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In 2015, Costco Wholesale Corporation (Costco) was ranked as one of the world’s largest global retailers based on sales revenue, second only to Walmart Inc. It had successfully expanded into eight international markets: Canada, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Mexico, Taiwan, Australia, and the United Kingdom, managing to grow despite the turbulent economic conditions prevalent in these countries. Costco challenged stereotypes and employed unconventional business strategies to position itself as a leading transnational retailer. Costco’s business model was crucial to the company’s financial success and expansion over the years. Key company success factors included its membership-based operating model, its focus on low-cost efficiencies, the perceived quality and value of the Kirkland Signature brand, and its philosophy of rewarding human capital. However, as Costco made plans to expand its operations, it faced challenges due to intensified competition in the global retail industry and policies and regulations in local markets that restricted big box retailers. In this context of uncertain international markets, which markets should it enter next? What was the best entry method for each individual market?

In January 2018, an investment portfolio manager learned of a safety recall for Ford Motor Company (Ford) involving faulty airbags that failed to deploy upon collision. An investigation by U.S. regulators found that the company had been aware of these faulty airbags but had not taken proactive measures to mitigate the potential damage. As a result, in just one day, the share price for Ford dropped from $13.10 to $12.18 per share. The portfolio manager needed to anticipate the future of Ford and come up with a plan to protect his investors' wealth.

Drums Food International Pvt. Ltd. (Drums Food) launched India’s first Greek yogurt brand, Epigamia, in 2015. Experiencing initial success with Greek yogurt, Drums Food went on to add another unique offering, lactose-free artisanal curd, targeting consumers with lactose intolerance. With these launches, Drums Food was building a well-differentiated, healthy brand to successfully tap the value-added dairy products market. However, in 2018, the road ahead was not without hurdles. To succeed, Drums Food needed to change the consumer mindset to ensure constant patronage of Epigamia. It also needed to defend itself against competitors who could launch similar products at competitive price points, leveraging the scale of their existing dairy businesses. Could Drums Food sustain the brand and build strong brand equity, enough that it could extend the Epigamia brand to more categories?

In 2017, Cathay Pacific Airways Limited (Cathay Pacific) began its largest transformation program in 20 years in response to business hardships the airline had been experiencing since 2016. The program used digital enablement and insight orientation to realign the company’s newly defined business focuses and to establish supporting pillars for further development. Information technology (IT) not only played a lead role in this corporate transformation, but it also became increasingly vital to Cathay Pacific’s future growth. In 2018, this transformation seemed successful, but important questions remained regarding the development of Cathay Pacific’s IT strategy over the previous decade, the company’s focus for its IT investments, and the factors that led the company into hardship. As it moved forward, how far could Cathay Pacific go with its digital transformation? How could IT influence the company’s future business strategy: could it help Cathay Pacific avoid further turbulence?

Sichuan Haidilao Catering Co., Ltd. (Haidilao) was the leading hot pot company in the Chinese market and the largest hot pot chain of restaurants in the world. Haidilao was famous for its extraordinary customer service, which had made it a legend in the catering industry. However, on August 25, 2017, a news report with online videos revealed that mice were in the kitchen of one of Haidilao’s restaurants, that dustpans and tableware were washed in the same sink, and that spoons intended for customer use were used to unclog blockages in the plumbing. How could Zhang Yong, the founder and chair of Haidilao’s board of directors, respond to the crisis, turn threats into opportunities, and prevent the recurrence of such a crisis?

Founded in 1969 as a small operation, Otsuka Kagu, Ltd. became Japan’s largest furniture retailer and was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1980. A membership program in 1993 managed to revitalize the company’s sales at a time when Japan was in a recession. Years later, after sales began to decline and the founder was convicted of insider trading in 2008, the presidency was transferred to the founder’s daughter, who applied a more customer-centric model to the business. This change infuriated the founder, who removed his daughter from the company’s leadership. After persistently poor performance, the company’s board of directors reinstated the founder’s daughter; she then launched a notorious public battle for control of the company. Despite new environment-responsive strategies, revenues continued to decline to the point of the company declaring its biggest loss by the end of 2017. In August 2018, the company reported a net loss of ¥2.3 billion, with the company’s shares trading at their lowest level ever. Facing financial distress, the company had to look both inward and outward to determine its next steps.

