Case Studies

Amazon vs. Walmart: Using Financial Ratios to Compare Companies

In 2021, an investment management firm analyst needed to convince his portfolio manager that technology companies such as Amazon.com Inc. (Amazon) could have a strong investment thesis since they improved upon existing business models. To make his...

Casing Petrochemicals Limited: Reviving Growth in Turbulent Times

Casing Petrochemicals was a leading importer of Petroleum Derivatives (such as Base Oil), Chemicals and Refrigerants in India. With 90% of the firm's revenue and profits contributed by the Petroleum Business, the other businesses were secondary in nature...

Sonos Inc.: Product Development at the Speed of Sound

DIGITAL LEARNING EXPERIENCE COMING SOON. Kurt Preston, Vice President of Global Sourcing & Product Operations at Sonos Inc. (Sonos), had been considering a Joint Development Model for future Sonos products. In 2022, Sonos began to expand their product...

Licious: Marketing Plant-Based Meat

In October 2022, Licious, the market leader in India's meat industry, launched its new brand UnCrave in the plant-based meat market segment. The launch was aligned with the company's portfolio diversification strategy, leveraging its strong core brand...

Brookfield Renewable Partners: Is Entropy a Sustainable Investment?

An investment proposal reached the offices of Brookfield Renewable Partners (BRP) that outlined an opportunity for BRP to invest $300 million in Entropy Inc., a carbon capture and storage (CCS) company based in Calgary, Alberta. A subsidiary of...

Zibusiso Mkhwanazi: A Serial Entrepreneur at a Crossroad

Zibusiso Mkhwanazi, chief executive officer of Avatar South Africa, looked out of his office window in Johannesburg. Mkhwanazi was contemplating whether he should stay at Avatar or move on to new things. This question was triggered by a media briefing...

Indian Premier League (IPL) Media Rights: Media Valuation

The Indian Premier League (IPL), a Twenty20 cricket league, underwent a transformative shift in 2022 as the IPL governing council conducted an e-auction for media rights, valuing them at US$5.64 billion. Viacom18 secured digital rights for $2.57 billion,...

Minespider: Building Responsible Battery Supply Chains with Blockchain

This case addresses managing critical mineral supply chains by focusing on cobalt used in lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries and the impact of mining operations in Central Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Minespider, a...

Making a Team on Dream11: A Fantasy Sports Platform

On November 9, 2020, Chhavi Jain wanted to participate in a contest created by her college friend Vikas Jack on the Dream11 mobile application. The contest was for the final match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 between the Delhi Capitals and the...

Prajiv Farm Solutions: Fodder Value-Chain Interventions for Profitability

It was June 2023, when Dr. Himanshu Awasthi, founder of Prajiv Farm Solutions, considered expanding his business by addressing the challenges in the agricultural sector, particularly fodder production. Recognizing the issues faced by Indian farmers-low...

Peloton Interactive Inc.: A Push to Keep Users Pedalling

The case centres on the pricing and business model challenges facing Peloton Interactive Inc.'s new CEO, Barry McCarthy. With the decline in demand post-pandemic, McCarthy must make pricing and product decisions that balance revenue, profitability, and...

The Himalayan Chocolate: Brand Extension for Social Enterprise

The Himalayan Chocolate is a start-up brainchild of Rohan Keshewar. Stuck in Manali during the Lockdown, Rohan stayed with a family in their homestay facility. While interacting with the host family, Rohan discovered that the locals had two primary...

Bavarian Nordic A/S: Yet Another COVID-19 Vaccine?

This case focuses on the efforts of Bavarian Nordic A/S, a Danish pharmaceutical company, to create a new COVID-19 vaccine. Their vaccine is based on a newer technology and has the potential to provide longer-lasting protection than the currently...

Saera Electric: Electric Three-Wheelers in India

Nitin Kapoor, the managing director of Saera Electric Auto Pvt. Ltd. (Saera Electric), a leading three-wheeler electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer in India, was excited to capture the opportunity brought about by some recent favourable regulatory...

Microsign Ltd.: Engaging in Business with a Conscience

In October 2021, the founder and chief executive officer of Microsign Products Ltd. in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India, was planning to expand the company, but wanted to ensure consistency for employees with disabilities. The company was planning to increase...

The Solidarity Fund in South Africa: Creating Social Value in a Crisis

The Solidarity Fund (the Fund) was established in March 2020 by a business group in South Africa to support the South African Government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By September 2022, the Fund had proven highly effective and helped stabilize the...

