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Mr. Dharamdas Desai was running a distribution agency in Madhopura, a town in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. He asked his son, Paresh, to analyze the business's financial situation. Paresh found that the business's post COVID compound annual growth rate was around 4 per cent and the operating profits had also declined. Paresh looked at the business situation and wanted to revamp the business strategically. Paresh came out with three alternatives to revive their business, Manik Distribution Agency: diversify into new product categories distribution; adopt a hybrid model (distribution and retailing of the products); and enter into the digital/e-commerce market. Paresh wanted to keep the business, so he needed further clarification.

In the rush to develop vaccines, many strains of viruses are used in laboratories in an effort to help humanity. However, the same samples used to develop life-saving vaccines could potentially be used to develop weapons of biological warfare. This case looks at the scenario from multiple perspectives in an effort to discuss the ethics of virus usage, storage and regulatory oversight given the differing economical situations and motivations of the actors.

This case tells the story of Included Health, a U.S. health care venture born from the unification of a major virtual care provider and two health care navigation platforms. The company's overarching mission is to raise the standard of health care for everyone by becoming a single source where all of a patient's services are provided - such that the patient is fully supported physically and financially. As of late 2023, it served tens of millions of individual members across America, counting as clients 32 of the Fortune 100 companies. We enter the case almost three years since the merger of the health navigation platform that Included Health's CEO Owen Tripp first founded, Grand Rounds, and the virtual care provider Doctor On Demand. He and Dr. Ami Parekh, the chief health officer, are at a crossroads. As the case describes their options for strategic direction going forward, Included Health becomes a window into several important industry themes: rethinking future models of in-person care, government regulation of virtual care after its boom during the COVID-19 pandemic, opportunities and challenges of incorporating AI, the increasing "consumerism" in health care, the primary care doctor shortage, and more.

University murders are not isolated brutal events. Fears ignited on campus compromise student learning and personal growth. When violence disrupts a campus, the integrity of education is violated. Anxieties and uncertainties brought by harassments and threats impair the welfare of faculty, staff, students, and their surrounding communities. This case traces intricacies and impacts of a graduate student's harassment and violent threats to faculty and staff for nearly a year. There is no intention to summarize all aspects of the analysts' report on which this case is based, including descriptions of 955 distinct events related directly to this murder. Rather, the objective of this case is to capture the evolution of information, judgments, decisions, and actions during a crisis, as well as the contextual impact of organizational culture and norms, and to provoke readers' insights and judgment regarding crisis management successes and failures.

Driven by the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO) and Government Technology Agency (GovTech), Singapore has embarked on the strategic transformation towards Smart Nation since 2014. The Smart Nation ambition envisioned Singapore as a mutually reinforcing triad of Digital Economy, Digital Government, and Digital Society, enabled by an extensive suite of smart nation-wide infrastructure. New townships would be designed and built smart, as they embrace an increasingly green future. Various global rankings of smart cities have often put Singapore in the top spot. What are the key factors that have contributed to its success? What are the key challenges it has encountered, and what should be the strategic next steps for Singapore?

The case highlights the courage, tenacity, and drive of a young woman pursuing her law degree part-time while working full-time in a financial role in Maryland. She applied to a posting for a government relations role in her parent company's head office in Washington, D.C. The job involved advocacy work with members of the US Congress, which aligned with her interests even though it was intended for candidates several levels above her current role. However, given her interest in the opportunity, she reached out directly to the hiring executive, bypassing her manager and circumventing her organization's standard human resources processes and protocols. She left the call with a request for an interview, although she thought that it could result in either a rapid climb or a painful fall from grace with reputational risk, which could impact her future career. Time would soon tell.

Hong Kong-headquartered SenseTime Group Inc. (SenseTime) was founded in 2014 to commercialize artificial intelligence (AI) and was a global leader in deep-learning AI, with applications in Smart Business (facial recognition), Smart City (property damage and theft detection), Smart Life (interacting with the Internet of Things to improve consumer experience), and Smart Auto (autonomous driving). December 10, 2021, was supposed to be the date for setting the offer price for SenseTime shares in the company's global initial public offering. Instead, it was the date that Xu Li, co-founder and chief executive officer of SenseTime, learned from Hong Kong Clearings and Exchange Ltd. that American President Joe Biden was about to designate SenseTime a Communist Chinese Military Company-an action that prevented American investors from legally investing in SenseTime, derailing the initial public offering. How should SenseTime alter its marketing, research and development, and listing strategies in the light of the American government's actions? How would the increased tension affect the geographic, technological, and customer aspects of SenseTime's efforts to drive business growth?

In February 2022, Café Niloufer, based in Hyderabad, India, was contemplating transforming its product lines of Irani tea, onion samosas, and Osmania biscuits, to grow its customer base over several other competitive brands. Anumula Shashank, Café Niloufer's managing director, wanted to update the brand by strengthening their product portfolio to meet the needs of new-age consumers. Cafes/lounges that provided a variety of beverages were projected to propel the competition in the coming years. Shashank wanted to grow the café business. He had three alternatives: add the products to the existing product line, add a new product line, or open new retail outlets. Shashank also wondered what analysis process and decision criteria he should use to make his decision.

