個案總覽

The Happy Turtle was a bootstrapped start-up in Delhi, India, that was focused on driving a circular economy for plastics. The company aimed to offer sustainable and biodegradable lifestyle alternatives to plastic, which could secure a greener future for the planet. The founder of The Happy Turtle had left a successful and flourishing corporate culture to follow her passion for sustainability. By mid-2019, The Happy Turtle had been growing at a slow but steady pace to reach a breakeven point. One year later, however, the company was finding itself at a crossroads. Business uncertainty had arisen due to the Indian government’s new policy on plastic waste management, various underlying issues related to the circular economy, and the challenge of raising money from angel investors. In addition, the founder was finding it difficult to recruit, hire, and retain the right talent to help her achieve The Happy Turtle’s vision. What strategic and routine decisions would she have to make to reach her company’s goals and vision?

海霆國際物流集團成立於1985年，為台灣少數能夠布局全球供應鏈國際物流的代表業者。本個案藉由介紹國際物流產業的概況，說明物流產業價值鏈的分工狀況。接著以冷鏈物流在運輸過程的特殊需求，海霆藉由引進Euro Fresh冷鏈物流系統，利用資訊科技提供顧客從產地到餐桌，全程不斷鏈的冷鏈物流服務。第二部份，說明跨境電商的興起，海霆在台北港設立海外倉，促成海運快遞與台北港全球轉運的新商機。此外，持續增加的國際跨境電商包裹數量，大量退貨衍生的逆物流問題，讓學員探討海霆應該如何面對逆物流的問題，進而轉化成新的商機。

In 2016, Pythagoras Global Fund (Pythagoras), based in the United Kingdom, decided to launch a fund focused on emerging markets, especially those in Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC countries). Pythagoras’s fund manager favoured investing in family-owned businesses, but the investment opportunities in India used ownership structures different than those used in developed markets. The structures in Indian groups altered the cash flow and effective ownership rights in the subsidiary firms, which had ramifications for stakeholders and raised associated governance issues. The fund manager needed to decide which firm to choose by assessing the investment opportunities and evaluating the corporate governance of the companies.

On March 1, 2020, when news of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, it meant an existential threat to the survival of businesses internationally. L’Abode Accommodations, a full-service property management company based in Sydney, Australia that specialized in mid- to high-end luxury vacation homes, was no exception. Virtually overnight, the company experienced an alarming number of contract cancellations. To make matters worse for an industry dependent on vacationers, Australia shut its borders to international travellers. How could L’Abode Accommodations adjust its operating model and strategic and tactical marketing efforts to stop the business from bleeding revenue and profit and to address the staff’s fears of layoffs, as cancellations poured in?

In March 2021, the wine trade war between China and Australia was escalating, and the competitive landscape in China’s wine market had changed dramatically in just three months. Asa Top, a Chinese import company that had represented certain Australian wineries for over a decade, had to rethink its marketing strategy. The general manager of Asa Top did not know when the recent trade friction between China Australia would end. After the Chinese government introduced its new tariff policy on Australian wine, other participants in the Chinese wine market had quickly reacted to claim Australian wine’s market share in China. How should Asa Top deal with the impact of the duties, reduce the losses, and explore future co-operation with Australia’s winemakers?

NorLand Limited (NorLand) was a construction company based in British Columbia, Canada, with operations in Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec, and the United States. Having grown primarily by acquisition, the company was moving toward an ambitious goal: to achieve CA$500 million in revenues and CA$50 million in net operating income (NOI) by 2025—the 500-50-25 goal. The main questions facing Dave Reynolds, NorLand’s chief executive officer (CEO), and his leadership team revolved around not only expanding the business to achieve this target but doing so sustainably, while giving NorLand’s business units the latitude and freedom that had drawn them to join NorLand in the first place.

Based in southern Germany, Richard Henkel GmbH was a manufacturing firm focused on its triple-bottom line rather than on its sales turnover. Driven by its sustainability ethos in both its products and its manufacturing processes, it saw itself as a champion of a post-growth, sustainable economy. The case pivots on co-managing director Susanne Henkel’s decision concerning a lucrative sales order: the order would place significant stress on its existing steady-state manufacturing operations and potentially compromise its sustainability performance. In deciding whether to accept the order, Henkel had to confront a pivotal question: How much growth was necessary and sustainable, and how much was too much?

