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In mid-2019, the managing director of Switz Foods Pvt. Ltd. (SFPL), which owned the Mio Amore bakery brand, faced the dilemma of how to tackle its competition. Under a franchise agreement from 1989–2014, the company had manufactured and sold cakes and other food products in Eastern India under the Monginis brand name. Due to the managing director’s innovative and emotion-centric market positioning, Monginis quickly became the number one bakery brand in Eastern India. In 2015, however, the franchise licence was discontinued with a condition that, for a period of three years, Monginis would not enter the territories where SFPL had held the Monginis franchise. In 2015, SFPL created the new bakery brand, Mio Amore. In 2019, the Monginis brand re-entered the East Indian market. The managing director’s dilemma was how to sustain Mio Amore’s leadership position, while countering the competition from a former brand.

Founded in 2008, Indiahikes provided professionally managed treks to individuals, groups, schools, colleges, and corporations across India. Indiahikes began with the objective to popularize trekking in India by promoting treks and providing essential information. Before long, the organization began organizing treks and developing a community of trekkers. By 2018, Indiahikes had the largest online trekking community and was India’s biggest trekking organization. Having reached a crucial point in its growth, the company needed a strategy to reach its full potential as the top community-led organization. However, it needed to earn adequate profits for continued investment into trek documentation and to develop trekking communities across India. Indiahikes also needed to address capacity constraints, market saturation, the retention of trained staff members, and conflicts with regional trek operators. Its growth path required exploring opportunities and making important decisions.

On January 8, 2017, Ronald Huggins, plant manager at AEL Mining Services Limited (AEL), needed to come up with innovative ways to keep his employees motivated. This need was driven by the downward trend of the local mining market. In 2011 and 2012, AEL had rolled out a major retrenchment, leaving employees with low morale and motivation, which in turn had affected performance levels. It became apparent that plant performance needed to ramp up. This was particularly important given the company’s strategic plans to expand internationally and focus 80 per cent of its business, rather than the current 20 per cent, on the international mining market.

Karabo Morule is the managing director of Old Mutual Ltd. Personal Finance in South Africa. In June 26, 2018, she is leading a team through the company’s process of organizational change. The dilemma she faces is how to retain the heritage of a shared values-based culture, while also modernizing and strengthening it to express a new customer-led approach with the focal point in Africa. Old Mutual Ltd. is the largest financial services provider in Africa, and it is attempting to retain certain aspects of its culture, such as its core values of respect, integrity, and accountability, while changing other aspects of its culture to include being a champion of the customer, the power of diversity and inclusion, and trust, all amidst the major transition of its primary listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange as a Pan-African organization. The case documents the organizational change process, demonstrating culture and women in leadership as critical levers of a successful change process.

In 2017, Dr. Gordon Morewood, chair of anesthesiology at Temple University Health System (Temple Health) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, faced a rapidly changing health care environment. Responsible for training anesthesiology residents and for all anesthesiology patient care across Temple Health’s system, Morewood faced rising expectations for improving patient outcomes, patient satisfaction, and financial performance. Communication in health care had long operated in silos, and Morewood knew that significant changes in medical education and a shift toward cross-functional communication in health care were needed. A digital real-time performance feedback application (app) could help with the change process by building a growth feedback culture. The app could also use people analytics to identify the skills, knowledge, and experience most critical to the institution and assess competency development across the organization. The tool could help Morewood achieve the changes needed to meet the expectations in health care. Should he launch the app across the health system? If so, how would he introduce the new feedback culture and its use?

Patrice Motsepe, the son of a small business owner, grew up in Apartheid era South Africa. He founded Ubuntu-Botho Investments (UBI) in an attempt to provide historically disadvantaged South Africans with access to the financial sector. In 2003, UBI entered into a partnership with Suid-Afrikaanse Nasionale Lewens Assuransie Maatskappij (Sanlam). Through the diversification of UBI’s and Sanlam’s business models and with a dual focus on economic and social value creation, the inclusion of a large base of black South Africans in the economy was facilitated. Now, in 2018, Motsepe was on the brink of sealing another historic deal with Sanlam. However, how should this second Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deal be approached by both Motsepe’s UBI and Sanlam, taking into account the extended shared value framework developed for BEE transactions?