Big Hit Entertainment, a Korean-based producer of popular music content, was promoting its hit "idol group," BTS, as a serious entry in the world’s mainstream musical entertainment business, alongside global performers such as Justin Bieber. The "K-pop machine" represented a complex set of practices for producing performances, many of which were unique to Korea and criticized as being "overly manufactured." The case raises questions about the extent to which processes and institutions designed to generate commercially valuable creative outcomes could be developed into a reliable, repeatable, or standardized form. Could a formula be used to generate successful and creative products?

As a typical investor in India, you sought to attain reasonable growth in her capital with adequate diversification and low volatility in returns. It was suggested that you consider investing in mutual funds in order to obtain diversified exposure to India’s equity and debt markets. In particular, it was suggested that you invest in the Tata Equity P/E Fund, which had witnessed stellar performance in the recent past. However, before you can decide whether to invest in mutual funds, you must thoroughly understand the key features and their benefits and costs. You also need to identify specific sources of outperformance and to assess the fund’s true outperformance, actively attained after adjusting for risk.

In order to shift 30 per cent of the country’s transport fleet to electric by 2030, the Indian government had launched multiple programs to promote usage of hybrid and electric vehicles (EV) in the country and had agreed to provide various fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to EV firms up until 2020. Many leading automobile manufacturers in India were investing millions of dollars in designing and manufacturing EVs, building the infrastructure required for running EVs, and creating the components required for the battery system used in EVs. Despite these multiple public and private initiatives, by September 2018 it had became apparent that many macro and micro issues were present in the overall environment that was being built for the smooth running of EVs. Would Mahindra Electric Mobility Limited and other automobile firms be able to effectively formulate strategies and compete successfully in this dynamic and changing business environment?

In 2014, Guccio Gucci SpA (Gucci), a flagship brand of the Kering group, was struggling with its operating profit and human resources. By December 2014, the company had experienced three consecutive quarters of declining profits. In addition to the company’s financial issues, its president and chief executive officer (CEO) and its creative director had abruptly left the company. On January 15, 2015, a new CEO took over and faced several decisions. He needed to decide whether or not to reposition the brand and whether to hire internally or externally for a new creative director—related decisions that would strongly influence the brand’s position in the market and its appeal in the future.

SF Express Group Co. Ltd. (SF Express) was a leading express delivery and logistics solutions provider in China. In May 2017, SF Express became involved in a dispute with the logistics-tracking platform Cainiao Network Technology (Cainiao), which was controlled by Alibaba Group Holding Limited. SF Express and Cainiao were the two largest players in China’s express delivery market. The dispute, which involved an SF Express–affiliated smart package locker company that declined a data-sharing request from Cainiao, caused SF Express and Cainiao to sever their ties over proprietary data and cybersecurity. This severance caused significant disruption to China’s e-commerce sector. After regulatory intervention, both parties agreed to resume sharing data for the time being and had to negotiate a resolution to their data dispute within 30 days. The chief information officer of SF Express needed to come up with an immediate solution to the dispute as well as a long-term data strategy for SF Express.

In 2017, bike sharing was one of the hottest technology trends in China. Since its inception two years earlier, Mobike had quickly become one of China’s leading bike on-demand companies because of its bicycles’ superior quality, and the company’s intelligence capability, open innovation, alliance strategies, and big data applications. Mobike expanded aggressively to take advantage of opportunities in this emerging market and the need for efficient, green, and sustainable solutions to short-distance urban transportation. However, Mobike's aggressive expansion faced tough challenges, including shared bicycle operations and management, competition from rivals, and government regulations. By late 2017, several bike-sharing services had gone bankrupt. How could Mobike avoid the same fate, generate profit, and continue to prosper?

On October 3, 2016, the Government of Ontario released its finance statements for the province without the opinion of Ontario's auditor general. This incident stemmed from a disagreement between the auditor and the government over public-sector pension accounting interpretations, which had the potential to seriously affect the province’s budget balance and long-term debt levels. It was uncertain how this disagreement would be resolved. Many members of the media, think tanks, and opposition political parties decried the government for refusing to co-operate with the auditor, while others felt the auditor had gone too far in her interpretation of Public Sector Accounting Standards.

As a pioneer and leading competitor among China’s online travel-service providers, Ctrip.com International, Ltd. (Ctrip) had successfully integrated technology into China’s rapidly growing travel industry by 2017. The company’s platform provided a comprehensive set of travel services including hotel reservations, flight and train ticketing, vacation packages, business-travel management, and dining reservations. Praised in the industry as the exemplary combination of traditional tourism and e-commerce, Ctrip had experienced significant success. However, the company still had to adapt to an ever-changing and increasingly complex internal and external business environment. How would the company evolve its business model to sustainably compete in the global online travel market?

