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In May 2022, Getwell Pharma India Private Limited was an independent neighbourhood pharmacy in Amritsar, India. Pharmacy retail in the country was largely dominated by traditional independent stores, until the emergence of pharmacy chains and e-pharmacies with scale advantage, extensive financial resources, large numbers of stock-keeping units, store brands, and new technology. These changes were making traditional pharmacies less attractive to customers, who were increasingly asking for heavy discounts to match those of the new competitors. However, the discounts were not manageable for independents that were positioned at the end of a long and fragmented supply chain and stuck with limited margins. As a result, Getwell Pharma India Private Limited was losing its customer base, despite offering quality products and services. With revenues and profits falling, should the company consider allowing a major competitor to absorb the business?

This disguised case set in April 2016, based on true events, describes an existential crisis faced by an English law firm operating in Italy. English law firms entered Italy in the 1990s through alliances with reputed Italian firms. The intention was to gain access to the lucrative Italian legal market. When they started operations, these firms aimed to achieve a leading position in the Italian market (top three strategy). Hence, their Italian operations were afforded a high degree of autonomy and preserved their distinctive Italian identity. But later, in the 2000s, English law firms started adopting a one-firm strategy to integrate their Italian operations into the global network. This created a great deal of tension and complexity, as Italian professional logic differed radically from the English logic. Subsequently, alliances and mergers between the English and Italian firms unravelled quickly, resulting in an existential crisis for the English law firms in Italy after over a decade of operations. The case presents such a situation through the eyes of partner John Smith, of the firm Smith and Jones, who must determine how to avert such a crisis while taking into account the Italian legal approach, and without diluting the global nature of his firm.

In December 2022, after the independent film distributing company levelFILM Inc. experienced several box office failures, the company’s manager of sales strategy was wondering if the company needed to re-examine its portfolio strategy. Based in Toronto, Ontario, levelFILM Inc. operated in the highly uncertain film industry, in which it was almost impossible to predict how any one film would perform at the box office. The various distributors in the industry employed different strategies for managing risk, including building a large diversified portfolio of projects or pursuing a blockbuster strategy with heavy investment in fewer projects. The company’s manager was wondering which strategy would be most appropriate for levelFILM Inc. and how he might use extensive historical data that he had available to determine optimal risk management and investment returns options for the company.

A Hong Kong start-up, Senior Deli develops a wide variety of soft meal products targeted at mostly elderly patients suffering from dysphagia, or difficulty swallowing and chewing. Its patented technologies help supply softened food that retains the original taste and appearance and appeals to local palates. There is significant market potential for soft meal products amid the aging populations in Hong Kong, mainland China, and other developed countries. Yet the team has found that some patients and care homes have hesitated to adopt the products. In general, soft meal products are still new to many people and suppliers in Hong Kong. The stakeholders seem to hold up in adoption of the products. This market chasm is too costly for Senior Deli or any single start-up to overcome. Therefore, Senior Deli’s major issues are educating target customers, legitimizing soft meals, and promoting its products amid such uncertainty. At the end of 2022, a localized guideline for care foods was announced in Hong Kong, but will it create an opportunity for Senior Deli to overcome the issues it has been facing?

It is September 2021, and Kalshi is a new, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-approved trading platform for event contracts. Kalshi went online just a few months earlier, after a successful round of Series A funding. Sumer Sao, the first (and at the time the only) member of Kalshi’s growth team, realizes that the key to the company’s sustained success is to quickly grow the number of daily active users to increase liquidity on the trading platform. To achieve that, Kalshi needs to find the right pricing structure that can potentially attract different target segments while also encouraging trading.

The owner of Primes and Zooms, a retail still photography rental organization based in Pune, India, was facing a hard choice in the spring of 2022. After ten years in the business, he saw that the market was changing in some unexpected ways. These changes, coupled with the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic had brought, meant that Primes and Zooms needed to determine a new growth strategy. There had been fast-paced growth in the video photography space, compared to the still photography space. The options were as follows: should Primes and Zooms enter new geographies with its existing still photography business, or should it expand its current locations to include video rental services?

