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This case presents some of the entrepreneurial challenges faced by a female leader in the technology sector who conceived a new product based on her passion to help others especially those most disadvantaged.

Upon completion of this case study, students should be able to prepare supply chain and distribution analysis that considers ethics and sustainability, integrate philanthropic efforts as part of an organizational strategy and recognize strategies to promote equity within and beyond an organization.

Connie Stacey (she/her) is an entrepreneur and president of Growing Greener Innovations, an award-winning battery energy storage company based in Alberta, Canada, with a mission to end energy poverty globally. With the emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic in 2020, Stacey turned her attention to an innovation called Project Rescue, a ventilator that uses non-identifying patient vitals to track data. It serves as a pandemic early warning system, addressing two key challenges: pandemic data are prone to error, and real-time information is non-existent after the pandemic has spread. This new product was conceived based on her passion to help others, especially those most disadvantaged. This multi-faceted case focuses on the many challenges that Stacey and her team needed to address. The dilemma in this case centres on establishing supply chains amid a pandemic, as well as prioritizing the corporate social responsibility elements of philanthropy and equity within her organization (and beyond).

This case is appropriate for third- or fourth-year undergraduate or graduate-level students.

In addition to “call out boxes” throughout the case and teaching note, additional readings/links/videos are outlined below. (These supplementary materials, “Teaching Tips”, are included in the teaching notes as well.)

CCS 11: Strategy.

Urban Affordable Housing (UAH) Inc. was a real estate asset management syndication firm that sponsored affordable housing to low-income families and seniors across the USA. The case examines the firm’s management of an internal information technology (IT) change initiative. The case follows the firm’s recently hired IT manager, Anthony Bryant, as he works to change a culture while acquiring resources and acceptance for the project he was hired to oversee. Bryant deals with numerous changing priorities, inadequate sponsorship, resistance from various levels, and a dearth of resources as he struggles to get the organization to complete an overdue database conversion.

This case is based upon the firsthand experiences of the lead author over a seven-year period while working at UAH. Measures have been taken to disguise the firm’s identity, including using a pseudonym, fictitious names for firm employees, a fictitious location, and the alteration of key dates. Key elements of the case have been constructed around semi-structured interviews and the review of archival documentation. Most quotes are verbatim in an attempt to preserve their authenticity, and were drawn from the semi-structured interviews and from historical accounts of actual occurrences and conversations.

The UAH case is multi-faceted, as it can be used in a number of environments amid a business school curriculum. A primary use is likely in a course revolving around organizational change and development. It might also be featured as part of the organizational change component in a course on organizational behavior, used to illustrate and analyze organizational culture and change leadership. Furthermore, the case could be used for change-related topics in management information systems or project management courses. The authors suggest the case be assigned at the graduate level, though it could also be suitable for an advanced undergraduate class.

Critical knowledge for successfully analyzing this case includes the following concepts: the change process (Lewin, 1951); leading change (Kotter, 1996); resistance to change (Kegan and Lahey, 2001); and communicating change (Armenakis and Harris, 2002).

Wrigley launched Eclipse gum in August 1999. In early 2000, Paul Chibe became senior marketing manager for Wrigley's breath freshening portfolio, which included Eclipse. With the disappointing first-year performance of the brand, Chibe needed to take action to turn Eclipse around. His task was to use the opinions from other Wrigley executives and from marketing research data to decide if Eclipse could be turned around or if it should be abandoned.

After reading and analyzing the case, students should be able to:

• Identify the most important variables that drive the success of consumer package goods brands

• Interpret and use data from various types of marketing research to evaluate marketing mix strategies

• Develop fact-based marketing recommendations

Identify the most important variables that drive the success of consumer package goods brands

Interpret and use data from various types of marketing research to evaluate marketing mix strategies

Develop fact-based marketing recommendations

The case concerns a real $25 million program consisting of nine concurrent projects to deliver and implement a custom-built in-store customer relationship management (CRM) system and a new point-of-sale system in 400 stores of a national retail chain. The name of the company has been disguised for confidentiality reasons. Once deployed, the new system should give Clothes ‘R’ Us a significant strategic advantage over competitors in the marketplace; it will increase in-store manager productivity, cut costs, and ultimately drive increased sales for the retail chain. The program is in crisis, however, because the product managers have just left to join a competitor. The explicit details of the program are given, including examples of best practice program governance and the real activity network diagram for the program. Detailed Excel spreadsheets are also provided with the actual earned value data for the program. Students analyze the spreadsheets and the data given in the case to diagnose the impact of the most recent risk event and past risk events that occurred in the program. Ultimately students must answer the essential executive questions: What is wrong with the program? How should it be fixed, and what is the impact in time and money to the program? In addition, qualitative warning signs are given throughout the case—these warning signs are red flags to executives for early proactive intervention in troubled projects.

