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In 2023, Kaushik Roy, the managing director of PCBL (formerly, Phillips Carbon Black Limited), unveiled an ambitious plan to propel the company’s profit before tax to ₹20 billion in Indian rupees by 2029, a more-than-threefold level of growth. Emphasizing capacity-expansion and strategic-rebranding initiatives, PCBL aimed to fortify its status as a global industry leader and as India’s largest carbon black manufacturer. Despite global economic uncertainties, the company’s robust financial performance and strategic dividend declaration underscored its resilience and market dominance. Central to its strategy were innovative product development and enhanced customer engagement, which were crucial for penetrating new markets and sustaining its growth momentum. However, with the company’s focus on high-margin specialty chemicals, Roy pondered the alignment of this strategy with its broader branding efforts and the potential impact of the strategy on both domestic and international markets. As PCBL navigated these challenges, agility and strategic alignment were identified as pivotal for achieving its ambitious growth targets.

The founder of ChopValue Manufacturing Ltd. (ChopValue) was working to resolve his growth strategy. In 2016 his research had suggested 100,000 chopsticks were thrown out daily in the Metro Vancouver region. This moment of inspiration led him to develop an initiative to recycle and recircle these utensils and to create ChopValue. The company collected and cleaned used chopsticks, pressed them into tiles, used the tiles to create furniture and home décor products, and then sold the products. After launching ChopValue, the founder recognized a global need to reduce waste and developed a franchise system to grow his circular economy. He was now working to develop the best strategy for moving forward.

In December 2019, LUSTER LightTech Co., Ltd. was a company in the field of machine vision. As the business was rapidly developing, the founder, Yao Yi, realized that the company’s research and development directions were very scattered, and some projects with heavy investments might not be profitable. After reviewing the existing business, the chief financial officer, Gu Baoxing, proposed a "focus" plan, in which the company should concentrate on core customers in key industries or standardized core products, based on financial sustainability and profitability as the main criteria. In Case (A), students are required to use management accounting knowledge to assist the company in making business choices and strategic decisions.

Wowing Coffee Beans Corporation Ltd. (Wowing Coffee) was established in 1997 in Yunnan Province, China. From the beginning it had embraced improvisation—in both its founding of a coffee plantation in China to its decision to produce specialty beans. In early 2020, just as Wowing Coffee explored the new and innovative idea of pairing its coffee estate with tourism opportunities, the outbreak of COVID-19 disrupted everything. With opportunities and challenges coexisting, where would Wowing Coffee go? Who would they sell their specialty coffee to during the lockdown period, and how should they sell it? Should they continue to invest in exploring new tourism opportunities within the plantation or return to supplying raw materials, like they had in the past, just to survive?

The business model of Side Door Access Inc. (Side Door), a Canadian start-up co-founded in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was based on facilitating live music performances in intimate, non-traditional venues like living rooms, art galleries, and bookstores, enabling direct connections between artists and audiences. The platform provided artists with opportunities to perform in unconventional spaces and negotiate directly with hosts regarding performance fees, with Side Door taking a modest commission. As the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in early 2020, Side Door had to adapt to achieve continued growth. The chief executive officer considered various adaptations, including partnering with platforms such as Zoom and Twitch to facilitate virtual concerts; exploring different revenue models like pay-what-you-can and subscriptions for exclusive content; and diversifying offerings with workshops, masterclasses, and panel discussions. Each option presented its own set of challenges and opportunities and required her to weigh the potential impacts on Side Door’s mission, artist relations, audience engagement, and long-term strategy.

In 2010, the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, India, had been working for several months on an initiative to catalyze cleantech start-ups in India. This required multi-point intervention, including mentoring, acceleration, and funding. Substantially funded by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), this policy experiment aimed to address both market and government failures in developing countries like India by unlocking venture capital to clean-energy start-ups. As the project required CIIE to raise additional funding from other sources and there had so far been no venture capital funding of clean energy projects in India, the CEO wondered who he could approach for such funding, how to approach them, and how to structure the resulting fund to ensure the greatest potential support for innovative cleantech solutions.