Farmer Lee Farms was a family-owned farm 70 kilometres from Johannesburg, South Africa. The farm was founded in 2005 by Jimmy Botha, a sixty-year-old, first-generation Black commercial farmer. From 2005 to 2017, the farm had experienced steady growth and was recognized as a Black business success story in post-apartheid South Africa. During this period, the farm had a clear target market of high-end food packaging houses and food retailers and specialized in the supply of high-quality, high-value fresh produce. However, a severe hailstorm in 2017 destroyed important infrastructure on the farm that was crucial for growing the farm’s temperature-sensitive products. The capital required to repair the infrastructure was not available. As a result, the farm lost key off-take agreements with high-end retail customers and Botha had to change his crops to hardier but lower-value cash crops. In November 2020, the farm urgently needed to re-evaluate its strategy to avoid bankruptcy, for which Botha was considering four options: continue growing cash crops and hope for a market turnaround, apply for a bank loan for funds to repair the damaged infrastructure, access the available government grants to carry out repairs to the infrastructure, or change his farming methods entirely and learn an alternative farming technique known as hydroponics.

In September of 2017, CavinKare Private Limited was faced with a tough decision about how to continue its growth in the personal care products industry. The company had been successful in the hair colour market in India, particularly in the southern regions of the country. CavinKare’s success was largely due to their focus on research and development and innovation. The hair colour market showed room for growth, and CavinKare wanted to make sure that they capitalized on its potential. There were three options before the company: stay with their existing products and markets, expand their existing products into new markets, or create innovative new products. To make the decision, CavinKare had to consider many factors, including consumer behaviour, new product development, marketing strategies, and trade partnerships. Only by considering all of these things together would the company have an answer to its question: what was the best option for growth?

After years of learning from the best bakeries around the world, Polish entrepreneur Monika Walecka returned to her native Poland and, in 2019, opened her artisanal bakery, All in Flour. The bakery was an extension of her values and struck a delicate balance between financial and social objectives. All in Flour was located in one of the most upscale districts of Warsaw and focused on top-quality bread products. It used high-quality, diverse, and expensive ingredients sourced from small, local suppliers, and its bread prices were probably the highest in Warsaw. Walecka was considering whether to pursue any development options. In fact, her preferred option, at present, was to do nothing. She knew that growth was not an obvious choice because it came with risk, costs, and problems. Nevertheless, the decision of whether to change something was becoming the most important challenge of her entrepreneurial career as a baker.

In 2016, BlewMinds Consulting LLP was launched as a storytelling consulting start-up with the vision of touching and transforming five billion lives by 2030. One of the two co-founders was already well-known on the LinkedIn social network platform, with more than 600,000 followers. He was also recognized as one of the 25 Top Voices in India by LinkedIn for 2019. The company transformed 725,000 lives directly and 200 million readers indirectly through social media stories, one-on-one training, group coaching sessions, webinars, and speaking engagements, driven mainly by the co-founder’s extensive LinkedIn follower base. However, to realize the company’s vision, several questions remained: How could the co-founders create a community of storytellers within the organization who could effectively establish trust through communication and contribute collectively to the company’s growth? How could they engage a wider audience by effectively leveraging the co-founder’s strategic influencer communication on social media? Should the company continue its bootstrapped business model or should investors be sought?

In 2015, HiteVision Tech Co. Ltd., a leading Chinese enterprise in the research and development and manufacturing of interactive educational flat-panel displays (IFPDs), faced a developmental bottleneck. The general manager of the commercial product department turned his attention from the educational to the commercial IFPD market. In early 2018, during the process of entering the commercial IFPD market, the company encountered a series of channel conflicts, which were resolved by adopting a multibrand strategy. However, after achieving initial success in the commercial IFPD market, the company encountered new channel conflicts. In early 2019, the company was facing a distribution problem and an e-business channel issue. The general manager again needed to find a solution.

In May 2021, the chief executive officer of Telkom SA SOC Limited (Telkom) in South Africa was facing a dilemma. Fifth generation (5G) technology was about to be introduced to the country’s communications industry. While Telkom had fared well during the COVID-19 global pandemic, even managing to gain market share from its much larger competitors, the anticipated release of additional coverage spectrum for the new 5G technology was going to put pressure on Telkom’s finances and business model. The chief executive officer, appointed in 2013, had helped transform the company’s business model from a struggling state-owned enterprise with a monopoly and unhappy customers to a thriving business in open competition with complementary strategic business units. However, with continuous evolution in the industry, Telkom was forced to innovate again and possibly reposition its strategic business units.

