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Uber had pioneered the growth and delivery of modern ridesharing services by leveraging the explosive growth of technology, GPS navigation, and smartphones. Ridesharing services had expanded across the world, growing rapidly in the United States, China, India, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Even as these services expanded and gained popularity, however, the pickup experience for drivers and riders did not always meet the expectations of either party. Pickups were complicated by traffic congestion, faulty GPS signals, and crowded pickup venues. Flawed pickups resulted in rider dissatisfaction and in lost revenues for drivers. Uber had identified the pickup experience as a top strategic priority, and a team at Uber, led by group product manager Birju Shah, was tasked with designing an automated solution to improve the pickup experience. This involved three steps. First, the team needed to analyze the pickup experience for various rider personas to identify problems at different stages in the pickup process. Next, it needed to create a model for predicting the best rider location for a pickup. The team also needed to develop a quantitative metric that would determine the quality of the pickup experience. These models and metrics would be used as inputs for a machine learning.

Ahmedabad Container Depot (ACD) was a fast growing inland container depot (ICD) in Ahmedabad. The area of the depot was 15 acres and it had a monthly turnover capacity of approximately 25,000 containers. The primary processes at the facility were imports, exports, and transshipments. ACD had been facing various challenges due to inefficient manual container tracking system at the facility. Due to good business, the company was able to reach 90–95% of its capacity which was also the main problem ACD had to deal with. The management wanted to increase efficiency by reducing the number of moves required to locate a container by implementing a technology solution. The Head IT of ACD, Bhavik, was examining proposals from vendors and had identified a few alternatives. He was also considering the options that other large container yards had used successfully. His dilemma was to determine the feasibility of the alternatives, particularly those which had not been tested by any other firms in the country. Also, implementing technology could cause a change in roles and responsibilities; dealing with that situation was another area of concern.

The Greenland case describes the experience of four young Norwegian men determined to set a world record for unsupported crossing of Greenland. The case describes the team, their preparations, and their experiences as they crossed in “good” weather that was often whiteout blizzard conditions with temperatures dropping as low as −78 degrees F. Throughout the case, one of the team members reflects on things he learned about himself, about the team, and about leadership from the experience (recorded in italics). The teaching note (available to registered faculty) is supplemented by a PowerPoint presentation that helps introduce the expedition to Greenland, other “risky recreation,” and the concepts related to resonance or flow. A video supplement is also available. The case lends itself to a profound discussion of leadership on its own and leads in nicely to a discussion of world-class performance and the purpose of life, which both startles and pleasantly surprises most students and participants.

The case focuses on truck high idle time, truck detention, and enroute challenges faced by Nagpur Golden Transport Company, a trucking company with a fleet size of 150 trucks. Being in a highly competitive market, every single order not fulfilled by the transporter is an opportunity lost. How should NGTC use GPS data, MIS, and other freight transport technological capabilities in reducing truck idling times, and increasing trip revenues?

Firm success, organizational structure and values, business challenges, corporate change, decision making.

Senior undergraduate courses in Organizational Behavior and Business Policy and Strategy.

This case relates the story of growth of Future Internet, a small media firm launched in 1998 in Dubai, UAE. The case describes the past achievements of Future Internet along with the challenges met on the road, illustrates the key factors and core organizational values that were critical for its business success and discusses the new prospects that the company is seeking to explore in the future. As Future Internet is continuously searching to engage in a path of new business opportunities, what are the most viable strategic choices to be made for securing a sustainable corporate growth and development?

Discuss different aspects involved in the management of a small firm operating in a dynamic industry; assess the key factors that might contribute to explaining corporate success; and evaluate the effectiveness of managerial decision making over time (change in structure and values, opportunities' evaluation and selection of strategic options) to achieve sustainable development.

Teaching notes.

Students will need to know basic capital budgeting techniques to value UrsaNav and its divisions. Students must determine which cash flows are relevant and determine an appropriate return on investment. Some of the issues that need to be addressed include: how to handle taxes in a discounted cash flow analysis when valuing an S Corp. where incentives depend on current (known) tax provisions and future (unknown) tax provisions; how to use comparable multiples to develop a cost of capital for a DCF valuation; and how to value a firm using comparable transactions.

Case information was obtained through interviews with the owner, Charles Schue. In addition, the authors researched industry and comparable company data, along with current events relating to government consulting.

UrsaNav is a US-based, international provider of advanced engineering and information management consulting services in the naval navigation industry. After about a decade of operating and growing, the firm had become successfully diversified; however, it had also grown too large to manage effectively. Thus, the company was spun-off into three separate segments: Tagence, Geodesicx and UrsaNav. These segments went “back to the basics,” and focused more on serving customers, with each having a more defined company focus. Is this a move that creates or destroys value? How could it create value for the firms’ founders?

This case is intended for an advanced undergraduate or an MBA corporate finance class or an entrepreneurship elective. Students interested in analyzing whether or not decision makers within a company would want to spin-off divisions, or merge with another company, or divest a company would find this case appealing. Other students who just want to analyze whether the company has grown too much would be good candidates to do this case.

The case study should enable the student:1. to assess the complexities of the Indian quick service restaurants (QSRs) market and its competitive dynamics;2. to infer the factors which have contributed to the growth of Domino’s Pizza in India;3. to apply different tools and techniques to assess and refine strategy;4. to evaluate Domino’s Pizza India in the context of the value chain analysis; and5. to examine the strategic options available to Domino’s India for achieving its future growth in India.

