個案總覽

In 2018, Tesla Inc. was one of the highest-valued automobile companies in the United States-despite never reporting profits. Although Elon Musk, the founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., was appreciated for his vision, learning capabilities, active presence on social media, and dedication, he was also criticized for his leadership style and controversial tweets regarding the privatization of the company. Analysts and short sellers believed Musk's narrative ability had caused Tesla Inc. to become overvalued and suspected that the company was actually on the verge of bankruptcy. Did Musk's leadership do more harm than good? Would he be able to save Tesla Inc.?

In January 2018, a senior manager at Labatt Breweries of Canada, headquartered in Toronto, was thinking of how to launch an influencer strategy for the Budweiser brand in Canada. The manager needed a strategy to connect with a group of influential bloggers and other influencers in Canada. These influencers' opinions affected the way different brands were viewed. Getting the influencers on-side would require finesse as Budweiser was typically seen as different from the new, popular craft-brew brands. Budweiser was the leading beer brand in Canada. It needed to be more relevant to the 18-24 target group, a group that the brand had struggled to reach despite allocating significant marketing dollars to promote its product. The senior manager, who was looking into implementing an influencer marketing campaign, realized that she needed to do some planning regarding how to take into account influencers' views and preferences.

In 2018, Game of Thrones, a widely popular television series, had inspired a significant increase in tourism to one of its filming locations: Dubrovnik, Croatia. The economy in Croatia, in general, and Dubrovnik, in particular, relied significantly on tourism. However, the popularity of the television series had led to overwhelming tourist traffic in the area. During the peak tourist season, the city now suffered from serious overcrowding. In addition, the city was at risk of losing its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In response, the city had begun to engage in demarketing efforts. Would these efforts be successful in both managing the high demand for tourism in the area and creating a sustainable tourism industry?

The manager of Water Operations at the City of London wanted to reduce the cost of pumping water by optimizing energy use. Water Operations had been consistently experiencing higher operational costs, and electricity bills accounted for up to 30 per cent of its direct costs. If the manager could predict the future cost of energy, she could schedule the operation of the water pumps to benefit from periods of low energy prices, potentially saving up to 25 per cent of the energy costs. The manager obtained the hourly Ontario electricity prices from 2003 to 2015, and wanted to use that data to evaluate how accurately she could predict future electricity prices. How should she proceed?

In late September 2014, students in the Arnold School of Business (Arnold) full-time MBA program wrote an open-book managerial accounting exam. Immediately after the exam, one of the students, who was also vice-president academic of the Graduate Business Students Association (GBSA), was informed by a classmate that some students accessed the Internet for solutions during the exam. The GBSA representative knew she had to do something but was unsure how to proceed. In part A of the case, the student representative consulted with her colleague, the GBSA president. The two considered four potential courses of action: (1) do nothing; (2) bring the issue to the entire GBSA council; (3) inform the course instructor; or (4) speak directly to the academic chair of the MBA program. In part B of the case, the two student representatives speak with the academic chair, who explained that without any hard evidence of academic dishonesty, little could be done. The academic chair and GBSA representatives must decide how to resolve the issue when any solution is likely to disappoint some students and cause division, and possibly enmity, among classmates who are just one month into their MBA.

The case opens in 2017 as Onur Erbay, CEO of HOPI, a multi-vendor loyalty platform, is contemplating a critical decision. The case chronicles the origins of Boyner Group, the parent company of HOPI and a major retailer in Turkey, and development of retail and customer relationship management (CRM) in Turkey over the years. Before HOPI, Boyner Group retailers were unable to trace customers across the Group's brands form insights about customers' preferences and habits beyond what brand-specific CRM and loyalty programs provided data for. HOPI was born as the management team at Boyner Group realized the need to serve the customer holistically; the program was designed as a coalition loyalty program including non-Boyner retailer partners. The case provides a detailed overview of the design choices for HOPI-a mobile only app with its own currency, paracik, its revenue model, user experience, and how the company planned to leverage big data to segment the customers for retailers and increase purchasing power for customers. Since its launch in 2015, HOPI had 5.5 million downloads and 300 thousand daily active users browsing campaigns offered by over 116 coalition retailers that ranged from gas stations and cinemas to supermarkets and department stores. In 2017, Erbay, who had ambitions to grow HOPI beyond a loyalty program, was faced with harsh realities: the Turkish market was very price sensitive, several competitors had emerged since HOPI's launch, and several retailers and consumers preferred discounts at the time of purchase instead of earning loyalty points for future purchases. Erbay was also facing pressure from the parent company to make HOPI profitable. Was it time for HOPI to pivot to the discount model and abandon its original concept?

