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One Pot, One Shot (OPOS) was a revolutionary cooking technique developed by B Ramakrishnan, known affectionately as Ramki, in 2015 and subsequently validated by people from various countries. In its initial two years, OPOS had remained confined to a close group of followers on Facebook. Ramki was keen to build up the OPOS business among its followers. Having established a private limited company in July 2019 to meet the legal requirements of doing business in India, Ramki set up a network with multiple revenue streams. His pressing dilemma now was to connect with the wider population and enable OPOS to have a deeper reach. He also wanted to focus on shared value creation for scaling the business and for transforming OPOS into a “for-benefit” enterprise.

It was March 2020 and a newly hired account executive at LinkedIn Corporation (LinkedIn) was keen to close his first major deal. His job was to help marketing teams acquire new customers and grow their businesses by leveraging the LinkedIn Ad network. He had secured a meeting with the vice-president of marketing for the video conferencing company Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (Zoom). He had just one hour to prepare for the meeting and determine the best way to position LinkedIn as a solution for Zoom to handle its growth challenges and opportunities.

Located in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Cooperation Zone in Shenzhen, China, Vanke Port Apartment (Vanke Port) was the leader among China's centralized long-term apartment rental enterprises. Recently, the company had improved its cost and operational efficiency and recorded stellar performance. A key partner in Vanke Group recalled the struggles Vanke Port had encountered on its way to achieving this performance. In 2019, Vanke Port had been battling to survive, and shortly after, the business was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, Vanke Port capitalized on digital technologies and carried out major organizational changes. As the company made it through the crisis and even started to thrive, the partner needed to present the lessons learned and recommend next steps to the board of directors.

The program head for retail talent acquisition at Yes Bank Limited needed to improve the talent acquisition process to fill vacant positions for relationship managers—a critical position within the business unit. Competition for talent was severe, with multiple positions at competing organizations open to suitable candidates, and screening the necessary number of candidates to ensure recruitment success was time-consuming and frustrating for everyone involved. One of the bank’s business leaders, particularly frustrated with the hiring process and the lack of consistency with candidate selection, was pressing for an urgent solution.<br><br>One option was to use an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, which centralized the candidate applications and improved the screening process by using machine learning to review videotaped candidate interviews. AI ranked the candidates, providing access to a larger talent pool and a quicker path to acquiring the needed talent. The process would resolve the bottlenecks that job aspirants typically faced in the traditional interview process, but would the tool dehumanize the entire process and undermine the interactions that ultimately led to better conversions and future integration with the brand and values of Yes Bank?

On June 9, 2021, the owner and director of S.I.T. Car Rental, which was located in Trinidad and Tobago, was considering whether he should upgrade his fleet of cars. The COVID-19 pandemic had negatively affected his sales in 2020 and 2021, although the owner was hopeful that he could increase demand by the end of 2021, once the need for pandemic-related lockdowns had ended. He had recently retired one of his older cars and so needed to decide whether he should purchase a new car to replace it or downsize his fleet. If he decided to purchase another car, he had to choose between a used economical vehicle and a new luxury vehicle.

On April 5, 2017, the lead link at Liip AG, in Lausanne, Switzerland, was reflecting on the past seven years. The digital services organization had gone through a rapid development, from a company with a team-based structure led by a top management team to a holacratic organization. A holacratic structure was based on a skeleton of roles and processes, with individual employees self-defining their work with the intent to help the company fulfill its purpose. However, was a holacratic structure sustainable over the long term for a growing company? What potential inefficiencies might Liip AG face under a holacratic structure and how could the organization overcome them?

O’Desi Meals was a food and beverage start-up based in Dublin, Ireland that aimed to deliver high-quality, healthy, home-cooked Indian food meals at affordable prices to customers who wanted delivery without compromise on taste or health. A second and more important objective that had driven the founding of the venture was to empower the population of underprivileged homeless individuals in Dublin. In March 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically affected projected estimates for O’Desi Meals operations and revenues. Demand for meals and its subscription-based sales increased exponentially. The substantial increase in orders and popularity strategically challenged the venture’s sustainability. To address this challenge, O’Desi Meals adopted two strategies: one short-term, to ensure sustainability (i.e., revenue generation); and one long-term, to ensure growth. Could O’Desi Meals become a successful and socially responsible authentic Indian meals provider by applying these two strategies?