The case details the growth story of American pizza chain Domino’s in India. Jubilant Food Works Limited (JFL), a part of the Jubilant Bhartia Group, operates the Domino’s Pizza chain in India. The first restaurant was opened in India in 1996 and, in the initial years, the focus was on promoting and popularising “pizza” as an interesting meal replacement option. Over the years, through memorable advertising, operational efficiency and product innovation, Domino’s emerged as the market leader in the organised pizza market in India. The growth in competition both from domestic and international brands and the challenge posed by the growth of food aggregators posed challenges to its prospect of maintaining market leadership. The nationwide lockdown because of the pandemic severely impacted the foodservice industry. Significant changes were seen in the operations of the QSR and rapid growth was witnessed in online food ordering especially through food delivery apps. The management at JFL believed that the demand for QSR would increase rapidly in the country given the possibility of closure of 30%–35% of conventional restaurants. This company had raised the store addition target for FY22 to 150–175 from earlier 135 as it believed that there would be a greater demand for trusted brands. The management believed that the domestic market had the capacity to absorb 3,000 Domino’s outlets compared with the earlier estimate of 1,800–2,000 outlets. In the first quarter of FY22, it added 20 new Domino’s stores. Was the management correct in anchoring its future success on new physical retail outlets? Was there a need to revisit the strategy?

The case has been written with the objective of enabling the students to understand the dynamics of a rapidly changing emerging market. It is structured for use at a Master’s level course and an MBA audience in the subject of Business Strategy/Retail Strategy.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

The learning outcome is that it will help to sustain your startups in the ever-changing business environment especially in the context of emerging markets.

The present case is about Dilkhush Kumar from village Bangaon, India who developed a cab booking platform “AryaGo”, an innovative platform completely dedicated for rural road transport connectivity. AryaGo is the service line of Aryan Cabs and Rural Trans-solution Pvt. Ltd., a Startup founded in the year 2016 under Startup Bihar, a seed capital support scheme of State Government. The idea was to provide comfort, convenience, safety and affordability to all the commuters travelling from or within far-off villages. The biggest challenge during implementation in villages includes availability of updated geo-mapped images for app development and vehicle tracking. Company was foremost in providing the kiosk-based booking facility for its customers. It took the decision based on the profiling of customers and their preferred booking methods. When a customer booked a cab using IVR, they did not had access to app-based customer panel and hence they could not avail services such as, location tracking, SoS, real time tracking of vehicle. However, heavy invest in IT has put the company in financial stress and Kumar is wondering whether to expand fast or penetrate in the given target market. Should he re-design his business model so as it can really make a difference in terms of service delivery?

Post Graduate/ MBA.

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 8: Marketing

To examine and create an ideal pathway model that can implement aiming to change the current improper practices in managing municipal solid waste (MSW) to sustainable practices. To acquire a better understanding of public participation and community culture helps in achieving the aim of reducing the amount of waste generation, sending less waste to landfill sites and encouraging the reuse and recycling of materials instead. To help students whom the awareness in the community regarding the importance of protecting the environment and acting in a civilization way has increased. To improve the MSW sustainability practices and enhance the waste sustainability practices together with energy and material conservation. To have more extensive knowledge and awareness of issues in waste management and some of the dilemmas managers of strategic and operations face.

Abu Dhabi’s center of waste management is known as Tadweer is a governmental entity under the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. Tadweer is responsible for managing every MSWs includes collecting, transferring, segregating, treating, recycling, reusing and tracking all kinds of wastes. CEO of Tadweer Dr Salem Alkabi called his team that manages various departments such as strategy, operations, projects and licensing. The meeting was to discuss Tadweer’s future directing and strategy for mismanagement of solid waste dumping into landfills in Abu Dhabi. Dumping in landfills is the main challenge Tadweer faced. Mr. Abdulrahman Albloushi’s strategy and business development executive director of Tadweer highlighted to Alkaabi how Tadweer could improve the waste management practices to make it more sustainable. Furthermore, assisting the center gets more benefit from the waste s instead of losing this valuable waste into landfills. Consequently, Mr. Abdulrahman must grapple with some difficult questions: how much the effectiveness in collecting waste from where it generated and removing it out-of-sight?

This case study is designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and executive MBA students of business management programs, especially for waste management, environmental management and strategic management courses.

Teaching Notes are available upon request.

CSS 4: Environmental management.

Faeyee Electronics was an electronics company that manufactured and sold smartphones including XS and XT types. The management of Faeyee wanted to pursue the maximum contribution margin as much as possible, especially since they were faced with limited resources. It was necessary to apply analytical tools and cost accounting concepts to study this case including cost-volume-profit analysis, learning curve analysis, regression analysis, definitions of competitive products, constrained non-linear optimization, and contribution margin.

The case uses business analytics tools and cost accounting concepts, including regression models and constrained optimization approaches, to study how to maximize business outcomes, such as contribution margin and profits when limited business resources are available. The company and individuals are disguised.

This case can be used in any junior-, senior-, masters- or MBA-level managerial accounting course. Students need to have at least one course of introduction to statistics or instructors review required statistics concepts or techniques before assigning this case. Students are exposed to the challenges of deriving learning curve models, using regression analysis to study collected data and allocating limited resources to maximize contribution margin.