In April 2020, Rudra Industries and Services Private Ltd., a diesel generator product and service provider in Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in northern India, was facing a dilemma. Diesel generators (DGs) were heavily used by telecommunication companies to provide uninterrupted power supply to their towers, despite frequent power outages. However, consolidation in India’s telecommunication industry had led to stagnation in the company’s core business. To maintain a continuous flow of income, the company was considering a business expansion to leasing diesel generators to clients. The company was asked to prepare a bid proposal for leasing 100 DG sets to a local bank with numerous branches across the state. What factors would influence the pricing estimates in the bid? How should the company finance the purchase of generators that will be leased out to the client? How could the pricing estimate be calculated to ensure the project would be profitable? Should the company even consider entering the leasing sector, considering recent reductions in power outages and increasing diesel prices?

Established in 2015 in Shanghai, China, Shanghai Kmind Enterprise Management Co., Ltd. was a strategy consulting firm that specialized in helping enterprises overcome market competition through the provision of its consulting services. It not only provided strategy consulting reports to clients but also acted as a business partner in assisting clients in implementing the reports. Among its many clients, nine leading enterprises had achieved rapid growth, and five had reached revenue of ¥10 billion. However, behind its success, the firm was facing a shortage of consultants. Although its clients had increased in number since the firm's founding, it had had to turn away many high-quality clients because of the consultant shortage. The firm’s chairman had to consider how to rapidly improve the firm’s service capability.

The Hatsu brand of tea beverages and healthy food products emerged from the idea of two Colombian entrepreneurs in 2010 and evolved, in just over five years, to capture the interest of the leading company in the Colombian beverage market, Postobón SA (Postobón), which acquired it. In this context, Hatsu faced the challenge of consolidating itself in the tea beverage market while also venturing into other product categories (e.g., cereal bars, nuts, infusions, and sodas) and multiplying its sales without losing the lifestyle concept on which it was built and through which it had succeeded. By late 2020, Postobón’s premium business unit director needed to determine how Hatsu could be turned into a megabrand without losing its essence.

Ian Rosen, the recently appointed executive vice-president of Digital and Strategy at Harry Rosen Inc. (Harry Rosen), a successful men’s retail chain founded by Ian’s grandfather in 1954, must decide on a technology solution to support the advancement of his proposed digital strategy for Harry Rosen. The decision-making challenges he is encountering in early 2020 are compounded by the onset of the global pandemic and resulting impacts on the luxury menswear family retail business. Given the timing of the onset of COVID-19, the challenges and opportunities related to the replacement and upgrading of the company’s e-commerce platform have been heightened. Strategic investment and the seamless execution of a new digital strategy are imperative components of the sustainability of the retailer’s success. Ian must review and consider three different options, finalize his decision and proposal, and be prepared to launch earlier than originally planned.

Buckeye Chiller Systems and International Steel Corporation formed MicroFin Incorporated in 2017, in South Carolina, United States, as a joint venture to produce tubing for industrial chillers. After four years of losses, the chief executive officer of Buckeye had lost patience with the joint venture. He gave his chief operating officer until the end of March 2021 (less than three weeks) to turn around MicroFin or dissolve the partnership. With no chance of making money in the short term, the chief operating officer focused on three options for terminating the joint venture. Time was running out, and something needed to change.

Breastcancer.org (BCO), a small, Pennsylvania-based non-profit organization with a $5.4 million annual budget in 2020, was looking ahead several months to the start of Pink October (also known as Breast Cancer Awareness Month). Unlike the many non-profits that focused on medical research to find a cure for breast cancer, BCO was dedicated to helping patients and their caregivers make sense of complex information, and it had established a digital community that became a trusted source of information and stories. BCO’s vice-president of partnerships and development was preparing for the 2019–2020 fiscal year-end review with the chief executive officer and the board of directors. While BCO was not at risk of closing, it had to find ways to increase revenue beyond individual donations and corporate sponsorships. The organization needed funding from additional revenue streams to expand its program offering, and the vice-president had just a few weeks to complete her assessment of BCO’s assets and revenue strategy, which she would present to the board.

The social enterprise Apni Shala Foundation (ASF) provided social and emotional learning programs to disadvantaged communities in Mumbai, India. Since its founding in 2013, ASF had engaged with more than 16,000 students. Before February 2020, ASF was directly engaged with more than 4,600 students, 1,000 parents, and more than 500 teachers at 35 government schools and non-profit organizations. However, on March 31, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced ASF to shut its office and discontinue operations, and its mission of equipping children, educators, and parents with skills to support improved mental well-being stopped abruptly. Amrita Nair, the co-founder of ASF now faced a dilemma regarding resuming the foundation’s social and emotional learning programs: If ASF did continue, which categories should it choose to serve, and why? How could it transform its offerings and operations without compromising much on the quality of programs?