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Since 2000, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, a global Fortune 500 petroleum company largely owned by the government of India, had institutionalized an internal competition called IDEAS. Each year, several employees participated by submitting their innovative ideas to the competition. Many of these innovations involved significant savings and/or improvements. However, by 2015, a degree of fatigue had set in. Was IDEAS an innovation engine or a tool for employee engagement? How could the competition be transformed so that it delivered more for the employees and the organization?

In 2014, KT Corporation, one of South Korea’s leading telecommunications companies, successfully mapped each point of a customer’s interactions with the company. This was done by a team whose function was to identify customers’ pain points, known as critical quality parameters. The customers’ experiences were clustered into key areas of contact and customer satisfaction in each area was assessed, allowing quality innovation to be experience-based. Identifying customers’ unmet needs and developing innovative solutions were already leading to dramatic improvements in customer experience. However, more work needed to be done, especially in encouraging staff to take actions for improvement.

In June 2015, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) India was considering its future in the Indian telecom market. MTS India, a global telecommunications (telecom) brand, had been operating in the country since March 2009. It had gone through difficult phases marked by India’s regulatory regime and the global economic crisis. Although the Indian telecom market had immense potential, MTS India’s success was stifled by a lack of telecom resources and in the inability to successfully manage the macro environment. Over the years, the company had adopted multiple strategies to drive business growth. However, due to the incompatible telecom ecosystem, including technology and devices, the company was not able to achieve its intended objectives in India. The chief executive officer was evaluating several strategic options in light of intense competition and a geopolitical crisis faced by MTS India’s parent company in Russia.

In January 2016, the owners of a family farm near London, Ontario, Canada, wanted to evaluate the financial status of their business. After 30 years in farming during a period that had seen dramatic changes in the agricultural industry, the couple was beginning to think about succession planning for the farm that had been passed down to them from previous generations. The couple wanted to evaluate how well they had managed the farm’s cash throughout fiscal 2015 and would use this analysis to help them determine the long-term stability of the farm's operation in preparation for this succession plan.

In September 2015, the manager of Hind Oil Industries (HOI), a small edible oil manufacturer in Asansol, West Bengal, was challenged by a dilemma in pricing strategy. HOI had seen the price of mustard seeds, its primary raw ingredient, rise steeply because of harsh weather conditions in the previous harvesting season. HOI would need to raise the price of its product significantly in a price-competitive market dominated by larger companies. The manager wondered if he could increase the price of his only product, Maa mustard oil, to cover the substantial increase in production costs without suffering a loss in total revenue earned. If so, what would be the optimum price under various scenarios related to his competitors’ expected price hikes? Could HOI’s price be raised even if the competitors decided against raising their prices?

In 2016, the deputy general manager of operations at DVMS Power Electronics Private Limited (DVMS) in Gujarat, India, was faced with a problem at the company’s transformer plant. In recent years, amidst growing demand, the company had experienced low manufacturing capacity and was often unable to fill customer orders. Various stakeholders expressed their concerns about failing service levels. The deputy general manager was considering additional capacity as an option, but simply adding such capacity might negatively affect DVMS’ cost structure. He needed to consider the various short- and long-term options that would best benefit the company. He assigned the company’s summer intern the task of collecting the required data regarding the manufacturing of transformers at DVMS: the specified number of machines and workers, the processing time, and the monthly demand data for transformers. He needed to prepare a report that identified weak areas and suggested possible ways to expand capacity.

In 2016, the respective heads of The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Inc. (SeaWorld) were trying to reach a mutually beneficial resolution to their dispute over orca whale breeding. The HSUS opposed SeaWorld's practice of breeding captive orcas and each leader was facing challenges. SeaWorld was experiencing growing negative publicity and a decline in park attendance and revenues, while the HSUS was in the process of publishing a book encouraging business leaders to join the animal protection movement and incorporate HSUS values into their strategic plans. After a decades-long antagonistic relationship, how could SeaWorld and the HSUS find common ground? Could SeaWorld continue operating in a way that was financially beneficial for the parks and entertaining to guests, while also being respectful of the welfare of the orca whales in their care? Could they meet the HSUS’s goals of animal protection?

