個案總覽

In December 2018, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Carrot Rewards (Carrot), a profitable Canadian social enterprise, was facing a turning point. The company, which had been founded three years earlier, was about to implode. Its single largest client had just conveyed its decision to pull out, causing a sudden 65 per cent drop in the company’s annual revenue. Should Carrot continue with the prevailing model—one day at a time? Should it launch a freemium version of its app? Should it pivot toward new geographies and new locations? Should it begin to focus on new verticals and go after new clients? Should it go on the auction block and salvage what is left of the original company? The founder and CEO wondered whether the future held workable options other than those he was considering in dealing with the enterprise he had founded, built, and nurtured.

On March 20, 2020, in an effort to stem the transmission of the COVID-19 pandemic and under the direction of government officials, Canada’s Stratford Festival halted work on its 2020 productions and ultimately postponed the entire season. Additionally, social justice issues had come to the forefront with the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Watching the protests unfold across North America, the Stratford Festival’s executive and management team recognized the pain their black colleagues were experiencing and set their sights on doing something meaningful to champion anti-racism. The executive team offered the Black Caucus and the Indigenous Circle—two informal groups of the Stratford Festival artists and administrators—the opportunity to take over the Festival’s social media channels for a 48-hour period and to conduct a town-hall session on the Stratford Festival’s YouTube channel. The question remained, however, whether turning over the social media channel was a prudent strategy, given the difficulty of predicting the outcomes of activities that start out with good intentions.

While international shipping transports more than 90 percent of global trade to people and communities all over the world, it is also a major pollution source. In order to minimize air pollution and protect the environment, the IMO requests that all carriers and vessels adopt a new global sulfur limit of 0.5 percent for ships’ fuel oil (in contrast with the previous limit of 3.5%) from 1 January 2020. This new regulation, without a doubt, significantly impacts firm operations. Three potential solutions are suggested for carrier firms: (1) to install a sulfur-oxide scrubber, (2) to switch to low-sulfur fuel oils, or (3) to switch to liquid nature gas (LNG) for existing vessels or build new LNG vessels for newly planned vessels. The first option allows vessels to continue using high-sulfur fuel, but the cost of installing a scrubber is high. The second option requires a low initial investment, but will be challenged by potential price hikes. The third option uses an almost toxic-free alternative material, but requires a major rebuild and, hence, is costly. This case aims to discuss the consequences of such a top-down regulation on carriers’ financial and operational performance, on carriers’ choices among the three options, the implications on supply chain partners and consumers with respect to these options, and finally, whether such a regulation is effective in reducing sulfur emissions.

In 2020, the flagship location of Jamie's Market, a specialty supermarket retailer in California, struggled to hire enough temporary workers to meet the increased staffing demand resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The new assistant manager, who had been recently transferred to the company's flagship store, was tasked with figuring out what had gone wrong and recommending changes to ensure that the store would have enough qualified workers for the remainder of the pandemic (or until store sales returned to pre-pandemic levels, whichever occurred first). The assistant manager looked into the company’s hiring and socialization processes, spoke with both temporary and permanent workers, and identified at least two reasons for the challenges in hiring temporary workers: insufficient advertising of the job listing for temporary workers, and little or no effort to socialize temporary workers once they were hired. Based on these conclusions, what changes should the assistant manager recommend when hiring the next group of temporary employees?

It was June 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Frances Edmonds, head of sustainable impact at HP Canada Co., the Canadian subsidiary of HP Inc. (HP), was continuing HP’s decades-long pursuit of sustainable impact. HP had worked nearly two decades with strategic partners like Lavergne Groupe to redesign its products and make plastic circular. HP was now committed to using 30 per cent post-consumer recycled plastic across its personal systems and printers by 2025. However, decreasing commodity prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply challenges, and lowered global collection of recycled content could potentially undermine HP’s recycling efforts and goals. Edmonds was considering possible strategic, tactical, and operational actions to cope with the situation and sustain HP’s aspirations. Would HP’s circular supply chain remain viable and competitive?

In late 2018, the chief executive officer and president of Domino's Pizza Japan Inc. was convinced that a substantial expansion in the Japanese market was needed and feasible for continued growth. His company had already grown to nearly 550 stores across Japan, which was over double the number only five years earlier. The company had numerous opportunities to grow further, including opening new markets; opening stores closer to the company's customers; and building on customer insights, new menu offerings, and a new marketing approach. In particular, the chief executive officer wondered whether priority should be given to new markets in Japan that the company had not yet entered, or if priority should be given to greater penetration in Japanese locations where it already operated. What strategy was the best option for expansion in the Japanese market?

