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Anchal Abrol and Priya Puri faced a dilemma of enticing their children to eat nutritious food. In 2019, they decided to pool all their savings to launch Snaqary. The company's clever recipes, inspired by traditional Indian wisdom, focused on nutritious ingredients such as multigrain without compromising taste. Though organic growth met initial expectations, the time to launch the brand into the next orbit was upon them when they realized the need to generate a strong preference and pull for the brand to be able to command a position in the grocery retail system. It was March 2023, and they were planning the following year's strategy. Snaqary wanted to scale up and make the brand attractive to investors.

As one of the world's largest fried chicken chains, Popeyes had failed twice to enter the Chinese market over a twenty-year span. In March 2023, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the owner of Popeyes, attempted a third strike by bringing the fried chicken brand under its local joint venture, Tim Hortons International Limited China (Tims China). The responsibility of making this third attempt successful rested with Yongchen Lu, the chief executive officer of Tims China. To cultivate another world-class, fast-service brand in China, Lu faced the imperative of delineating synergy between the two distinctive brands (one in coffee and the other in fried chicken). Could he make Popeyes a success in China?

Alexandria Confectionery & Chocolate Company (trading as Corona), led by chief executive officer Shady Farid, grappled with a post-pandemic downturn in sales, weakened brand image, and heightened competition in the chocolate, biscuit, and chocolate spread markets. Faced with an urgent need for revitalization, Farid contemplated strategic adjustments, with an emphasis on enhanced brand perception and consumer insights. To succeed, he had to leverage the company's existing brand and market position and focus on targeted advertising and quality representation to reclaim market share and grow revenues. Farid focused on three product lines: moulded chocolates, the Bimbo brand, and chocolate spread. How could he leverage the company's existing positioning and brand name to increase market share and revenues?

The founders of the app-based credit line MoneyTap shared a vision of creating an inclusionary multi-product banking experience. The company's gross revenue had surged from its first year, but while the business was doing well, growth was not coming easy because of intense competition. The organization wanted to expand its offerings to include a pay-later feature, credit cards, and digital savings and become India's first full-stack neobank. The team's current brand, MoneyTap, was a personal credit-line brand, and to expand it to a full-service neobank required a new brand strategy and a rethinking of the brand architecture. While branding and its concepts were perceived to be more applicable to consumer goods, the founders were convinced that their fintech start-up could only move to the next level by leveraging the inherent power of a strong brand.

As a pioneer in the plant-based alternative meat industry, Beyond Meat had experienced rapid growth for many years, primarily driven by increasing environmental concerns and health-conscious consumers. By 2022, the company experienced several challenges, some of which were industry-wide, while others pointed to internal issues relating to operations, human resources, and its product as well as geographic diversification strategies. Its stock value had dropped dramatically during the year and one-fifth of its global workforce had been axed in an effort to save costs. Ethan Brown, the chief executive officer and co-founder, had to decide whether he should maintain the company as it is or to make a change, either subtle or drastic, to regain sales and move forward.

In March 2021, the newly appointed senior vice-president of the Alfa Romeo brand in North America, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, was facing the main task of rebuilding the brand to increase sales. Since its inception, the company had seen inconsistent sales in its efforts to capture the high-end exotic auto market. The brand's origins in the high-performance and competitive world of auto racing emphasized its true essence of excitement, spirit, performance, seductive design, technical advancements, and seamless interface between driver and machine. Contributing to the company's sales volatility were numerous factors, including macroeconomic forces, consequential effects of past brand managerial decisions rooted in infidelity to the brand's origins, and a notable lack of consistent brand management or leadership that had witnessed the appointment of four brand managers over the previous decade. Alfa Romeo's brand building success was inextricably tied to effective marketing communication. The senior vice-president had to find a way to communicate and instill the brand's desired exotic and exciting mystique in the minds of consumers.

On New Year's Eve of 2018, Amjad Dar, head of Brics Online, is considering alternatives going forward for operating Brics Online, a business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce arm of Brics Pakistan (Brics). The main decision to be taken is whether Brics Online should be operated centrally (through a dedicated warehouse) or merged with stores to allow for decentralized operations. Centralized operations in the first year of Brics Online produced considerable losses due to various factors, including the lack of planning, follow-up, and resource capabilities. The managing director of Brics Pakistan, Yoso Manovo, has asked Dar to give his decision on a proposal put forward by two other experienced company personnel to decentralize Brics Online's operations. Dar knows that his decision will impact the future of not only Brics as a retail organization but also Brics Online and its sustainability. Whatever decision Dar takes should ideally result in optimized operational costs while supporting future growth and expansion for the Brics Online venture.

