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Upon reading, analyzing and participating in the classroom discussion of this case study, students will be able to use the blue ocean strategy (mainly the Strategy Canvas tool) to analyze how companies establish their products as viable and the go-to solution for consumers; perform a competitive analysis for competitive products; learn how to use data from the case, including industry trends, to predict the future market position of products; and learn how to develop strategies for new products in the market.

Abdishakur M. Afrah, who served as the Head of Business Development at Premier Bank, oversaw a substantial banking portfolio, which included Premier Wallet – the first digital wallet in Somalia. This case study outlines Premier Wallet’s journey and its transformative impact on the banking sector. Owing to the mobile wallet, consumers could, for the first time, engage in purchasing, withdrawing cash, shopping online and topping up without needing a bank account at Premier Bank. This allowed for the financial inclusion of the unbanked Somali population. This case study also highlights the Wallet Send feature, a disruptive feature that challenged the prevalent Hawala system in Somalia. This feature enabled customers to send money across 110 countries via their smartphones, facilitating direct deposits to the mobile or bank accounts of their family and friends or to cash withdrawal points nearby. Despite these advanced features, Premier Wallet struggled with broader acceptance, hindered by a mere 9% internet penetration, the absence of a national identification (ID) system and stiff competition from WAAFI, a fintech application supported by Hormuud Telecom, Somalia’s leading telecommunications company. The case study also delves into the strategic decisions Afrah had to make to position Premier Wallet as the top mobile money option for consumers in Somalia.

This case study is suited for undergraduate-level courses.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship

Diplomatic and consular policies; legal aspects of international relations and Asia regional scenario.

Undergraduate.

In April 2012, high-level officials from China and the USA were about to meet in Beijing in the framework of the bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue, organized on a yearly basis. The event was always delicate, due to the ambiguous relationship existing between the two countries, which were at the same time rivals and dependent on one another. That time, the tension previous to the meeting increased significantly: a Chinese human rights activist had just sought and obtained diplomatic protection in the US Embassy in Beijing, thus creating an embarrassing situation for both States' foreign departments […] How could they possibly solve this contentious issue without affecting their already sensitive relationship?

Analytical: to be aware of the political nature of the current Chinese Government; to realize the concrete and practical implications of an Embassy's special status; to balance two contradictory objectives, in a specific situation where none of them can be fully discarded; to contrast and try to combine long-term goals (in this case, to maintain a functioning relationship between two main world powers) with short-term objectives (in this case, how to deal with a Chinese activist that required protection against his own country's security forces); to find a modus vivendi (conciliation) between values and interests; to get convinced that certain kinds of negotiations cannot be conceived through a “win or lose” approach: in this case, the only way out must be respectful of the two parties' core interests; and to take into account that image preservation (“face-saving”) must be included within any country's objectives in any situation involving diplomatic means. Conceptual: the purpose is to familiarize the students with specific concepts, such as: best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), which is to be mentioned as part of the discussion (it is not included in the case study itself); interdependence; (purported) Group of Two; asylum and refuge; Immunity; and sending state/receiving state.

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

Masayo Kodama, President, Reborn Kyoto NPO, believed foreign-aid food saved her and other Japanese from starvation after World War II. Kodama was determined to help others suffering in third world countries. After distributing emergency supplies in Cambodia, Kodama developed a new vision: teach impoverished people how to “fish” and they would feed themselves and their children for life. She decided to teach dressmaking skills to people in third-world countries. Kodama recruited volunteers in Japan and these women, in turn, collected and prepared silk from kimonos. Japanese volunteer seamstresses took the silk and supplies, traveled to such places as Vietnam and Yemen, and taught people how to create clothes suitable for sale in western markets of Japan and the US. Although the sale of products, along with small grants and private donations, yielded subsistent revenues for the nonprofit organization, Kodama wondered how to build her organization and to find a replacement for herself with so few resources.

The Kenyan government’s announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom’s mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya. The new tax would be levied on all cash transfers but was largely targeted at M-Pesa, which controlled around 80 percent of the cash transfer market. In response to the new tax, Safaricom, the mobile communications market leader, announced a 10 percent price increase.

The case presents the structure Safaricom established in order to develop a mobile money transfer service in Kenya. As a concept, M-Pesa was unprecedented in Kenya: prospective customers had to get comfortable with the idea that a mobile communications company could provide a payment system, that transactions could be initiated through a mobile phone, and that nonbank outlets could provide cash-in/cash-out services. Even when the concept was accepted, however, customers needed a convenient network of agents to handle transactions, and stores needed to see demand from customers in order to be motivated to become agent outlets. Thus, in order to grow, M-Pesa needed to aggressively pursue and acquire both customers and agents in this two-sided market.

