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One week since the first meeting, Mr. Deepak Kumar, Chairman and Group CEO of MakeMyTrip (MMT), called a second meeting of the homepage website redesign team for redesigning the Home Page (see Exhibit 1 for the current Home Page)¹. This team comprised of the CBO, Analytics Head, User Experience (UX) Head, Product Head and the Tech Head (CTO). The second meeting was called to discuss and finalise the options of the Home Page design to be tested, the criteria to be used for choosing the best option, and the testing methodology.

What happens when a company is faced with a unique market challenge with the potential to change the way business is done—a true market disruption? This was the challenge faced by the European business team of DuPont's Tyvek Housewrap business. The adoption of the Kyoto Protocol created new challenges for the construction industry in the United Kingdom that the DuPont team felt it could meet. To enforce the Kyoto Protocol, the U.K. government threatened to fine utility companies and builders who did not adhere to new emissions standards. Deploys the Innovation Radar framework, which encourages a business to think through all the issues of a business system, leading to a successful introduction and a sustainable business. DuPont's European Tyvek team had to devise a solution at the intersection of multiple elements. Specifically: Who should it target? How should it describe the product's value proposition? Through what channels could it reach the key decision makers? How could it overcome the inertia of the existing business system?

To illustrate that all the issues relevant to bringing an innovation to market must be recognized and dealt with in an integrated fashion when introducing major new business initiatives; that the Innovation Radar is a useful framework that integrates key questions around WHAT the product is, WHO the key customers are, HOW the product affects their desired outcomes, and WHERE the product should be placed in market; and that the elements in the radar comprise a complete business system of innovation.

Strategy.

The case study is intended for organization theory and strategic management courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate (MBA) levels.

The case describes a company located in a fictitious developing country. The main activity of the company is the exploitation and production of tin, which it has developed over its 40-year history (1971-2011). During the first 33 years, it developed three capabilities: namely, technical, productive and the generation of trust among employees. The case illustrates three characteristics of capabilities: problem solving and complexity, practicing and succeeding, and reliability over time. The case also illustrates a paradox related to capabilities and shows three of its causes: path dependency and lock-in to a given course of action, structural inertia, and the absence of a capability dynamization function. In 2009, the company was faced with the need to reshape its capabilities and the arrival of a new President to the company provided the appropriate occasion to analyse this option.

These include: understanding what an organizational capability is and what its main characteristics are; understanding the process by which an organizational capability emerges and develops, and how it may be eroded in a given scenario; understanding a paradox an organization faces when capabilities are developed; and understanding why the concept of dynamic capabilities does not add power to the concept of capabilities.

Teaching notes are available, please consult your librarian for access. Videos with interviews of employees of the case company are also available.

The specific learning objectives of the case are as follows: To contribute to the knowledge of environmental challenges faced by various financial companies while trying to foray into the rural markets, especially in case of insurance products’ expansion strategy; to understand the distribution strategy adopted by insurance companies in rural as well as urban markets; to apply the concepts such as mental accounting, designing and pricing of insurance products to develop an effective strategy for insurance products targeting the rural market; to be able to analyse the data available on products and the rural market structure that enables the students to derive from an implementable managerial framework and design an effective rural market strategy for insurance products; and to enable the students to evaluate the key rural market drivers, which will subsequently help them to develop a new structure of rural distribution channel.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited (IPRU) was trying to reach the last mile customers of rural India to tap the opportunity and meet the Indian Government's statutory requirement of financial inclusion. Even though the leadership of IPRU was optimistic about the untapped potential of rural India, and launched a separate business vertical - Rural Business Channel (RBC) in the year 2002 to cater to this target segment, yet it faced many strategic issues while foraying into the rural domain. The company struggled with both the designing of products as per the rural customers' needs, as well as the distribution of these products in rural areas. The present case study is an attempt to bring out the strategic challenges that were faced by the IPRU management, with a major focus on designing, pricing and distribution of rural insurance products. The case study will help the readers in understanding what might go wrong while entering new rural markets and how to deal with these challenges.

The case study can be used to teach both undergraduate and postgraduate management students.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

The case depicts an opportunity for undergraduate and postgraduate students to be exposed to the basic digitization of supply chain management, technology adoption, change management and cost-benefit analysis concepts. The study aims to encourage them to use the data given in the case and exhibits to compare and contrast physical and digital supply chains (SC); design the digitized version of the traditional SC; examine the nitty-gritty of technology adoption in the SC context; develop the change management plans for the successful adoption and implementation of SC digitization; design the risk register and Explore the business process management; and conduct the return on investment analysis.

Amber Yen, Chief Operating Officer Apparel Sourcing at Ransys Partners Ltd (RSL), was presented with the task of reducing physical sample production cost and time without impeding order pipeline. RSL was experiencing significant capacity constrain during the COVID-19 crisis, failing to deliver physical samples to international brands. To win large export orders, RSL had to adopt a new innovative way to reduce the sample approval process while meeting customer requirements. Ms Yen wanted to convert the entire sample approval process into a digital mode. She was facing multiple challenges related to the design, implementation and adoption of the digital sample approval process to coordinate the entire SC. She had limited time and was grappling with other impending constraints such as increasing cost, intense competition, demanding customers, shortage of labor due to COVID-19, reducing the bottom line. It was her time to test the idiom “necessity is the mother of innovation”.

The target audience for this case is management or business school students. This case can be used to teach digitization of SC, operations management, organization behavior, digitization of enterprises, IT for business, new service development, supplier management technology adoption, and change management in management or business schools.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 9: Operations and Logistics.