Mamaearth was founded by husband-and-wife duo Varun and Ghazal Alagh in 2016. The core value proposition of Mamaearth's offer focused on toxin-free, safe products based on natural ingredients, which resonated strongly with its target audience. Despite operating in a tough and competitive industry with many large, established global and Indian companies, Mamaearth had been able to build a strong presence in the market and achieve unicorn status in 2022. One remarkable aspect of the firm's growth had been that it was one of the few unicorns that-along with strong top-line growth-had a positive bottom line and had turned profitable in the previous two years. This early success gave founders and investors the confidence to plan their next move, which was to issue an initial public offering (IPO) at a valuation of $3 billion in 2023. But the IPO was planned at a time when there was a marked downturn in funding in the start-up ecosystem. Further, the post-listing performance of some of the other celebrated unicorns had been less than satisfactory, resulting in heavy losses for investors. Therefore, many unicorn firms that had been planning IPOs had deferred their plans. Facing the possibility of such a poor scenario, should Mamaearth move ahead with its IPO, defer in anticipation of a more opportune time, or find alternative means of raising funds?

In late 2022, McDonald's, one of America's oldest and most iconic fast food companies, introduced a mostly automated store in Fort Worth, Texas. The only human employees at this store were in the kitchen and did not interact with consumers during the ordering or pick up of food. While some consumers liked this concept, it also received very negative reviews on social media, with some responses addressing the ethics of replacing human labour with robotics. The chief executive officer of McDonald's had a choice to make: Should he listen to consumer complaints and make changes to the mostly automated store, or should he continue to move the company fully automated stores?

The case presents three mini-cases on employment discrimination. In the first, "(Un)See the Seen," a project manager faced the dilemma of how to support a neurodivergent associate whose principal consultant opposes him. In the second, "License to Ageism-When the Old Play Games with the Young," a young project leader faced the dilemma of how to protect himself from a junior partner and a toxic culture in the firm. In the third, "Cold Shoulder Another Day-A(vo)iding Disability," an HR manager faced the dilemma of how to ensure a paraplegic intern continued his internship when his reporting officer did not support him.

In 2021, amidst a world pandemic and escalated racial tensions, Allens Lane Art Center, a non-profit art centre in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was losing its leadership and failing to live up to its history-making initiative to promote integration among community members through the arts. The Center's executive director was stepping down and there was no replacement in line. Also, like many small businesses in the West Mount Airy neighbourhood of Philadelphia during this period, the Center suffered low revenue, among other issues. The president of the Center's board of directors had to determine how to bring the small non-profit back to life and generate a reawakened commitment from the board. They had to be prepared to make difficult decisions, including determining how the Center could change its business model while holding to its mission of bringing diverse communities together through the arts.

In December 2022, Steve Noakes, Board Chair of Binna Burra Lodge Ltd, Queensland, Australia learned that they had received government funding of AU$18 million to reconstruct the Lodge and cabins lost in the 2019 bushfires. The timeframe was tight for this major re-build which would need to adhere to a safer, more sustainable, and fire-resistant materials. They were also committed to re-building with a stronger Binna Burra spirit that would include the meaningful involvement of the local community, including the local Indigenous population, the Yugambeh languages people, but it also had to be financially viable.

Braithwaite & Co. Limited (BCL) was a leading railway-engineering public sector company in India. The company was incorporated in 1930 as the first wagon manufacturing company in India. In 1976, the Government of India (GoI) nationalized the company, registering and incorporating it as a fully owned GoI undertaking to support Indian Railways by supplying railway wagons. However, following nationalization, BCL faced growth challenges and gradually accumulated significant losses during the 1990s; eventually, it was declared legally sick and referred to the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR). The reasons identified for its sickness were failure to technologically upgrade and adapt to changing market scenarios, dependence on a single customer (Indian Railways), and operational-level issues within the organization. Yatish Kumar joined BCL in 2018 and took a series of strategic and operational measures to turn the company around. These measures resulted in BCL's improved financial performance, profitability, and a quick turnaround, and the company was awarded Miniratna Category-I status in 2021. Although BCL had been growing at a good rate, Kumar was concerned about how to sustain the turnaround and maintain that growth rate in the future.