• Understand the complexity of pricing in two-sided markets

• Evaluate the profitability of different pricing strategies in two-sided markets

• Understand the effect of an innovation on the creation and capture of value

• Identify possible threats to competitive advantage in two-sided markets as well as in developing countries

• Understand the value of co-opetition and how cooperation with competitors and complementors can increase a company’s profitability

Understand the complexity of pricing in two-sided markets

Evaluate the profitability of different pricing strategies in two-sided markets

Understand the effect of an innovation on the creation and capture of value

Identify possible threats to competitive advantage in two-sided markets as well as in developing countries

Understand the value of co-opetition and how cooperation with competitors and complementors can increase a company’s profitability

This case puts students in the shoes of the Ebola response leadership teams of Firestone Liberia and its parent company, Bridgestone Americas, as they worked together to respond to the deadly 2014 Ebola epidemic. While the companies had received positive press for their containment of the virus on their rubber farm in Liberia, which was home to 8,000 employees and 80,000 Liberian citizens, the situation off the property was worsening. With death counts rising and hospitals across the nation closing as staff caught the virus, the Liberian government declared a national state of emergency. The teams now faced the possibility that the government might attempt to take control of the farm's medical center. How could they balance their duty to care effectively for employees against the demands of the Liberian government? Should they try to fend off the government or cooperate to meet the government's demands? Students will learn how to do a methodical situation analysis that considers ethical obligations and strategic implications, and to distill their recommendation into a briefing for senior leadership.

The Olympic Gold Quest (OGQ) was founded as a Non-profit to support Indian athletes in their quest to win Olympic Gold medals by bridging the gap between the best athletes in India and in the world. The support from OGQ has been instrumental to India in winning its highest number of medals at any summer Olympics. Buoyed by this success, OGQ has set up a target of achieving eight Olympic medals at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games. With OGQ relying on donations to support the athletes, the challenge is to market the Olympic cause by creating, communicating, and delivering the right offering for its donors.

Public sector management, stakeholder management, collaboration and strategy.

Undergraduate (final-year) or master's-level students (Master in Public Administration, Master in Management). Designed for courses in nonprofit management, public administration and/or international development. Can also be used in any course, such as strategic management, sustainable development or corporate social responsibility, that covers stakeholder theory, or stakeholder management as a topic.

Decentralization has changed the way core services are delivered to local populations in sub-Saharan Africa. This in turn has forced nongovernmental organizations, international aid agencies, corporations and other development partners to change the way they engage with government in their shared efforts to help improve the living conditions of people living under the threshold of poverty in this and other parts of the world. This modular ethnographic teaching case uses the specific example of the water sector in Malawi to help highlight the complexity of multiple stakeholder relations in an international development context.

Upon completion of this case, students should be able to: identify and understand the different goals and issues that individual stakeholders in cross-sector partnerships are dealing with; identify and understand the power/control dynamics at play in these relationships; analyse the advantages and disadvantages associated with different ways of coordinating multi-stakeholder partnerships; and develop recommendations for structuring multi-stakeholder relationships in developing and emerging markets that balance efficient service provision with concern for individual stakeholder priorities.

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

Social implications are as follows: social activism; girls education; collaboration; collective action; and change agent.

Learning outcomes are as follows: evaluate the role of a change agent in a nonprofit organization; understand collaborative partnerships in a nonprofit organization; examine how a nonprofit organization is promoting education in conflict-affected countries; understand the importance of education for girls as a basic human right; understand and discuss the threats to girls’ education in conflict-affected countries; analyze the role of Malala Yousafzai in supporting girls’ education globally; identify the challenges unique to educating girls; and explore steps that Yousafzai needs to take to ensure girls have equal access to the knowledge and skills they need to learn and lead in a world affected by the pandemic and climate change.

The case discusses social activist Malala Yousafzai’s (She) diligent efforts to promote girls’ education in conflict-affected regions globally through her not-for-profit organization Malala Fund. Co-founded in 2013, Malala Fund worked to ensure every girl globally could access 12 years of free, safe, quality education. The fund worked towards this goal by building creative partnerships and investing in its global network of education activists and advocates fighting for girls’ education in communities where most girls missed out. Malala Fund supported girls’ education programs in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, India, Brazil, Ethiopia, Turkey and Lebanon. The Fund’s projects were aimed at addressing gender norms, promoting the empowerment of girls through education, imparting gender-sensitive training for teachers and raising awareness about the need for girls’ education. In 2016, the fund created the Education Champion Network to support the work of local educators and advocates to advance.