Paytm was an Indian financial technology company. Since its launch in 2010, it had built a dominant payments system in India, comprising mobile wallets, offline payments via QR codes, and a payments bank that offered no-frills banking. However, in 2016, the Indian government launched a free, publicly available digital payments platform, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), that removed barriers for entry into the payments market. With its dominant advantage eroded, Paytm had to strategize a new business model to ensure profitability. By 2023, the company's leadership was confident that Paytm had found a profitable model and was on the right path. But they were still debating what was next for the company. Which business vertical should it focus on? Should it expand internationally? Which path would help Paytm become India's dominant fintech company?

In February 2023, Emtech's founder Carmelle Cadet is facing a dilemma. Rapidly running out of cash, Cadet has a term sheet from a leading VC but has a choice of how to structure the investment. The decision will have significant implications for Cadet's own stake, as well as her ability to attract top talent. One factor influencing Cadet's decision is her vision of creating a digital currency platform that will facilitate financial inclusion and other values throughout the world. Founded in 2018, Emtech first offered central bank digital currencies to world governments, digital fiat currencies that could be a tool for emerging economies to offer benefits and administer social programs more efficiently. The company later began developing regulatory sandboxes, which allow governments and fintechs to experiment to optimize regulatory environments, while working with financial service providers on innovation and regulation of new products.

This case details the 2020 launch and subsequent scaling of UST's Open Talent initiative, a program to integrate freelancers from digital platforms into its workforce. The case highlights how the shifting post-pandemic world, including layoffs, wage inflation, and return to office policies interact with the momentum of organizational change. Readers are left to grapple with how UST's leaders should take the program forward.

Kickstarter was a virtual crowdfunding platform and community that allowed creators of all kinds to raise funding for creative projects. The executive team was wrestling with a tension in its business model: the organization earned the majority of its revenue from projects that were not closely aligned with its mission. The executives saw the mission as raising funds for art projects, however such projects only accounted for 3% of total funds raised. They were also concerned that societal interest in arts was declining. Kickstarter was a Public Benefit Corporation and therefore it measured its success by how well it achieved its mission, not by the size of its profits.

In 2016, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (RJio), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, disrupted the Indian telecom sector by offering consumers access to the latest cutting-edge fourth-generation (4G) data and voice services at affordable prices. Competitors alleged that RJio had indulged in predatory pricing to acquire customers, but they lost the litigation as the anti-trust regulator held that the company should enjoy the benefits of a start-up and no predatory pricing rules were applicable. Within five years of its launch, RJio had become the top Indian telecom company. In 2023, competitors had caught up by offering better services at equitable rates. Had RJio indulged in predatory behavior to establish itself in a price sensitive market? Could the company continue at the same pace in the future? Had RJio transitioned into a new role as a technology company? What role should retailers play in ensuring customer acquisition to support RJio's future growth strategy?

October 8, 2021: Tata Sons won a bid to acquire India's national carrier Air India, marking the airline's return to its original owners after 68 long years. The winning bid of $2.4 billion gave Tata Sons full ownership of the airline and its coveted network of 6,200 landing and parking slots in Indian airports and 900 slots in overseas hubs. This bid marked the end of a two-decade-long journey for the Indian government that had been trying to sell the troubled airline which, according to recent estimates, was losing nearly $3 million per day. The chairman of Tata Sons, Natarajan Chandrasekaran (Chandra), described the occasion as a "historic moment." "It will be a rare privilege for our group to own and operate the country's flag bearer airline. It will be our endeavor to build a world-class airline that makes every Indian proud." The acquisition of a heavily indebted and loss-making public sector asset raised several questions: Why did Tata Sons acquire Air India? Was it an emotional decision to regain control of an airline they had started? Was this an example of Tata Sons helping India overcome another persistent challenge, a trait well documented throughout its corporate history? Was it a commercially sound decision?

Suparshva Swabs India (SSI), a family-owned firm started by Brij Mohan Jain and his sons in 1992, when India was going through liberalization, began its journey in the personal-hygiene category by launching high-quality cotton swabs (also known as cotton buds). SSI had steadfastly managed environmental challenges on the regulatory, economic, financial, and competitive fronts to offer good-quality products in India at an affordable price. In early 2020, as COVID-19 struck the whole world and the Government of India was under pressure to increase the number of COVID-19 tests conducted per day, the high costs of importing cotton swabs from the United States, Italy, and China exacerbated the crisis, making real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests unaffordable for the average Indian and reducing the number of tests conducted per day. SSI identified the opportunity to produce swabs indigenously in India and substantially bring down the costs. With very little time to respond to the challenge and meet the government's demand with a price acceptable to all stakeholders, SSI worked within severe time and cost constraints to make this possible. In August 2022, as the intensity of COVID-19 tapered off and a slew of substitute consumer-friendly methods for testing were arriving in the pipeline, SSI needed to determine what strategic alternatives were available for growth from this point.

