Business Case Studies

Google's Project Oxygen: Do Managers Matter?

Google's Project Oxygen started with a fundamental question raised by executives in the early 2000s: do managers matter? The topic generated a multi-year research project that ultimately led to a comprehensive program, built around eight key management...

Big Hit Entertainment and Blockbuster Band BTS: K-Pop Goes Global

Bang Si-Hyuk ('Hitman Bang') is the founder and co-chief executive officer of Big Hit Entertainment, the company behind BTS, a 'K-pop' band that has found unparalleled success around the globe-a remarkable feat given that most of their songs are in...

Cirque du Soleil

Retaining talent is an issue for any company whose success relies on the creativity and excellence of its employees. This is especially true for Cirque du Soleil, the spectacularly successful "circus without animals," whose 2,100 employees include 500...

GE's Two-Decade Transformation: Jack Welch's Leadership

GE is faced with Jack Welch's impending retirement and whether anyone can sustain the blistering pace of change and growth characteristic of the Welch era. After briefly describing GE's heritage and Welch's transformation of the company's business...

Pinckney Street

Although inexperienced in real estate, Edward Alexander hopes in June 2013 that youthful enthusiasm and an $240,000 in savings and inheritance will help him enter the real estate business. His experience chronicles the process of finding, evaluating, and...

Army Crew Team

The coach of the varsity Army crew team at West Point assembled his top eight rowers into the first crew team and the second tier of rowers into the second team using objective data on individual performance. As the second boat continually beat the first...

Chase Sapphire: Creating a Millennial Cult Brand

The Inside the Case video that accompanies this case includes teaching tips and insight from the author (available to registered educators only). The launch of the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card was enthusiastically received by Millennial consumers,...

Trader Joe's

The Inside the Case video that accompanies this case includes teaching tips and insight from the author (available to registered educators only). Based on a variety of metrics, Trader Joe's ranked as one of the most successful grocers in the United...

Amazon.com, 2021

In February 2021, Amazon announced 2020 operating profits of $22,899 million, up from $2,233 million in 2015, on sales of $386 billion, up from $107 billion five years earlier (see Exhibit 1). The shareholders expressed their satisfaction (see Exhibit...

Leadership in Crisis: Ernest Shackleton and the Epic Voyage of the Endurance

Provides an opportunity to examine leadership and entrepreneurship in the context of Ernest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition, a compelling story of crisis, survival, and triumph. Summarizes Shackleton's career as an officer in the British Merchant...

The Tulsa Massacre and the Call for Reparations

The Inside the Case video that accompanies this case includes teaching tips and insight from the author (available to registered educators only). How should historic social injustices be addressed? Survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre and their...

Popeyes in China: Making Fried Chicken Fly in a Foreign Market

As one of the world's largest fried chicken chains, Popeyes had failed twice to enter the Chinese market over a twenty-year span. In March 2023, Restaurant Brands International (RBI), the owner of Popeyes, attempted a third strike by bringing the fried...

BeM: A Start-Up's Journey through Online Product Reviews

The product recommendation website BeM was launched in 2020 in Brazil to explore the significant and untapped potential of the country's online reviews market. Inspired by US models, BeM's webpages featured expert-generated reviews of products in four...

Mexico, Trade, and Development

Coursera's Foray into GenAI

In early 2023, Maggioncalda, CEO of US EdTech firm Coursera, launched Project Genesis to develop a strategy for incorporating GenAI capabilities into the firm's offerings, asking his teams to focus on value to the firm and cost of implementation. The...

The Lithium Ion Battery: From Industry to Diverse Ecosystems

Raymond Green, Chief Researcher at Amber Global, a global energy think tank, believes that climate change could be slowed by consumers switching to electric vehicles (EVs). He analyses the lithium-ion (li-ion) battery industry's origins and its...

Malaysia Airlines: Culture Transformation While Flying Through Turbulence

This case study follows Malaysia Airlines Berhad (MAB) through its Culture Journey (2018-2021), an initiative to rebuild the corporate culture as part of a broader turnaround strategy. The airline was stricken by twin tragedies in 2014 - the...

First to Fight? Culture, Tradition and the United States Marine Corps (USMC)

Over a history of more than 240 years, the United States Marine Corps has forged a distinct culture and institutional identity centered on its "warrior ethos." In the wars of American history, Marines fought with uncommon valor, rising to international...

