The case study focuses on VidMorph, a SaaS company in the video production software business. This fictional company needs a pricing strategy for its new video editing platform (also called VidMorph). It plans to choose between a subscription-based or usage-based model; to decide whether to offer a time-limited free trial or a freemium version with limited functionality, along with setting a usage-based paywall for a full-function paid version; and to determine the optimal subscription price that should be charged for the product, using the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter model to estimate customer willingness to pay. This case study can be distributed, read, and analyzed in a single 90-minute class period; see the Appropriate Uses section below for the special advantages of using it that way. The case can also be studied and discussed in the traditional way, with the students reading it before an in-class discussion.
Kiera, a young, enthusiastic sales rep, was recently promoted to manager of a sales team of five. In her first year on the job, she tackled a major revamp of the company's outdated training materials and organized a regional conference for her area, but neither her boss nor corporate seemed to appreciate the work she had been doing. Without support or guidance from her boss, Kiera was confused. What was she supposed to do? The A and B cases present two different perspectives on coaching. Case A and Case A (Illustrated) contain a narrative from the point of view of the “coachee,” Kiera, who was learning how to work with her boss, ultimately with the assistance of an executive coach. This case focuses on coaching as a tool to enhance self-management and relationship management and to improve personal performance. Case B describes how Kiera started to learn the “coach approach” to managing her team with the continued guidance of her executive coach. She learned to apply the same skills that her coach used with her in Case A and Case A (Illustrated) to diagnose her team, share feedback, and communicate expectations. She was learning how to listen and ask thoughtful questions, but she also needed to expand her awareness to “other-management“ and build her own coaching skills to enhance her team's performance.
Set in 2023, the case features Sanergy, a Kenya-based social enterprise founded by three MIT graduates. Sanergy's circular sanitation model comprised a not-for-profit toilet unit, which provided safe access to sanitation and waste collection, and a for-profit agriproducts unit, which treated the waste and upcycled it into saleable organic products. Ten years after Sanergy's 2011 launch, cofounders David Auerbach, Lindsay Stradley, and Ani Vallabhaneni decided to split the two business units into distinct entities--Fresh Life (the toilet unit) and Regen Organics (the agriproducts unit)--that would operate under a new umbrella platform called The Sanergy Collaborative. Both units had high growth potential, but operating under the same brand name had impeded their ability to pursue strategies suitable for their distinct business models. This split would allow each entity to scale and explore opportunities that the sanitation value chain had unlocked in related domains. Although the new structure held clear benefits, it raised concerns, too. Would the enterprise be able to strike a balance between generating profits and creating impact? Most important, would Fresh Life and Regen be able to establish credibility among key stakeholders in the industry? Should the two organizations align their missions to leverage synergies, or should they forge their ct enterprises like Sanergy could adopt.
Viacom18, a Reliance Industries Ltd. company, acquired the streaming rights for the popular Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament for 2023-2027 for a whopping $2.89 billion. Unlike the previous rights holder, Disney+Hotstar, which put the streaming behind a paywall, Viacom18 decided to offer free streaming, betting on increased advertisement revenue from a massive increase in viewership. However, the free streaming for the 2023 IPL season only brought in advertisement revenues of $276 million against a projection of $450 million. The Viacom18 team needed to rethink its mix of advertising and subscription revenue. It had three options: a pure advertising-supported model (AVoD); a subscription model with packages for the IPL, possibly including a cheaper package with ad-supported content; and a blended business model that would combine the AVoD model with a small subscription fee (sachet pricing) specifically for the IPL. If the advertising-based model had created a large enough user base, it would have attracted advertisers and generated a profit. In the 2023 season, however, it produced only 60% of projected revenues, which was insufficient to pay the IPL licensing fee. On the other hand, a subscription-based model, although likely to create more revenue per user, would dramatically reduce the customer base because of Indian consumers' price sensitivity. Such a model also might not meet revenue expectations.
