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The case focuses on the precision agriculture industry, an emerging combination of technologies and solutions targeted at improving the economics and sustainability of the agricultural industry. Within the context of the industry transformation, the case specifically examines the strategic decisions made by John Deere, the leading agricultural machinery and equipment manufacturer in the world as it charts its course towards digitally transforming the company. The case provides an ideal platform to explore a broad spectrum of topics ranging from ecosystems and platforms, defining and delivering a unique customer value proposition, and leveraging contemporary tools such as artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), data analytics, and deep learning to revolutionize the old and tradition-bound agricultural business. John Deere has introduced a set of leading-edge tractors, sprayers, and farm equipment that promise to personalize agriculture at the plant level. The technologies embedded in its tractors along with cloud-based analytical capabilities provide farmers with real-time actionable data and advice. As it launches a new way of farming, the company confronts skeptical customers who think the equipment is too expensive and hard to repair, and the data streams too complex to comprehend and apply to their field-level decisions. There are other issues relating to data privacy and ecosystem management that Deere confronts as it aspires to emphasize its software platform as the way to the future. The reader is asked to assess the way the Leap Ambitions strategy has played out in the marketplace and suggest course corrections as needed to guarantee that Deere can ensure it derives the maximum value from the ecosystem.

This case is the third in a series that explores how the storied Swedish media company, Bonnier News, is transforming itself to succeed in the digital era. This case picks up from 2019 and follows the Bonnier News management team as it crafts and implements a strategy to succeed in the rapidly transforming media landscape and increasingly fraught geopolitical environment. Their goals as they do so are to sustain profitable digital growth for Bonnier News; increase the reach and relevance of their papers; bring more value to more readers; and become a leader in European business media while continuing to develop a successful, sustainable, and scalable business. Success was essential, even existential-indeed, in their view, democracy itself was riding on it.

Chai Point was an Indian food and beverage company focused on chai. It started in 2010 as a retail store network but soon expanded to corporate offices by developing an IoT-enabled automatic tea and filter coffee machine. By 2023, Chai Point had 170 stores and 5000 machines nationwide. However, it was still a fraction of India's vast tea market. With ambitions for greater scale, Chai Point launched a promising third vertical, MyChai Corner, to aggregate the unorganized chai market via a tech platform. MyChai Corner was in its pilot stage, but its expansion would require significant capital expenditure and an aggressive pricing strategy. How should ChaiPoint allocate its resources between its various verticals? Which vertical would help it achieve the maximum growth? How could the company create synergies between them?

In September 2022, The Commons Project Foundation (TCP) CEO Zhenya Lindgardt and her team met on a Zoom call to discuss building tools to help Rwandans manage their health data. They believed that helping Africa build digital infrastructure would improve much-needed healthcare service delivery. TCP had started in the U.S. with health data, building tools and protocols that would allow people to access, store, and share their medical information. This was difficult given privacy concerns, obsolete storage methods, interoperability problems among providers, and strict legal requirements. Leaders in less-developed markets in Africa saw the value of TCP's person-centered approach to health data. TCP considered how to reach its goal and scale, and how to fund its ambitious vision. Who should pay for digital infrastructure that was a public good? Were the answers the same in the U.S. and in Africa?

As Tesla's first overseas factory and China's first wholly owned foreign automotive factory, Gigafactory Shanghai has developed rapidly, thanks to the series of industrial reforms in China and strong support from the Shanghai local government. Gigafactory Shanghai has bolstered Tesla's manufacturing capacity rapidly and significantly, enabling the company to tap into the growing global demand for electric vehicles, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Tesla's investment has also contributed to the advancement of China's electric vehicle industry and aligned with the broader goal of technological development and carbon neutrality. Nevertheless, Tesla's investment has risks, such as the deterioration of US-China relations, changes in government regulations and policies, competition from other automakers, and the threat of technological obsolescence. The student question revolves around Tesla's ability to defend its leading position in both the Chinese and global electric vehicle markets, with a view to creating a mutually beneficial partnership with the Chinese government. This case allows students to explore how host country industrial policies affect corporate investment decisions and how to deal with the uncertainties of foreign direct investment. After studying this case, students will be able to discuss the intricate relationship between industrial policies and foreign direct investment.

