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The case study describes the digital transformation of Enel under the leadership of Francesco Starace from 2014 to 2019. Enel is one of Europe's largest utilities, providing electricity to 71 million customers across Europe and South America. It is also an impressive success story. At the time the case is set (June 2020), its market cap of €75 billion was far higher than that of its competitors, thanks in large part to Starace's push into renewable energy and digital technologies.

The case study describes the digital transformation of Zensar Technologies Ltd. under CEO Sandeep Kishore. Zensar was a mid-tier IT services company based in Pune, India; profitable and successful but without any obvious differentiating features and with relatively weak growth. On his arrival in 2016, Kishore made a series of important strategic shifts, first of all narrowing the company's focus to three country markets and three industry segments, then pushing growth in higher-value-added digital services. The case ends in 2020 with the transformation process still incomplete. Good progress has been made, but there is still a gap between the new positioning and Kishore's strategic intent on the one hand, and the reality of Zensar's performance on the other. Students are asked to assess how successful Kishore has been and what he should do next.

In 2017, Billy McFarland set out to create an immersive music festival in the Bahamas. He spent eight weeks with rapper Ja Rule planning the Fyre Festival, which, in the end, never brought a single act to the stage. The Fyre Festival became one of the most widely documented festivals of the century, and the subject matter of thousands of news articles, parodies, and memes that poked fun at what was an event planning nightmare. What had gone wrong from an organizational standpoint, and what proactive measures could have been taken to avoid the problems?

In April 2018, more than one year after the chief executive officer (CEO) of Danby Appliances Inc. launched a private sponsorship program to support Syrian refugees in their integration into Canada, the CEO and others were starting to raise some questions. Although the program seemed to have had an overall positive impact on Syrian refugees, Danby's board of directors wondered about the impact of the program on the appliance business. The settlement program continued to take up a considerable amount of the CEO's time and may have even been a drain on other Danby resources, such as staff time. With competition intensifying in the appliance manufacturing industry, the board asked the CEO to assess the impact of the settlement program on Danby, the refugees, and the community, and to recommend whether the program should continue. The CEO knew it would be difficult to collect precise numbers and wondered how he should start to quantify the true impact of the settlement program.

China-based Xiaomi entered India's smartphone industry in 2014. In 2015, it had a meagre market share of 3 per cent, which by the first quarter of 2018 had grown to a 31 per cent market share, making it India's number one smartphone player. Xiaomi was set to expand its offerings to additional product categories in an effort to disrupt the electronics market in India. How had Xiaomi achieved its phenomenal growth in India in just a few years? Would it be able to maintain its brand image of product reliability as it extended its offerings to additional product categories and continued selling at low price points? Could the strategies that had made Xiaomi the number one smartphone player in India also help it to disrupt other product categories?

In spring 2018, the chief supply chain officer of Traeger Pellet Grills, LLC, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, was visiting a supplier in in Changzhou, China. He was meeting with the supplier the next day but had not fully decided how to manage the meeting. The supplier was responsible for a large portion of the company's supply of grills but was also positioning itself as a competitor by tooling, designing, and producing knock-off products that were then directly marketed to consumers in the company's strongest market-the United States. Although the supplier denied any involvement in the knock-off grills, the chief supply chain officer knew the tooling and styling were impossibly similar to his company's products and there was no other facility in that supplier's area with the capability to make look-alike grills at that level. The chief supply chain officer had to decide how to deal with the rebellious supplier.

Social and political issues in the US health care system, along with near-record employment levels, had led to a high employee turnover rate throughout the industry in 2019. In October, after Brownspeed Health Care, a consultative service, received numerous requests from its clients for assistance, the chief analytical officer was asked to prepare a report on how the company could help its clients address the problem. The first phase of the plan was to use the Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners and clerical workers as part of a low-risk strategy to enhance employee compensation and deploy wide-scale retention strategies and forecasting services.