In 2017, the French film producer and distributor EuropaCorp S.A. (EuropaCorp) announced a historical record loss of €119.9 million. The company had almost doubled its revenues between 2001 and 2010 by using an integrated studio model, but the recent losses had been substantial. After entering into a number of international joint production and marketing ventures, the company reported its highest revenues to date in 2015, only to announce in July 2016 that the company had incurred significant losses and that its revenues were the lowest since 2008. Once again, the company tried to turn itself around, strengthening its position by focusing on the founder’s core business and making some financial adjustments. A capital increase resulted in a positive shift in EuropaCorp’s shareholding structure; however, the company was still experiencing losses and was anticipating a continuing loss into the next year. Was there anything more EuropaCorp could do to change its position?

On November 20, 2015, the chief financial officer of Pfizer Inc. (Pfizer) was preparing to make a recommendation about whether to proceed with or stop merger talks between Pfizer and Allergan plc (Allergan), a pharmaceutical company with headquarters in New Jersey but tax residence in Ireland. Informal talks had been going on for almost a month, but both sides were rapidly approaching the pre-arranged deadline. The two teams had less than a week to either formally agree to proceed with a merger or walk away. Formalizing the agreement meant activating a US$400 million breakup clause that would make it costlier to call the deal off at a later date. Allergan’s Irish tax residency made this merger both attractive and concerning. While it provided the opportunity to lower Pfizer’s worldwide tax rate, the U.S. Treasury Department had recently announced regulatory changes targeting mergers that relocated a company’s tax residence to a low-tax country (called “tax inversions”). Pfizer’s legal team members were confident that the announced changes would not affect the proposed merger with Allergan. However, they were less certain about if—and when—the U.S. Treasury Department might make changes again.

In April 2017, the Indian government announced the country would be free of fossil fuel cars by 2030. Maruti Suzuki was the market leader in India’s conventional passenger car segment, and did not agree that electric cars should be forced on the average consumer. Electric cars were very expensive and had limited mileage, making them a poor fit for Indian consumers, who were generally budget-conscious and mileage-obsessed. It would be very difficult to replace fossil fuel cars quickly, especially with largely non-existent infrastructure for the operation of electric cars. Maruti Suzuki wondered if it should wait for the uncertainty in the country to clear, while other car manufacturers took their chances on India’s electric car market, or if it should expedite the process of building electric cars and keep its market leadership position intact.

In late 2017, senior management staff at New Flyer Industries Inc. (NFI) were reflecting on the recent growth of their company. NFI was an automotive company that specialized in heavy-duty transit buses and motor coaches. It had been over a year since it had acquired Motor Coach Industries International Inc., and the leadership team was pleased with NFI’s performance; however, they wondered why the company’s stock price had become stagnant in recent months. NFI had a long history of operational excellence and innovation and had exhibited growth through acquisitions. Had NFI reached the limits of its current strategy? What opportunities and threats existed in the industry? Which resources had enabled the firm to achieve market success? The management team needed to analyze the business and its environment to identify a way forward.

Japan's number-one apparel brand and retailer, Uniqlo Co. Ltd. (Uniqlo), built its business by delivering high-quality basic casual clothing at low prices. Uniqlo's founder and chief executive officer of Uniqlo's parent company, Fast Retailing, stated that his goal was to become the world's number-one apparel retailer. He argued that success in the U.S. market was crucial to meeting this goal; yet, Uniqlo USA was not doing well. In mid-2017, after more than a decade of efforts, Uniqlo USA had relatively few stores and continued to lose money. As the gap between its goals and performance continued to diverge, the company needed to re-examine its U.S.-based business and potentially its globalization strategy altogether.

In early April 2018, Spotify Technology SA (Spotify) had planned a rare direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Unlike typical initial public offerings (IPOs), which used investment banks as underwriters to help set an IPO price, Spotify’s direct listing would allow market participants to determine the initial price. In a typical IPO, investment banks shopped the potential offer to various clients and, in the process of book building, determined a range for the offer when it started trading. They also often provided support for the issue on the day it started to trade, limiting the downside for shareholders if demand was low. In Spotify’s case, the investment banks were only being paid a nominal fee, and Spotify was not raising capital in the offering. The stock simply started trading on the prescribed day. A portfolio manager with a hedge fund that focused on growing technology companies was considering investing in the firm, but faced a challenge: how could she estimate Spotify’s value when it started to trade?