Little more than a year had passed since Chrissy Taylor, granddaughter of the company's founder and daughter of its longest-serving CEO, had been promoted, in December 2019, to CEO of Enterprise Holdings, the parent company of Enterprise Rent-A-Car. Taylor had spent her entire career in the family-owned business, but like all Enterprise employees, she started as a management trainee at a branch office. “Just like everybody else in our upper management, I started behind a rental counter,” Taylor said in an interview at the time of her promotion. “I worked my way up in various roles, learning the job by doing it: washing cars, picking up customers.” She was determined to continue the legacy of her family's company, which her father famously described as being committed to three things: “listening to and satisfying our customers, creating opportunities for our employees, and achieving long-term, sustainable growth.”
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Boeing and Airbus, the leading manufacturers of large commercial aircraft, were locked in a battle for market share that drove down prices for their new planes. At about the same time, the two industry heavyweights began developing new aircraft families to address their projected future market needs. Large commercial aircraft (generally defined as those carrying more than 100 passengers) were among the world's most complex and expensive manufactured products. A wide-body jet comprising millions of parts and nearly 200 miles of wires and tubing could be priced at $300 million or more. Design and manufacturing took up to ten years, from initial research to a finished product. The process required large numbers of highly trained and specialized workers. It also took large amounts of capital; recent aircraft programs were estimated to cost more than $13 billion. Manufacturers had to invest in extensive and highly specialized facilities and equipment and commit to high attendant fixed costs. To maximize their development investment, manufacturers created aircraft “families” that used the same airframe or body as a platform for multiple models. Within each family were aircraft that varied in numerous dimensions, the most important of which were passenger capacity and flight range–critical determinants of the airline's strategy. In October 2007, the Airbus superjumbo A380 made its first flight. The A380 carried more passengers than any other plane in history and had as a solution to increased congestion at global mega-hub airports. Four years later, the Boeing 787, a smaller long-range aircraft, was launched to serve secondary cities in a point-to-point network. When these planes made their inaugural flights, the global environment had significantly changed from when they were first planned. China and other emerging Asian economies were growing rapidly, spawning immediate and long-term demand for more aircraft. At the same time, changes to the market for air travel had created opportunities for new products. These opportunities had not gone unnoticed by potential new entrants, which were positioning themselves to compete against the market leaders. The case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the profit potential of the global aircraft manufacturing industry in 2002 and 2011. Students can also identify the actions of participants that weakened or intensified the pressure on profits within the industry.
The “Moral Complexity in Leadership” series of cases and teaching notes help business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Meaningful fiction challenges students intellectually and emotionally; it reveals the inner worlds of human players and enables learning that can be difficult to access through case studies, commentary, or reporting. Through literature, students will wrestle with the kinds of problems they will face as leaders looking to make courageous decisions aligned with their moral codes. The works in this series represent a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and cultural frameworks; the characters are complex and contradictory, and the systems within which they operate (whether family, organizational, or cultural) influence them in varied ways. They have been taught to executive, full- and part-time MBA student audiences for many years. The series aims to increase students' understanding of moral frameworks and enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. In this installment of the series, “Moral Distress and Rationalizations,” students will examine Allan Gurganus's “Blessed Assurance,” about a 59-year-old man named Jerry who narrates this novella by looking back on a part-time job he held when he was 19 years old, a role that still plagues him with guilt 40 years later. Working for Windlass Funerary Eventualities, Inc., his assignment was to collect weekly funeral insurance premium payments from elderly, impoverished Black people in the fictional small town of Falls, North Carolina. Windlass's practices were predatory: Customers were required to make payments every week or forfeit all compensation for their loved ones' funeral expenses, no matter how many hundreds or even thousands of dollars they had already paid. Jerry tells readers he needed the job to pay for college business courses and to help his parents, who suffered from “brown lung” (byssinosis) after working in a cotton mill for 30 years. Jerry tells the story because he still “feels bad about what went on,” and his wife says, “Telling somebody might help.” Moral Complexity in Leadership students have consistently found Gurganus's novella deeply resonant. Jerry's complicity in an unethical system over which he has little power and his tortured decision-making and rationalizations about whether to continue or to quit echo situations many students face. Even for those who have not yet encountered such situations, the story likely will be relevant soon.
