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In late 2009 Toyota became the subject of media and U.S. government scrutiny after multiple deaths and injuries were attributed to accidents resulting from the unintended and uncontrolled acceleration of its cars. Despite Toyota's voluntary recall of 4.2 million vehicles for floor mats that could jam the accelerator pedal and a later recall to increase the space between the gas pedal and the floor, the company insisted there was no underlying defect and defended itself against media reports and regulatory statements that said otherwise. As the crisis escalated, Toyota was further criticized for its unwillingness to share information from its data recorders about possible problems with electronic throttle controls and sticky accelerator pedals, as well as braking problems with the Prius. By the time Toyota Motor Company president Akio Toyoda apologized in his testimony to the U.S. Congress, Toyota's stock price had declined, in just over a month, by 20 percent---a $35 billion loss of market value.

Understand the strategic and reputational nature of crises Recognize the challenges of managing a crisis Learn the requirements for building trust in a crisis Understand the challenges of managing a crisis that may not be the company's fault Identify the strategic business problem in a crisis Understand how corporate structure may help or hinder effective crisis management Understand the media landscape and its impact on crisis management

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.

This case is appropriate for entrepreneurship courses where the topics are generation of business model, business model innovation and shared value. It can be used at undergraduate and graduate levels.

This case addresses the challenges that Mejor en Bici (in English: Best by Bike), a start-up that promotes mobility by bicycle, had to face from 2010 to 2015 at the level of its business model and generation of shared value. The case narrates the main achievements and obstacles in this path of entrepreneurship and how, through this process, a business model should be designed that allows strategic decisions to be taken to achieve sustained growth. In addition, this case examines how from early stages in entrepreneurship it is possible to generate shared value as a strategic component.

• Identify and present the value proposition of Mejor en Bici to understand where a business model starts.

• Design and evaluate the business model of Mejor en Bici from an innovation perspective.

• Apply the concept of shared value in the generation of a business proposal for Mejor en Bici based on their business model.

Identify and present the value proposition of Mejor en Bici to understand where a business model starts.

Design and evaluate the business model of Mejor en Bici from an innovation perspective.

Apply the concept of shared value in the generation of a business proposal for Mejor en Bici based on their business model.

• Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers and challengers. John Wiley & Sons. Pages: 14-44; 56-108; 244-262.

• Porter, M. E. and Kramer, M. R. (2011). The big idea: Creating shared value. Harvard Business Review, 89, 1-18.

• Amit, R. and Zott, C. (2012). Creating value through business model innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53, 40-59.

Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business model generation: a handbook for visionaries, game changers and challengers. John Wiley & Sons. Pages: 14-44; 56-108; 244-262.

Porter, M. E. and Kramer, M. R. (2011). The big idea: Creating shared value. Harvard Business Review, 89, 1-18.

Amit, R. and Zott, C. (2012). Creating value through business model innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, 53, 40-59.

The social implication of this case lies in the motivation and guidance that potential entrepreneurs and students who analyze this case will receive. They can learn from a successful but complex experience how to start a business in a sustainable and responsible way.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

Whoosh, is that all there is? On the eve of becoming a partner at a well-known consulting firm (“the stuff MBA dreams are made of”), a senior executive starts to question what he is doing with his life. Walt Shill had graduated eight years earlier from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia and had worked his way up at McKinsey Consulting to become the first American partner in the Japanese office. Shill and his family move back to the United States, where he starts to question his goals. For the first time, it seems that Shill has no target to aim for. Having had reached his goals, Shill sets out on an adventure to seek his own meaning of life. He gets into good-enough shape to take a cross-country bicycle ride, which he completes. This undisguised case tells Shill's story and what he learned along the way. It ends with Shill's promise to himself to be less judgmental and to start walking through life with eyes wide open. A teaching note is available to registered faculty.

The case opens with the Ford Motor Company seemingly on the path toward bankruptcy. Ford had been bleeding red ink for more than ten years when it decided in 2006 that continuing the same turnaround attempts was not going to right the ship. The company was facing significant external challenges, such as intense competition and changing consumer preferences, as well as internal challenges, such as quality and design issues and a stifling level of corporate complexity. As the case begins, CEO Bill Ford has taken the unusual step of hiring an auto industry outsider as his replacement. Alan Mulally, a thirty-seven-year Boeing veteran and principal architect of the venerable airplane manufacturer's own massive and successful turnaround, wasted little time in getting about the business of remaking Ford. He developed a plan to: focus on the Ford brand and divest the numerous other brands the company had acquired over the years; simplify and streamline the company's manufacturing operations; and remake the corporate culture from one of fiefdoms and false optimism to collaboration and facing reality. With an ardent belief in the plan's viability, Mulally raised nearly $24 billion and began to put his plan into motion. The case explores the many causes of this once-great company's decline and the steps it took to beat the odds and get back on the path of profitability.

