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• Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2018 (Revised September 2018)

  Huawei: How Can We Lead the Way?

  Elie Ofek, Tian Tao, Eden Yin and Nancy Hua Dai

  On September 12, 2017, just as Apple’s Tim Cook was unveiling the iPhone X, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s Consumer Business Group (CBG), and Glory Cheung, his Chief Marketing Officer, were discussing some key strategic issues regarding Huawei’s smartphone business. Established in 1987, Huawei was the largest telecom equipment company in the world. Huawei established the CBG in 2012 to focus on Huawei-branded smartphone models and within five years had risen to be the No. 3 player in the market in terms of shipments—next only to Apple and Samsung. As they finished watching Cook’s presentation, Yu and Cheung thought about the Mate 10 series, Huawei’s most advanced smartphone that would be launched on October 16, 2017, in Germany. The new models would include Huawei’s proprietary Kirin 970 chipset, which boasted having the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) mobile processor. They had to decide how to position, communicate, and price the new phones. Yet beyond these near-term decisions, a major challenge facing Huawei was how to make good on Yu’s bold vision to overtake Apple and Samsung in market share within three to five years, while maintaining healthy profits. This task seemed particularly daunting given the difficulties the company had encountered in penetrating the lucrative U.S. market. What would it take for Huawei to be the number one smartphone brand globally?

  Keywords: Product Launch; Product Positioning; Marketing Communications; Price; Competitive Strategy; Global Strategy;

  Citation:

  Ofek, Elie, Tian Tao, Eden Yin, and Nancy Hua Dai. "Huawei: How Can We Lead the Way?" Harvard Business School Case 518-071, February 2018. (Revised September 2018.)  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2018

  Sealed Air Corporation: Deciding the Fate of VTID (Abridged)

  Elie Ofek

  In mid-2010 the Sealed Air Corporation has to decide on next steps for its novel video tracking technology (called VTID) after unsuccessful attempts to market it in three different industry settings. The company must determine whether its most recent target market, the quick-serve restaurant segment, is still worth pursuing or whether the company should look for a different application and market altogether. The company could also revisit the previous two applications, tracking and tracing processed meat and tracking employee safety practices. At the other extreme, after seven years of R&D and marketing efforts and millions of dollars in expenses, the company could cease attempts to commercialize VTID.

  Keywords: Budgets and Budgeting; Customer Focus and Relationships; Decision Choices and Conditions; Technological Innovation; Marketing Strategy; Problems and Challenges; Commercialization; Service Industry;

  Citation:

  Ofek, Elie. "Sealed Air Corporation: Deciding the Fate of VTID (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 519-030, September 2018.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | August 2017 (Revised July 2018)

  MannKind Corporation: Take a Deep Breath, This Time Afrezza Will Work

  Elie Ofek and Amanda Dai

  In June 2014, MannKind Corporation announced that after years of development and billions of dollars in expenses, the FDA had finally approved its drug, Afrezza. MannKind would thus be the only company with an inhalable insulin on the market. As an alternative to injectable rapid-acting (or mealtime) insulin, Afrezza boasted a potential market of at least 4 million diabetic patients. Shortly thereafter, Sanofi, a company with vast experience in the diabetic space, became MannKind’s marketing partner and helped launch Afrezza in February, 2015. Although the drug had a black box warning and required doctors to perform a lung test on patients, expectations were high, with some analysts predicting peak sales of up to $4 billion a year. However, those lofty hopes were quickly dashed when Afrezza generated lackluster first-year sales, driving Sanofi to terminate its short-lived contract with MannKind in January 2016. MannKind's management attributed the launch’s failure to a poor marketing approach, convinced that Sanofi, despite its strong global presence and experience, did not effectively address critical barriers to adoption. The company now planned to overhaul Afrezza’s entire marketing strategy. This included rethinking which patients and physicians to target, how to position the drug to engender interest and adoption, how to lower end consumer price, through which media to convey Afrezza's benefits, and how to streamline the process of performing the lung test and getting the drug into the hands of patients. But would all these changes and initiatives, no matter how well executed, be enough to turn sales around? Would Afrezza ever realize the potential that Alfred Mann, the late founder and former CEO, saw in the novel treatment?

  Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Product Launch; Product Positioning; Marketing Strategy; Adoption; Pharmaceutical Industry;

  Citation:

  Ofek, Elie, and Amanda Dai. "MannKind Corporation: Take a Deep Breath, This Time Afrezza Will Work." Harvard Business School Case 518-031, August 2017. (Revised July 2018.)  View Details

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