In September 2021, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president of HealthCare atHome India Pvt. Ltd. (HCAH India), based in Mumbai, India, was concerned about his company’s future. Founded in 2012, HCAH India provided a wide range of health services at home, including intensive care, step-down beds, post-operative care, nursing, physiotherapy, attendant services, and elderly care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company was growing at a rate of 60 per cent month over month. While the COVID-19 virus continued to strain the country’s health care system, the chief operating officer and executive vice-president faced numerous organizational and social challenges. HCAH India had responded quickly to address the home health care needs of patients during the pandemic. It was even recognized for its excellence by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry as the best home health care provider. However, how could the organization evaluate its options and focus on internal capabilities, while building on its strengths to meet future challenges?

Maison Singulier was an online vintage furniture and home goods store founded in October 2020 and based in Montreal. Since its inception, Maison Singulier had succeeded in building a loyal customer base across Canada and the United States. Despite the early success of Maison Singulier, the founder realized that she could increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the store’s marketing communications if she adopted a more systematic approach to its marketing strategy. Although she had a good understanding of the typical Maison Singulier customer, she wanted to have a more formal definition of her target segment so that she could fine-tune Maison Singulier’s marketing communications. Having enlisted the services of a local market research company, by the end of June 2021, Maison Singulier had the information it needed to redesign its marketing communications strategy to effectively reach out to the selected consumer segments. It was crucial for the future of the company to successfully manage this period.

Burlap & Barrel was an upcoming and successful public benefit corporation based in the Queens borough of New York City that imported spices from foreign farms and sold them to restaurants, gourmet food stores, home cooks, and other food services in the United States and other markets. In March 2020, when COVID-19 gripped the world and forced most food establishments to close down temporarily, the two co-founders of Burlap & Barrel saw an instant drop in their revenues because half of their sales volume normally came from restaurants. To stay afloat in the pandemic, they changed their focus from wholesale channels to a direct-to-consumer business model. Media coverage in major outlets helped demand increase, but the shift from wholesale to direct-to-consumer raised many supply chain inefficiencies in sourcing, storing, packaging, and transportation. In early 2021, as restaurants began gradually reopening, the two B&B co-founders became concerned about meeting the growing demand from both direct-to-consumer and restaurant orders while retaining their core ethical, environmental, and business values.

Two women entrepreneurs' early-stage company achieved notable success when they introduced an innovative zero-sugar product into the highly competitive beverage market. After navigating a rebrand, the co-founders were poised to scale their company through product line extension, thereby entering the even more competitive ready-to-drink beverage market. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated their direct-to-consumer marketing strategy. The co-owners had to determine both the timing of the new product launch and the marketing strategy.

Dell Technologies Inc. was founded in 1984 in Austin, Texas, and became a global company that designed, developed, and manufactured personal computers and a variety of computer-related products. In 2016, it merged with EMC Corporation to create the largest privately-controlled technology company with the most comprehensive end-to-end solutions portfolio in the industry. In March 2018, the company formed an internal strategic group named Dell Global Operations and tasked its senior vice-president of strategy with planning the digital transformation of the company’s supply chain. in 2018, the Dell Global Operations group had to consider the intrinsic challenges of a giant and diverse enterprise. How would the company ensure that key actors were aligned with its digital vision? Which levers were needed to establish a digital vision that matched business strategy and priorities with supply chain operations? How could an actionable roadmap be developed to achieve the digital transformation of such a complex supply chain? What actions or goals should be prioritized?

Following a weekend strategy retreat in October 2018, the vice-chair and group CEO of Kuwait-headquartered mobile telecommunications company Zain, was proud of the company’s performance over the previous year. Zain Group had much to celebrate, having blazed a trail in advancing women’s empowerment and inclusion in the workplace—a double challenge in a technology industry that was also based in a region heavily influenced by traditional gender values. Its strategy included the launch of the Women Empowerment Network initiative (WE Initiative) in November 2017, a strategic master plan aimed at achieving gender equality, empowering women, and advancing women’s careers at Zain. However, a great deal of progress remained, and new challenges were emerging. The company had put significant emphasis and resources toward women’s empowerment and development, leaving some of the male colleagues feeling overlooked and left out. As well, other groups, such as people with disabilities and younger generations, also had barriers to overcome. How could the company continue its efforts to support women while also being inclusive and considering the needs of all its employees?

LenDenClub (LDC) was a primarily online platform operated by Innofin Solutions Pvt. Ltd. in the peer-to-peer lending industry in India. To offer differentiated products in a growing segment, LDC decided to focus on the untapped segment of low-salary earners. However, it was risky to serve this segment; borrowers had little credit history but often required loans immediately for emergency expenditures, and these borrowers had limited repayment capacity, so it was challenging for LDC to remain profitable. LDC responded by developing a new product based specifically on the targeted segment’s needs that allowed LDC to give small loans to more borrowers while achieving the lowest default rates. In June 2020, with preliminary testing done, LDC needed to refine InstaMoney’s features to achieve the best version of the product and obtain the best performance of InstaMoney in terms of conversions and the lowest default rates.