This case demonstrates that internal issues alone can derail a company and emphasizes the importance of leadership in fostering the right corporate culture to turn a company around. Students will identify the key internal and external factors that can contribute to a company's decline and learn the importance of diagnosing issues within each of three major aspects of a company-strategy, operations, and financials-in order to develop a successful turnaround plan.

The theoretical basis for this case is a focus on vertical integration, first-mover advantage and competitive dynamics. Vertical integration is based on Williamson’s (1979) theory of transaction-cost economics as it relates to vertical integration; the discussion on first-mover advantage is built off of Suarez and Lanzolla’s (2005) dynamics of first-mover advantage; and the analyzes on competitive dynamics derives from the MacMillan et al. (1985) early empirical tests of interfirm rivalry dynamics.

The authors conducted extensive research using the following sources: IBISWorld, MergentOnline and academic journals, trade magazines and websites. Additionally, the authors successfully piloted the case on more than 350 undergraduate students enrolled in a business and corporate strategy course.

Peloton used vertical integration to control the creation of its own software, bikes, exercise classes and retail outlets. In doing so, Peloton was one of the first companies in the industry to have near full control of the production process (Gross and Caisman, 2019). Due to this integration, Peloton was one of the fitness equipment industry leaders. However, Peloton’s high level of vertical integration coupled with rapid growth led to lackluster profitability. Given the rise in popularity of in-home exercise equipment, Peloton had room to continue its growth, but the question remained whether it was strategically positioned to do so.

This case is best taught in undergraduate and graduate strategy courses. For undergraduate courses, it could be incorporated into lessons on competitive dynamics, internal analysis and first-mover advantage and strategic positioning. For graduate courses, it could be incorporated into lessons on vertical integration and delving more in-depth into the long-term sustainability of having a first-mover advantage.

After completion of the case study, the students would be able to identify and evaluate organizational culture as a critical element of organizational resilience and assess its fit to the business context, evaluate different elements of organizational resilience and their contribution to business adaptation and develop leadership approaches that help adapt and leverage organizational culture to foster individual, team and organizational resilience.

This teaching case covers topics of organizational leadership, including organizational culture and organizational resilience. This case study is appropriate for the postgraduate and executive education programmes. This case study covers the approach to organizational leadership and resilience of the OKKO, a Ukrainian retail petrol station network. The dilemmas considered by top managers of the company emerged in February–April 2022 amid the unfolding Russian invasion of Ukraine. The case study protagonists solved multiple business and organizational dilemmas to continue efficient business operations while allowing the organization to adapt to a complex and fast-changing environment. They leveraged a distinct corporate culture, strong employee engagement and established business processes and management practices to ensure the viability of the business.

This case study is appropriate for postgraduate and executive education programmes. The level of difficulty is light to medium. Recommended pre-requisites are understanding human resources management terminology and reviewing preparation materials. The case study is suitable for teaching courses in leadership, people management and organizational development that cover corporate culture, leadership and organizational resilience.

CSS 6: Human resource management

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

The learning outcome of this study is to bring to the table of a wider intellectual audience, a unique model of community-based entrepreneurship, which is working wonders with its unique selling points (USPs) in promoting sustainability and conserving the ethos of villages and, at the same time, generating livelihoods through traditional farming techniques adopted by the rural population residing in the Himalayan region of India.The proposed case study can be used as a replicable model in other parts of rural India and other emerging economies to start and scale up a similar “integrated rural development model” through effective policy advocacy and public–private partnerships and to develop sustainable farmlands and livelihoods for rural India. It has a definite potential to be used as a pedagogical tool in postgraduate programmes offering courses in microfinance, financial inclusion, social and community entrepreneurship, sustainability, entrepreneurship, community development finance and rural immersions and public policy.

