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Driven by a passion to develop his own brand, Sandeep Yadav started Rock Pharmacy in 2014 in a rented area of 700 square feet and with seed capital of US$6,665. His primary customers were patients who required medication regularly for conditions including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and kidney issues, and people who worked for companies in the local area. The venture dealt mainly in patented medication. However, over 2018-2020, there had been a dramatic decrease in sales and profits due to the rise of e-pharmacies and organized pharma, and the business was struggling to meet its operating expenses. Considering the options available to save his business, Yadav had to decide: should he give up his brand and collaborate with online/organized pharma players, or should he compete with them?

On March 23, 2021, Vineet Sharma, the sole owner of MedStar Polymers, India, a medical-grade latex glove manufacturing company, was considering the dilemma of how to scale up production to fulfill an unprecedented order during COVID-19. With demand for protective equipment outstripping global supply during the pandemic, an exceptional business growth and expansion opportunity for glove manufacturers had emerged. Several manufacturers had expanded production by adding new production lines. On the surface, a production ramp-up looked as simple as increasing inputs: raw material, labour, machinery, equipment, and cash. However, a decision to rapidly increase production could create risk and almost destroy a business—especially when constraints such as raw material unavailability, transport and travel restrictions, logistical problems, and state- and area-wide lockdowns started impacting the production process. Sharma had to decide how to increase output while also dealing with disruptions such as a shortage of labour and concerns about the use of natural latex rubber. Was now the right time to add a new production line? Should he switch to making nitrile gloves? He needed to make decisions quickly, as the current high demand would likely not last.

<p align="justify/">In 2021, the chair of the admissions committee at The School of Management in Gandhinagar, India, had only three months to prepare for the start of the school’s next master of business administration program. During these three months, prospective students who had received admission offers could decide to decline offers, even though some had already paid relevant fees. Understanding the uncertainty of those decisions was critical to estimate the number of additional offers to send out to other candidates. If the final number of prospective students joining the program was lower than the school’s available capacity, The School of Management would lose contributions toward its fixed business costs and potential profit. It would also mean that the school’s resources would be underused. On the other hand, denying admission to students who had received offers to join the program, due to a lack of space, could adversely affect the school’s brand image and future admissions. Understanding the decision-making process of prospective students was critical over the long term to develop appropriate retention strategies and encourage all candidates to accept their admission offers.</p>

Copenhagen Airports A/S (CPH) has been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, with flight activity at levels not seen since the 1970s. Although the virus overshadows everything, three senior managers discuss a more long-term trend: the steadily declining revenues of the airport’s shopping mall. Over the past number of years, consumer interest in food, beverages, and tax-free items has continuously decreased, posing considerable challenges to CPH’s business model. About 80 per cent of the airport’s profits are generated by the non-aeronautical business, of which the shopping mall is the biggest part, and CPH needs that income to continue investing into the airport’s status as an important hub for airlines. What could CPH do to deliver better existing services, and what new services would merit serious consideration? Could CPH launch new products or services that would be attractive to both passengers and shopping mall tenants, or would it need to redevelop its entire business model? Since the commercial business was key to driving the airport’s further development, the managers knew that finding answers to these questions was important to sustaining CPH’s position as a leading hub in Northern Europe. The case is not about the COVID-19 pandemic and its implications for the aviation industry. This is a case about the long-term trend of declining revenues in the airport’s shopping mall.

The Center for Sustainable Agriculture was founded in 2004 as a solution to various problems in India’s agricultural industry. The founder developed a sustainable agriculture model to help farmers lower crop failure risk and reduce production costs, to which pesticide and fertilizer use contributed over 30 per cent. The Center for Sustainable Agriculture built a sustainable agriculture model by collaborating with farmers, producer associations, governments, and markets. The introduction of organic products allowed the company to integrate sustainability into its core business plan. In 2021, after achieving success in Telangana, India, the founder was planning to expand his organic farming model across the country, but he wondered what challenges he would face in other states and how he could overcome these.

In July 2020, the founder and manager of Montreal Community Contact (Contact), a bimonthly community newspaper, was considering strategies to ensure the survival of his business. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that he was sixty-three years old, he worried about what the future of the newspaper would look like if anything were to happen to him. Contact had been running for almost thirty years and had a loyal readership within the Black community in Montreal and a loyal cadre of advertisers, but online media was threatening the newspaper industry, and each year the business just managed to break even. The business’s owner now felt it was important to secure the long-term survival of the newspaper. How should he improve the stability of Contact while evaluating future avenues for the business?

In October 2018, Yehuda Katzman, vice-president of marketing and business development at design house Inbal Dror, was attending the 2018 New York Bridal Fashion Week event, where Inbal Dror and its direct competitors revealed their spring lines to distinct buyers. As in previous years, Katzman had lined up meetings with interested retailers and wanted to make sure they appreciated the unique nature of Inbal Dror’s designs and the quality of its craftsmanship and the raw materials it used. Katzman also wanted to ensure that the couture brand was recognized for its dependability, sincerity, and understanding of different cultures. Travelling from Israel to participate in international bridal shows was a costly undertaking, and it was critical for Katzman to identify new retailers to continue expanding Inbal Dror’s global reach. His challenge this time was to successfully penetrate the vast markets of China and the Far East—a challenge that could, if successful, generate incredible growth.

