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After completion of the case study, the students will be able to analyze the FinTech industry in emerging markets, distinguish the growth strategies for startups in the hyper-growth phase, using the Ansoff matrix, evaluate and select geographical markets for expansion (foreign country selection) and understand the liability of foreignness concept.

In 2015, Islam Shawky, Alain Al-Hajj and Mostafa Menessy founded Paymob in Egypt, a FinTech start-up providing technological and financial solutions to consumers and merchants in the country. The company had grown into one of Egypt’s most prominent digital payment providers by deploying infrastructure and technologies that empower the underserved with access to financial services. In 2021, Paymob had gained a lot of support from venture capital investors that ended with closing the largest in Egypt Series A fund of $18.5m led by Dubai-based venture capital firm Global Ventures. Although Paymob had already reached great success in Egypt, the founders’ vision was to become the regional leader of digital payments, focusing on small and medium-sized enterprises. So, they are considering regional markets similar to Egypt’s, such as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a call with a lot of structure but a lot of competition, and Pakistan, a market with much less competition but relatively unstructured. The founders found themselves in early 2022 deciding between these two markets in preparation for the next round of Series B $50m funding.

This case study can be useful for courses in executive education.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

This study investigates the application of collaborative inquiry within innovation management, employing platform thinking to address challenges of generalizability and relevance. The aim is to integrate Collaborative Inquiry methods, characterized by participatory, diffuse, and reflective practices, to transform research into a tool for impactful change in organizations in the field of innovation management.

A longitudinal participatory case study approach focuses on the IDeaLs case—a research platform that collaborated with multiple companies over several years. The data gathered and analyzed comes from the research project within the research platforms over the first two editions and from the research platform management and coordination activities.

The study introduces the Collaborative Research Platform Approach (CRPA), demonstrating its effectiveness in addressing typical constraints of traditional research methodologies through a real-world application within the IDeaLs case. The findings highlight the CRPA's potential in fostering a dynamic, co-creative research environment that bridges theoretical knowledge with practical applications, thus enhancing both scholarly and organizational outcomes while pursuing a future change within the organizations.

There are two main research implications. First, it proposes platform thinking as a theoretical lens to read a multi-stakeholder phenomenon in the research domain, confirming its nature of value-creation mechanisms, using it outside the business model and strategic space. Second, it offers a methodological contribution by presenting the CRPA framework.

The CRPA framework offers organizations a structured approach to managing collaborative research projects that align with both academic rigor and practical relevance. Companies engaged in the study reported enhanced ability to implement actionable insights from research, influencing real-time decision-making processes.

By fostering collaborative engagements across multiple stakeholders, the CRPA promotes a research culture that values inclusivity and practical impact, potentially leading to broader societal benefits through improved innovation management practices.

This paper contributes to the innovation management field by proposing the CRPA, which integrates principles of Platform Thinking with Collaborative Inquiry. This novel approach is designed to improve the applicability and scope of innovation research, offering a robust framework that enhances engagement and utility across academic and business domains. It uses platforms as a theoretical lens to read a multi-stakeholder environment in the research domain.

The COVID-19 pandemic was a shock to the food supply chain without modern precedent. Challenges in production, manufacturing, distribution and retailing led to the highest rates of food price inflation in the US since the 1970s. The major goal of this paper is to describe statistically the impact of the pandemic of food price inflation and volatility in the US and to discuss implications for industry and for policymakers.

We use Bureau of Labor Statistics data to investigate food prices in the US, 2020–2021. We apply 16 statistical approaches to measure price changes and volatility and three regression approaches to measure counterfactuals of food prices, had the pandemic not occurred.

Food price inflation and volatility increased substantially during the early months of the pandemic, with a great deal of heterogeneity across food products and geographic regions. Food price inflation was most pronounced for meats, and contrary to expectations, highest in the western US Forecasting approaches demonstrate that grocery prices were about 7% higher than they would have been without the pandemic as of the end of 2021.

The research on COVID-19 and the food system remains in its nascent stage. As findings on food loss and waste, employment and wages, food insecurity and more proliferate, it is vital to understand how food prices were connected to these phenomena and affected. We also motivate several ideas for future work.

The ongoing adverse effects of climate change have led scientific think tanks to aim towards achieving net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets with affordable and clean energy (Sustainable Development Goal 7). One of the significant contributors to the escalating emissions rate is the use of conventional vehicles. The uptake of electric vehicles (EVs) is a promising solution for a cleaner economy. However, increased penetration poses various challenges to the power system. There is a need to explore alternatives, such as hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), to use the advantages of both electric and conventional vehicles and bridge the gap between them. However, the transition to hydrogen-based transport requires intensive study of its key benefits and issues, the actions that need to be taken to achieve a changeover concerning light and heavy vehicles and whether such kind of transformation is likely or even possible. This chapter highlights the brief history and mechanics of HFCVs. It further analyses the various benefits and challenges which the technology poses. Additionally, it addresses critical questions regarding the feasibility of the shift towards hydrogen fuel to satisfy the world's rapidly growing energy needs and meet net-zero targets based on real-life applications. This chapter will be a valuable resource for further research, development and education efforts in HCFVs to assist in the rapidly growing transportation needs for automobiles and other vehicles.

