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In May 2016, three scientists from Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology were preparing for a meeting with several managers from the institute's technology transfer department. The three scientists were planning to commercialize a new technology they had created, and hoped to use their invention to launch a new company as a spinoff from their work at the institute. However, because the scientists had created the technology while working at the institute, the technology was legally owned by the institute. The focus of their meeting with the institute's management was (1) to plan for the protection of their invention by registering relevant patents and (2) to discuss the terms for a suitable agreement between both parties. The scientists wanted to clarify how they might be able to use the technology to launch their spinoff company. Specifically, they were eager to determine their rights to the patents that would be registered for their intellectual property. They hoped the meeting would clarify any conflicts between the interests of the scientists and those of the university, and would determine the party responsible for costs related to protecting the intellectual property.

This case describes the evolution of the customer success function through the rise of Gainsight. It discusses the responsibilities of the customer success function, measuring and compensating customer success teams, and the return on investment for adding a customer success organization. It also describes some of the different forms customer success can take across firms.

In the fall of 2019, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg are facing increased scrutiny on multiple fronts. Regulators from around the globe are threatening the company with punitive measures. Users are organizing against it. But there is little consensus around what, precisely, Facebook has done wrong, or what strategies Zuckerberg and his team should put in place for the future. "Facebook Faces the Regulators" traces the trajectory of the pioneering social media company up to this critical moment and considers its future, focusing on the core questions of governance that have recently engulfed it. Has Facebook simply become too powerful, the case asks? Has it violated the spirit of many countries' most sacred laws, if not the actual letter? Most fundamentally, what kinds of rules should be imposed on firms that run the world's social media markets? And who should make them?

In mid-2019, Carlos Hank, was deliberating over the results for Banorte Móvil - the mobile application for Banorte, Mexico's most profitable and second-largest financial institution. Hank, who had been appointed as Banorte´s Chairman of the Board in January 2015, had overseen Banorte's transformation (and multi-million-dollar investment) from a product and client volume-focused bank into a customer-centric, technology and data-driven organization with a radically new focus. Beyond investing in a new technology platform and deploying new digital channels, Banorte also invested in the development of internal capacities to convert data intelligence into profits. Spearheaded by José Antonio Murillo, an economist with a Ph.D. from Rice University, Banorte's Analytics Business Unit (ABU) kicked off early on 2015, reporting directly to upper management and focused on increasing customer lifetime value. Over the course of its four-year trajectory, through data analytics and experimentation, which involved both experimenting with client incentives and tailored communication strategies through multiple channels, the ABU had successfully achieved higher product placement rates, particularly under Banorte Móvil's platform. Yet, with 2.25 million active users, Banorte Móvil was still far from reaching its 4-million-user target by 2020. Adoption picked up, but Banorte Móvil was still losing many potential adopters along the mobile customer journey, particularly in its activation phase. Furthermore, 81% of app activity was for account balance or transaction views, with financial operations, such as card or service payments or acquisition of new bank products, accounting for a minority of the activity. If Banorte wanted to remain a top player in Mexico's financial sector, it was clear to upper management that growth in mobile banking needed to be a priority.

By 2020, Ren Zhengfei, CEO of Huawei, had transformed the small telephone switch manufacturer he founded in 1987 into a $120 billion telecommunications company poised to lead the lucrative rollout of fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks. However, an emerging U.S.-China tech war has jeopardized Huawei's prospects. The Trump administration is waging a global campaign to blacklist doing business with Huawei due to concerns in Washington about the company's relationship with the Chinese government and the security of its products. As Huawei attempts to answer the litany of questions being asked about its business, the company's corporate communications and government relations strategies are thrust onto center stage. How can a company so successful technologically-it is a global leader in 5G technology-struggle so mightily in telling its story? What would it take for Huawei to repair its relationship with Washington? Can Huawei protect itself from the crossfire of a growing digital cold war between the U.S. and China?

Based in Mwanza, Tanzania, family-owned and operated Exotic Expeditions Tanzania Ltd. was a leading tour operator in East Africa. The company was purchased in December 2014 and experienced considerable success the following year. The owners felt that there was an opportunity for growth within the company and believed that the best way to realize this growth was to improve their marketing efforts and service offerings. The family wanted to remain profitable and reach the company's goal of offering the best service in the industry while increasing revenue by 25 per cent within the next three years. To do this, the owners had to reach a consensus on the best marketing plan to help them differentiate against numerous competitors and continue to deliver optimal service offerings.