In April 2024, Xander Griffin, Head of Consumer Innovation at OpenAI, was preparing for a roadmap review with CEO Sam Altman. Responsible for the company's generative artificial intelligence (genAI) flagship products ChatGPT and ChatGPT Enterprise, Griffin faced the challenge of maintaining OpenAI's leadership amid slowing product improvements and rising competition. ChatGPT quickly became the market leader in conversational AI after its November 2022 launch. It excelled at generating human-like text responses to user inputs by supporting use cases in virtual assistance, content generation, tutoring, coding, information retrieval, and multilingual communication. Griffin's task was to develop a compelling roadmap for ChatGPT's future releases, particularly GPT-5 and its subsequent iterations. Griffin was considering enhancements in multimodal interaction, customization, accuracy, integration, and bias mitigation. While creating their roadmap, they used ChatGPT to suggest future development themes and sprints. The results underscored AI's potential and limitations in strategic planning. Griffin needed to add their domain expertise and insights to ChatGPT's responses to create a product roadmap to ensure the company's sustained innovation and market leadership.
MoviePass is a movie ticket subscription service that grew slowly between 2011 and 2016 under its founder, Stacy Spikes. In 2016 and 2017, the company brought in a new CEO, Mitch Lowe, and a new majority owner, Ted Farnsworth, who cut the monthly subscription price to $9.95. The service grew meteorically but struggled to make the subscription ticket business profitable because $9.95 per month could not cover the cost of the movie tickets that MoviePass had to buy on behalf of its customers. According to Farnsworth, turning a profit on the subscription business was never the main idea; it was just a path to an advertising and marketing business built on the data. (The case provides some data on Facebook that enables students to benchmark this claim.) The original MoviePass went bankrupt in 2020 but was reincarnated in 2022 by Stacy Spikes with a business model that differed in several significant ways from the MoviePass of 2016-2018: the new model was a credit system, the subscription price was higher, and it had the support of a network of participating theaters.
Set in 2024, the case features Patel Brothers Group (PBG), a US-based Indian grocery retailer and distributor. PBG, a family-run enterprise, comprises two business units: Patel Brothers, a chain of grocery stores catering to the Indian diaspora, and Raja Foods, an importer and distributor of ethnic food products. Over its nearly 50 years of operations, Patel Brothers has established a strong presence in the US with 51 stores in 19 states, while Raja Foods manages the procurement and distribution of over 700 products. However, Rakesh Patel, co-CEO of PBG, recognizes the need to pursue a multipronged growth strategy going forward, which involves: (1) expanding PBG's retail and distribution presence in existing states and new markets like the West Coast, which are characterized by a burgeoning South Asian population and minimal competition; (2) introducing new retail product categories such as pharmacy, healthcare services, or insurance, akin to strategies employed by major retailers like Walmart and Target; and (3) tailoring its marketing mix to cater to the evolving profile of the Indian diaspora, which includes a growing number of South Indians and younger generations. Furthermore, given the post-COVID-19 rise in e-commerce, especially among the younger demographic, Patel Brothers also needs to adopt omnichannel retailing and build an active presence on social media platforms, which the retail group lacks. More important, the group needed to explore diversifying PBG's revenue streams by getting into businesses beyond retail, such as travel services, development of shopping complexes, and brokerage services for pigments and dye. These decisions call for substantial investments, organizational restructuring, manpower and asset acquisition, and resource allocation. Through this case, students will learn about market segmentation and targeting, the resource-based view (RBV) of determining the effectiveness of a business model, Ansoff's strategies for growth, and various other tools and frameworks to evaluate new product opportunities and expansion concepts that PBG could consider.
In December 2022, amid mounting pressure to cut costs, Google announced it would consolidate the operations of its four navigation-related brands under the leadership of Chris Phillips, vice president and general manager of the Geo services division. The restructuring plan meant that the 500-member team of Waze, a navigation app that had operated independently since its acquisition in 2013, would now be tied to Google's core mapping products—Google Maps, Google Street View, and Google Earth. Students will take the role of Aaliyah Williams, a fictional marketing consultancy CEO, and make recommendations to Phillips on crafting a portfolio strategy that optimizes Google's market share and growth. In analyzing this case, students will learn how to leverage brand architecture and brand management tools to ensure a strong portfolio with clear positionings that minimize brand overlap and cannibalization.
