, long queues also created other issues, such as managing crowding and the negative impacts on the giant pandas’ emotional and psychological health as a result of the noise generated by tourists waiting in lines.

In June 2020, the owner and director of UnityCars Pvt. Limited (UnityCars), a car rental company in Melbourne, Australia, was reviewing his fleet of vehicles and the company’s operation over the previous few months. The COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns had a negative and severe impact on UnityCars’ revenues. The company had expanded rapidly in previous years, becoming highly leveraged, which made it more vulnerable to negative shocks. A sharp reduction in revenues, high expenditures, and the combination of these with the uncertainty of the macro environment had posed a serious threat to the survival of UnityCars. The owner wanted to forecast the company’s operating cash flow and decide whether he should borrow or reorganize the fleet to meet his liquidity needs.

Founded in 1964, Brøndby IF (BIF) was a professional Danish football club located in Brøndbyvester, in the capital region of Denmark, and had won eleven Danish championship titles. In 2015, BIF embarked on a journey of incorporating sports data into its organization and building its sports analytics capabilities. By the end of 2022, sports data had become an integral component of the club’s activities and had enabled BIF to establish itself as a leader in sports analytics in Northern European football. However, BIF and its analytics capabilities were contending with the ever-changing landscape of modern sports characterized by rapid digitalization and internationalization.

Going through a dynamic market change with increased user growth and competition, the digital fitness scale-up Freeletics GmbH (Freeletics) found itself at a crossroads in September 2020. Equipped with fresh funding of US$25 million, the chief executive officer and the business development lead discussed the path forward for the company. Its current successful offering, a digital fitness coaching app, promised continuous growth. However, changing market conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, new user behaviours, and emerging technologies offered new opportunities—and new competition. Consequently, Freeletics had to diversify its business model with new offerings to strategically renew its competitive advantages while keeping the existing successful business growing. The chief executive officer and business development lead had to find an organizational approach that would allow them to start a new entrepreneurial journey without neglecting what they had already built.

Longevity Wines was a family-owned urban winery and certified minority-owned business based in the Livermore Valley wine region of Northern California. Founders Phil and Debra Long opened Longevity Wines in 2008 when their winemaking hobby outgrew their garage. By that time, they had spent years visiting tasting rooms and had identified a need to increase inclusivity in the wine community. The wine industry had a history of exclusion in terms of race, gender, and class; how could Phil Long make the wine community more inclusive and his wine brand more accessible to BIPOC consumers?

In May 2022, an interactive brand activation for Insomnia Cookies (Cookies), called CookieLab, celebrated its one-year anniversary. Insomnia enjoyed strong brand-name recognition for its late-night snack of freshly baked cookies and offered a strong unique selling point (USP), especially among college students. But there were still many questions about the company’s next steps, including whether a growth strategy through CookieLab was the most suitable strategy for Insomnia.<br><br>Specifically, should Insomnia expand CookieLab to other locations, locally, in the north east region of the United States, or across the United States? If yes, what marketing strategy and tactics should Insomnia use to grow that expansion?

Hemant Gaur, managing director of Siddhi Vinayak Agri Processing Pvt. Ltd. (SVA), had to approve the marketing mix for Carisma, a global retail potato brand. Known for its great taste and low glycemic index rating, the Carisma product was available to SVA through its joint venture partner. If the launch of Carisma was successful, SVA could significantly increase its revenue and profitability, as well as its market value. However, the launch would consume precious resources that could otherwise be used to grow current revenue sources and SVA capabilities. Thus if the launch was unsuccessful, SVA would have wasted its resources and lost the confidence of its investors. The decision was critical for SVA, and Gaur had to make it soon to allow the full financial year’s revenue to be included in the SVA valuation.

In 2014, Samuel Holmström and Jens Lundqvist took over Lundqvist Trävaru, the conservative construction company owned by the Lundqvist family for the last 80 years. Through a revolutionary digital transformation process, they redefined the company as a technology-enabled logistics and building kit company. In the last eight years, they expanded operations and manufacturing space in Sweden and other parts of the world, and they added 52 new employees in approximately 10 years. Holmström and Lundqvist had many questions on their minds: Should they pursue all the growth options that were available to the company? Should they identify and focus on a few key opportunities? And what kind of resources would they need to mobilize to achieve their technical and growth objectives?

Hairstrong sold hair scrunchies, and the business’s founder had experienced significant success since selling her first products in September 2019. Sales had reached CA$90,000, and media coverage came from outlets such as Good Morning America, Chatelaine, and Global News. However, the founder wanted to expand on the early success to double current total annual revenue and consider making Hairstrong her full-time occupation. This meant significantly expanding Hairstrong’s exposure geographically and building an efficient and targeted marketing plan. This would not be an easy task given the myriad opportunities the founder had to consider.

In early 2023, the executive chef and owner of Craft Farmacy was considering the feasibility of expanding to a second location in Waterloo, Ontario. Craft Farmacy was a farm-to-table restaurant in London, Ontario that featured an upscale, rustic bistro style dining experience. During 2022, the owner had visited similar farm-to-table restaurants in the Kitchener-Waterloo region to verify his sales, investment, and cost assumptions; this data allowed him to project financial statements and cash budgets for the new restaurant. With the projections complete, the owner thought he could analyze the risk of the expansion, and then decide whether or not a second location in Waterloo would be a wise investment.