On November 21, 2018, the Italian luxury fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana (D&G) cancelled a show that was scheduled to take place in Shanghai, China, after controversial video advertisements and private Instagram messages, allegedly sent by Stefano Gabbana himself, went viral. The videos were seen by many to be racist, and they resulted in subsequent boycotts by Chinese celebrities and consumers. As D&G struggled to regain market share in China and suffered huge financial losses, major Chinese e-commerce companies such as Alibaba Group Holding Limited and JD.com Inc. joined the boycott by dropping the brand from their platforms. The Chinese luxury market was large and growing, and experts warned that the brand's profits would suffer from this mistake. What mitigation strategy or actions could D&G undertake to repair the damage done to its reputation, especially in China?

The chief commissioner of the New South Wales branch of the Scout Association of Australia (Scouts NSW) was appointed in mid-2016, and the last couple of years had presented many challenges. The strategic plan inherited from the last chief commissioner had effected some positive changes across the organization, but the membership numbers were still in a declining trend. While the organization was not in dire financial straits, current operations were not only unsustainable but also affecting the organization's ability to deliver the quality values-based programs that Scouts had once been well known for. For the next three years (2019-2021), Scouts NSW would need an innovative strategic plan that addressed marketing, revenue generation, and capital repositioning while respecting the organization's not-for-profit, youth-focused, and values-based structure.

Villeroy & Boch is one of the oldest manufacturing companies in Europe, still controlled by the founding families, though with a public listing. Its specialty is ceramics, divided into bathroom fittings and tableware. At the time of writing the case study, demand was falling for traditional ceramic dining sets, but the business was continuing to grow as a whole. It was displaying considerable ability to automate and modernize in production, gaining efficiency improvements, and to use innovative designs and digital media to appeal to younger customers. It has committed to reduce its environmental impact through lower energy usage and recycling. It retained many features of responsible ownership, for example staying committed to the community in which it originated, maintaining significant manufacturing presence in Germany, and significant philanthropic activities in the region. There were hundreds of family owners, with the 10th generation starting to become involved in the business.

The case describes the dynamics and potential transition of grocery shopping into New Retail concept - a term introduced by Jack Ma and projected to disrupt the way retail industry is working now. The Case discusses and hints that there might be a different game Alibaba and Amazon are playing when merging online and offline shopping and creating a new customer experience with their respective HeMa and AmazonGo initiatives. The hype around the concept with likes of Starbucks and Zara trying to create strategic partnerships with Alibaba for creating the New Retail format suggest that there is a bigger picture involved. The Case highlights the difference in the resources and capabilities utilized by the New Retail players and the traditional brick and mortar retailers, such as Wall Mart, Carrefour and others and suggests that the wholistic "ecosystem" approach might bring a different flavour to the traditionally low margin industry through leveraging the payment system and creating a last mile delivery platform for further growth.

Corporations are increasingly held responsible for the products they source and the sustainability of their supply chains. It was to meet this need that EcoVadis, a sustainability rating agency, was founded in 2007 by Pierre-François Thaler (INSEAD MBA, 1999) and Frédéric Trinel to bridge the information gap between corporate buyers and their suppliers. Following an EcoVadis sustainability assessment, suppliers receive a "scorecard" of their performance which they can then share with clients, while corporate buyers can monitor suppliers' sustainability performance via the EcoVadis platform. The combination of technology, expertise and network effects propels the rating agency onto the global stage, with over 650 employees in 10 offices on 5 continents, and over 55,000 assessments completed. However, the co-founders need to adjust their strategy in an increasingly competitive and technologically sophisticated market. How can they scale up its human capital and technology capabilities to drive growth in the next decade, and ultimately make the corporate world more sustainable?

In December 2016, two years after the founding of Medicloud, a Singapore-based start-up that offered a medical appointment-booking application, the founder and chief executive officer recognized that the start-up had yet to monetize. A decision regarding a pivot was imminent. He also recognized that there were new opportunities in the areas of employee benefits and insurance for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). He needed to answer two pressing questions before the company's initial funding ran out: Should the start-up pivot to serve SMEs? If so, what kind of products and services should it offer to the SMEs?

Evidence based medicine (EBM) requires a level of maturity in the processes, both clinical and non-clinical, which is gained typically over years through consistent deliberate efforts. It is argued that the role of clinical leadership is critical to this. In addition, challenges of implementing EBM are easiest to surmount in single location organizations but complicate considerably when there are multiple distributed locations. While EBM is gaining momentum in health care systems of more developed countries, examples of successful implementation are few in India. Indian institutions face the unique challenge of sorting through multiple bases of foreign evidence (differing guidelines in the UK and U.S.) in addition to domestic evidence covering interventions less frequently used outside of India. The Tata Memorial Centre (TMC) is a pioneer in cancer care and research in India. Over several decades, they have developed an indigenous approach to development and implementation of Evidence based medicine, which has catapulted them into leading cancer hospitals in the world. Set in March 2016, this case study describes TMC's journey thus far with particular emphasis on changes in organizational design as key enablers. TMC's next frontier is to propagate this model of clinical excellence to other cancer hospitals in India through the formation of National Cancer Grid. The key challenge confronting Dr. Rajendra Badwe, Director of TMC, is can these other hospitals accelerate their journey based on the learnings from TMC or whether they will have to customize their approach based on their own operating context. More broadly, which elements of TMC's clinical excellence model are replicable in other hospitals and what organizational changes would be required to implement them.