Post-graduate level students.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CCS 11: Strategy.

After discussing this case, students will be able to understand the challenges faced by social entrepreneurs in starting a health-tech start-up in Africa; create and evaluate lean business models of health-tech companies as a social enterprise; evaluate how health-tech start-ups were developing innovative business models and supply chain networks to make prescription drugs accessible and available in Africa; understand how inorganic growth strategies can help health-tech start-ups scale up; and evaluate what promises investors were seeing while investing in social enterprises in the health-care sector in Africa and what social wealth they were creating.

In August 2022, Gregory Rockson (Rockson), social entrepreneur and founder of for-profit health technology (health-tech) social enterprise in Ghana, mPharma, stated that he had plans to replicate the company’s business model, which provided people access to drugs and at affordable prices, to other African nations, beyond the company’s existing footprint. However, analysts pointed out that the fragmented drug supply chain and poor regulation in the health-care market across Africa could act as a challenge for mPharma to replicate its business model successfully across the African continent. People in Africa were forced to pay higher prices to buy life-saving drugs due to the continent’s fragmented drug supply chain. To add to their woes, pharmacies struggled to keep life-saving and life-sustaining medicines in stock. Often, patients traveled miles to a pharmacy only to find out that the drugs they needed were not in stock. In addition to this, the markets were flooded with counterfeit drugs. And the Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated the situation. mPharma managed the prescription drug inventory for pharmacies and drug suppliers using its proprietary vendor management information system. By using the technology infrastructure it had built, the company connected patients, pharmacies and hospitals through a cloud-based software. The system enabled doctors to track in real-time which drugs were available and at which location, thus giving patients reliable access to medicines. Patients registering with mPharma with their prescriptions and medical history received an alert on their mobile phones notifying them where the drugs they needed were available. mPharma bought drugs from major drug manufacturers such as Novartis International AG, Pfizer Inc. (Pfizer) and Bayer AG, on behalf of the pharmacies. This enabled the pharmacies to save on the up-front costs of stocking the drugs, reduced supply constraints and ensured availability of drugs to consumers in these underserved markets. The company had a consignment model wherein member pharmacies had to pay only for what they sold. Most pharmacies forecast the number of drugs they needed and purchased them from mPharma at pre-agreed rates. The company took the inventory liability to prevent pharmacies from going out of stock. As mPharma used its purchasing power to buy drugs in large quantities from drug manufacturers and suppliers, it was able to help patients realize cost savings of 30% to 60% in the purchase of medicines. mPharma was focusing on achieving its ambitious goal of dominating the health-care market in Africa in future. However, analysts felt that the company would face challenges related to poor regulation in the health-care market, high prices of drugs and the fragmented pharmacy retail market in the continent.

This case is intended for use in MBA/MS level programs as part of a course on Social Entrepreneurship, Sustainability, Business Model Innovation, Disruptive Business Models, and Supply Chain Management in the Drug Industry.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.

Human resource management.

Postgraduate and graduate management programs.

Watson and Lilly (W&L) Berhad is the subsidiary of Wanger Group of Company, established in 1822 by Wanger Watson Group, and engages with transportation and logistics, communication and media, and electricity storage activities. The company provides freight forwarding by air, sea, and land, warehousing and distribution, industrial logistics, and stevedoring and port services. The case is all about the issues related to operations and human resource management in W&L Berhad, company in Malaysia. The company management observed that there has been an increasing trend on the number of mis-shipment. The investigation report was too worrisome to the Managing Director. The mis-shipment recorded in September 2011 was 5.91 per cent and by the end of first quarter in November 2012, the mis-shipment increased to 6.71 per cent. On the second quarter starting from December 2012, the mis-shipment continues to increase to 6.99 per cent and by February 2013, the mis-shipment was at 7.56 per cent. An independent consultancy was assigned to analyze the root causes of the issues. The agency found that the business having high operating cost due to operational inefficiency, documentation issues and human resource issues. The case study proposed several solutions to enhance the manpower efficiency, operational effectiveness, and achieving customer's satisfaction.

Learning the nature of business: to explain the nature of freight and forward business and the base of W&L Berhad, Malaysia. Nature of business operation issues: the case can be used to examine the issues of business operations due to mis-shipment in freight and forward companies. Nature of manpower issues: the case can be used to examine the issues of manpower in correlation with a mis-shipment of freight and forward companies. Integrating business and operational issues with customer delight and business loss. Strategic intervention: instructor can explore varied strategic interventions that curb the operational and manpower issues that may lead to business growth and development in freight and forward companies, achieving customer's satisfaction.

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