「小樹屋」是由四位創辦人於2016年10月所共同創立的空間租賃品牌，採用「隨需即租」的線上申請方式，讓有獨立空間使用需求的使用戶能快速在1分鐘之內完成線上預約。小樹屋執行長對一個具有簡約設計風格的舒適空間，其市場需求能獲得初步確認而深感振奮，但也持續思考著成長策略與可能隨之而來的競爭威脅。

Tire-building machinery producer Safe-Run Group (Safe-Run) was a second-tier supplier in the automotive industry. Responding to “green supply chain” initiatives in the industry, including by Safe-Run’s major clients, the company started working on a new environmentally friendly meridian machine. The results of a pilot test led by Zhijun Li, vice-president and head of research and development at Safe-Run, proved very promising both in terms of energy consumption and productivity, yet senior management remained skeptical. In a meeting with Li, senior executives expressed concerns about the higher production costs and the reaction of Safe-Run’s main customers. Li needed to build a better business case for the new machine.

The chief technology officer of a leading pharmaceutical distributor in the US is facing a crossroads. Driven by the company’s mission of “reimagining healthcare,” his team has just conducted a pilot of blockchain. Having designed the blockchain and tested it in real-world conditions, the team is now keen to use it in the company’s supply chain. As the team leader, the CTO is grappling with how to move forward. How can he ensure he chooses the right business partners for incubating blockchain technology at Cardinal? And how can he ensure he chooses the right business processes for implementing blockchain technology?

Favarr.com was the brainchild of two Master of Business Administration graduates from Harvard Business School who were looking forward to their start-up dream. They aim was to solve a problem of cross-border delivery of items through an aggregator model, where travellers would sell spare space in their luggage to carry and deliver goods. The platform was in beta testing mode and available by invitation only. The founders were deliberating on various issues and challenges as they launched their online platform, and the possible available solutions to resolve them.

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - Family Business Category at European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>Established in 1988, Cee Dee Vacuum Pvt. Ltd. was a family-owned engineering products manufacturer located in the industrial hub of Pune, India. In the three decades since inception, the company established itself as a leading supplier of engineered equipment used in the manufacturing and maintenance of electrical transformers. Its achievements included the design, manufacture, installation, and commissioning of some of the largest engineered equipment for their clients’ electrical transformer-manufacturing sites in Asia. The founders wanted to plan for the company’s growth over the coming decade. Central to the evaluation and choice of strategy was the consideration for a high growth rate while leveraging Cee Dee Vacuum Pvt. Ltd.’s leadership position in the industry. Assuming that the owner family’s next generation was not interested in taking over the business, the founders had to find the most suitable growth strategy and prepare the business for sale.

Julia Miller was the lead project coordinator for Construct Water Company on a water line construction project in Bakersfield, California. Miller had been recently been promoted when her new boss came to her hotel room for a meeting, but kissed her without her consent. Over the next few months, Miller faced more conflict and had to make an increasingly complicated decision about what to do next, including whether to report the original misconduct. Miller repeatedly chose not to report the incident because she worried about a negative reaction from the company’s human resources office and potential retaliation from her mostly male superiors. She decided instead to follow the advice of a co-worker to avoid conflict. Miller was constantly trying to figure out what she should do, and wondered why the organizational environment had made these decisions so difficult for female employees like her.

Guangzhou Leyaoyao Information Technology Co. Ltd. provided online-payment services in Guangzhou, China. In 2017, the company entered the claw-machine market and became the leader in the industry’s online-payment services within two years. To further develop its business and improve its market power, the company was considering diversification through vertical integration within the claw-machine industry or horizontal expansion to other types of offline physical devices. Both options held potential benefits and risks. Vertical integration would enable the company to enhance its market position, lift entry barriers, and develop a new revenue model within the claw-machine business, but consolidation costs could be substantive and the relatively small scale of the claw-machine industry could be a constraint for the company’s future development. Horizontal expansion would allow the company to apply its core competences from the claw-machine industry to other offline and networked facilities, but it could be challenging due to established market leaders in other sectors. Which option would broaden the company’s business boundaries: vertical integration or horizontal expansion?

As of the end of 2019, the point-of-care testing (POCT) products of Getein Biotech Inc., an important in vitro diagnostics (IVD) enterprise, had been successfully applied to the detection of many diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, inflammation, kidney diseases, and blood coagulation disorders. Its market share and output value were both among the highest in the industry. In addition to improving its core POCT products, Getein Biotech firmly grasped industry opportunities to accelerate expansion in key IVD segments and build a complete product system. However, with the impact of COVID-19 in 2020, the enterprise, unlike its competitors in this industry, failed to seize the opportunity of developing COVID-19 test kits. As a result, its profits fell sharply, and its competitive position in the industry faced huge challenges. At the beginning of 2021, due to uncertainties about the COVID-19 pandemic, the enterprise was forced to integrate its original resources and capabilities and adjust its development strategy in order to establish sustainable competitive advantages.