Siemens Medical Solutions (SMS) offered innovative products and systems, clinical solutions, and services for medical professionals. Its latest project, transforming a hospital to digital records and processes, was experiencing serious delays that had damaged the relationship with the client. Management believed the underlying problem was that SMS was not using the correct approach to organization and processes for solutions marketing. The executives in charge of on-time completion and successful delivery of the project must now agree on a different recommendation.

Students will examine the infrastructure, customer offerings, and competitive landscape for Seimens Medical Solutions, as well as evaluate three potential organizational models (transient solutions, solutions streamlined enterprise, and adaptive solutions) to determine which represents the ideal structure for SMS. They will be able to identify the role of leadership in the organization, recommend how SMS should prepare for this change, and recommend how it would measure the transformation's success.

The theoretical linkages are with dynamic nature of PESTEL analysis, Porter’s five forces, resource-based view of the firm and characteristics of an entrepreneur.

The names of the institutions and individuals involved have been disguised. However, the material facts of the case are authentic.

This case discusses strategy in the context of a crisis situation in a small business. JTH Inc. was a computer subcontract manufacturing (SCM) firm serving the New England region of the USA. The influx of international competition (mainly from China) due to recession led to significant challenges for JTH and the SCM industry. JTH was struggling and the situation was further complicated by the founder’s (Robert Maxwell) personal and emotional situation. Robert had to decide whether to keep the business running, close it down, merge with/be acquired by a competitor, innovate the business model or do something else.

This case is designed to target undergraduate students of Strategic Management; it may also include Entrepreneurship students. It should most probably be taught in the first half of the course after concepts such as PESTEL, Porter and resource-based view of the firm have been taught.

Strategic Management.

The case is designed for a) MBA students b) Short-duration executive MBA courses.

The case refers to India’s leading steel company Tata Steel. Tata Tiscon, the steel rebar brand, is the organization’s leading retail brand. The case chronicles the period between the birth of the retail brand in the year 2000, its dramatic rise and dominance, to the end of 2013 when some of its initiatives had failed. Tata Tiscon was established as a pan Indian brand on the dint of a distribution network comprising 33 distributors and over 2000 retailers, many of them exclusive to the brand. The brand spawned a series of innovation in the category like “selling by piece”, fixed price concept and “free” home delivery. Together with its channel partners, the company achieved dramatic success which was reflected in its leading market share coupled with significant price premium in a category where price had traditionally being the only selling pitch. After 2010, the company saw an emerging challenge in the form of a new business model, where some companies were gearing to provide the complete portfolio of construction material including cement, steel, etc., and a turnkey construction solution for house builders. Tata Tiscon responded by attempting to enter the service space by launching a building design solution and later a construction supervision solution. Both of these initiatives failed. The protagonist of the case is Mr Keshav Viswanath (Chief of Marketing for retail business at Tata Steel), who is concerned with the failures of these key initiatives and is wondering how to ensure the “leader” status of Tata Tiscon in coming years.

The students are expected to understand how a core strategy like differentiation is implemented successfully in “practice”; understand the exploitation–exploration dichotomy in an organization; appreciate difference between radical innovation (based on new organizational routines, new business partners and new relationships) and incremental innovation based on fine tuning of existing organizational routines and relationships.

Rebar production: www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6n9sci8j-8; Tata TISCON AV: www.youtube.com/watch?v=89kOUsbnaYQ; TQM – The Toyota Way: www.youstube.com/watch?v=qf3gdrIMxRw; Disruptive vs. Incremental Innovation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOOL_GiaLTo; Approach to innovation is dead wrong: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pii8tTx1UYM

CSS 11: Strategy.

Retail marketing management.

Undergraduate management; MA; Master's in Business Administration and Master's in Strategic Marketing programs.

Opening of the “Dubai Mall” in November 2008 set a new benchmark in retail history. The mall is considered the largest in the world by space and 6th largest in the world in terms of gross leasable area. The Dubai Mall is the UAE's most ambitious retail launch to date. This case examines how in today's highly competitive retail environment, added-value retailing, experiential retailing, or retailtainment has become a major component of the retail strategy mix to establish a competitive advantage. The new phenomenon of “retailtainment” has caught the momentum worldwide and success of Dubai Mall is the live example of its strategic role in the retail mix. The case also highlights the importance of “good location” in the success of retail establishments, whilst examining primary retail location theories and there relation to the phenomenal success of Dubai Mall.

Through this case study students will be able to: understand the roles of “entertainment” and “location” in retail mix strategy; analyse the new trend of “retailtainment” and “quality location” in creating value-added services and gaining competitive advantage in global competitive retail environment; ascertain the importance and application of “retailtainment” and “strategic location” in the real world's successful example of “Dubai Mall”; and diagnose the role of these learnt concepts in the retailing strategies practiced by other retail establishments in their cities/country.

Teaching note.

Decision Analysis, Management Information Systems, Strategic Management, Organizational Development, Financial Management, Risk Management.

MBA-1 (Decision Analysis), MBA-2 (MIS).

On a beautiful October morning in 2011, the CEO of a mid-size oil marketing company located in Nairobi, Kenya has to make a tough decision whether to upgrade their current B1 system to a bigger version of SAP. Abbas, the new Information Communications Technology (ICT) Director of Zaidi Group, was worried that Zaidi was building a bigger and bigger company on top of a more and more small enterprise resource planning system. Abbas's fears also include RedLock's past inefficiencies. Kariuki, the Finance Director, on the other hand was into the fear of overspending in a huge information technology (IT)system where current functionalities required can be addressed by a smaller system through add-ons, customization and development.

Demonstrate some tools in decision analysis for problems with multiple objectives including some issues indecision framing and cognitive inertia; Raise the issue for fundamentally changing a firm's infrastructure; Demonstrate the alignment of IT strategy to Business Strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.