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Credit and charge card issuer American Express (Amex) had developed a strong reputation among consumers due in part to its Membership Rewards (MR) loyalty program, first established in 1991. Through MR, all Amex cardholders could accumulate and redeem "points" based on how much they spent, while customers with Amex's Gold and Platinum Cards received additional perks. By 2016, however, the U.S. credit card market had become increasingly competitive, with many credit card companies increasing their sign-on point bonuses for new customers. Chris Cracchiolo, Amex's vice president of U.S. loyalty, strategy, and global partnerships, had to decide how to position the MR program in the face of this competition. Should Amex begin offering more competitive sign-on bonuses and point redemption rates, or would this dilute the company's strong brand?

Sony used to be synonymous with "innovation" and "cool products". The case reveals how the company lost its edge and describes the leadership initiatives to restore its former glory. In 2012, Kazuo (Kaz) Hirai becomes CEO and successfully transforms Sony, including a relentless focus on differentiation through "wow" products instead of chasing scale. How should he organize and manage the company's response to digital opportunities, such as virtual reality, that could affect the company's entire value chain?

Insigne Health is a fictional for-profit, integrated health insurer/health care provider whose leadership believes that by shifting members' focus from "sickness" to "well-being" it could increase the overall health of its insured population and decrease the resources it spent each year on delivering care. The case puts students in the role of design researcher charged with understanding the member segment about which Insigne Health leadership is most concerned: The "silent middle." This cohort represents 70% of membership. They are "neither sick nor well," and may, without changes in a range of behaviors, be quietly developing conditions that will evolve into costly chronic diseases. From interviews included in the case, students uncover insights into member behavior and, based on these insights, generate and develop concepts to help members change behaviors and lead healthier lives.

The Relax case traces the history of a massage services company from its founding in 2007 to mid-2017, when it is considering the best strategy for growth and an acquisition. The company's owner and top managers wonder how the firm should reorganize to cope with the challenges posed by the company's transformation from a small, independent operation to a professionally managed enterprise. This case illustrates the challenges of preparing for rapid growth. It covers issues of internal management and organization, as well as brand management decisions. Relax can be used in an entrepreneurial management or small business course. Because of the emphasis the company places on its brand, it may also be applicable for some marketing or brand management classes.

In 2015, nine black Americans were killed in a racially motivated shooting spree. The incident fuelled ongoing racial tensions in the United States and launched a conflict over the presence of Confederate memorials in public spaces. When the push to remove Confederate memorials began, the task for Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, was to deal with the city's notable Confederate monuments and the conflict they engendered in a city divided along racial lines demographically, economically, and historically. On May 19, 2017, Landrieu addressed the public. Students have the opportunity to evaluate the speech, consider why Landrieu chose this occasion to address the public, and determine what the speech reveals about his leadership character.

When Luca Garavoglia became chairman of the Campari Group at the age of 23 following the death of his father, he immediately adopted a strategy of fast growth through acquisitions. Over the next 24 years, Campari acquired 26 companies, spending over €3 billion and establishing its own distribution network in 20 countries. This two-part case series describes how Campari transformed from a single-brand local Italian company to an important player in the global spirits industry with over 50 premium brands distributed in over 190 countries. CASE A follows Campari on its journey from 1994 to 2018, providing an overview of its history, business strategy, market place, trends and competitive landscape. learning objective: The case describes the successful transformation and survival of Campari as a small player among "giants" in a niche sector of the spirits industry. It can be used for class discussion on different business and social topics, such as: 1)Business strategy (SWOT, Porter's 5-forces); 2) Globalization (from local to global); 3) Growth through M&As (value creation, synergies); 4) Family-owned businesses (conflict of interest, strategic fit); 5) Marketing strategy (market trends, ethical role of marketeers).

This case describes the sourcing challenge faced by a firm which is involved in contract manufacturing of a device. The company must decide whether to continue as a contract manufacturer where they are engaged in a wholesale price contract, or they should get into the development of their channel by engaging with the design firm through a revenue sharing contract.

The case narrates the evolution of the Alibaba Group, starting with Alibaba.com in 1999, in four different phases, with the last phase beginning after its IPO in 2014. The evolution is described from a social sustainability perspective, highlighting Alibaba's initial efforts to help small businesses in China access the world markets and later, its focus on facilitating e-commerce led entrepreneurship in rural parts of China. Not surprisingly, Alibaba Group's evolution coincided with China's economic growth, as the e-commerce platforms have significantly contributed to the growth of businesses and consumerism in China. Specifically, the development of e-commerce ecosystem by Alibaba Group, created a platform where not only retail businesses, but also allied third party service providers could emerge and grow. After its IPO in 2014, Jack Ma, Alibaba Group's chairman, explicitly defined "E-commerce in rural areas" as one of the three strategic directions going forward. The case discusses in detail the two rural initiatives "Taobao Villages" and "Rural Taobao" that the Alibaba group pursued as part of its rural strategy. It is estimated that the e-commerce of Taobao villages created more than 840,000 direct job opportunities and rural Taobao reached 202 counties in 22 provinces and established 9,278 village-level service stations by August 2016. The case also provides a brief overview of the ecommerce industry in India and ends with the questions: if there is a way for e-commerce players to provide socially sustainable business opportunities for the Indian rural population and how Alibaba should plan its entry and growth in the Indian market.