Vikrant Kadian founded Cherrygrocer Pvt. Ltd. (Fresherry), an online app and delivery service for fruits and vegetables, in February 2021 in Gurgaon, India, and was joined in the venture by three friends. In January 2023, Kadian was still the majority shareholder. The venture promised its customers better prices, convenience, an alternative to physical inspection of the produce, and traceability. However, the company had no defined target market and insufficient capabilities to straddle two main market segments, and the bootstrapped venture was suffering from wastage and inefficient resource allocations and facing high operational losses. Kadian had to choose from among the options available: Should he target a specific market or continue to straddle two segments and invest in capabilities? If he decided to choose a target market, should he chase the premium or budget segment? Should he continue bootstrapping the firm or bring in an external investor to implement a marketing strategy? Realizing the importance of his entrepreneurial dream and the principle on which he started his venture, Kadian had to decide the way forward without losing time.

In May 2022, Rohan Jain, the second-generation entrepreneur of an Indian family-managed carpet design firm, TexCarp Consulting, had to decide whether to enter a new vertical with one of their biggest clients, American Carpets. The opportunity involved using technology and personnel to carry out virtual reality rendering for American Carpets so that the US-based company could showcase its products to clients in virtual space. Jain tried to convince his father to invest. But the technology involved high costs, and Jains's father was opposed to the idea, since it would involve tying capital to fixed costs. But Jain could also convert the fixed costs into variable costs by either hiring technology or outsourcing the project. Should Jain go ahead with the VR rendering project? And if so, which of the three options should he select: buy, hire, or outsource the required technology and personnel?

Susan DeLuca, the chief executive officer of Eurostar Pictures (Eurostar), was under pressure from her board to define a new direct-to-consumer strategy for the company's video properties. Complicating this decision was the uncertain state of the streaming video on demand (SVOD) industry in 2023. DeLuca charged her team to consider two questions: (1) What was the future of the video streaming business, including new services (potentially spearheaded by Eurostar) that might disrupt the industry? and (2) How could Eurostar most strategically leverage its video assets to maximize revenue going forward?

In the wake of Covid-19's disruptions, Kshore, a Chinese appliance maker, is thinking of realigning its supply chain. Like many other global manufacturers, it's being pressured by its customers, which include Walmart and other large retailers, to reduce the time, expense, and environmental impact of shipping goods between countries. On a trip to Monterrey, Mexico, Kshore's CEO and COO tour factories that are closer to North American markets-and are impressed by their professionalism. But questions about transportation and staffing give the executives pause. Should Kshore start production in Mexico or consider other countries? Two experts weigh in.

In the wake of Covid-19's disruptions, Kshore, a Chinese appliance maker, is thinking of realigning its supply chain. Like many other global manufacturers, it's being pressured by its customers, which include Walmart and other large retailers, to reduce the time, expense, and environmental impact of shipping goods between countries. On a trip to Monterrey, Mexico, Kshore's CEO and COO tour factories that are closer to North American markets-and are impressed by their professionalism. But questions about transportation and staffing give the executives pause. Should Kshore start production in Mexico or consider other countries? Two experts weigh in.

In the wake of Covid-19's disruptions, Kshore, a Chinese appliance maker, is thinking of realigning its supply chain. Like many other global manufacturers, it's being pressured by its customers, which include Walmart and other large retailers, to reduce the time, expense, and environmental impact of shipping goods between countries. On a trip to Monterrey, Mexico, Kshore's CEO and COO tour factories that are closer to North American markets-and are impressed by their professionalism. But questions about transportation and staffing give the executives pause. Should Kshore start production in Mexico or consider other countries? Two experts weigh in.

As 2023 neared its end, Richard Adkerson, CEO and Chairman of Freeport McMoRan, marked two decades of leadership. Dubbed "the elder statesman of the copper industry" by The Economist, Adkerson had witnessed various industry shifts. He anticipated a surge in copper demand, driven by the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. However, meeting this demand posed challenges, as copper mines take nearly a generation to become operational. With demand outstripping supply, the industry might seek copper alternatives. Recognizing these challenges, Adkerson prioritized operational efficiency and yield across Freeport's global copper operations. Embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Freeport invested heavily in technologies like artificial intelligence and data analytics to maximize copper extraction from existing mines. This strategy, initiated in Baghdad, Arizona, expanded across the U.S. under the America Concentrator program, aiming for efficiency in all American copper mines. However, competitors like BHP, Grupo Mexico, Codelco, and Rio Tinto were also adopting similar technologies. The ubiquity of these technologies raised questions about their potential as a sustainable competitive advantage for Freeport. The company faced the challenge of leveraging its human capital to maintain its edge, especially as its stock performance lagged behind rivals like Southern Copper. The future posed questions about Freeport's continued dominance in the copper industry.

