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Launched in 2014, Amazon's Echo and Echo Dot smart speakers led the category's rapid adoption by households and enabled the penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistants into the everyday lives of millions of people. By 2019, Alexa the virtual brains behind Amazon's smart speakers was able to play music, create reminders, get weather reports, control lights and other home appliances, shop, and do much more in response to voice commands. Amazon had developed significant new capabilities for Alexa, developed an entire ecosysgtem around it, expanded Alexa's user base to more than 100 million users, and made significant progress in monetizing its digital voice assistant. However, Alexa's progress also created new challenges for Amazon, its Alexa-enabled customers, and society at large. Amazon needed to identify and address these challenges in order to encourage continued consumer acceptance and preclude detrimental government or regulatory action.

Entrepreneurship.

The case can be taught for students at the Master's level and research scholars in management education.

Univexcellence was an idea conceived by Surbhi from her science project in 1997 when she was studying at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jaipur, India. The science project model was based on the theme “World is a classroom, room is university”. It was shown that the world would be converted into a room, and the room itself would become a University through satellite communication. Surbhi decided to become a computer engineer and learn about it herself so as to become self-dependent as a business woman. Keeping this in mind, she completed a computer engineering course. A strong sense of efficacy enhances human accomplishment and personal well-being in many ways. Surbhi has proved it in her case.

The case describes challenges and setbacks faced by a woman entrepreneur and through her self-confidence and persistence, illustrate show she solved them to the benefit of her business.

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

This case study will allow students to learn about effective segmentation and how to choose an appropriate segment, analyse the attractiveness of the target market by using five-forces analysis and explore business growth alternatives by using Ansoff’s growth matrix.

The Left-Out Store was an online shop that sold products exclusively for left-handers. Maitri Wadher, the proprietor of the store, being a left-handed person and driven by her childhood experiences, started the store to help left-handed people find products for their use. She started the online-only store in September 2018, and in October 2022, she found that, despite the COVID-19 pandemic having abated, her store had not grown as expected. How, then, should she push for growth? Was the niche segment substantial enough? Was her target market attractive? Should she penetrate the market or go for market development? What should she do?

PG level (MBA/PGDM).

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 8: Marketing.

Marketing Communication.

At the undergraduate level, this case can be used in marketing courses such as Marketing Fundamentals, Marketing Management, Marketing Communication and Consumer Behavior. This case may also be used for Master's level students for Quality when focusing on safety/security in offices and factories.

This case is used to introduce the concept of B2B and B2C marketing and explore the possibilities of converting an industry that essentially uses B2B marketing communication to choose B2C options. This case is also important for creating awareness on safety and preventive measures in the face of a fire crisis.

Understanding the role of marketing communication. Differentiating between B2B and B2C markets. Exploring the application of B2C marketing communication in the fire suppression systems market in the Middle East.

Teaching notes.

The learning outcomes are to get an understanding of the greeting cards (GCs) industry – appreciate the evolution of the industry and the changes that have been impacting the industry; analyze the external environment situation and assess the current strategy of Archies; analyze the existing strategy of Archies and apply the knowledge of strategic frameworks to the current business context of Archies; and create a new strategy for the company to overcome its current challenges.

The case highlights the situation faced by Archies Limited, a company, which pioneered the growth of the social expression industry in India and developed the market for GCs, a quintessentially Western concept in the Indian market. While it experienced phenomenal growth for two and a half decades, in the past 10 years, things have become more difficult for the company. Based on secondary data, this case presents various facts related to the case and seeks answers related to possible strategies that the firm may explore in the future.

Undergraduate and postgraduate management course in the area of strategic management. The level of difficulty can be from medium to high depending on the learning level.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Agile software development, Knowledge workers and Lean thinking as a management system

The case lends itself to students of business management, or aspiring consultants, who have been exposed to operations management in general and Lean thinking specifically. It is an advanced case study, assuming prior knowledge in these subjects and approaches the subject matter from an organisational development point of view, rather than a pure operations point of view. It is thus well suited to an elective on operational excellence on an MBA or in executive education courses in Lean thinking

The case starts with Mark, manager of a software development team, hearing that he will have budget for two new developers who will join his team in the coming year. While the extra help could be useful, he was considering what the impact of new people would be on the productivity of the team, which he felt was already stretched. Mark continues to consider the entire development chain and how code changes were implemented to ACSESim’s (the company’s primary product) graphical user interfaces. Having recently been acquired by an American company, he was also under pressure to start to adopt some of the parent company’s systems, which would constitute a fairly disruptive, but necessary, change, particularly for future collaborations with other developers in the parent company. With two new developers, experience taught Mark that development could slow down owing to training efforts. To minimise disruption, he was wondering about how to get the new developers up-to-speed quickly and streamline their operations within a changing corporate environment. The case highlights the different mechanisms that were in place at ACSESim, including the use of issue trackers; Kanban boards; version control software; automated systems; stand-up meetings, etc. Each of these mechanisms is discussed briefly and shows the value they added to the development practices that were in place. This also allows students to understand Agile practices and what Lean thinking might mean in a knowledge work environment and then to consider what the proposed changes might mean and how they could be deployed.