In early May 2022, Collie Turner, founder of award-winning non-profit organization Heroic Gardens, was looking to obtain additional revenue streams in order to expand the organization’s programming. The mission of Heroic Gardens was clear: help veterans experience the healing power of nature. The pivot to a new campaign during the COVID-19 pandemic was successful, and the number of organizations and veterans reaching out for services was increasing.<br><br>Heroic Gardens was looking for funding and new ways to scale in order to grow its programs and hire employees to support that growth. As Turner was preparing for a financial and program review with her board—and knowing that the organization was 99 per cent volunteer run—the challenge was understanding and finding a way to increase funding in order to support Heroic Gardens and the veterans it serves.

In February 2022, the chief executive officer of Defeat Duchenne Canada was eager to scale up the operations of his charitable organization, from its local origins in London, Ontario to a national and impactful venture. The management team had to find the best way to develop awareness of Duchenne muscular dystrophy to secure much-needed funding for research and improve access to treatment for the rare disease. Despite facing multiple resource constraints, including a name and branding change from Jesse’s Journey to Defeat Duchenne Canada, the team had to focus its efforts on generating the greatest impact.

Alexion Pharmaceutical Inc. (Alexion), founded in 1992, was a biotechnology company that focused on therapeutics for rare diseases. As the company grew, it sought to scale operations to serve a growing number of patients and their families worldwide. The search began for an innovative, forward-thinking, strategic information technology leader to spearhead the effort. In 2015, George Llado was hired as senior vice-president and chief information officer. Llado realized that big data and analytics could play a unique transformational role in identifying customers to accelerate sales growth and realize the mission to save lives. He wondered if analytics enabled through cloud computing, a new kind of data platform, and betting on technology start-ups could accelerate patient identification. When he joined Alexion, Llado faced a unique set of related challenges, including (a) applying analytics in a highly regulated industry, (b) rapidly creating a new type of integrated data platform, (c) managing dysfunctional vendor relationships, and (d) balancing the role of data and analytics in relation to the traditional sales force approach in pharmaceutical firms.

<p style="color: white; background-color: rgb(3, 70, 56); font-size: 16px; display: inline-block; border: 0px rgb(197, 183, 131); padding: 4px 4px;"><a href="https://www.iveypublishing.ca/s/product/vcayr-managing-sexual-harassment-digital-learning-experience/01t5c00000Cd0NUAAZ" style="color: inherit; text-decoration: inherit;">AVAILABLE AS A DIGITAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE</a></p><br> In January 2019, a project manager at VCayr, a social service organization, reported to a board director, Adam Johnson, that another board director at VCayr sexually harassed her. Johnson was aware of the severity of sexual harassment and the significant harm it could have on all VCayr members and the overall organization. He had to decide how to manage the situation.

In November 2019, digital marketing firm Arcane was six months into the conversion of its London, Ontario, headquarters into an organization of “agile” squads (small, self-managed teams)—a radical departure from the discipline-based silos that had served the agency since its beginning in 2011. Chief executive officer Lindsay Schneider and chief operating officer David Bunce, the architects of the change, were preparing an update for Arcane’s Ownership Group the following week on the status of the squad structure rollout. Schneider and Bunce were tasked with reviewing the introduction of the squad structure and assessing the success of its implementation.

Vikrant Kadian founded Cherrygrocer Pvt. Ltd. (Fresherry), an online app and delivery service for fruits and vegetables, in February 2021 in Gurgaon, India, and was joined in the venture by three friends. In January 2023, Kadian was still the majority shareholder. The venture promised its customers better prices, convenience, an alternative to physical inspection of the produce, and traceability. However, the company had no defined target market and insufficient capabilities to straddle two main market segments, and the bootstrapped venture was suffering from wastage and inefficient resource allocations and facing high operational losses. Kadian had to choose from among the options available: Should he target a specific market or continue to straddle two segments and invest in capabilities? If he decided to choose a target market, should he chase the premium or budget segment? Should he continue bootstrapping the firm or bring in an external investor to implement a marketing strategy? Realizing the importance of his entrepreneurial dream and the principle on which he started his venture, Kadian had to decide the way forward without losing time.