“Moral Complexity in Leadership” cases and teaching notes help business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Meaningful fiction challenges students intellectually and emotionally; it reveals the inner worlds of human players and enables learning that can be difficult to access via case studies, commentary, or reporting. Through literature, students will wrestle with the kinds of problems they will face as leaders looking to make courageous decisions aligned with their moral codes. Using fiction to spark dialogue on moral issues will challenge students to read critically and carefully; to listen carefully and empathetically; to facilitate and participate in open—and sometimes contentious—conversation; and to articulate well-reasoned opinions. The readings and discussions will lead students to understand more fully what enables people to make choices congruent with their values; to choose actions that convey care for the systems within which they operate (or for which they are responsible); and—perhaps most important—to determine how people can avoid getting themselves into trouble. The works in this series represent a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and cultural frameworks; the characters are complex and contradictory, and the systems within which they operate (whether family, organizational, or cultural) influence them in varied ways. These cases have been taught to executive, full-, and part-time MBA student audiences for years. The series aims to increase students' understanding of moral frameworks and to enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. In this installment of the series, “Race, Memory, and Moral Goodness,” students will examine Toni Morrison's lone short story, “Recitatif,” which has much to teach leaders about the complexity of race and social hierarchies, the ways in which our memories can deceive us, and the possiblessibility of moral goodness. The story, published in 1983 and spanning several decades, and tells of two girls who meet as residents at an orphanage in the late 1950s and then again as adults who reminisce about their shared past. One character is white and the other Black, but Morrison purposefully does not specify which is which. Time and again, when exploring “Recitatif,” students have shared how Morrison's story has challenged their preconceptions about race and sometimes unsettled them in ways that led them to reflect deeply on their understanding of race, finding new insights about the world and themselves.
This case describes a community-based healthcare clinic and the issues facing the management and board of directors. The issues raised are common problems faced by all types of nonprofit organizations: insufficient fundraising and marketing policies to guide board decision making, confusion over staff and board roles in decision making, poorly thought-out bylaws that contribute to the confusion over board and staff roles, the challenge of harnessing the diverse backgrounds and opinions of a community-based board of directors, and lack of sound financial planning.
Avocados from Mexico (AFM) is a marketing organization that exists to 1) build brand equity for avocados exported from Mexico to the United States and 2) increase category consumption. In preparing for 2022, after several years of successful advertising campaigns, the AFM decided to develop its next omnichannel strategy. A critical part of this decision was whether the company should continue to tout its product in Super Bowl advertisements. Although the organization had advertised in the Super Bowl from 2015 through 2020 as a media channel, the Super Bowl was growing in expense. Moreover, in 2021, AFM did not advertise in the Super Bowl yet achieved considerable success, calling into question the importance of Super Bowl advertising's role in the brand's omnichannel strategy.
“Moral Complexity in Leadership” cases and teaching notes help business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Meaningful fiction challenges students intellectually and emotionally; it reveals the inner worlds of human players and enables learning that can be difficult to access via case studies, commentary, or reporting. Through literature, students will wrestle with the kinds of problems they will face as leaders looking to make courageous decisions aligned with their moral codes. Using fiction to spark dialogue on moral issues will challenge students to read critically and carefully; to listen carefully and empathetically; to facilitate and participate in open—and sometimes contentious—conversation; and to articulate well-reasoned opinions. The readings and discussions will lead students to understand more fully what enables people to make choices congruent with their values; to choose actions that convey care for the systems within which they operate (or for which they are responsible); and—perhaps most important—to determine how people can avoid getting themselves into trouble. The works in this series represent a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and cultural frameworks; the characters are complex and contradictory, and the systems within which they operate (whether family, organizational, or cultural) influence them in varied ways. These cases have been taught to executive, full-, and part-time MBA student audiences for years. The series aims to increase students' understanding of moral frameworks and to enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. In this installment of the series, “Evaluating Personal and Professional Integrity,” students will examine Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's award-winning first novel, Purple Hibiscus, a coming-of-age story with lessons that can be applied to broader human dynamics regarding a life of integrity versus a divided life, the classic rationalizations that can justify enormous harm, and the pull between defiance and obedience, between silence and speaking up. The novel, published in 2003 and set in post-colonial Nigeria, is narrated by a shy 15-year-old girl named Kambili Achike, who lives a comfortable life but experiences verbal and physical domestic abuse perpetrated on her, her mother (Beatrice), and her brother (Jaja) by her father (Eugene), a respected community leader who is a devout Catholic and known for always coming to the aid of those less fortunate outside the family. The clash of these two juxtaposed realities of the divided self have far-reaching consequences on Kambili's entire family.