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Considering the restricted and enclosed nature of prisons and closed environments and the prolonged and close contact between individuals, COVID-19 is more likely to have a higher incidence in these settings. This study aims to assess the prevalence of COVID-19 among prisoners.

Papers published in English from 2019 to July 7, 2023, were identified using relevant keywords such as prevalence, COVID-19 and prisoner in the following databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus and Google Scholar. For the meta-analysis of the prevalence, Cochrane’s Q statistics were calculated. A random effect model was used due to the heterogeneity in COVID-19 prevalence across included studies in the meta-analysis. All analyses were performed in STATA-13.

The pooled data presented a COVID-19 prevalence of 20% [95%CI: 0.13, 0.26] and 24% [95%CI: 0.07, 0.41], respectively, in studies that used PCR and antibody tests. Furthermore, two study designs, cross-sectional and cohort, were used. The results of the meta-analysis showed studies with cross-sectional and cohort designs reported 20% [95%CI: 0.11, 0.29] and 25% [95%CI: 0.13, 0.38], respectively.

Through more meticulous planning, it is feasible to reduce the number of individuals in prison cells, thereby preventing the further spread of COVID-19.

The rapid emergency remote teaching has moved informal learning programs online including makerspaces, which has created an opportunity for harnessing the benefits of virtual makerspaces. This study reports on findings from three club designers and facilitators’ reflections on a fully virtual maker club offered in the summer of 2023. This paper aims to inform practitioners of the potential challenges and strategies to resolve various issues.

Reflective video journaling was conducted by facilitators. Videos were transcribed and analyzed for observations, learning events, challenges and strategies.

Findings present strategies adopted to address problems during implementation and a checklist for practitioners. The problems are associated with the learning environments, technology tools and student participation. The authors adopted in-the-moment and short-term strategies to tackle the problems and long-term strategies that bear implications for future virtual makerspaces.

This paper can provide direct guidance to practitioners in schools, libraries, museums, etc., who plan to offer informal collaborative learning for children online. It prepares practitioners for the potential challenges and equip them with concrete strategies and questions.

Fully virtual makerspaces have the potential to reach a wider range of audience.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to report the reflective findings on a fully virtual makerspace club that comprehensively covers challenges and strategies before, during and after the club, which has direct implications for future offerings of such programs.

This article proposes that survival can be a legitimate organizational goal, challenging a common view that dismisses it as unambitious or contrary to innovation. Drawing parallels from nature and survival strategies across various systems, it advocates that organizations, much like living organisms, should prioritize survivability (i.e. ability to survive) to ensure long-term success. Contrary to being seen as limiting, survival, when understood in its broad sense, can encompass and enhance performance goals such as growth. The article outlines the ERP factors —efficiency, resilience and prominence—as key to achieving survivability, offering a framework for organizations to manage resources, adapt to external forces and balance visibility to thrive amidst challenges.

Conceptual framework.

This model introduces the significance of survivability as an organizational goal.

This article argues for the consideration of survival as an overarching organizational goal, challenging the prevalent view that dismisses it as unambitious or contrary to innovation.

The purpose of this multi-voiced paper is to propose a prosocial paradigm for the field of performance management and management control systems. This new paradigm suggests cultivating prosocial behaviour and prosocial groups in organizations to simultaneously achieve the objectives of economic performance and sustainability.

The authors share a common concern about the future of humanity and nature. The authors challenge the influential assumption of economic man from neoclassical economic theory and build on evolutionary science and the core design principles of prosocial groups to develop a prosocial paradigm.

Findings are based on the premise of the prosocial paradigm that self-interested behaviour may outperform prosocial behaviour within a group but that prosocial groups outperform groups dominated by self-interest. The authors explore various dimensions of performance management from the prosocial perspective in the private and public sectors.

The authors call for theoretical, conceptual and empirical research that explores the prosocial paradigm. They invite any approach, including positivist, interpretive and critical research, as well as those using qualitative, quantitative and interventionist methods.

This paper offers implications from the prosocial paradigm for practitioners, particularly for executives and managers, policymakers and educators.

Adoption of the prosocial paradigm in research and practice shapes what the authors call the prosocial market economy. This is an aspired cultural evolution that functions with market competition yet systematically strengthens prosociality as a cultural norm in organizations, markets and society at large.

This paper aims to examine how the allocation of audit hours to the year-round procedures, based on the risk of material misstatements in financial statements, impacts audit quality.

Using a data set on audit hours spent on year-round and year-end procedures, the authors build an empirical model for testing the effectiveness of year-round auditing of Korean public firms during the period of 2014–2018.

The initial tests do not show that proportionate increases in year-round procedures increase audit quality. However, after the authors control for the risk of material misstatements, the authors find that proportionate increases in year-round audit hours generally increase audit quality, except for high-risk firms where audit quality increases only as year-end hours proportionately increase. For high-risk firms, the results suggest that increases in year-round audit procedures occur at the cost of the essential year-end work. Similarly, except for high-risk firms, the authors find that the allocation of more audit effort to year-round procedures improves audit efficiency.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study provides some of the first empirical evidence showing how a risk-based approach to allocating audit effort over the duration of an audit can impact audit quality and efficiency. Regulatory bodies, such as the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board and Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which consider the proper allocation of audit hours as a key audit quality indicator, should find the results useful.