In November 2017, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, the founders of Tezos, confronted a governance crisis that threatened to destroy their project and expose them to serious legal risks. All developmental activities in Tezos were stalled after Breitmans lost access to the funds raised through an initial coin offering (ICO) four months earlier. Moreover, a series of class-action lawsuits in the United States alleged that the USD 230 million ICO of July was an illegal security offering. The case provides a fascinating situation for discussions on the principles and the frameworks for governance.

Brothers André and Daniel Albuquerque founded the company Terra Nova in 2001 to mediate land disputes between poor families illegally living in urban areas and the official landowners-with the aspiration to improve the lives of the poor. A business-led approach to the issue, like Terra Nova's, was innovative and contested amid the widespread belief that land disputes fell solely within the public sector's purview. After struggling to develop a viable business model, the company received support from impact investing firm MOV Investimentos. By 2019, Terra Nova finally broke even and was exploring opportunities for scaling. But its leaders had to decide the right expansion model for the social business.

In October 2019, Dan Macklin, the newly-appointed chief executive of Salary Finance Inc., was weighing his options for the future of the business. The company's value proposition was quite simple: partner with employers to offer employees affordable loans that were repaid through automatic payroll deductions. Taking repayments directly from salary, and collecting those repayments in one transaction from the employer, dramatically reduced costs, saving employees large amounts of interest when compared to market alternatives like credit cards or payday lenders. Salary Finance Inc. was a subsidiary of Salary Finance Limited which was launched in the UK in 2015. By September 2018, Salary Finance Limited had partnered with over 100 UK employers and offered loans to around one million employees. It was at this point that the company decided to try and replicate this success in the United States, and opened an office in Boston, Massachusetts. By October 2019, the US business had partnered with 15 employers, offering loans to around 50,000 employees. In October 2019, Macklin was contemplating the best way to accelerate the growth of Salary Finance Inc. to hit his 10 million employee target. He was also wrestling with whether he should stick with the core product or add new products to drive sales. This had worked well in the UK where pay advances and savings accounts had proven popular in addition to their core loan product. Salary Finance Inc. was off to a good start, but it remained uncertain how quickly Macklin could grow the business and help more Americans get out of debt.

This case examines the business decisions around managing the community impact of a mining development in the Gobi Desert region of Mongolia at Oyu Tolgoi-one of the larger copper and gold deposits in the world, and a flagship project of Rio Tinto. In 2009, a mining development agreement was reached with the Government of Mongolia on the national level, but negotiations were just ramping up at the local level. New legislation mandated the creation of a local-level agreement, but the exact requirements were vague, leaving a great deal of ambiguity about the obligations of the company. Hoping to establish its so-called social licence to operate, Rio Tinto committed to discussions with local authorities, but the many stakeholders involved have competing interests.

Swadhaar FinServe Private Limited (Swadhaar), a non-banking financial company-microfinance institution (NBFC-MFI), was set up in Mumbai, India in 2008 with the objective of providing the urban poor with increased access to financial services. Swadhaar was a leading provider of financial services to clients in several major states of India. Between 2009 and 2013, there were major changes in the regulatory environment; some of these restricted the scope of MFIs and others opened new business opportunities. Although Swadhaar was able to reach financial sustainability with its existing business model, its founder was always looking at growth strategies to achieve her mission. In late 2014, RBL Bank Ltd. offered to become a strategic investor in Swadhaar. In early 2015, Swadhaar's founder needed to decide whether or not to accept RBL Bank Ltd.'s proposal.

The chief marketing officer (CMO) at an automobile agency was looking at a list of car model features, which he had received from the manufacturing plant. He was expected to provide the manufacturer's suggested retail prices of the cars to dealers the following week and had to decide on the base prices. The CMO asked a data scientist at the research lab to predict prices using the data of past car models. Each car model had different features that could affect the price. The data scientist decided to use feed-forward neural networks as a tool for predicting the prices of new models. After comparing different prediction models, he also wanted to determine which prediction model was suitable for car manufacturing plants.