BharatPe: Governance Failure in a Start-Up

In May 2022, BharatPe, a startup,announced a revamp of its governance framework to address any potential risks associated with suspicious transactions in response to a prolonged dispute with its Co-founder and former Managing Director (MD), Ashneer...

Inkpothub: Should the Digital Media Start-Up Continue?

Founded in Hyderabad, India in 2019, Inkpothub is India's first digital media platform to offer researchers, scholars, and academics a forum for sharing success and experience stories. The platform allows users to share their journeys to promote research...

Silicon Valley Bank: Victim of Risk, Regulation, or Governance?

By 2023, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in Santa Clara, California, had been successfully providing financial services to venture capitalists and private equity firms for 40 years. The bank, which catered to clients from the innovation and technology sectors,...

Digitalization of Direct Lending Process at SIDBI: A Step toward Hyperautomation

A year had passed since implementing digitalization of the direct lending process at Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), and the committee gathered on January 2, 2023, to reflect on its success and identify any issues. During the meeting,...

Prabhu Murthy Industries: To Trust or Not to Trust

On July 15, 2022, the senior marketing manager of Prabhu Murthy Industries Limited participated in a high-priority meeting attended by all of the company's executives to discuss a pressing issue. The company's unstable financial position and...

Arconic Inc.: A Spin-Off of Its Global Rolled Products Business

Arconic Inc. was an international aluminum parts manufacturing and lightweight composite engineering conglomerate. In early 2019, it was set to be sold to Apollo Global Management Inc., a premier private equity firm; however, the deal fell apart due to a...

Merced Property and Casualty Company: How Climate Risk Led to Its Failure

Facilitated by hot Diablo winds, dry weather, and combustible vegetation, the Camp Fire in November 2018 almost destroyed the town of Paradise in Butte County, California. The fire also led to the demise of Merced Property and Casualty Company (Merced),...

Schneider Electric's India Smart Factory: Creating a Sustainable Value Chain (A)

The year was 2021. At his Gurugram office in Haryana, India, Anil Chaudhry, Zone President and Managing Director of Schneider Electric India Private Limited (SEIPL), sat working on his keynote address for a conference. He had been invited to present a...

The ICRC: The Humanitarian Impact Bond (Abridged)

In July 2017, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched the world's first Humanitarian Impact Bond. This innovative finance pilot was an experiment by the ICRC to engage the private sector differently and diversify funding - critical...

Fairphone (A): Can a Start-Up Change an Industry?

Fairphone, a "social enterprise" that created the world's first ethically sourced smartphone, had revolutionized consumers' and investors' expectations around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) responsibility in the electronics industry. The...

Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Virginia Budgeting: Achieving Bright Futures

This case covers strategic financial planning at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Virginia (BGCCVA), a nonprofit youth-serving organization with an annual expense budget of $6.7 million. In preparation for the next fiscal year, the CEO and CFO were...

Mexico: From Crisis to Reforms and from Reforms to Crisis

As he prepares for a 2023 meeting of General Electric Corp. (GE), Vladimiro de la Mora, president of GE Mexico, weighs the potential benefits and risks of nearshoring production to the Mexican border. Along with major ports that accessed both the Pacific...

Robinhood: Welcome to the New Wall Street?

Serena Khan, a fictional analyst at an investment management firm, was tasked with evaluating a potential investment in Robinhood Markets, Inc. in March 2023. Known for its sleek interface and zero-commission trades, Robinhood aimed to "democratize...

Southwest Airlines: Cutting through the Storm (B)

Winter Storm Elliott was a major storm system that grounded air travel across the United States in the days before and after Christmas of 2022. While other major airlines recovered quickly and got passengers to their destinations, Southwest Airlines Co...

Fairphone (B): Is It Really Worth It?

This case is a follow-up to "Fairphone (A): Can a Start-Up Change an Industry?" (UVA-OM-1712). Fairphone's goals to keep producing an ethically sourced smartphone were noble, but "doing well by doing good" could only be an idealistic slogan unless...

Southwest Airlines: Cutting through the Storm (A)

Winter Storm Elliott was a major storm system that grounded air travel across the United States in the days before and after Christmas of 2022. While other major airlines recovered quickly and got passengers to their destinations, Southwest Airlines Co...

Toxic Taps: Arsenic Exposure in Hungary

This case focuses on the challenges of the public provision of high-quality water in Hungary, a high-income, former Eastern Bloc country that has been a member of the European Union since 2004. It struggles with chronic groundwater arsenic contamination...