In 2016, LinkedIn was the largest online platform connecting people to job opportunities and training. The company’s goal was to innovate and co-create with stakeholders a stable, yet emergent online platform that could serve a global business community undergoing rapid transformation in technology, job requirements, and the structure of work itself. <br><br>LinkedIn had a leadership role in this transformation; the company vision, market penetration, and expertise promised to help address major problems of global unemployment and underemployment. The company’s Economic Graph, a massive data set of employment information, was part of the response, but LinkedIn had some challenges to address. How could LinkedIn co-create with stakeholders a stable, increasingly scaled online platform that could serve a global business community, while the structures of those stakeholders inhibited interconnectivity, the skill sets for workers were evolving, and the requirements for and nature of work itself was going through rapid, uncertain transformation? How could it expand to include less educated adults and connect people in regions with different business cultures, values, and practices? How could it better coordinate open-source information among stakeholders? How could it define “soft skills” and connect people with good soft skills with hiring managers?

In 2016, a recently retired artilleryman from the Canadian Armed Forces was planning his next steps as a civilian. He had always been passionate about healthy lifestyles, and his sense of entrepreneurship led him to consider the viability of launching a series of fitness boot camps, based on different skill levels and age groups. He saw this boot camp idea as a way of providing health services to a group of clients who were already interested in exercise but who might become more involved if their fitness activities were held outdoors. He could either launch the boot camps on his own or partner with a small local gym. He needed to earn $2,000 after all expenses per month from May to August each year for the business to be feasible. The gym offered him cost-saving options, but was he ready to share his revenue with a partner?

In July 2014, the managing partner and co-founder of Netherlands-based Expatica Communications B.V. (Expatica) received tragic news. His close friend and business partner had been travelling on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine. The two partners had worked closely together at Expatica for over 15 years. Three days after receiving the news of his friend’s sudden death, the surviving partner found himself alone in his office trying to work out how to cope with the situation and, in particular, how to deal with the employees who were due to return to the office the next day. How should he prepare himself for the next morning? How should he approach the meeting with the employees, and what should he say? What actions should he take regarding the firm in the short and medium term?

When the June 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit, resulted in a vote to leave, the managing director of the U.K. subsidiary of Italian coffee-machine maker Molto Delizioso, SRL, faced a scenario that affected many international firms and their subsidiaries. The U.K. subsidiary imported and paid for coffee machines in euros, but when it sold these items in the United Kingdom, the revenue earned was in pounds. The devaluation of the pound after the Brexit vote affected both the company’s revenues and costs and, therefore, its profits.<br><br>Molto Delizioso’s managing director had to decide what to do about pricing after the devaluation of the pound caused an increase in the cost of importing his gourmet coffee machines. If he kept prices the same, profits would go down significantly. Should he raise the prices he charged to the customer? And if so, by how much?

On October 13, 2015, the regional director of DHL Global Forwarding (DGF) was reviewing reports in preparation for a team meeting in Bengaluru, India. DGF provided air and ocean freight forwarding services. In September, the regional director’s team had successfully rolled out a new consolidation program in three Indian cities: Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai. While glancing through the respective consolidation teams’ reports, however, several questions occurred to the director: Was DGF paying more to airlines on specific days of the week in these three cities? Should the company continue to run the consolidation program in these locations? How could DGF consolidate its clients’ requirements across these cities? Would such consolidation benefit the company? The director had just one day to come up with a new plan for presentation at the next team meeting.

Paillasse International SA was a Swiss-based bread company operating in 15 European markets as of 2016. The company had invented a proprietary, patented process for producing bread concentrate that was used to make high quality, healthy breads. The company was successfully using licensing agreements for the bread concentrate with bakeries throughout the European markets; the latest agreement was with a retailer in Spain. The chief executive officer had just shared the good news with the company owner. The conversation then turned to questions concerning the future growth of the company. Where should it expand next? What impact would the maturing industry have on the company’s growth plans? How could the company maintain its competitive position in the market?

SAPMER SA was a Southern Ocean fishing company started by three Réunion Island entrepreneurs with one ship in 1947. The company grew from an entrepreneurial venture to a corporate acquisition, then back to a beloved family business not expected to make much money. But in 2006, SAPMER SA tested the waters with a new tuna venture. The venture was successful, but the company saw a better long-term opportunity in occupying a niche position. SAPMER SA launched a strategic rebirth with a five-year plan to develop a new segment: super-frozen tuna fishing and processing in the Indian Ocean, addressing premium Asian markets in sashimi, tataki, and tuna loins and steak. SAPMER SA’s strategy resulted in strong performance, but in early 2013, when examining the financial records and the terms for purchasing newly acquired ships, the owner could see challenges ahead. To manage the challenges, the owner needs to know the reason for the improvement in return on equity, what potential problems could be identified from a DuPont analysis of the financials, and what bottlenecks to anticipate in the coming years.