In this case, students will assume the role of a fictional hedge fund analyst, Iván Champeau, who is conducting a pro forma financial analysis of KLA-Tencor (NASDAQ: KLAC), a publicly traded conglomerate in the semiconductor capital equipment industry with a focus on the process-control segment. The case takes place in the summer of 2014, immediately after the June 30 end of KLAC's fiscal year. Champeau feels that KLAC management has been too conservative in its capital structure management and could increase the firm's value by leveraging the company with more debt and using the proceeds to conduct a large share-buyback program. In the case's decision point, students must choose among four options regarding how much debt to recommend that the company issue. The case's flexibility allows it to be taught as an introduction or a more advanced and nuanced approach to the concept of capital structure management using debt's tax shield, counterbalanced by the potential costs of financial distress brought about by taking on more leverage.
Serenique is an AI-driven online mental health counseling startup that created a custom large language model (LLM) for mental health counseling. Serenique has achieved significant market success, but to drive growth, the company wants to expand into online couples counseling. Seeing a rapidly growing market, the company is evaluating three strategic options: developing an in-house AI-powered module; acquiring DuoHarmony, a startup with a solid foothold in the online couples therapy market; or partnering with a traditional counseling company called Amity to combine AI with human expertise. The options vary in cost, level of control, integration effort, and speed to market. Serenique must decide the best option for enhancing its capabilities to enter online couples counseling.
The “Moral Complexity in Leadership” series of cases and teaching notes help business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Meaningful fiction challenges students intellectually and emotionally; it reveals the inner worlds of human players and enables learning that can be difficult to access through case studies, commentary, or reporting. Through literature, students will wrestle with the kinds of problems they will face as leaders looking to make courageous decisions aligned with their moral codes. The works in this series represent a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and cultural frameworks; the characters are complex and contradictory, and the systems within which they operate (whether family, organizational, or cultural) influence them in varied ways. They have been taught to executive, full- and part-time MBA student audiences for many years. The series aims to increase students' understanding of moral frameworks and enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. In this installment of the series, “Greed,” we examine Leo Tolstoy's “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” This classic tale of a man who forfeits everything in his pursuit of more land gives students an opportunity to discuss how comparison and escalating acquisitiveness (greed) affect them in their professional and communal circles. It also creates an opportunity for meaningful discussion of ways to identify and manage the human tendency to want more.
This case study explores Microsoft Teams' strategic response to Zoom's rapid rise during the COVID-19 pandemic. It highlights the ways in which Microsoft leveraged its customer base, expertise in enterprise software, and integration with the Microsoft 365 suite to challenge Zoom in the video communications market. The case highlights the playbook Microsoft has used many times over the past three decades to compete against challengers who established a first-mover advantage. It covers two phases of the competitive battle between Microsoft Teams and Zoom. The first phase began with the launch of Microsoft Teams in 2017 and ended in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic helped Zoom dominate the video communication market. The second phase of the battle focuses on how Microsoft Teams counterattacked to gain market share against Zoom.
After a successful transition from a projects-based IT business services company to a platform-driven analytics company, Saama's core leadership team gathered in 2017 to brainstorm the next phase of its growth. The year before, the team had decided to narrow its target market to the life sciences vertical. Saama now had to decide how to execute on this focused strategy by choosing a growth pathway within the life sciences vertical. Saama's leadership team was considering three alternatives: acquiring new customer accounts, developing existing customer accounts, or developing new products by harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies. The team had to evaluate these growth pathways in terms of both short- and long-term revenue potential, as well as their potential for sustaining Saama's competitive advantage.