To gain an understanding of how Lean and Agile principles can be applied in a software development environment and Lean knowledge work in general To consider the best way to manage new hires so that they can become productive in a Lean or Agile software development environment, whilst dealing with pressures to migrate to new systems.

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: 9: Operations and Logistics.

Organizational theory/organizational behavior.

MBA

ABC Development Organization (ABCDO) is a civil society organization working in Dungarpur district of Rajasthan. ABCDO is working towards empowering tribal women of rural Rajasthan through making credit accessible to them and by offering them various livelihood choices. The organization employs local people, most of whom have not received college education. Illiterate, marginalized, and poor are the adjectives that describe the clients of ABCDO – the women from rural and tribal Rajasthan. ABCDO played the role of an intermediary between these hopeless women and formal financial system. ABCDO works with low degree of formalization and with a relatively low amount of documentation, despite being in the business of delivering financial services. However, such low formalization has never caused any problem in coordination of various activities within the organization and ABCDO has been growing in operation for the last couple of years. The case is about the role played by organizational culture in an organization with low degree of formalization. This case examines the emergence and functions of culture in civil society organizations which are often characterized by routineness of technology, yet the absence of rules, procedures and written documentations.

At the end of the course, students should be able to understand the following: the emergence of culture in a Civil Society Organization, the role played by culture in an organization with low degree of formalization, the framework depicting relationship of environment and strategy to organizational culture in the context of organizations engaged in microfinance with a social agenda.

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

After reading and discussing this case, students will learn to identify the content and context of enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation that is important from an operations standpoint. Through this case, student will discuss and evaluate the scenarios of ERP implementation arising from different deployment alternatives. Students will also learn to comprehend the case organization’s unique operational context and explore the challenges of introducing change into workplace environment and stakeholders’ overall expectations.

This case introduces students to the dilemmas of managerial decision-making that large companies face while implementing organization-wide technological upgrades, such as ERP. The case is set at a time point where ABC Mining Company – a large public-sector mining company – was trying to identify the most optimal ERP option based on its organizational structure and organizational processes. The information related to ABC’s organizational context included their business, structural and operational scenarios at the time. The information related to ABC’s stakeholders’ expectations reflected their perception about ERP and future implications. The information related to managerial conflicts reflected the understandings of the managers, in terms of need for ERP, needed skill to handle ERP and different types of ERP implementations that others have adopted. The case calls students for extensive analysis of the gathered information to identify and evaluate impacts and risks of all possible ERP alternates, and finally pick upon the most optimal ERP alternate. The case assumes a live 90-min class session conducted by an instructor. The instructor is recommended to assign the case to students for mandatory pre-reading before coming to class. The instructor is provided with a teaching plan to navigate the case.

The case is designed as an introductory case for an undergraduate or a graduate course pertaining strategic decision-making of ERP systems implementation.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Entrepreneurship, Innovation Management, Bringing Technology to Market, International Growth Strategy from Emerging Markets, Russia, B2B Marketing.

MBA and executive education programs, technology management programs and electives.

The case investigates the 20-years growth story of ABBYY, one of the most successful Russian technological companies in a global market. It covers the company’s roots, development of unique technology, evolution of products, market development and globalization and discusses a strategic threat from Google Translate to the company’s sustainable position and its business model.

The expected learning outcome is to discuss the key issues associated with establishing, growing and globalizing technology-driven business in an emerging market: bringing technology to market, defining customer value proposition, entering overseas markets from Russia, building partnerships, developing organizational structure to fit growth, financing rapid growth and solving “Innovator’s Dilemma”.

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 3: Entrepreneurship.

Strategy.

This case can be used on a strategic management course in the second year of an MBA programme, any special elective course on the media and entertainment industry and in executive education programmes to demonstrate the application of strategic management concepts and frameworks.

The Indian film industry was the largest in the world and the seventh largest in terms of revenue. Significant number of movies were made in languages such as Bengali, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada, with Hindi commanding the highest number. The film industry in Karnataka made movies in the Kannada language. The industry was plagued by a host of issues with the industry contributing just 2 per cent of the revenues and box office success rate at just around 25 per cent. The state government had set up Karnataka Chalanachitra Academy with the objective of promotion and development of the movie industry in Karnataka. The Chairman of the academy, Shailesh Singh, was extremely concerned about the poor success rate of Kannada movies and was contemplating various options of reviving the ailing Kannada movie industry.

The expected learning outcomes are as follows: application of strategic management frameworks in the context of the movie industry; analysis of industry issues from the long-term and short-term perspectives; study of different entities in the movie industry and the roles they play and their interdependence; applying learning to suggest survival strategies in an extremely competitive market; and insights into the role of government in the media/entertainment industry.

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 11: Strategy.