Founded in 2000, with its headquarters in Singapore, BreadTalk Group Limited used a creative lifestyle concept to attract consumers who were accustomed to viewing bread as inexpensive, basic food. In 2003, the company founder and chairman achieved his goal of listing the company on the Singapore stock exchange to raise capital for scaling up operations. By mid-2018, the company had grown to become a regional, multi-brand food and beverages enterprise with 11 brands, almost 1,000 outlets across 18 territories, and a staff of over 7,500 people. In 2018, BreadTalk Group Limited opened a new restaurant in London, United Kingdom, representing its first entry into the Western market. However, the executive team had to engage the company’s employees across continents and inspire them to innovate, especially through the use of technology. The first step was to choose the right management team for the new business unit in London and build a new talent pool in Europe.

In November 2018, a bicycle program specialist who worked in the Planning and Sustainability Division at the Washington, DC, District Department of Transportation, wanted to analyze Capital Bikeshare’s bike rental demand for the past two years. Capital Bikeshare was a station-based bike-sharing operator that provided an expansive, multi-jurisdictional transportation system to Washington and the surrounding area. If the bicycle program specialist could determine some significant factors that affected users’ ridership patterns, he could best design his expansion plan of adding 40 new bike-rental stations to the system. He obtained the hourly bike rental demand for October 2016–September 2018 to evaluate how sensitive the demand was to some external factors.

In 2020, the chief executive officer of Tella Oy, a small Finnish hat-making firm, wanted to achieve €2 million in turnover. She had been pursuing a regional growth strategy with some success since 2016, when she had founded the business after acquiring the long-established family firm. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the firm had abandoned its internationalization plans and began fabricating personal protective clothing. When the chief executive officer met with consultants, several expansion options were raised: remaining regionally focused, entering into exclusive supply arrangements, pursuing opportunities in Asia, licensing her designs, or becoming a fully online retailer. As a small firm with no permanent employees, which of these various options could Tella Oy realistically pursue? More importantly, was this chief executive officer ready to give up her role as chief designer to take on the role of managing director?

Delta 9 Cannabis Inc. produced and sold recreational cannabis in Canada—a market that after legalization was characterized by volatility in supply, demand, and regulations. Nonetheless, Delta 9 grew rapidly, and March 31, 2020, marked Delta 9’s best-ever fiscal quarter. However, Delta 9’s share prices had deflated over the previous year and the economy had recently been upended by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, there was considerable uncertainty regarding the outlook of Delta 9’s three main business segments, each facing unique challenges and opportunities. The chief executive officer must decide how to allocate existing capital to keep Delta 9 on the path to growth.

In January 2019, one of the founding members and current board members of Londvolota, a South African trust formed by General Electric South Africa (GESA) in 2015, faced a challenge. Londvolota needed to improve the establishment and growth of entrepreneurial South African businesses as part of GESA’s development of local suppliers, which aimed to enable the best of these businesses to supply the global GE network. The initiative represented a major contribution to supporting the South African economy; however, the board was considering updating its criteria for selecting the businesses for development. How should the organization adjust its criteria to avoid failures and increase the initiative’s success rate?

In 2017, the general manager of Rajarambapu Patil Co-operative Sugar Factory, a 50-year-old sugar plant in India, needed to recommend a strategy for the factory’s upcoming production cycle. For the aggregate production plan, he was considering three options: a chase strategy, a level strategy, and a subcontracting strategy. The company faced multiple challenges, including a limited pool of skilled labourers, employee poaching by competitors and allied manufacturers, the wide availability of job options in metro cities, and pressure from the labour union. Company management wanted to optimize profits, while reducing risks and incurring no extra costs. How should the general manager decide which strategy would best meet all the criteria?

In 2016, a summer intern at Bombay Hospital Indore, in India, was tasked with evaluating the hospital’s patient discharge process. Two types of insured patients required different discharge processes for the payment of outstanding balances. The intern needed to map the respective processes and project the outcomes of (1) moving from the current two parallel systems to one centralized, or pooled, system; and (2) adding a third staff member to process patient discharges and collect payments. Would these suggested solutions resolve the problem of wait times? Would one be more effective than the other?