Blacbiblio.com, Inc., an educational materials start-up in Montreal, Canada, launched its first and only product, the ABCs of Canadian Black History Kit, in 2016. The product received strong positive reviews at the time of its launch, but its initial price of CA$2,500 per kit left it out of reach for most of its intended customers. The company founder, a historian and educational content creator, shifted to a flexible pricing strategy, offering the kits for as little as $400–$1,500 each, depending on the status of the buyer. By late 2018, she had sold fewer than 40 kits and held an excess inventory of over 100 unsold kits. Now she needed to decide whether and how to adapt her current approach to become successful in the current market. Should she consider other potential markets instead? Should she perhaps rethink the product design itself?

Top Cloud-Agri Technology Co., Ltd. (TPYN) was a Chinese high-tech company serving the agricultural industry. By implementing a digital business model, TPYN transformed from a traditional business model to a digital leader in the industry. To achieve further growth and develop an innovative digital business model, the chairman of the company put forward the new concept of “open, share, integrate, and win-win.” This concept presented not only a rare opportunity for enterprise development but also a considerable challenge, as the required cross-industry, cross-domain integration meant an increased consumption of resources. Should the company look for collaborators within the government or with other larger platforms, or could TPYN continue implementing the new model alone?

In December 2017, Ali Asher, the second-eldest child of Aziz Asher, was conducting research for his father on the best way to restructure the family business to prepare for succession. Asher’s parents and siblings all lived in Canada, while Ali had been running a start-up in India for nearly two years. The family had a real estate and construction business in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ali’s older sister had special needs and lived with her parents, so any family estate plan would need to consider her ongoing care and well-being. His brother, who lived in a suite in the family residence, had a close bond with this sister, worked closely with their father, and had personally invested in one of the family’s main real estate assets. The second sister lived in an apartment in Toronto, which the family had helped her purchase, and had little interest in the family business, though she wished to receive an equitable share of the overall estate. Ali believed that the family business and estate were highly vulnerable to both internal and external forces; he needed to recommend a suitable option for safeguarding the family’s estate and transitioning the family business to the children in a manner that would satisfy both his father’s conditions and the wishes of the other family members.

In early October 2018, the executive director of Daya Counselling Centre had just learned that the Ontario Works program, one of the centre’s major funded-referral programs, was planning a significant change. The executive director was concerned about the impact of this change on the centre’s financial performance. The timing could not be worse. She and the board of directors had been discussing the feasibility of moving the centre from its downtown location in London, Ontario, Canada. Any negative impact on the counselling centre’s financial performance could derail these plans. In addition, she had been planning to approach the board with a proposal to fund a new clinical administrative support position to help her manage the centre’s growth. How could she ask the board to add a new position to the budget if the counselling centre continued to post a deficit?

Founded in 1899 by Shinjiro Torii in Osaka, Japan, Suntory Holdings (Suntory) boasted a rich history in Japan’s alcoholic beverage industry. It purchased US-based Beam in 2014 for $16 billion, renamed itself as Beam Suntory, and transformed into one of the world’s largest alcoholic beverage makers, reaching total global revenues of more than 2.5 trillion yen ($23 billion) by the end of fiscal year 2018. Now, in 2020, could the Suntory team pull off a third miracle and successfully bring Japan’s highball culture to the extremely competitive global marketplace?

In 2018, the owner of Blue Sky Ranch, a heritage pig farm in British Columbia, Canada, was reviewing her business options. She had been producing premium-priced, high-quality pork for two years; however, despite growing demand from restaurants, grocers, and consumers for high-end, sustainably raised, free-range meat, Blue Sky Ranch was not yet profitable. The owner faced several challenges in processing and delivering her product to clients, and faced competition from large meat producers who had stronger relationships within the food supply chain. The business was operating at a loss and was continually constrained by federal and provincial regulations. What options were available to ensure the future of her business?