This is a case for teaching Project Management, Uncertainty Complexity and Risk in Projects and Technology Management. It discusses the issues related to installation, commissioning of new technology that is an alternative to blast furnace technology. The case deals with location, technology selection, a problems encountered by a major integrated steel makers in Indian Context. We discuss and unforeseen uncertainties associated with this project.

The year 2013-14 was very significant for Raychem RPG Ltd (RRL) - a joint venture between RPG group, India and TE Connectivity, USA. The sales were looking up and order book was promising. Newly restructured units were working well and business in new segments was picking up. There were several initiatives undertaken by the CEO in last five years of his tenure. His team had achieved the desired stability and turnaround was successful. A high-growth future in a slowing global economic scenario had to be converted into a more profitable opportunity. However, he faced several questions. Was the strategic transformation journey that he embarked on four years ago complete? Could he have done something different? Which were the areas where the next focus should be? Did RRL have the required competences to succeed in those areas? How would RRL manage the changing expectations of the two JV partners?

This short case provides income statements and balance sheets for a recent year for seven Indian firms from seven industries. These firms belong to the following industries: Airline; Banking; Information Technology Services; Liquor Producer; Oil Exploration and Development; Pharmaceutical, and Retail The task before students is to evaluate the financial statements given in the exhibits and identify the appropriate industry for each firm.

In February 2018, the co-owners of Trafalgar Ales, Meads & Distillery, based in Oakville, Ontario, were eager to take on a wide range of new opportunities. In the 18 months since their purchase of the brewery, the two co-owners had devoted great efforts to transforming the company, creating and launching several new and successful beer brands. Contract brewing was de-emphasized, and the layout of the brewery was reset. The owners became involved in the industry at the brewers association level. What they needed, it seemed, was a better understanding of the opportunities in front of them. The co-owners had to decide where they should focus their attention and their resources. Their challenge was how to grow the brewery-do more of the same, or launch products in other categories?

In 2016, Chinese football club Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao Football Club (Evergrande), which had recently been crowned the most valuable football club in China by Forbes magazine, with a valuation of US$282 million, simultaneously had a market capitalization in China of over US$3.3 billion. The team had yet to earn a profit, so these valuations raised questions regarding how this team in particular was valued and how sports franchises were valued in general. Many sports teams tended to lose money as they built their talent base, and investors often valued such assets in a way that was similar to the valuation of technology stocks. A football fan who was interested in investing in the Evergrande club was concerned about the high price for its shares. He wondered whether the club was really worth this much money and whether its stock price could continue to rise in future. To answer these questions, he needed to understand how the team was valued.

In 2014, an entrepreneur in Cape Town, South Africa, started SweepSouth with her husband. Their mission was to enable dignified home cleaning work for the most vulnerable blue-collar workers, and they offered several services to empower them. When the company struggled to meet the demand for domestic services over the December holiday period, the founders realized the extent of the market's need to connect domestic workers with potential clients. Given the entrepreneur's business acumen and her husband's skills and experience in software development, they created a digital platform that was often labelled the "Uber" of domestic services. SweepSouth employed 40 staff members and had 8,000 contractors (referred to as "SweepStars") on the company's platform. In 2018, the two founders wanted to scale up the business for greater social impact and had to choose among expanding the business to other African countries, expanding the service offering to office spaces, or remaining focused on serving the home and adding new services such as gardening and plumbing.

On September 30, 2017, the general manager (GM) of Uber Technologies Inc. (Uber) for sub-Saharan Africa, arrived in Nairobi, Kenya, and paid for his Uber service with cash. This functionality of the Uber app represented a new business model for Uber. The GM had to convince global management of the business case for offering cash payment options in Africa; he did so by conducting experiments and showing data that indicated rider numbers had tripled with adoption of the cash payment option. Uber's driver-partners were concerned about safety when they transported passengers who paid by cash, both because credit card payments offered Uber rider identification and because the driver-partners were concerned about driving around with large amounts of cash. In spite of their concerns, the rationale for introducing a cash payment option was relevant, and it had to be considered carefully in the context of African locations with high crime rates. The GM considered various initiatives for utilizing data from their technology platform to safeguard their riders and drivers. They needed to address local needs in Africa while adhering to global Uber standards.