The case describes how Patricia Heidtman, chief innovation and sustainability officer and member of the executive board at Sika, creates a roadmap for sustainability, including a net zero pledge. Sika deliberately put Patricia - also a trained chemist - in charge, unlike many companies that assign the sustainability agenda to the CFO, the head of PR or legal, or even a designated CSO. Sika is a specialty chemicals company with a leading position in developing and producing systems and products for bonding, sealing and damping, as well as reinforcement and protection in the construction and automotive industries. The company had over 27,500 employees and sales of CHF 10.49 billion in 2022. In her role, Patricia faces four main challenges. First, the regulatory environment for a global, publicly listed company like Sika changes fast and significantly, as the measurement standards are still developing. Second, scope 1 and 2 emissions count for only about 2% at Sika; 98% are related to scope 3, which the company does not control directly. Third, Sika has over 100 subsidiaries worldwide, and each market and customer segment is very different, requiring a bottom-up rather than a top-down approach. Finally, Sika's growth trajectory estimates a 300% revenue increase by 2050. Given this growth rate, reducing emissions by 75% would not decrease any emissions in nominal terms. An important step in implementing this commitment across the organization is a series of regional net zero workshops, with the aim of bringing everyone to the same level of understanding, since net zero affects every part of the business in different ways. At the same time, sharing the learnings and obstacles created valuable input for the regional and global pathway to net zero. This input will serve as a foundation for Sika's 2028 strategy. Through peer discussions instead of top-down mandates, Patricia wanted to create strong alignment between departments and regions on key decarbonization levers.

In July 2022, Celsius Network filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. CEO Alex Mashinsky acknowledged that Celsius had grown its assets "faster than the Company was prepared to deploy [them]" and as a result had made "certain poor asset deployment decisions." Two months after filing, Celsius initiated a marketing and sale process to identify potential buyers for its assets. By April 2023, the field was reduced to NovaWulf and Fahrenheit, LLC. Both bidders proposed reorganizing Celsius' business as a going concern and giving its creditors and 1.7 million customers near-total ownership of the reorganized company. However, the ultimate fate of Celsius' many stakeholders remained anything but clear.

A case on CRANE, a tool to help investors and green technology companies estimate the future climate impact of new technologies and products, called emissions reduction potential (ERP). The case includes material on CRANE's methodology for estimating future carbon emissions, including the variables and parameters of the tool's model. CRANE was created by Prime Coalition (Prime), which organized hundreds of investors to establish industry standard terminology, methodologies, and best practices for estimating the climate impact of new investments. In 2022, Keri Browder, director of Project Frame, a nonprofit program convened by Prime, was focused on how to improve CRANE's technical capabilities, integrate with other available tools for pre- and post-investment decision-making, and make the effort as useful as possible for Prime and Project Frame's mission to mitigate climate change.

This case begins with an overview of China's healthcare system, followed by an introduction to the country's hospitals' pursuit of digital transformation and a profile of Ruijin Hospital. The case then focuses on how Ruijin Hospital laid out a vision for the digital hospital and translated it into strategic goals that addressed the needs and concerns of multiple stakeholders. It covers how the hospital explored technology solutions for smart services, healthcare, and management to drive its smart transformation. Ruijin Hospital Affiliated to the School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University inaugurated the Shanghai Digital Medicine Innovation Center (hereinafter "Innovation Center") on October 27, 2021. The Shanghai Municipal People's Government expected Ruijin Hospital to lead the way in setting national standards and benchmarks for digital transformation in healthcare. At the inauguration ceremony, Ning Guang, the director of Ruijin Hospital, addressed the guests as head of the Innovation Center. He noted that the Innovation Center would play a pivotal role in spearheading the digitization of healthcare, exemplifying smart hospital practices, and extending them to other medical institutions. Ruijin Hospital needed to leverage internal and external resources to help the entire healthcare industry go digital as it moved forward with its smart transformation. However, achieving these dual objectives would prove to be a formidable task. Internally, it had a long way to go to apply its new technologies and digital solutions across the healthcare industry. Externally, the varying levels of informatization and smart technology application across medical institutions hindered the seamless integration and sharing of medical data. To complicate matters further, digitization in healthcare also varied from region to region. Ruijin Hospital faced challenges in extending its standards for digital transformation to other institutions. In this context, how would Ruijin