Airvent Fans Co., which manufactures ceiling fans for two OEM customers, Tropical and WindStar, is challenged in fulfilling the demands of its customers. Its plant, currently operating at the full capacity of 0.8 million fans annually (3200 fans/day), is looking at the possibility of improvements within current available resources to increase output in order to handle the immediate future demand, before deciding whether to outsource some of the operations in the long term. This involved thorough studies of the processes, and it was concluded that capacity enhancements were required at various stations. To handle future projected demand that is rapidly growing, the management plans to further increase the planned capacity of the plant to suitable levels. The current layout is incapable of handling such a scale of operations and thus, the concept of lean manufacturing is applied to help restructure the plant's layout and operations. The design and improvements required the determination of various factors. This case study identifies and estimates the various parameters needed to design such a system. Process Flow Analysis and Value Stream Mapping are used as tools to understand and identify the bottlenecks and sources of problem. Immediate demand is met by implementing batch sizes based on Economic Production Quantity (EPQ). For the long term, investments are made in machinery, the factory layout is revised for better material flow, and the assembly line operations are decoupled to achieve higher flow rate. The plant ultimately adopts a Make-to-Stock system from the earlier Made-to-Order system.

Grameen Koota (GK) is a micro finance institution (MFI) that offers several socially focused loans for poor and low income households. Its collateral-free loans and other services are targeted at women from poor and low-income households to improve their economic opportunities for inclusive development. Udaya, CEO had set GK on a strong foundation for growth after a period of consolidation and was planning to accelerate growth. GK was growing at 2x but needed to grow at 4x. CEO was facing a dilemma as to whether GK should set up new branches and increase the customer base for lending operations or mine their existing branches. GK had started expanding beyond South and Western India by setting up operations in Central India. The case describes the strategies adopted by GK to consolidate and grow. It raises potential issues and opportunities including transitioning from microfinance to broader financial services, growing through rapid acquisition and expansion of customer base as well as lending operations. Should they retain borrowers merely as customers of a commercial, financial service or aim to make these poor borrowers financially self-reliant? The case also highlights the strategic options for GK to achieve its 2020 aspirations.

We Sell Everything in Software (WSES) Inc., sold innovative off-the-shelf products and had customers across the world. WSES specialized in providing software solutions for different industries such as defense, clinical research, consumer goods, capital markets, security, banks, retail, and insurance among others. Although the products were commercial off-the-shelf, many clients required personalization and after sales support which WSES was happy to provide. WSES did not have a structured approach to take decision regarding chasing a sales lead. Therefore, it incurred high marketing cost including their travel costs, client visits, time spent by the sales team/technical experts/support staff, and logistics costs; most importantly, this list excluded the cost of advertising, which in effect meant that the advertising costs were over and above the ones mentioned. The marketing team had several beliefs about chance of winning a deal across different geographical locations, different domains, etc. However, none of these beliefs have been validates. Jack Williams, the CEO of WSES, was worried that despite having such a huge expenditure list, the sales conversion possibilities based on the pipeline was at best an ancillary information, as there was no substance in justifying ''gut feeling''. Thus, WSES engaged Liz with a Ph.D. in statistics to understand if they could determine a structured approach to check whether the beliefs of the marketing team were in fact correct or not. Jack also believed that simple statistical analysis could help WSES with useful insights about sales conversion.

This case describes the activities and documents the challenges faced by a small-scale firm in the unorganized sector of textile wet processing industry in India. While the small scale and manual nature of operations allows firms in this industry much flexibility of accepting a wide variety of orders, in terms of size and the type of processing needed by the customers, it also poses quality and delivery related challenges that arise due to the manual nature of operations. The case therefore exposes students to the operational trade-offs between flexibility, cost, quality and delivery time and highlights the tensions between various competitive dimensions in a business scenario. The students are then provided a choice of options to choose from, which will require them to consider the pros and cons of choosing one dimension over the other, in the context a small-scale firm in an unorganized sector of an emerging market, that is constrained for resources.

In 2016 the chief executive officer (CEO) of Harley-Davidson Inc., the iconic U.S. manufacturer of motorcycles, was facing a constant decline in sales and stock price due to the company's dependence on a mature U.S. market and the natural attrition of its most loyal riders, who were ageing. In May 2017, the CEO needed to determine how to return his global company to growth amid a protectionist agenda and direct business interference from the White House. Should the company expand internationally or not?