In March 2022, Jack Jelinek and Mikey Woolfson, co-founders and co-owners of CRANK Lite Bev Corp (Crank), were considering whether they should sell their beer (Crank Lite Lager) at the Northern Heat Rib Series (Ribfest). As an Oakville, Ontario-based brewery startup that launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, Crank had already taken on a large amount of risk, and Jelinek and Woolfson were unsure of whether they could afford to take on additional risk. However, they wished to continue growing their business to eventually get acquired by another company. Jelinek and Woolfson wanted to determine whether the Ribfest opportunity made sense from a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

Zhongke Xinke (Beijing) Technology Co. Ltd. (Zhongke Xinke), founded in November 2016, enjoyed a high reputation in China’s makerspace industry. Miao Jinsheng, the founder of Zhongke Xinke, sensed the changing environment and the development challenges of the enterprise and created the Foreseeing Unicorns Project. Jointly launched with the Jiangxi provincial government, the project supported the success of entrepreneurs and helped Jiangxi Province to discover and cultivate unicorn enterprises, creating shared value economically and socially. However, its commitment and close ties with the local government limited Zhongke Xinke’s future growth to a certain extent. How could the project grow by balancing its commitment to Jiangxi Province with its need to grow outside the province (national)?

In 2022, the SEEMA Center for Training and Protection of Women and Children’s Rights, a non-profit organization in Khartoum, Sudan, was focused on eradicating the practice of female genital mutilation. The organization was facing cultural, educational, and political challenges in Sudan, as well as tensions from decades of civil unrest, which created barriers for the founder’s fight to eradicate FGM. Her work was also greatly challenged by the deep cultural roots of the practice that existed within the country and in the surrounding regions. Female genital mutilation was a traditional ritual that generated a culture of illegal procedures and groups of extremists. These groups countered the work of the organization and made the founder’s job all the more difficult. She had to find effective strategies and partnerships to help her achieve her organization’s goal of eradicating female genital mutilation.

RiQian Motor was a Chinese company focusing on the development of wheel motors for mining machinery. Its long-term track record with providing high-quality products and service had won the trust and favour of its many clients. In 2016, the mining machinery industry began to focus on the production of electric vehicles. RiQian Motor invested in this new direction, but as of 2018, it was suffering losses in this new area. RiQian Motor was faced with a difficult choice: Should it discontinue its efforts at diversification and go back to the specialized strategy it excelled at? Or should it take a risk and continue the diversification strategy?

Brandix Group (Brandix), an apparel manufacturing firm with facilities in Sri Lanka, India, and Bangladesh, began its sustainability journey in the early 2000s, much before there were established practices in the apparel manufacturing industry, in an effort to combat and adapt to the challenges of climate change. The company had worked across all of the group’s establishments to ensure waste minimization, material efficiency, energy efficiency, and eco-efficiency in operations. Ashroff Omar, chief executive officer of Brandix, felt the time had come for Brandix to review its sustainability efforts and assess whether its sustainability strategy could be continued. He was planning to expand the scope of sustainability practices beyond firm boundaries, and explore the impact of possible changes in regulations, technology, and challenges from competitors.

Hungunda Horticulture Farmer Producer Company Limited (HHFPCL), based in Bagalkot district in Karnataka, India, had confronted significant challenges amid shifts in policy and the environment. An abrupt ban on onion exports from India, coupled with severe drought, had jeopardized the company's growth trajectory, necessitating a strategic reassessment. Despite its innovative operational model and successful market penetration, HHFPCL had contended with declining commodity prices and agricultural-market volatility, which had threatened the company’s ambitious expansion plans and gender-inclusive policies. In January 2024, a member of HHFPCL’s board of directors had to devise strategic initiatives to help the company combat the drought while advancing its business-to-consumer branding and expanding its farmer network to fortify supply-chain resilience.

When Enrique Layola joined the San Pedro City Agriculture Office, he was highly concerned about the worsening conditions of Laguna de Bay and their affect upon the livelihoods of local fishermen. Improving Laguna de Bay’s water quality was vital to increasing the region’s production of fish. The deteriorating water quality had resulted in the proliferation of water hyacinth, which was likely to increase further due to worsening water pollution. Layola was determined to overcome the water hyacinth problem in Laguna de Bay and carefully considered the most appropriate method for tackling the management of the water hyacinth.

Mr. Abdul Kasim, managing director of Arar Infra Contracting Co. LLC (Arar), needed to make a decision on the viability of a business proposal to start a new company called Dune Technologies (Dune) under Arar to build smart fire alarm devices using cloud-based technology. Kasim saw the Dune project as a transformative opportunity for Arar to enter a new market with significant growth potential and to get an early-mover advantage in the cloud-based fire safety systems industry. However, project viability and funding of the investment remained unanswered questions, so Kasim prepared a preliminary report on his business idea and presented it to his fellow board members.