The case on Satyukt analyzes the platform business model in the context of Agriculture by capitalizing on remote sensing data and how the founders built up a successful business that benefits farmers, agri-business and insurance companies. The founders kickstarted the platform business solving one use case and acquired a set of users. Satyukt leveraged the data and the initial set of users further to solve additional use cases benefitting other players in the ecosystem. When used in a Platform Business Models course, this case can help students understand a key platform strategy called "coring". It can help draw attention to key focus areas in a business model which could be "cored" to derive more benefits that could expand the reach of the platform to varied set of players. Satyukt is also a classic example of the interplay of technology (data analytics) and platform business model. This could also segue into digital platforms that thrive on analytics.

LeadSquared is a Bengaluru-headquartered Unicorn that provided end-to-end marketing, sales, and onboarding automation solutions on a SaaS (software as a service) platform. It aims to offer the best-in-class sales execution platform for high-velocity sales teams. In 2022, it had about 1200 employees largely in India. In addition to operations in Bangalore, it had operations in Noida, Hyderabad, and Mumbai in India, New Jersey in the US, and Johannesburg in South Africa (after acquiring another firm in the same space). More recently, it had established offices in Jakarta, Indonesia and Melbourne, Australia. LeadSquared has over 2000 customers across 40 countries. The case provides a context to examine the issues faced by a technology startup as it raises funds, attracts employees, and acquires clients. It ends with the stage where the organization aspires to expand, and the leadership is contemplating on the challenges it might face as it expands into new geographies.

Across the globe, inspiring startup founders are creating a meaningful impact on people's lives and generating economic growth through new applications of deep technology. This category, often called "deep tech" for short, includes ventures whose key innovative solution is grounded in potentially game-changing advancements in science and technology-like those leveraging the latest in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), cybersecurity, biotechnology, and so on. Because of its ability to catalyze significant changes across industries, deep tech has sometimes been called the "fourth wave of innovation," following on the heels of the industrial revolution, the information revolution, and the digital revolution. And deep tech startups can have a major impact on the world, as their founders spend their days leveraging "tangible scientific discoveries and engineering innovations" in the pursuit of "solv[ing] big issues that really affect the world around them." This case shares the stories of three such founders-born, raised, and working in India, Mexico, and Turkey. Two of the founders launched their own product/service startups, leveraging emerging innovations in AI, cloud computing, computer vision, and biotechnology to address major challenges and opportunities in the medical device and mental health spaces. And the third founder established her own investing startup-a VC fund centered on deep tech ventures, bridging the insights and networks of Silicon Valley with the talent and energy in her region. Through each of their stories, similar themes emerge: capitalizing on the newfound accessibility of deep technologies to solve major problems locally, growing their startups with the ambition to expand beyond their regions, helping establish their regions' entrepreneurial ecosystem for future generations, and helping talented people all over the world reach their potential.

On March 10, 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) went into receivership. At the time, it was the second-largest US bank failure in history. What happened? The case briefly describes the story of SVB, from its origin in the early 1980s to March 2023, and focuses on the events surrounding its demise. The case discusses in detail the issues that led to SVB's bankruptcy, in particular interest-rate risk, asset-liability management (ALM), inadequate stress testing, risk management more broadly, corporate governance, regulation, issues related to the bank's focus on venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) loans, and its exposure to the technology sector. The case also describes the Fed's reaction after the bankruptcy. The SVB episode offers an important learning opportunity that touches many facets of a bank and its environment. It has several clear messages about bank management leadership. The case is well suited for a course on financial institutions, money and banking, and risk management. Ideally it would be positioned after credit, interest-rate, and liquidity risks have been covered, so that students have a better understanding of these concepts before they tackle this case; it could also be used as an introduction to the banking model, its key risks, and the role of the Federal Reserve. At Darden, it is taught in the second-year elective, "Financial Institutions and Markets."