Accounting for Property, Plant, and Equipment and Depreciation Expense

This technical note provides an overview of accounting for property, plant, and equipment and depreciation expense. It discusses determining what costs related to the asset should be capitalized and what should be expensed, determining what amount should...

Umbrella of Protection: Health, Disability, and Life Insurance

Matthew Andrews and Elizabeth (Liz) Graham had recently graduated college and planned to get married soon. They had both accepted jobs in Washington, DC, and would be moving to Gainesville, Virginia. Matthew would be working as a software engineer with...

LOGY.AI: Revolutionizing Oral Health Through Artificial Intelligence

Capitalizing on the digitalization trend, Logy.AI captures a substantial market in the Indian and Nigerian oral healthcare space, earning a revenue of US$110,000 in FY 2023. The company's international and domestic adoption, which exceeds 200,000 within...

Schneider Electric's India Smart Factory: Creating a Sustainable Value Chain (Abridged)

The year was 2021. At his Gurugram office in Haryana, India, Anil Chaudhry, Zone President and Managing Director of Schneider Electric India Private Limited (SEIPL), sat working on his keynote address for a conference. He had been invited to present a...

Sustainability transformation at SITA

Aiming to blaze the trail that would lead the air travel industry out of the pandemic, SITA decided to reshuffle and renew its credit facilities. In the process, it established that sustainability - particularly ESG factors - would play an increasingly...

Corporate Strategy: Sectoral diversification

This technical note summarizes the main issues related to corporate strategy, i.e. the strategy of companies with a diversified business portfolio. In particular, the analysis focuses on the issue of sectoral diversification. The concept of corporate...

Strategic Alliances: An Option to Enable Corporate Growth

In this technical note, we present what we consider to be the most important issues in creating an SA. To avoid any terminological confusion, we will start by defining what we understand by SAs in the context of this technical note and the objectives...

Can the board of directors be an effective team?

This technical note discusses whether boards of directors can be effective teams to help govern the company. Most of the literature in this area deals with the board structure and composition. This note presents the key attributes of boards as human...

Family council

When you establish the governance mechanisms of an family enterprise, you do have to realize that is more complex than a non-family enterprise. And the difference is the family. In the same way you need to establish the governance of the business, you...

Reformist III: virtues, skills and tools

In the first note of this series - "How to be a reformer"- we analyze the fundamental attitudes of the reformer, which, to a large extent, can already be considered as basic virtues: rectitude, patience, etc. The second note - "Reformist II: strategies...

Reformist II: strategies for change

The Technical Note "How to be a reformer" sets out some fundamental attitudes of the reformer that make it possible to fulfill the manager's mission, defined by Antonio Valero as that of "achieving fairer and more effective realities over time2. This...

How to Be a Reformist: Basic Attitudes

Ethics is not about solving moral dilemmas using theories specific to this discipline (cf. the technical note Ethics beyond dilemmas). This business ethics course seeks to develop the attitude, virtues, skills and techniques of the reformer as the...

Dialogue in the Dark (DiD) China: Managing Diversity through Lessons in the Dark

This case is designed to help students understand how to manage diverse employees with unique strengths and weaknesses. It features the Dialogue in the Dark ("DiD") China organization, a social enterprise franchise that employs visually impaired people...

Allbirds China: Sustainable Footprints into an Emerging Market

The case describes how Allbirds, a U.S. eco-startup that entered the booming footwear market in China, met with challenges in putting their global perspective into local practice. This teaching note is designed for a 90-minute teaching plan, where...

How A Hidden Champion Defended its Title: The Strategic Choice of Juhui Food

This case study revolves around China's rapidly evolving catering industry, specifically focusing on the compound seasoning sector. It details the business practices of Chongqing Juhui Food Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as ""Juhui""), which adopts a...

Quicktron: Evolving into a Global AMR Unicorn

This case describes how Shanghai Quicktron Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. ("Quicktron"), a tech startup with a vision of establishing itself as China's Kiva, broke into mobile robotics at a time when the business had not garnered much attention from...

Zhongshan Hospital Affiliated to Fudan University: Where Smart Healthcare Meets the Future

Zhongshan Hospital was one of the best medical institutions in China, maintaining a leading position in domestic rankings thanks to its extensive capabilities. From 1992, the hospital leveraged information systems to efficiently manage daily operations...

Botanee: Leveraging Multi-touchpoint Marketing to Build a Strong Chinese Brand in the Digital Age

In recent years, new consumer brands have mushroomed to meet consumers' increasingly diverse and personalized demands. However, some struggled to achieve sustainable, long-term growth as they relied heavily on capital investment, outsourced production,...