ECOALF: Fashion for the Future

ECOALF, a Spanish fashion brand and sustainability pioneer, aimed to tackle the industry's challenges of excessive consumption and production. The brand's mission was to create timeless apparel exclusively from recycled and eco-responsible materials,...

ExxonMobil: Is Chasing Net Zero Futile?

The case is set in September 2023, and talks about the energy transition of the oil and gas industry in context to ExxonMobil (Exxon), which has seen continued backlash from media and climate activists on its stance on climate change, strategies towards...

Cyrus: Turning a Traditional Business Model On Its Head (A)

The loss of the lease at their Michelin-starred Cyrus 1.0 in Sonoma County, California gives the partners an opportunity to shut down and rework a "broken" business model, one with labor intensive experiences six or seven nights a week, high burnout,...

More than Optics: Olympus's Vision to Become a Leading Global MedTech Company

In August 2022, CEO Yasuo Takeuchi reflected on Olympus Corporation's recent transformation from being known as a Japanese consumer camera company to becoming a leading global medical technology (MedTech) company. Over the past dozen years, Takeuchi and...

Monetary Policy and Inflation Targeting in India

In May 2022, India's retail inflation rate rose above the upper limit of the target range set by the Reserve Bank of India in 2015, to reach 7.79 per cent. In recent years, India's retail inflation rate had been successfully kept within the target range...

Doing Business in Sao Paulo, Brazil

The case gives readers an overview of key factors of doing business in Brazil, including Brazil's economic transformation since its colonial years until 2023, when leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sworn in for his third term, after the...

Monsters in the Machine? Tackling the Challenge of Responsible AI

In November of 2022, the small tech company OpenAI released ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot which quickly captured the public's imagination-becoming the world's fastest-growing consumer application within months of its release. Though...

KOKO Networks: Bridging Energy Transition and Affordability with Carbon Financing

The problem was massive: two million hectares of African forests were lost annually to charcoal production for cooking, an area equivalent to 13 times Greater London, resulting in one billion tons of carbon emissions yearly. At the same time, an...

Khanmigo: Revolutionizing Learning with GenAI

Already a leader in the edtech space since its 2008 launch, Khan Academy was now one of the first edtech organizations to embrace generative artificial intelligence ("genAI"). In March 2023, Khan Academy began beta testing Khanmigo, a genAI "guide" and...

East Rock Capital: "Talent is the Best Asset Class"

Adam Shapiro and Graham Duncan launched East Rock Capital, LLC in 2006 with a seed investment from Stuart Miller, executive chairman of Lennar Corporation. East Rock managed long-term assets for high-net-worth families, primarily working with external...

NBIM and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund

Netflix's Culture: Binge or Cringe?

In May 2022, streaming entertainment company Netflix lost customers for the first time in more than 10 years. Once a first mover in the streaming landscape, Netflix was facing competition from Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and others. A key...

Paytm: A Payments Journey in India

Paytm was an Indian financial technology company. Since its launch in 2010, it had built a dominant payments system in India, comprising mobile wallets, offline payments via QR codes, and a payments bank that offered no-frills banking. However, in 2016,...

Yellow Corporation: On the Verge of Bankruptcy

Yellow Corporation, one of the country's oldest and largest less-than-truckload (LTL) carriers, was nearing its 100th anniversary in 2024. Whether it would reach that milestone, however, was uncertain as the company was attempting to restructure its...

Flourish Fi: Empowering Positive Money Habits

Flourish's co-founders met in a UC Berkeley Haas MBA course and - motivated by financial adversity in their own families - aimed to make saving money attainable and rewarding for people lacking a financial safety net. The company's first product was a...

Jason Kelce - Perfectly Unplanned: A Dive into the Personal Branding of an NFL Athlete

Jason Kelce, an NFL player and athlete recognized around the world, had built a strong personal brand over the course of his career. He had reinvented himself and worked hard at honing his own personal branding, successively building a successful...

Hitachi Limited: Construction Machinery

In 2021, Hitachi Limited was reconsidering its ownership of Hitachi Construction Machinery (HCM). The decision about HCM's future was one of the last steps in a more than decade-long effort to reorient Hitachi from a manufacturing conglomerate to a...