This case study is set in the backdrop of 2023 having been declared by the UN as the International Year of Millets and India being the homeland for millet cultivation. The objective of the case study is to bring to the table of a wider intellectual audience, a unique model of community-based entrepreneurship operating in the Himalayan region of rural India. The community-based entrepreneurship model works on the USP of promoting sustainability and conserving the ethos of villages and generating livelihoods through traditional farming techniques. This case study traces the journey of Roopesh Rai (protagonist and the founder of Bakrichhap), the community-based entrepreneur and his challenges in setting up the enterprise. The narrative is built in the light of a series of interviews with Rai, the main protagonist and the founder of Bakrichhap, as well as the people of Goat village by Komal, a post-doctoral fellow in the area of community-based enterprises (CBEs). Through this narrative, the case writers’ endeavour was to understand how CBEs such as Bakrichhap were providing a means of integrated rural development in the hilly region of Uttarakhand, India. Also, how such enterprises were thereby curbing distress migration, unemployment and a large-scale erosion of the cultural heritage and traditional and indigenous farming techniques of the land. In the first seven years of the operations of this uniquely curated CBE, Rai endeavoured to iron out many bottlenecks. This case study also highlights the gamut of challenges faced by community-based entrepreneurs like Rai in designing strategy for growth and expansion. What strategy should Bakrichhap follow for expansion to the other regions of the country? Should all the three existing verticals of the enterprise be scaled up parallelly or should each individual vertical be expanded one after the other in a phased manner? Stemming out from the main dilemma of strategic expansion were the related issues of funding (finance) and the formation of an effective team (HR).

This case study can be used in undergraduate, graduate and executive programmes offering courses in microfinance, financial inclusion, social and community entrepreneurship, sustainability, entrepreneurship, community development finance and rural immersions and public policy.

This comprehensive case study is written by using the triangulation of data collected through a series of personal interviews, website information, news articles, personal observation and field visits. The research design used is single case (holistic; Yin, 2003, 3rd edition). The timeline of this case study is 2021 to 2022 and place is Nag Tibba, Uttarakhand, a Himalayan state in North India.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

The case was devised using both primary and secondary data sources. Primary sources of data consisted of in-depth interviews with individuals using the cycle hire project. The researcher also had first-hand experiences of using the cycles. The case study has been tested with undergraduate and graduate students taking management information systems courses.

This teaching case study charts the London cycle hire project, mostly from its first inception in July 2010, right through to the planned expansion of electric cycles from Summer 2022. The main aim of the case is to introduce students to project management challenges which are part of the London cycle hire project. While the project was filled with enthusiasm from its early beginnings, various challenges were encountered including issues associated with the project procurement/sourcing process, software and technical problems, as well as other project management issues. Problems became so severe in 2011 that the service provider was hit with a penalty and had to make critical project improvements. Would these accountability measures prompt the service provider to resolve these issues? How would the service provider go about undertaking a fact-finding exercise to verify the existence of the challenges and address them to ensure renewed project success?

The case was written for classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The focus of the case is particularly well suited for exploring topics and issues relating to types of information systems, project management and accountability, multiple global supplier procurement, as well as challenges associated with hardware integration and software design. While the case was targeted at MIS students, the case study would also be effective for an introductory level project management course or a general management course. The subject of the case, the bicycle rental program, is likely to appeal to students, and the basic underlying business issues, processes and objectives of the project are easily understood.

Bicycle industry, emerging markets, competitor analysis, financial forecasting.

This case can be used as a teaching tool in the following courses: MBA/post-graduate programs in management in management accounting, management control systems and strategic cost management; executive training programs for middle and senior level employees; and under-graduate/post-graduate programs in entrepreneurship. It can be used to explain and test the concepts of SWOT analysis, Porter's five forces model and PEST analysis. It introduces the technique of breakeven analysis and its relationship with operating leverage. Moreover, it demonstrates the application and analyses of the Du Pont equation.

Hero Cycles Ltd was established by the four Munjal brothers in pre-independence India. It started off as a business of bicycle spare parts, but quickly expanded in post-independence India, with Ludhiana as its base. The company later joined with foreign firms like Honda Motors, Japan to become the largest manufacturers of bicycles in the world. It dominates domestic markets with a market share of around 40 percent. Ananth Munjal, a learned, ambitious and cautious individual, is the next generation, ready to take over the reins of the company. Being someone who believes in learning from past mistakes, he forms a team to critically examine the decisions made by his predecessors. This team is also directed to utilize forecasting techniques for determining the expected profitability given the existing state of affairs that prevail. Additionally, Du Pont analysis is to be performed for studying the efficiency of the company on the facets of operating performance, asset turnover and associated financial leverage. Also, Ananth's risk-averse nature compels him to study the past with regard to the relationship between operating leverage, breakeven sales and corresponding margin of safety. Furthermore, he wishes to inspect the historical cost structure of the firm, and its influence on company performance.

These include the use of: SWOT analysis to identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to a company; PEST analysis to identify the political, economic, social and technological factors that affect the operations of a company; Porter's five forces model to analyse an industry. The case also helps students: by identifying fixed costs and variable costs that are a part of operating expenditure of a business; in the use of forecasting the financials of a company for the sake of predicting the future outcomes of certain business strategies; by application of Du Pont analysis to examine the efficiency of the various processes and strategies; in determining quantitative terms like contribution margin, breakeven sales, operating leverage, margin of safety, their significance, and the relationship between these terms.

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