In a letter to its members in September 2022, London Food Co-op (the Co-op) in London, Ontario, shared that it was struggling with a number of challenges. The pandemic had taken a toll on the Co-op’s financial position, to the extent that its viability was at risk. The main challenges it faced were decreasing sales, low membership, and a lack of awareness of the Co-op among Londoners. One of the managers of the Co-op needed to find solutions to help increase its sales and membership. The unique elements of the Co-op included its core values of sustainability and supporting a local food system, its co-operative business model, and its strong connection to the community.

Minko Platforms Pvt. Ltd. (Minko) was a financial technology (fintech) lending startup that specialized in providing supply chain distribution financing to small retailers that sourced inventory from fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) distributors. The company faced a dilemma in determining how to scale up. Should it continue to focus on distributor-retailer transactions, a market where it had already gained experience and penetration? Or should it target the higher value stockist-distributor transactions further up in the supply chain? The latter would be more remunerative but would also have more potential competition. The company’s situation was further complicated when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released new guidelines on digital lending that would significantly impact its operations. As a result, company leaders were also evaluating whether Minko should continue as a fintech company or procure a licence to operate as a non-banking finance company (NBFC).

In June 2023, Mike Stonier, the director of the custom programs unit at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in South Africa, received an email from one of his program coaches that sent him in search of an urgent solution. Since 2022, a cohort of middle managers from the Kraftfahrzeug Company (Kraftfahrzeug) had been enrolled in a custom program and tasked with completing an Action Learning Project and submitting a final report to improve their general management skills. But as their coach explained in the email, some team members had threatened to exclude other team members from the authors listed on the final report—due in just three weeks—because they had not contributed enough to its writing. The excluded team members would not meet the project requirements and thus fail the course. Stonier knew this failure would affect the institute’s relationship with Kraftfahrzeug, as GIBS could be perceived as having failed to provide the training the company had paid for. What could Stonier do to satisfy the aggrieved team members while holding the non-contributing members accountable? How could his solution ensure that GIBS met its contractual obligation to Kraftfahrzeug?

On June 5, 2023, the head of hospital administration and joint medical superintendent at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) was contemplating his responsibility to the streams of outpatients that were coming from various parts of eastern India with hope and anxiety. Elderly, young, fragile, poor, and needy patients alike placed strong confidence in the professional excellence of medical practitioners at AIIMS Bhubaneswar, located in Odisha, India. The large medical institution, housing India’s top medical talent, offered high quality medical education and supported the health care needs of the country’s underserved population. However, the head of hospital administration wondered if the AIIMS goals should reflect the deep-rooted philosophy, objectives, and deliverables of the doctors. Should patient service be featured in the formally stated institutional goals that had been an integral part of the purpose of the medical fraternity at AIIMS? Could a shared vision be built and strengthened in the letter and spirit of this leading medical institution? Integrating shared values into the institution’s goals would require answering these questions.

Manoj Dawane founded an advertising technology (AdTech) start-up in Delhi, India in 2020 that provided digital consumer behaviour intelligence for targeted digital advertising without using third-party internet cookies. His patented technology solved the issue of personal data privacy created by cookie-based targeting. His unique competitive advantage would not last long and he faced three dilemmas. First, to define a clear business model that would be a balance between the core competency of the company and the emerging market opportunities. Second, to identify an alliance partner for a faster growth. Third, to redefine his go-to-market strategy for seven times growth in two years, as demanded by investors.

In July 2023, managers at Exide Industries Limited (EIL), a prominent player in India’s power-storage industry, faced a pivotal decision during a strategic workshop led by the company’s managing director and chief executive officer. The company had been presented with a groundbreaking yet uncertain opportunity: to develop a metaverse-powered platform for battery customization and testing. This initiative, championed by the chief information officer, aimed to address specific challenges faced by EIL’s original-equipment-manufacturer clients. However, the decision to invest in the metaverse was complex and laden with uncertainties regarding the technology’s future and its alignment with EIL’s strategic goals. The company would have to evaluate the potential risks and benefits of adopting this new technology in order to decide whether or not to proceed with this ambitious project.