The Kanaka Bar Indian Band, a First Nations community in British Columbia, Canada, had realized impressive economic development in the decades since the 1970s. This progress included development of a profitable hydroelectric system backed by strong community governance and the introduction of a five-year community economic development plan. In 2017, the community was executing the plan with some successes and some challenges. As the band council and community members looked to the coming years of the plan and beyond, they wished to continue making progress towards their community vision of self-sufficiency, vibrancy, and sustainability. As they reflected on their successes, took stock of the community's resources, and assessed its challenges, they asked themselves whether the plan needed to evolve. Which of the community's resources could it use to achieve its vision in a way that addressed the challenges at the time and remained consistent with the traditional community values?

In April 2015, the Dharampal Satyapal Group introduced a new hard-boiled candy in three states in India. The candy, named Pulse, had a distinctive raw-mango flavour and a spicy, tangy taste. It quickly became popular. Within two years, Pulse candy surpassed ₹3 billion in sales and became the leader in the hard-boiled candy segment, beating leading national and international brands. The company achieved all of this with a small advertising budget and very little promotion; rather, the candy's success was largely a result of word-of-mouth and interest on social media. Demand exceeded supply, and competitors were beginning to launch similar and poorly imitated products. How could the group sustain the sales momentum of Pulse? Should it extend the Pulse brand to other formats and flavours and into other product categories? Should it take the candy to overseas markets, and if so, which ones?

When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he inherited a firm fading toward irrelevance, plagued by internal fights and inertia. Earlier that year his wife, Anu, had given him a best-selling book by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck entitled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, suspecting it might give Nadella some ideas for Microsoft. He adapted the idea to encourage employees to shift from Microsoft's historical "know-it-all" culture to embrace a "learn-it-all" curiosity. The case study provides background on Nadella's challenges and context, as well as how he and his leadership team executed their culture change effort.

At the age of 42, in the midst of a successful and lucrative career as the owner of an international retail consultancy, Andrew Thornton realised he had nothing more to give to his business. He quit the agency in 2006 and used his buy-out money as a down-payment for two Budgens supermarkets in north London. When profits at one store fell in 2010, he reached crisis point. With a deep conviction that companies should have a broader focus than profit alone, he founded Heart in Business, a consultancy focused on unlocking the potential of employees, and used his Belsize Park store as a testing ground. By 2016, like-for-like sales were growing at 5% - while neighbouring stores' figures were in decline - and the average length of service at Thornton's Budgens was 54% longer than that of the control store. Andrew's conviction that freeing people's potential and creativity delivers tangible business results now had strong evidence to support it: his sales figures provided that. But even better evidence was on the way, from the global assessment and training organisation BEING at Full Potential , whose Human Potential Assessment tool measured how much human potential the store was utilising and compared it to a 'control' store in a neighbouring postcode. Thornton's Budgens rated higher on every single measure. Through investing in his people with specialised coaching, Andrew had won not just their dedication, engagement and commitment, but their whole hearts and minds. By purposely trying to weave authenticity, cohesion, empathy, self-leadership, enquiry and creativity into every fibre of the business, Andrew not only raised levels of engagement - and profit as a result - but ignited the spirits of all who worked for him. In fact, it was precisely the harnessing and utilisation of his people's passions that led to their increased productivity.

It was the 28th of February 2012, and Joshua Shen, an investment associate with a large banking group, found himself saddled with a project that blurred the lines between his professional and personal lives in an unexpected manner. His Chief Investment Officer had sent to him a fact sheet on a proposed private placement subscription to the shares in Cordlife Group for a private banking client, and tasked him to prepare a valuation report on the company so that he could decide whether to recommend the private placement to the client. Cordlife was not your typical firm: instead of selling everyday consumable goods and services, it was an umbilical cord tissue bank, in the business of life itself. Joshua was familiar with the company: he and his wife had just banked their first-born's cord cells with them. But, more often than not, a good product does not necessarily mean a good company, and a good company does not necessarily mean a good stock. How does one value such a business? Should he recommend the investment to the client, and on what basis?

Koperasi Mitra Dhuafa (KOMIDA), the second largest microfinancing institution in Indonesia, was to launch its digital mobile platform by the end of 2018. The trial in selected field offices had begun. Among the many objectives, the new platform had to improve the efficiency and reliability of KOMIDA's nationwide field operations. The operational director, the point person for this initiative, had to make sure that the operations department back in its Jakarta headquarters could work well with more than 200 KOMIDA field offices nationwide. He keenly remembered the recent failure of a smart card pilot. It had to be scrapped due to cost concerns and a lack of acceptance from KOMIDA's clients. How could he ensure that the coming trials would lead to a successful rollout? What should he watch out for to keep things progressing smoothly? This case describes KOMIDA's motivations behind such an initiative and its challenges in managing the project and their vendor, TBOP. It discusses how IT project management should be mindful of the prevailing cultural and industry norms in a country. By focusing on digitalisation and the promise of deep analytics, it also discusses how an organisation can become "digital-ready".