Jingdong (JD), the leading innovation-driven e-commerce company and retail infrastructure service provider in China, had rapidly expanded its enterprise procurement market. In the process, however, it faced major issues related to poor customer experience, the high cost of risk control for the value-added tax (VAT), and inefficient invoice management. In early 2018, JD (the supplier of invoices) collaborated with the China Pacific Insurance (Group) Company Ltd. (the receiver of invoices) to launch China’s first electronic VAT special invoice, using blockchain technology to resolve traditional issues associated with paper invoices in the reconciliation of accounts and payments. In the process of developing the electronic VAT special invoice, the president of JD’s enterprise business department, considered how to meet the demands of companies and taxation agencies in a safe, confidential, convenient, easy-to-use, and low-cost manner. What potential challenges might JD face in promoting of its electronic VAT special invoices?

DailyFish was an emerging e-commerce enterprise that was started in 2016 by Baby Marine Ventures, one of the largest exporters of frozen seafood from India. Subramanian Sankaran, Head of Loyalties and customer service management (CSM) was facing challenges related to increased missed calls in the call center that eventually led to a loss of sales opportunities. The chief executive officer of the company instructed Sankaran to reduce the waiting time per call by one third, thereby minimizing the missed calls. Sankaran had to find out how to minimize the waiting time without compromising the call quality. He was looking forward to hiring a couple of executives to tackle the issue. He planned to find the best fit using fractional factorial experiment using Taguchi orthogonal arrays.

YFY Inc., a Taiwan-based global multinational firm with its origins in agriculture and paper products, had recently become an innovator in environmentally-friendly packaging material—producing nPulp, paper pulp made from straw. The company’s visionary leadership choices had shaped its technological choices through various institutional changes and helped it overcome a number of technical and organizational obstacles in order to commercialize this innovation. However, like all green innovations, nPulp still faced serious challenges, such as unsupported policies and regulations, and unstable supply. In 2017, the company’s leadership needed to find other applications for this product to increase its market adoption rate and maintain and expand its operation. At the same time, they wondered if the previous generation’s vision of creating a business ecosystem including organic farming, proper waste treatment, non-chemical paper manufacturing, energy and resource recycling, and new materials was even feasible.

The chief executive officer (CEO) of Middle East Airlines (MEA) had to decide whether the airline should fly over Syria during the armed conflict. All other airlines in the Middle East had decided not to fly over Syria either because they did not want to show their support for the Syrian government or because they believed it was too dangerous. Yet, these airlines did not have as much to lose as MEA because, unlike them, 50 per cent of this airline’s flights flew over that country. It was estimated that MEA could lose US$50 million if it did not fly over Syria. What should the CEO do?

In October 2018, the founder of NutriHealth started to think about the next phase of her company’s growth strategy. NutriHealth began as a stand-alone clinic in 1998 and was a service provider of personalized wellness and health management diet plans. It was time to make decisions that would lead to sustained growth. NutriHealth had reached a satisfactory position in the market, and investors had become interested in the venture, offering capital. There were many options to explore, and the founder wanted to find the best approach in choosing a growth pathway.

The chief executive officer of Ridlr, a mobile application (app), faced a new challenge in 2019. Ridlr was a subsidiary of ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., which was a major player in India's transportation-as-a-service sector and also owned Ola, a ride-hailing app. The chief executive officer envisioned Ridlr becoming the preferred information and mobile ticketing option for India’s public transportation modes. He wanted to successfully position the firm to grow from 600 million annual transactions in 2019 to 6 billion in 2022. He was confident in the firm's value proposition to serve the large consumer base, but he wasn't convinced that direct monetization through consumers was the best option. Although the business-to-business channels of transporters and technology service providers offered some opportunities at monetization, how could Ridlr gain access to that value? The chief executive officer needed to prepare a product and marketing strategy that would ensure both growth and monetization. Where should he begin?

In 2019, the managing director of Sarva Pharmaceuticals Private Limited, a pharmaceutical company based in India, was considering an expansion of his company by entering the growing pharmaceutical market in Myanmar. He needed to identify the best way to execute this expansion plan, assess whether his company’s product range was adequate and suitable for the Myanmar market, prepare for possible risks and cross-cultural marketing issues, and plan the management staffing approaches in Myanmar.

This case describes that Sinyi Real Estate Inc. held the belief that “righteousness before profits” and launched the “We Are One” Project, hoping to make the community more gelled. In each stage promoted by the “We Are One” Project", Sinyi Real Estate Inc. responded to different challenges through rolling correction and continuous improvement that had achieved today's dazzling results.