AcademyOne, Inc. (AcademyOne) was a small privately owned software provider whose focus was on providing students with college transfer solutions. It operated as an educational technology company that provided software as a service (SaaS) products to simplify and streamline the college transfer and advising process. After surviving an economic recession and an industry lawsuit, the firm had regained its financial footing, and in 2021, now that it was financially secure, some of its long-term investors had asked to cash out their investments. AcademyOne’s president and chief operating officer was tasked with looking for ways to grow the business and with valuing AcademyOne, with the end game of selling the business.

On July 8, 2019, Barry Robinson, president and managing director of International Operations for Wyndham Destinations Asia Pacific (Wyndham Destinations AP), and Liam Crawley, chief financial officer, were in receipt of a report provided by law firm Baker McKenzie’s Corporate Mergers and Acquisitions team. Wyndham Destinations AP was in the process of acquiring the privately held Resort Frontier Co. Ltd., the management company for Sundance Resort Club. Through an affiliated corporate entity, Wyndham Destinations AP would also acquire all the forfeited and unsold points of Sundance Resort Club. This acquisition would represent the vacation ownership and exchange company’s first foray into the Japanese market. Crawley and his team would need to undertake comprehensive external and internal financial analyses and discounted cash flow analysis of Sundance and multiples valuations of comparable firms to help Robinson determine a fair offer price.

BDP International Inc. (BDP), one of the world’s leading privately-held freight logistics companies, provided chemical shipping services to eight of the top ten global chemical companies. In April 2021, it contracted with a chemical company for two shipping orders, each to a different destination, and each with a set number of containers to be shipped every month for a year. The containers were filled with a chemical used in the electronics industry. This was one of the biggest logistical challenges faced by BDP’s vice-president of Government and Industry Affairs and its director of Transportation, especially because the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted the global shipping industry.<br><br>After having sorted out and arranged for the shipping, a few containers belonging to BDP’s client were engulfed in a fire that broke during the vessel’s voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The containers and their contents were damaged beyond recovery. BDP had to scramble again to plan transportation, this time deciding how to inform the client, deal with possible late penalties and damage fees, and make whole on the order.

The historic Lund Resort at Kla ah men (the Resort) was wholly owned by the Tla’amin Nation and operated by Tla’amin Management Services LP (TMS). The Tla’amin Final Agreement had been in effect since April 2016, making the Tla’amin Nation self-governing over its land, resources, and members. The Resort, on British Columbia (BC)’s Sunshine Coast, featured thirty-one renovated guest rooms that ranged from budget-friendly units to luxury ocean-front suites. In addition to hiring a new general manager, the Resort needed to increase bookings in the shoulder season and stabilize staffing. By 2018, the Resort had had six general managers in two years and needed a highly experienced professional to fill the position. TMS hoped to retain this person for at least three years. The new manager would need to be a good fit in terms of Tla’amin culture and values; given the complex reporting structure, they would need to be adaptive and willing to work with multiple people within the Tla’amin leadership, including the TMS board of directors and the Tla’amin operating board. While it would have been best to hire a manager with experience working with Indigenous communities, the TMS had determined that this was not feasible and that it was best to hire someone who was experienced and open to learning about Tla’amin culture and values.

In December 2020, Daytoy Group, a leading global furniture and home furnishings retailer, asked the small Chinese candle supplier Dalian Talent Co. Ltd. to become its sole supplier of aromatic and unscented candles. Daytoy Group was offering the supplier a large amount of new production volume after terminating its relationship with its only other candle supplier in the Asia-Pacific region due to a corporate social responsibility issue. The supplier had to consider the cost of the additional supply chain management, manufacturing technique, and production capacity that would be needed to comply with the new request. The company already had enough orders from other reliable clients to fill its schedule until April 2022. Expanding production capacity and adding work teams to meet the request would take one to two years. How should the supplier respond to the request? What impact would the new arrangement have on its operations? How would it affect its long-time collaboration and future partnership with Daytoy Group?

The vice-president at Tencent LeXiang (LeXiang), the enterprise social networking platform of Tencent Holdings Limited (Tencent), had been overseeing the development of the platform from its inception. Since its official launch in 2017, LeXiang had been successfully adopted across a wide range of multinational corporations; it was also popular internally at Tencent, with many employees engaging with their fellow co-workers on the forums.<br><br>The vice-president was preparing for a meeting with Tencent’s leadership about the future of LeXiang and how the platform could bring value internally to the company. As part of her preparations, she received a data set that included many posts and replies within Tencent’s own LeXiang platform. While she thought there was significant value in the insight the platform provided about Tencent’s own employees, she was unsure how to organize the wide-ranging posts and demonstrate their potential value to Tencent’s leadership.