M-Lab's founding goals were to infuse an innovation mindset into Mitsubishi Corporation; to catalyze new business opportunities; and to enable a dialogue between Japanese business and Silicon Valley. M-Lab housed representatives from each of Mitsubishi Corporation's verticals who were joined by executives from other prominent Japanese corporations. While M-Lab was still early in its history, its leader, Tsunehiko Yanagihara, was pleased with its progress: the ecosystem was fertile with research on cutting edge technology; resident executives collaborated across industries on a daily basis; several investments and proof of concept projects were underway; staff had launched an innovation learning program; and soon, an on-site retail-tech accelerator would welcome its first participants. As some of the projects born out of M-Lab now evolved to commercial businesses, Yanagihara saw yet a new role for M-Lab - that of startup advisor. How might he harness Silicon Valley insights on scaling technology ventures and feed them back to the young ventures made possible by M-Lab? And how might he help those now responsible for implementing and executing at these new businesses apply these learnings to the hurdles they faced?

In May 2013, TransDigm, a company that manufactured a wide range of highly engineered aerospace parts for both military and civilian aircraft, announced it was buying Arkwin Industries for $286 million in cash (3 times Arkwin's sales of $91 million). Having acquired more than 40 companies in the past 20 years, TransDigm was an experienced acquirer with a unique business model focused exclusively on value creation. This case describes TransDigm's acquisition, integration, and talent development processes as well as the changes made at Arkwin over the following three years. It serves as a complement to the TransDigm in 2017 case (HBS #720-422). Whereas the TransDigm case provides an overview of the company, its history, its value creation strategy, and its financial performance, the Arkwin Industries case provides a deep dive into a single transaction as a way to illustrate TransDigm's value creation strategy in practice. That strategy consisted of three parts-value-based pricing, cost reductions, and new product development-and had the goal of doubling a target firm's operating margins and cash flows within five years.

In January 2019, eBay Inc. (eBay), a California-based e-commerce company, faced an activist campaign centred on its portfolio of businesses. Elliott Management Corporation, the hedge fund leading the campaign, believed that StubHub and Classifieds, two of eBay's companies, did not belong in eBay's portfolio and that their real value was hidden by eBay's ownership. The hedge fund also argued that the lack of focus in eBay's portfolio was distracting the company's senior management from Marketplace, eBay's core business, which was facing stiff competition from other major online retailers. What should the chief executive officer and board chairman do to address these charges about eBay's corporate strategy?

Café Meteor Bistro was a newly opened bistro-style restaurant in Haileybury, Ontario. The owners of a nearby lodging business for up to 60 guests had developed Café Meteor Bistro to serve the local market, tourists, and their guests. In January 2019, the owners were each working 80 hours per week, and although their first year of operation had seen sales grow, they were behind their projections and not yet breaking even. Understanding that the situation was not sustainable, they were considering options. Should they sell the restaurant or hire an operations manager? If they planned to sell, they needed to come up with a valuation.

Peloton Interactive, a well-known venture-capital-backed unicorn in the connected fitness space, recently had gone public with a market capitalization of over $8.0 billion. However, in the weeks following its public debut, Peloton's stock price had fallen by over 25%. Taylor Knox, an enthusiastic Peloton subscriber, believed that connected fitness products were the future of exercise and he had been excited about the prospect of investing in Peloton. However, given the market's reaction to the company's IPO, Knox understood the need to determine the fundamental value of Peloton's shares, as well as to identify and to evaluate the key risks associated with its innovative business model. Reflecting on the situation, Knox wondered if this was an opportunity to invest in his favorite activity at a discount. Or, did market investors understand something he didn't?

Four college friends market a beverage that combines ingredients like those in a drink they consumed in college bars. It includes a caffeinated energy drink, malt liquor, and a soft drink flavoring. They launch the business, Big Boom Beverages (BBB), with their own money and funds from friends and family members. Their initial product sells reasonably well, but not enough to remain profitable. When they introduce a reformulated product, Totaled, its social media presence explodes. Young consumers upload many videos to YouTube that record the impacts of consuming large quantities of Totaled that earn millions of views. Totaled becomes a star brand on social media and sales skyrocket. The company is inundated with distribution requests. The founders see success looming. As sales of Totaled and similar products increase, so do reports of binge drinking and its negative consequences. Emergency room doctors and public health officials express concern about the combination of high levels of alcohol and caffeine in these products. Rapidly expanding distribution of the beverage through convenience stores gives underage drinkers easier access to the beverage. All these factors attract national media coverage. The founders are unprepared to deal with the bad reputation their product is gaining and regulatory and public-relations crisis they face. As the case ends, they are deciding how to respond. "Big Boom Beverages: Fight or Flight?" can be used with undergraduate and MBA courses in entrepreneurship, marketing, business ethics, corporate social responsibility, general management, and public health.