In late 2015, the chief executive officer of Extraordinary Journeys, an African safari tour operator, faced a rare opportunity to buy a smaller competitor, Safari Specialists Inc. The chief executive officer worried that her firm's strong organic growth would slow, and she was interested in examining alternative growth strategies. The smaller company was offered at a reasonable price and had a remarkably similar organizational culture. On the other hand, it relied heavily on outside contractors, not employees, creating potentially difficult human resources challenges. Further, it was located in rural Georgia, far from the Extraordinary Journeys home office in downtown Manhattan. All things considered, the chief executive officer was wondering if she should buy her competitor.

In May 2020, Scenic Floral Inc. (Scenic), a Beamsville, Ontario start-up that sourced fresh cut flowers from Colombian farms and the Niagara Peninsula, was aggressively looking to expand the business. The company’s Mother’s Day sales had started out very slowly in 2020 as the floral industry in Canada and worldwide began to recover from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While a flurry of last-minute orders from Scenic’s two largest customers meant sales for the holiday had been strong overall, the company’s manager and partners knew they would have to strike a careful balance in growing their business—continuing to focus on their main customers while considering whether to expand the current product line, add retail customers, perform processing services, serve as a sub-supplier, export to the United States, or launch into e-commerce. Capacity constraints meant they might need to make trade-offs between growing the core business and appropriately timing new opportunities. With so many opportunities available, how could they maintain their existing customers while planting the seeds for growth when the timing was right?

In April 2020, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited (Jio), a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, announced an alliance with social media giant Facebook Inc. (Facebook). This was the biggest foreign direct investment for a technology firm in India. The association between Jio and Facebook offered both firms many opportunities, and the strengths and core competencies of the two organizations promised to create value for Indian consumers and businesses by meeting their technology needs. However, the differences in the two organizations in terms of culture, expertise, business models, and management styles would need to be dealt with effectively to create the desired synergy. How could Jio ensure a co-operative and complementary partnership (despite their differences with Facebook) in order to succeed and set a precedent for future international alliances?

Linc Pen and Plastics Limited (LPPL) was a 40 year old Indian writing instruments company with a presence in over 50 countries through its sole brand Linc, a value brand that had a brand image of providing good quality products at a low price. Over the past year and half , LPPL had faced margin pressure due to a steep increase in the price of raw materials. In late 2019, Deepak Jalan, the managing director , decided not to disturb the brand equity of Linc but instead to move upmarket by developing a new ballpoint pen, Pentonic, for the premium segment. LPPL priced Pentonic ball pens at ₹10 —higher than Linc’s original ball pens, which mostly sold at ₹5. The Pentonic ball pen was highly successful right from its launch, and within a year, Pentonic had become the company’s second largest product in terms of volume and its largest product in terms of value. Pentonic had an independent identity in the market. In the last board meeting, Jalan had proposed building Pentonic as a separate brand for the premium market. The board had asked him to develop a detailed plan for developing the new product to target the premium market and balancing the marketing mix and positioning strategy for the specific target customers of the two brands, Linc and Pentonic.

The owner of Hailey’s Handbags, a New England-based online business selling handmade products, had successfully grown her company using a limited-release sales model. However, by early 2019, complaints posted to her business’s social media accounts had become abusive and personal. The emotional impact on the owner was severe, and before she could decide how to manage the comments, she needed to first determine whether they represented legitimate complaints or if she had become a target of cyberbullying.

In early April 2020, COVID-19 began impacting trade, commerce, and industry globally. The founder and president of Innovative Automation Inc., a custom machine builder in the small and medium enterprise sector in Ontario, Canada, was facing two main dilemmas. First, how should he ensure that the internal channels of communication at the company remain open as its employees—like everyone in the rest of the province and indeed the rest of the world—dealt with a largely unknown virus? Second, how should the company enforce social distancing—made mandatory by the provincial government in its bid to contain the spread of the virus—at its manufacturing facility?

In 2020, the Indonesian bank PT Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional Tbk (BTPN) had to make a decision regarding a digital transformation strategy for its future. BTPN had started as a small bank that focused on pensioners, but became known for its innovation after a private equity partner bought a stake in 2008. Initially innovating successfully in microfinance, BTPN decided to go digital by creating an in-house start-up in 2015 called Jenius, thereby leapfrogging to become one of the forerunners in Indonesian digital consumer banking. The COVID-19 pandemic had accelerated digital financial services, and BTPN had to decide how to scale Jenius to transform the company. Was the in-house start-up model the best choice after all, or would the large incumbent banks digitalize faster?