This case follows the 2017 acquisition valuation of Mary Washington Pediatrics in Northern Virginia by two pediatricians, Natalia Juarez and Kirsten Atwood. The case provides a simple context for discussing approaches for enterprise valuation, including discounted cash flow (DCF) and transaction multiples methods. Students are encouraged to critique a financial forecast for the practice using the current performance of the target company and other comparables. The case has been used in a course specific to medical professionals but could be used by any group seeking an introduction to valuation mechanics.

As the Chief Administrative Officer of UMass Memorial Health Care (UMMHC) and president of UMass Memorial (UMM) Community Hospitals, Douglas Brown had just received unanimous and enthusiastic approval to pursue his "Anchor Mission" project at UMMHC in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was extremely excited by the board's support, but also quite apprehensive about how to make the Anchor Mission a reality. Doug had spearheaded the Anchor Mission from its earliest exploratory efforts. The goal of the health system's Anchor Mission-an idea developed by the Democracy Collaborative, an economic think tank-was to address the social determinants of health in its community beyond the traditional approach of providing excellent clinical care. He had argued that UMMHC had an obligation as the largest employer and economic force in Central Massachusetts to consider the broader development of the community and to address non-clinical factors, like homelessness and social inequality that made people unhealthy. To achieve this goal, UMMHC's Anchor Mission would undertake three types of interventions: local hiring, local sourcing/purchasing, and place-based community investment projects. While the board's enthusiasm was palpable and inspiring, Doug knew that sustaining it would require concrete accomplishments and a positive return on any investments the health system made in the project. The approval was just the first step. Innovation and new ways of thinking would be necessary. The bureaucracy behind a multi-billion-dollar healthcare organization would need to change. Even the doctors and nurses would need to change! He knew that the project had enormous potential but would become even more daunting from here.

The founding principle of contracts is the freedom of the parties. The parties are free to choose their terms and follow any modality of communication, oral or written. As they can freely make a contract, they can freely modify or unmake it. Written contracts have a clause, No Oral Modification Clause (NOM Clause), precluding oral modifications of the contract. Irrespective of it, business persons make oral agreements modifying the contract, and later, dispute its validity. If the parties are free to contract, why should the oral agreement not be binding? In a NOM Clause then, ineffective? The United Kingdom Supreme Court, in MWB Business Exchange Centres Ltd v Rock Advertising Ltd, explores this fundamental question on contract law.

Seng Hua Hng (SHH) Foodstuffs Pte Ltd, the largest nuts manufacturer in Singapore, was the company behind Camel Nuts, a trusted household brand name in nut snacks in the country. Camel had a prominent brand presence both domestically and internationally in 29 countries. Aspiring to continued growth, in 2016, the company set a strategic target of 100-100-10, which stands for S$100 million (US$72 million) revenue, geographic presence in 100 countries and a profit of S$10 million (US$7 million) by the year 2020. In late 2017, a year into his new role as Head of Group Finance at SHH, Colin Chin commissioned a team of SMU accounting students to build data analytics capability in-house to help the company achieve its strategic goals. In the past, SHH as a traditional family business would rely on ballpark estimates to make key strategic decisions, for example, to determine annual production capacity. The practice of using past years' demand in current year's production planning had continued throughout the decades. Some of the key challenges SHH faced was the lack of accurate demand forecasting on a periodic basis and the absence of important financial information that would support the risk assessment of expansion to new foreign markets. By leveraging the power of predictive analytics, Colin wanted to find answers from the data insights to help him overcome some of the challenges the organisation was facing. How could SHH grow its existing markets, both domestically and overseas, and by how much? What are some of the new markets SHH can enter? Will there be any potential cannibalisation of existing products if SHH were to introduce a new product line? Could data analytics help decision-making at SHH to become data-driven, hence enabling the company to better assess if the goals of 100-100-10 were within or out of reach?