Igraj Uči Rasti (IUR), which meant "play, learn, grow" in English, was the name of a company in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) that produced educational materials to teach basic literacy skills to children aged 3 to 10. The company's founder and chief executive officer had envisioned IUR products being present in all homes and schools across BiH. However, in May 2019, IUR was at a crossroads, and the founder faced challenges regarding his distribution strategy, operations, product offerings, target markets, and staffing. He was considering several possible options to increase profits and scale his business, but he wanted to analyze potential outcomes and assess how they would affect his personal goals and overall business feasibility. As he considered several possible options to drive additional profits and scale his business, he wanted to use both quantitative and qualitative analyses to determine potential outcomes in relation to his goals and to the business's long-term viability.

Wow! Momo Foods Private Limited (Wow! Momo), a quick-service restaurant (QSR) chain, was a Kolkata-based start-up that sold a variety of momos, a Tibetan food. The restaurant's specialty was a pan-fried variety of momos prepared to suit the Indian palate. In late 2018, the founders were reviewing the company's financials and considering how they could improve the company's growth. Their goal of becoming a widely recognized brand, both nationally and internationally, seemed elusive. How could Wow! Momo make momos a front-line fast food like pizza and burgers? Should they create a niche market, or should they seek to make Wow! Momo a mainstream fast food? And, ultimately, how could they first make Wow! Momo a national brand alongside other leading multinationals in India before expanding the business internationally?

Nuway Software (Nuway) specialized in custom mobile software. While it had procured many contracts over its 15 year history, mostly for the less than truckload and courier sectors of the transportation industry, by the beginning of 2020, it had not found a way to be consistently profitable. Therefore, the goal of Peter Neely, the company's president, was to develop recurring revenue streams. The question was how best to accomplish this goal. Should the company continue with its current business model of building custom software using its Nulogic framework but focus on a diversification strategy? Should it move fully into the creation of an off the shelf software package? Should it utilize a hybrid approach of customizing off the shelf software?

In less than four years, Easy Flower (EF) grew from an e-commerce flower retail start-up to China's largest supply chain operator in fresh flowers. Easy Flower positioned itself as a provider of quality flowers to retail florists. Taking advantage of its strength in technology talent, and pooling its finances, the company successfully created a national distribution infrastructure network, disrupting and transforming the fractured supply chain system of China's flower industry and dramatically enhancing its supply chain efficiency. Having built an industry leader from scratch, founder Rong Chao had to think about Easy Flower's future strategy. In late 2018, he saw two options: further integrating the flower value chain in China, or internationalizing his business by exporting components of his technology and systems to flower platforms in other countries. Constrained by the company's resources, he had to assess the various risks and requirements that each direction would entail.

On April 10, 2018, after his morning meeting about the Goodman School of Business expansion project, the site superintendent for the project realized he should consider reworking the schedule for the remainder of the expansion project. The plan had the renovation work in the main hallways scheduled to be done in fall 2018, but the hallways would be used to access all classrooms during that semester. During classroom changeover times, 1,200+ students could be in the hallways, so if construction was underway at that time there could be delays, and traffic flow would be impeded. The challenge for the site superintendent, having already committed to finishing the renovation of eight classrooms and an entire floor of offices before the start of fall classes, was determining whether all the sub-trades involved in the project had capacity and could be coordinated in a way that would result in the completion of the hallways on time for the fall semester.

Following the successful launch of Beau's All Natural Brewing Company (Beau's) in all 10 Canadian provinces, the craft brewer had its sights set on the next step forward: international markets. The brewery wanted to distribute Beau's internationally, and agents from numerous distribution agencies had contacted the export manager about the United States and Europe. The export manager was also considering Asian markets as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of that emerging market. In his view, this market was less congested than the competitive European and American craft beer markets. While market selection was an important consideration, the export manager wondered about how to pursue international growth as a viable strategic option for a craft brewer. Did exporting craft beer make sense? With Beau's being Canada's largest producer of organic craft beer, the export manager knew that he had to determine the strategic fit for Beau's growth aspirations in advance of meetings with prospective agents.