In July 2013, the chief information officer of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) was preparing for an upcoming meeting with FINRA’s board of directors. He was building an argument for why the organization should reverse the decision he had advocated just a few months earlier and shift from a model that used on-premises data centres to one that focused on public cloud resources. Some board members were already familiar with the cloud and were using it in their own organizations, whereas others were concerned about taking their most critical data and putting it into the hands of a cloud service provider. This decision would have a profound impact on the technical direction of the regulator moving forward. Choosing to abandon their on-premises resources and shift to the cloud was a fundamental architectural decision that would significantly affect job roles and be difficult to reverse. The chief information officer had to make the case that a cloud-focused approach would meet FINRA’s current needs and serve the organization better in the long term.

Dalian Bio-Chem Co. Ltd. (Bio-Chem) had been deeply involved in the field of industrial fungicides for nearly twenty years and occupied a place in both domestic and overseas markets. Since its establishment in 2003, Bio-Chem had adhered to a strategy of centralization, with industrial fungicides as its main business products. Bio-Chem was successfully listed on the A-share market in China in 2012, and it grew rapidly in the ten years that followed. Although Bio-Chem had become a leader in the field of industrial fungicides, its chairman believed that companies should not be content with the status quo. Some within the company believed Bio-Chem should carry out a diversification strategy because it had sufficient funds to do so; others thought it should carry out an integrated strategy because the downstream industry was very profitable; and others thought it should stick to a centralized strategy because the market demand for industrial fungicides was still very large, and adhering to a centralization strategy meant there would be room for growth. The chairman had to consider the opportunities and challenges of each strategy and determine which direction to take the company.

此個案聚焦於身處租賃業的中租控股公司，如何透過啟動數位轉型，回應變動快速的外在環境，以及業務單位的需求。透過本個案的討論與分析，學生將能對數位轉型的流程有所了解。此外，透過評估專案的優先順序，使同學思考進行數位轉型時，所應該考量的因素有哪些。

In 2019, an investment analyst for a hedge fund firm based in the Bahamas was tasked with evaluating his firm’s exposure to the automotive industry. The hedge fund firm held various large positions in the automotive segment, most notably in two equities—Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. and Ford Motor Company. The analyst decided to focus on these global industry giants as a proxy for the broader automotive segment. His manager expected an assessment of the industry’s prospects, so the analyst had to decide if the past stock performance of the two companies was a fair indicator of each company’s and the industry’s future. He also had to consider why one company would lose almost twice as much value as the other in one specific period. And why did the stock of the more diversified company experience the steeper decline? The analyst was eager to answer these and other questions, both for his own and his manager’s interest.

In September of 2020, an international business executive at the North Dakota Trade Office was asked by a client company, Dakota Growers Pasta Company Inc., to advise it on how to increase pasta exports to South Korea. Like many other firms in North Dakota, the client faced a number of hurdles to building successful export businesses. These included limited exposure to foreign markets and limited expertise in trade-related regulations and processes, as well as logistical issues. In his role, the business executive aided local companies’ efforts to develop and sustain export businesses. The client company now needed to find a new distributor to grow sales in the South Korean market, but selecting the right one required deciding which market segment to focus on first. The business executive had to determine what advice he should he give to his client company about expanding in South Korea.

Thirty years after its establishment, New Deantronics (ND) set up ForMED Ventures in 2015 for the purpose of investing in innovative medical devices to deliver value to patients, doctors, healthcare professionals, healthcare systems, and societies for better healthcare. Aiming at becoming a world-class developer of medical devices, ForMED invested in 12 projects, 6 in Israel and 6 in the US, in 2020. Another venture, Taitech (Taiwan Technology), was also set up in 2015 to assist local start-ups in Taiwan. In early 2021, ND’s founder Jane Liu announced her retirement in the following year and appointed a 35-year old project section manager, Ivon Liu, as her successor. The goal for Ivon is to double the company’s revenue to USD200M in 5 years. How will Ivon lead a Top Management Team comprised of individuals generally senior than she is in order to achieve the goal by 2025?

Ford Resource and Education Centers (FRECs) were established as a partnership between the Ford Motor Company Fund and GlobalGiving. The FREC in Bangkok, Thailand, housed eight non-governmental organizations, social enterprises, and foundations. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, just a few months after the FREC had opened in the city, FREC Bangkok and its collaborators found themselves paralyzed by the thought that all they had worked for in their Bangkok neighbourhood could be lost. With lockdowns in place, what could FREC Bangkok do to continue providing the necessary aid to community members? It might need to change the way that it served Bangkok. What would be the risks of shifting its focus? How could it mitigate those risks? How could FREC Bangkok continue to provide aid, and what would that aid look like for local residents? How could FREC address the community’s new concerns, and what would its strategy for addressing these concerns look like? Crucially, what would be the role and importance of FREC’s various stakeholders going forward?