The goal of the case is to teach complex program oversight. Students analyze actual earned value data for a real $25 million program consisting of nine concurrent programs and assess the impact of risk events as they occur in the program. A key takeaway of the case is that relatively simple tools (Excel spreadsheets and time tracking) combined with good project planning can be used to effectively control very complex projects. Students also learn the qualitative warning signs within programs that can serve as early indicators of problems.

The case is targeted at undergraduate students in international finance, international business, entrepreneurship and strategic marketing classes.

At the broadest level, the case represents an opportunity for students to discuss internationalisation of local firms. It focusses on getting students to analyse the costs and benefits associated with the foreign entry decision as well as the strategies for foreign entry.

The Exploring International Markets: Unique Quality Heads to Kenya case study provides a chronological report of how Unique Quality, a cereal production company, grew locally up until the point when it considers internationalisation. It details the key considerations the firm makes as it considers its foreign entry decision. Unique Quality is a cereal production company in Ghana, which operates within the agriculture industry. The industry operates at almost all the points along the value chain including coordinating the growing of the cereal until it is harvested, packaged and marketed for sale. The company which started operations in 2013 has made great gains in penetrating the Ghanaian market. Salma, who is currently at the helm of affair at the company, together with the board is considering entering into Kenya. This decision is one that must not be taken lightly and has left Salma in a dilemma.

The expected learning outcomes of the case are:To enable students:a) identify the reasons why firms go international;b) identify opportunities for cost-cutting benefits or revenue maximisation opportunities for Unique Quality in Kenya;c) understand and identify the various sources of country risk that Unique Quality could face in its attempt to enter the Kenyan market; andd) identify and analyse the various foreign entry strategy options available to Unique Quality.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com_to_request_teaching_notes

CSS 1: Accounting and finance.

This is a case of a crisis project management which showcases the unpredictable nature of the project and the role of management in handling the crisis. It is the case of a very severe cyclonic storm hitting the city of Visakhapatnam plant during October, 2014. The whole city was devastated and so was the situation in the Steel plant as it was under zero power conditions for around 10 days. This case gives need for managing an integrated steel plant in case of very severe cyclonic storm and documents the sequence of events and managing unforeseen uncertainty using NTCP concepts.

The decade from 2000 until 2010 was a turbulent time for Toyota Motor Company. The carmaker came under significant criticism from the United States government, consumers throughout the world, and media critics amid allegations of poor quality control and vehicle safety concerns. Problems with accelerators and brake systems were found on several of its most popular models, a situation initially exacerbated by the slow and somewhat tentative response from top management. Toyota was accused of not addressing early warning signs that appeared several years before the crisis received intense negative publicity. Toyota struggled to retain the confidence of consumers and governmental regulators, eventually recalling approximately eight million automobiles.

The case is designed to be used with the digital business model framework developed by Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Weill and Woerner, 2015) and is referred to as the W & W framework. This approach provides a useful structure for thinking through the strategic options facing environments ripe for digital transformation.

Research for this case was conducted through face-to-face interviews with the protagonist, as well as through a review of their business planning documents and other data and documentation provided by the founder. Some of the market and industry data were obtained using secondary research and industry reports. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed to ensure accuracy.

The case follows the story of Kurt Waltenbaugh, a Minnesota entrepreneur who shared the dream of using data analytics to reduce costs within the US health-care system. In early 2014, Waltenbaugh and a physician colleague founded Carrot Health to bring together their personal experience and expertise in both consumer data analytics and health care. From the beginning, they focused on how to use data analytics to help identify high-risk/high-cost patients who had not yet sought medical treatment. They believed that they could use these insights to encourage early medical interventions and, as a result, lower the long-term cost of care.

Carrot’s initial success found them in a consultative role, working on behalf of insurance companies. Through this work, they honed their capabilities by helping their clients combine existing claims data with external consumer behavioral data to identify new potential customers. These initial consulting contracts gave Carrot the opportunity to develop its analytic tools, business model and, importantly, to earn some much-needed cash flow during the start-up phase. However, they also learned that, while insurance companies were willing to purchase data insights for one-off market expansion projects, it was much more difficult to motivate them to use data proactively to eliminate costs on an ongoing basis. Waltenbaugh believed that Carrot’s greatest potential lay in their ability to develop predictive models of health outcomes, and this case explores Carrot’s journey through strategic decisions and company transformation.