By 2016, the Indian taxi market was beginning to move from the unorganized sector to the organized sector, as evidenced by the emergence of radio cab services (cab operators that hired salaried drivers and used call centres for bookings) and cab aggregators (e.g., Uber and Ola Cabs). Initially, the market had only a few players, but the competition turned fierce after the entry of Ola Cabs and Uber led to major disruptions. None of the aggregators had yet achieved a positive bottom line, but industry reports and a speculated compound annual growth rate of 25–30 per cent suggested a bright future for the industry, provided the stakeholders could strategically tap into the opportunities. <br><br>A small taxi firm, Kanika International Tour and Travel Pvt. Ltd. (KITT), needed to come to terms with its falling market share, difficulties in retaining drivers, and decreasing profitability. In light of the intensifying competition, should KITT and other independent players hold on to their business, or should they join the aggregators?

The minister of Haiti’s Department of Energy Security needed to prepare a presentation for the country’s prime minister that proposed a solution for transforming Haiti’s energy infrastructure. Haiti wanted to attract foreign direct investment that would spur socio-economic reform; however, the opportunities depended on a solid energy infrastructure providing reliable electricity to businesses, which Haiti did not have. Also, the residents of Haiti were in dire need of a low-cost, reliable energy solution that would allow them to move away from biomass and petroleum products, which were expensive and bad for the environment. How should the minister structure his proposal? What criteria would be required to support a strategy that considered the energy value chain, types of public-private partnerships, and need for socio-economic reform?

In December 2015, the head of supply chain management (SCM) at Las Vegas Construction Inc. was tasked with reducing operating costs by 25 per cent in order to deal with the fallout in Nevada’s construction industry from the global economic downturn. The SCM head had engaged the manager in charge of subcontracting to help with cost reductions. The subcontracting manager did find a way to reduce costs, but it turned out to be a questionable way. He had tipped off the three subcontractors with whom he had been working closely by providing them with confidential information regarding a target bid price for the labour sourcing process. When the bid prices were disclosed, even though Las Vegas Construction Inc. had reached its original cost savings goal, the SCM head had mixed feelings about the process. He wondered how to address this potentially unethical situation, and whether he should inform his superiors about it.

In 2015, a nutritionist and dog lover developed a new canine energy bar called K9FuelBar. This product was made of all-natural, non-genetically modified, organic ingredients. In doing some investigation, the product's developer realized there could be a small, but sufficient, market to make her product commercially viable. At this point, she needed to evaluate and decide on the best method of distribution for her product. She identified multiple distinct options, each with different qualitative and quantitative issues to consider. The owner of K9FuelBar needed to decide which option to pursue and to develop an overall market communication program to support her product.

In 2003, Mawlyngot Tea Growers’ Cooperative Society (MTG), a village cooperative in Meghalaya, India, was spearheaded by a local teacher who wished to lift the village’s people up from poverty, transform their lives, and improve their economic condition. The cooperative started with just a few farmers from the village, but by the end of 2013, the village was growing tea on nearly 90 hectares of land, involving almost all 45 households of the village. <br><br>Although MTG was a successful model of cooperation for income and social well-being, competition was increasing in the tea market as local players and big multinationals expanded their offerings in the region. In competing for market share, MTG did not want to compromise on its farming practices, which were 100 per cent sustainable and organic. MTG also wanted to build its brand. The cooperative needed to reposition and grow to expand its capacity, sales, and market presence, but the founder was uncertain how to proceed.

Silver Spark Apparel Ltd. (SSAL), established in 2004 near Bangalore, India, was a wholly owned subsidiary of Raymond Ltd. The plant had significant expertise in the manufacturing of jackets. SSAL faced a significant challenge when it came to the attraction and retention of workers, with the predominantly female workers often citing family issues as a reason for quitting. In order to combat attrition, SSAL’s head of human resources had initiated various employee engagement initiatives that had helped the company reach fourth place in manufacturing and production among “India’s Best Companies to Work For, 2014.” Nevertheless, the high rate of attrition had not been stemmed, and the data for the first quarter of 2015 was alarming.