The Pandemic's Impact on YLED: Navigating Uncertainty and Sustainability

In June 2020, Steven Zwane, founder and chairperson of the Youth Leadership and Entrepreneurship Development (YLED) program, based in Johannesberg, South Africa, faced managing the uncertainty of COVID-19's impact on the program's long-term...

Slane Irish Whiskey: Strategic Marketing for a New Brand

In 2021, the Irish whiskey segment was the fastest growing whiskey segment in the United States. US-based Brown-Forman Corporation had acquired the Slane brand in 2015 after purchasing all shares in the Slane Castle Irish Whiskey company and agreeing to...

Zentein Nutrition Inc: Raising the Bar

The founder of Zentein Nutrition Inc. needed a short-term plan for 2023 to maximize his goals for business growth and customer reach. The company was based in London, Ontario and provided natural, simple, healthy, and nutritious food alternatives to an...

Care for Wild: Social, Ecological, and Government Interdependence within Rhino Conservation

In February 2023, the Care for Wild founder and her team were planning for the future of their organization. Care for Wild had recently received a request from a potential international donor to outline the interdependencies for the social, ecological,...

SAP in India's Flexible Working: Are They Flexing Enough?

SAP's global approach of Pledge to Flex was the foundation for hybrid working for its employees. The approach empowers employees to balance when, how, and where they work best, considering business requirements and local legislation. The organization's...

Time is of the Essence: JP Landgoed Overcoming Challenges in the Citrus Industry

J P Landgoed (PTY) LTD (J P Landgoed), a mandarin fruit farm in Limpopo, South Africa, was founded by Cobus Beetge in 2014. The firm grew from a few mandarin trees to a well-established export-oriented company. In July 2021, at the peak of the harvest...

Chick-Fil-A: Fighting Chicken Sandwich and Culture Wars

Following its disastrous market entry into the United Kingdom in 2019, due to immediate backlash from the LGBTQ+ community, Chick-fil-A, the US$16 billion conservative Christian fast-food company, named a new chief executive officer in 2021, Andrew...

EduSports: Extending the Value Proposition

In mid-September 2022, Saumil Majmudar, the co-founder, chief executive officer, and managing director of Sportz Village faced a problem. The company, based in Bengaluru, India, was India's leading sports education organization, which provided a...

Bay Towel: How to Maintain Service Levels without Increasing Cost

Bay Towel Linen and Uniform Rental Inc. (Bay Towel) was a family-owned business based in Green Bay, Wisconsin, that had been serving the state and growing organically for about 100 years. The company provided uniform and linen rental and laundry services...

Building Inclusive Leadership at TBK Beverages: Developing a New Mentorship Program

In September 2022, the vice president of talent engagement at TBK Beverages met with the executive sponsor of a proposed mentoring program to discuss plans. A year earlier, employees had shared their dissatisfaction with the lack of access for...

Amul: Engaging Chefs as Influencers

In early 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown periods, the marketing director of Anand Milk Union Limited (Amul) was in a virtual meeting with his marketing manager. The two men were discussing plans for a marketing campaign for the...

Covered Call ETFs at Mackenzie Investments

In June 2023, Prerna Mathews, vice president of Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) Product Strategy at Mackenzie Investments (Mackenzie), was considering what ETFs to launch for the remainder of the year. As Mathews deliberated over the potential launch of a...

Lutheran Services - The Aged Care Food and Dining Experience

Innovation in aged care offers opportunities to create positive and inclusive change. Globally, healthcare systems are realizing the importance of customer-focused care, especially, when funding is limited. Residential aged care providers have...

Lansdale Warehouse: Defending Business Viability by Sustaining Its Rail Service Privileges

For over two decades, Paul Delp, the President of Lansdale Warehouse, had faced a daunting challenge; the Stony Creek rail line, which provided rail service to his warehousing business in Lansdale, Pennsylvania (PA), USA, had suffered from deteriorating...

Bored Ape Yacht Club: No More Monkey Business

In late 2022, a difficult period for the cryptocurrency industry persisted, marking the middle of what many considered a "crypto winter." Popular tokens and currencies like Bitcoin and Solana lost over 50 per cent of their value, with other Web 3.0...

Jijihong Catering Management Co. Ltd.: Brand Repositioning for Growth

Between 2016 and 2019, Jijihong Catering Management Co. Ltd. (Jijihong)-a well-established company in Jiangxi Province, China-encountered a plateau in its development as the number of its chain stores consistently stagnated at around 80 and never...