This case is intended for either an undergraduate or graduate course on entrepreneurial strategy. It provides an effective introduction to the unique structure and constraints which apply to an innovative start-up within the health-care industry. The case also serves as a platform to explore the critical criteria to be considered when developing a digital transformation strategy and exposing students to the digital business model developed by Weill and Woerner (2015) at MIT (referred to in this instructor’s manual as the W&W framework). The case was written to be used in an advanced strategy Master of Business Administration (MBA) class, an undergraduate specialty health-care course or as part of a health-care concentration in a regular MBA, Master of Health Care Administration (MHA) or Master of Public Health (MPH). It may be taught toward the end of a course on business strategy when students are building on generic strategy frameworks and adapting their strategic thinking to the characteristics of specific industries or sectors. However, the case can also be taught as part of a course on health-care innovation in which case it also serves well as an introduction to the health-care payments and insurance system in the USA. Finally, the case can be used in a specialized course on digital transformation strategy in which case it serves as an introduction to the MIT W&W framework.

The case is particularly well-suited to students who are familiar with traditional frameworks for business strategy and business models. The analysis builds on this knowledge and introduces students interested in learning about the opportunities and challenges of digital strategy. Equally, the case works well for students with clinical backgrounds, who are interested in how business strategy can influence changes within the health-care sphere. Finally, an important aspect of the case design was to develop students’ analytical confidence by encouraging them to “get their hands dirty” and to carry out some basic exploratory data analytics themselves. As such, the case requires students to combine and correlate data and to experience the potentially powerful combination of clinical and consumer data. Instructors should find that the insights from these activities give students unique insights into the potential for of data analytics to move health care from a reactive/treatment ethos to a proactive/intervention ethos. This experience can be particularly revealing for students with clinical backgrounds who may initially be resistant to the use of clinical data by commercial organizations.

This case uses two key theoretical notions for discussion and analysis: Policy-trade off model by Deborah Stone is adapted to the context of decision-making during the cyclone warning [Stone, Deborah. Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision-Making. Third, New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2012.]. The critical success factors in disaster response- John R. Harrald’s five-stage framework is applied to analyse Case B. [Harrald, John R. “Agility and Discipline: Critical Success Factors for Disaster Response:” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 8 September 2016. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716205285404.].

This case is written with the information collected through interviews, over three months from March 2020, with Ms Ranjana Chopra (Indian Administrative Services), a senior civil servant working for the Government of Odisha, who was associated with the event in the case. Secondary sources, including newspaper reports and meteorological bulletins from the Indian Meteorological Department, is also made use of.

Anupama Gowda was the District Magistrate of Kalinga in the state of Odisha, in the Eastern coast of the Indian peninsula. In April 2019, when the meteorological department issued a cyclone warning, she had to take a call on how to go ahead. Her team did not seem too enthused as Kalinga was away from the coast and meteorological warnings were taken as routine. The case discusses Gowda’s dilemma on whether to push for full-fledged preparations or a limited preparation at least or leave it laissez-faire. She made the decision by 24th April and “what happened” serve as Case B.

This case is intended to cover two key competencies: decision-making in ambiguity for public service professionals or bureaucrats and disaster response within a limited time period and resources. This case is useful for undergraduate-level foundational courses with decision-making under ambiguity as a component; in management, public policy and public administration disciplines. Executive training or short-term courses for early-career public service professionals (with no solid background in management/policy theory) on decision-making at the local administration level.

The case briefly describes the history of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) under Ross Perot and GM before turning to the beginning of a tumultuous decade in the late 1990s. As the turn of the century approached, EDS made critical strategic missteps such as missing opportunities in the Internet space, overlooking the onset of client-server computing, and failing to obtain major Y2K-related projects. The company attempted a turnaround by replacing the CEO with Dick Brown, whose leadership helped streamline the sprawling company. Despite initial successes, Brown's tenure ultimately ended in failure, due largely to his failure to recognize the growing Indian market and his willingness to buy business at the expense of the company's margin. The disastrous multibillion-dollar Navy & Marine Corp Intranet contract typified the type of high-profile transactions that Brown pursued, often boosting EDS's stock price in the short term while eroding its cash flow short term and its profitability over the long term. EDS management went through several stages of the turnaround process: the blinded phase, the inactive phase, and the faulty action phase, until Michael Jordan replaced Brown as CEO and enacted a three-tiered operational, strategic, and financial turnaround.

EDS's near-decade of turnaround efforts takes students through every phase of the turnaround process and demonstrates that even initially successful turnaround efforts can become distracted, rendering them ineffective. The case will show both a failed turnaround and a subsequent successful one, while adding an international component with respect to EDS's overlooking an important, growing Indian market.