Birla Cellulose, a part of India’s large conglomerate Aditya Birla Group, manufactured viscose fibre, which came from wood and was naturally sustainable. In 2017, the Changing Markets Foundation (CMF) brought out a report titled Dirty Fashion, which described the environmental damage caused by manufacturing practices used in viscose fibre production. The report detailed impacts on the environment, bodies of water, and communities around viscose manufacturing plants. Birla Cellulose responded to the report by collaborating with CMF and making significant changes to its manufacturing processes to comply with the highest standards around the globe. It ensured that its raw materials were responsibly sourced and that its products were responsibly manufactured and then properly handled at the end of their lives. The company was proud of its achievements. At the same time, it recognized that it needed to do more. In late 2019, the company’s business director wondered how to make the company even more sustainable. What level of investment would be required? How could it adapt to changing consumer preferences and still retain the benefits it had recently gained?

維膜助聽科技自成立以來便將企業的社會目標放在經濟目標之前，在還沒獲利之前就成立中華民國社區重聽福利協會，並將維膜助聽科技的 大量資源挹注在協會中，幫助重聽協會舉辦免費聽力篩檢、衛教講座及聽語訓 練課程等活動。對一個私人企業來說，將大部分的獲利挹注於公益事業或許是負責人個人可以做的決定，但卻不得不承認這樣會影響企業的長期發展。柯總經理心中很明白，要能同時維持維膜與重聽協會的永續發展，一定要將二個單位有明確的切割。唯有在追求企業的成長與利益，才更有機會成就社會公共利益。

In June 2021, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Peruvian-based Austral Group S.A.A. (Austral), one of the six largest producers and traders in marine-based foods and ingredients in the Republic of Peru, was concerned about two major ongoing challenges: gender equality and cross-generation employees. In May 2006, Austral merged with and became a subsidiary of Austevoll Seafood ASA (Austevoll), the world-leading Norwegian conglomerate in the fishery and seafood industry. After the merger, Austral improved its foundations of human resources (HR). The newly merged entity built a common organizational culture and created a bond to engage workers in its new culture. In 2007, the company introduced a 10-year plan to drive structural changes in human resource management (HRM). The CEO’s current issue is how to overcome the two outstanding challenges to move the company forward and make it sustainable for the future.

In January 2011, China-based Joyson Automotive Group (Joyson) acquired Preh GmbH (Preh), a German manufacturer of high-end automotive components. While Joyson had lower capabilities in areas such as management and engineering, it was able to ensure a successful acquisition of the more competent firm Preh after years of careful planning and relationship building. Joyson had grown over 14 years to become a US$10 billion manufacturing company by continuously acquiring more capable firms. The acquisition of Preh would make the two companies powerful players in the global automotive parts supply market and promised to provide Preh with financial resources and access to the lucrative Chinese automotive market, but only if the Chinese and German companies could be integrated successfully. How could Joyson’s management team ensure a successful integration of a firm with superior management, soft skills, and technical capabilities?

In October 2020, the managing director of Laurs & Bridz Pharmaceuticals Private Limited was considering changing the company’s sales strategy to reflect the challenges that India’s pharmaceutical industry was facing during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company was also considering launching a new antiviral drug. The COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted many routine sales practices, such as in-person meetings with customers, and had also affected drug distribution. Consequently, the sales team had managed to achieve only 87.4 per cent of its sales targets in the first three quarters, with a mere 9.3 per cent growth over the previous year against a targeted growth rate of 25.1 per cent. The managing director had to consider all factors affecting his company’s sales performance during the COVID-19 crisis. What strategies could he devise to motivate sales managers and representatives facing uneven growth across different zones? Should he revise sales targets this late in the year? What were the pros and cons of launching a new product during these times of market uncertainty?

In 2017, Total Credit Recovery Limited (TCR), an accounts receivables management and debt collection firm, hired a data scientist to analyze the firm’s current data analytics practices and create a plan to extend the use of its data. TCR collected more than 1 million points of data per day, and the company’s new data scientist knew that with a proper team in place, he could use this data to offer his firm a competitive advantage that was currently non-existent in the industry. TCR's leadership supported the data scientist with substantial resources and the team made notable contributions to the firm’s operations. However, one year later, as the firm was preparing to launch a new venture that relied on the contributions of the new data analytics team, the young leader was struggling to build a positive dynamic within his cross-functional team. How could he improve his team's dynamics and thus its ability to add value to TCR?