Ola Electric Mobility Pvt. Ltd. (Ola Electric) was launched in 2017 by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., better known as Ola Cabs, as a venture for making electric scooters. Bhavish Aggarwal, one of Ola Cabs' founders, acquired a 92.5 per cent stake in Ola Electric and pursued a path of rapid expansion. By 2022, Ola Electric had successfully raised a large amount of capital from investors, developed several subsystems (especially software) of its products in-house, carried out two product launches and generated tens of thousands of bookings from customers, and was building a state-of-the-art plant for making electric scooters. While Ola Electric's scooters had received positive reviews from a few expert reviewers and generated customer bookings, the company found it difficult to deliver defect-free scooters in sufficient numbers. The company was also mired in a number of controversies, such as some of its scooters catching fire, alleged safety issues with its products, publicly sharing a customer's private data, and the departure of several executive from the company. Blunt communication by the founder and majority owner Aggarwal made some of the controversies worse. Aggarwal and his team now had to determine how to address the challenges and decide whether to focus on tackling these or on aggressively pursuing greater volumes. In which direction should they steer the company's strategy?

Jonathan Gray, the head of Digital Assets at NorthCentral Bank, was tasked with deciding how the bank should approach the growing demand for cryptocurrency (crypto) investment products and services. As the fintech industry continued to grow rapidly and younger digital consumers expressed a desire for crypto-friendly products, the bank had to decide how to proceed. Gray considered three options: maintaining the status quo and not offering crypto products; developing investment-only products and services around digital assets; or becoming a meaningful ecosystem player by offering wallets and enabling users to acquire crypto assets and use them natively on blockchains. Each option had its own benefits and risks, and Gray had to decide which path is best for NorthCentral Bank to remain competitive in the rapidly evolving fintech industry.

CEO Tim Höttges had successfully led Deutsche Telekom (DT) on an ambitious mission to become Europe's leading telecommunications service provider. All the more impressive, the company had achieved this goal while also navigating the expansion of T-Mobile's network in the United States, and merger with Sprint. What would be DT's next strategic challenge? In late 2023, Höttges and his executive team were scrutinizing the next frontiers in digitalization, as well as assessing ongoing challenges from hyperscalers. It was time to set new goals, Höttges believed, and lead the sector by continuing to build and operate best-in-class, integrated digital networks. This meant investing more in cloud-based service platforms, continuing the rollout of fiber optic networks in Germany, and realizing the full potential of monetizing DT network assets in conjunction with 5G technology. This case describes the strategic challenges facing DT in 2023 and beyond. Boundaries between industries such as telecommunications, software, artificial intelligence, data storage, chip technology, digital security, and cloud platforms were rapidly blurring. How would DT position itself as an industry leader in new areas-and fend off competition from traditional telecom providers?

This case follows the entrepreneurial journey of Tommie Lo, Founder and CEO of education platform Preface, as he pioneered an innovative business model that provides up-to-date education in coding and tech skills, specializing in concepts like blockchain, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and the metaverse in the fast-developing field of Web3, as well as AI-related topics such as machine learning and ChatGPT. While its Business-to-Consumer (B2C) segment targets schoolchildren from well-resourced families or senior executives who are willing to pay a premium for flexible and convenient courses, Preface's clients in the Business-to-Business (B2B) segment include leading brands in financial services, technology, and luxury goods. Headquartered in Hong Kong, Preface differentiates itself in multiple ways. First, in contrast to traditional classrooms or purely online learning, Preface matches students with teachers for training sessions that could be online or offline, anytime and anywhere. Second, Preface's instructors are top engineers from leading tech companies who are passionate about computer science and teach at Preface as a second career, with Preface tapping into a high-quality resource pool. Third, Preface opened physical food & beverage outlets to offer exclusive events and foster a sense of community among its clients, contributing to a cultural shift toward lifelong learning.

In July 2017, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched the world's first Humanitarian Impact Bond. This innovative finance pilot was an experiment by the ICRC to engage the private sector differently and diversify funding - critical given the widening humanitarian aid gap. It was a massive undertaking. The HIB, which had a maximum potential deal size of CHF 26 million, took over four years to plan and multiple stakeholders, including governments, foundations, investors and lawyers, to put together. How did the ICRC pull this off and what possibilities does innovative finance offer the humanitarian and private sectors? Drawing on a series of proprietary interviews with key characters, various internal documents shared by the ICRC, and secondary sources such as news reports, press releases and reports by third-party organizations, this abridged case delves into the ICRC's motivations for entering innovative finance, why it chose the HIB instrument, what it was, the hurdles and challenges of designing and setting up this complex instrument, and what the ICRC did to get the project off the ground. Participants interested in innovative finance, the humanitarian and/or development sectors, cross-sectoral/industry collaboration, and social innovation will find the case particularly interesting.