Audioteka S.A. was established in 2008 and had a presence in various European markets. It was time for Audioteka to reaffirm its value as a fast-growing mid-sized Polish company. By 2022 the company offered 80,000 audiobooks in 11 languages. Newly appointed chief executive officer Arkadiusz Seidler was exploring possibilities to enter new markets that could help the company grow. An unusual direction had been identified, India. Preliminary data indicated that the idea was promising. But was it worth considering a project that could be perceived as an expression of overconfidence and eccentricity on the part of Audioteka's current management? To date, no Polish company had achieved success in India.

Private equity firm Shore Capital Partners is at an inflection point, after 12 years of phenomenal growth and success. Now, as the partners consider options, should Shore remain micro-cap focused, or move into more mid-cap investments? Should Shore hold investments longer? Or should they remain micro-cap focused and instead expand their verticals and volume of deals? Each option will demand a particular organization. Which one is best?

Founded in 2020, Adventures worked with celebrities in Brazil to create and launch digitally native brands. The idea was to match the celebrity's skill in creating content and entertaining fans with Adventures' skill in consumer packaged goods marketing and operations. Each brand was structured as its own company, with Adventures as the majority shareholder and the celebrity as the minority shareholder. The founders aimed to launch five successful brands over the next five years, generating $100 million in annual sales. Was Adventures a viable business?

Allbirds, Inc., the sustainable footwear company whose sneakers were rocked by public figures from Barack Obama to Leonardo DiCaprio, was a promising startup in 2016. But by end of 2022, its stock price had plummeted to ~4% of its previous high. Born out of co-founder Tim Brown's frustration for the lack of comfortable, minimalist sneakers on the market, Allbirds aimed to address both ease of wear and sustainability as a "purpose-native company built upon a system that leverages nature in a responsible way." It was met with an almost immediate cult following in Silicon Valley, perceived as both luxurious and responsible. However, the company struggled to realize its anticipated growth, and now, CEO Joey Zwillinger must explore how to turnaround the brand.

In October 2023, FIGS had revolutionized the medical scrubs industry with its fashionable and functional designs, but the venture was at a critical juncture. The digitally native vertical brand (DNVB) had gone public in a successful IPO in 2021 and reached $500 million in revenue in 2022. Investors had dubbed FIGS the "Lululemon of healthcare apparel." However, by 2023, FIGS was facing slowing growth, significant margin pressure, and a radical share price decline, exacerbated by macroeconomic headwinds and increasing competition. In response, CEO Catherine "Trina" Spear, who was also a co-founder, was contemplating three strategic growth initiatives to bolster FIGS' competitive position: expanding international presence, targeting healthcare institutions (a move into B2B), and establishing retail stores. Each avenue of growth held potential. International was a large market opportunity, B2B could unlock a stable new revenue stream, and retail stores offered brand visibility and synergy with the online experience. Spear had to decide whether FIGS's small team should pursue one or more of these opportunities, and, if so, whether to pursue them concurrently or with a phased approach.

This case follows Compass Pathways, a pioneering company developing treatment for depression based on psilocybin, the compound found in 'magic mushrooms.' Psilocybin was a federally illegal substance in the U.S., and a "Schedule I" drug, defined as a drug "with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." As the case opens in 2023, CEO Kabir Nath is preparing for the release of the company's Phase 3 clinical trial results, expected to lead to FDA clearance and the "re-scheduling" of the company's product. As Nath and his team prepare for commercialization, they grapple with decisions that balance short-term success and long-term sustainability in an uncertain, stigmatized industry.

In August 2022, CEO Yasuo Takeuchi reflected on Olympus Corporation's recent transformation from being known as a Japanese consumer camera company to becoming a leading global medical technology (MedTech) company. Over the past dozen years, Takeuchi and prior leadership had recovered from a major scandal and reinvented Olympus's purpose, governance, portfolio, organization structure and operating model. When asked if he could have done any better, he laughed with a humble smile. "There's no 'perfect' in the world-but we are doing almost perfectly. I am not a very optimistic type of person. But we are certainly advancing [the transformation] in the right direction. I have to say, it is working very well.'" Despite being on course, the journey was ongoing. Strategically, the evolving medical technology landscape demanded new capabilities-notably building an integrated digital solutions ecosystem. Organizationally, Takeuchi was at the helm of a matrix organization in which product divisions did not necessarily have full authority for all their activities; corporate functions were learning how to establish their global roles; and regional companies still drove local sales. And personnel issues remained a concern. Senior executive positions were staffed with "two in a box"-one Japanese and one non-Japanese manager-while Japanese employees were adapting to a job-based rather than a seniority system and the widespread use of the English language in meetings. How should Olympus navigate these challenges to deliver on its aspiration to be a leading global MedTech player?