John Wells is a Professor of Management Practice in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School where he teaches the first year core course in strategy and his own second year elective course on strategic innovation and change. He also teaches in several executive education programs.
Dr. Wells graduated from Oxford University with first class honors in Physics, focusing on nuclear and solid state. Following training as a cost and management accountant at Unilever, he attended Harvard Business School, where he was a George F. Baker Scholar and graduated as Valedictorian of the MBA Class of 1979. After two years at Boston Consulting Group, he joined Harvard Business School's Faculty to teach Industry and Competitor Analysis and Business Policy. In 1982 he was awarded a Dean's Doctoral Fellowship; he received his doctorate in 1984 after completing his thesis "In Search of Synergy", which quantified the impact of synergy on corporate profitability. The same year he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Business Policy Faculty, conducting research on the dynamics of competition and the application of artificial intelligence techniques to business problems.
In 1986, Dr. Wells became Chief Executive of Monitor Company Europe Ltd., a subsidiary of the firm he helped create with Michael Porter and Mark Fuller. He built the European practice and directed strategy studies for numerous firms and national governments. During this time he also co-founded Datapaq, a digital data acquisition company serving the automotive and packaging industries that continues to be the leader in its field.
Dr. Wells joined PepsiCo in 1994, initially as CFO of the European snacks division. He was then appointed CEO of Wedel, a PepsiCo affiliate and Poland's number one chocolate, biscuits, confectionery and snacks producer. In 1997 he was appointed CFO of Frito-Lay International, based in Dallas, Texas, with responsibility for all international snack operations.
In 1998, Dr. Wells joined the board of Thomson Travel Group, the UK's largest holiday company, responsible for the Group's strategy, mergers and acquisitions and e-commerce development.
Dr. Wells invests in and advises a number of start-ups, and in early 2002, joined Archie Norman, the ex-Chairman of ASDA in the UK, in a $1.3 billion management buy-in of Energis, the UK's third largest telecommunications service provider. Energis was later sold to Cable and Wireless Plc.
In the summer of 2002, he rejoined the Harvard Business School Faculty as the James M. Collins Fund Senior Lecturer in Strategy. In August 2003, he was appointed Professor of Management Practice.
In 2008 Dr. Wells became the president of IMD, International Institute for Management Development, in Switzerland before returning to Harvard Business School as a Professor of Management Practice in 2011.
Dr. Wells’ current research addresses how companies overcome inertia and increase their strategic responsiveness. He is examining strategic, structural and human factors that impede change and how they might be overcome. Some of his research is explained in his recent book, Strategic IQ: Creating Smarter Corporations, published in June 2012. John has also written over 50 case studies on strategy and change. He is currently examining the role of responsible leadership in business and society, the impact of social networking on strategic change and the importance of relevant learning.
Dr. Wells has worked and lived in Poland, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA. His business responsibilities and research have taken him to all corners of the world.
In today's world, only the smartest survive. The competitive landscape is littered with graves of well-known firms whose revenues, profits and stock prices rose for decades until they suddenly imploded.
In fast-changing business environments, firms must adapt their strategies and innovate to remain at the top. But many successful firms fail to do so. Instead, they succumb to inertia, hesitate, or stick blindly to their old strategies, until it is too late.
The ability to adapt to change is a measure of intelligence; so why do firms demonstrate such low Strategic IQ? What causes inertia and why is it so deadly? How can leaders help their firms to act more intelligently?
This book identifies the key sources of inertia—strategic, structural and human—and provides practical advice on how they can be overcome to create smarter corporations. It is both a wake-up call for successful firms and a lifeline for firms struggling to succeed.
To successful firms—beware! You may already be dead!
To struggling firms—have hope! It is possible to pass powerful competitors by raising your strategic, structural and human IQ.
In August 2018, pymetrics, a solution offering neuroscience-based recruiting tests, closed a $40 million funding round that valued the business at $160 million. Over 60 companies around the globe were using pymetrics tests in their recruiting process, including Unilever, Hyatt, and Accenture. Clients were seeing real impact, including time and cost reductions – 75% reduction in time-to-hire and 25% reduction in recruiting costs, as well as significant increases in diversity (in some cases over 100%) –and new-hire performance through metrics like retention. In addition, 1 million job candidates around the world had played pymetrics games to obtain career guidance.
pymetrics tools offered significant advantages over traditional personality tests such as Myers Briggs because they measured brain function rather than responses to self-administered questionnaires. They also collected a lot more data very quickly and measured critical brain functions associated with effective executives, ranging from analytical capacity and risk aversion to attentiveness, resolve, ability to interpret emotions, speed of learning, and capacity for trust.
In early 2019, the company was expanding rapidly. It employed nearly 100 people and operated out of 4 offices around the world. CEO Frida Polli was contemplating next steps. What should the priorities be? Was it more important to add more clients or develop more services to build current clients? How many global offices should the company operate, and how should these be organized? And could the company make more of its bias-free recruiting processes in a world where regulation against discrimination was becoming increasingly important?
In March 2013, pymetrics CEO Frida Polli visited Harvard Business School to listen to a section of MBA students from the class of 2013 to discuss her business plan and provide feedback on the tests they had taken to identify career opportunities. Polli had developed a series of neuroscience-based tests to measure brain function and map this to the profiles of successful executives. She believed that these could collect much more data than conventional psychographic tests in much less time, and it would be much more difficult for the candidate to “game” the system. Polli’s goal was to help companies recruit more effectively. In preparation for the class, the MBA students had all taken the tests. She looked forward to discussing the results.
In 2013, CEO Frida Polli was contemplating the next steps for her start-up business, pymetrics. After receiving her PhD in neuropsychology and MBA from HBS, she was determined to put her scientific and academic knowledge to work to build a business solving real world problems. To this end, her team at pymetrics had adapted a set of robust neuroscience-based computer exercises designed to measure a number of elements of brain functionality and apply these exercises to the world of talent assessment. In just about 25 minutes, these tests compiled a powerful cognitive, social, and emotional profile of the individual that could match the output of experienced interviewers or much longer psychometric testing programs. And the added benefit was that these tests, unlike interviews, discussion panels, or self-reported questionnaires, were hard to “game” because the underlying brain function and rate of learning showed through.
Frida believed that her exercise suite would be invaluable to recruiters and had demonstrated to a hedge fund and a major consulting firm that it was much more cost effective than their traditional approaches and could be used to broaden their search for the best talent. As she got out of the cab at LaGuardia to catch the plane for Boston, she wondered what the Harvard Business School class she was about to address would think of her ideas and how they might suggest she implement them.
In October 2017, Experian, one of the “Big Three” consumer credit reporting agencies in the United Kingdom made an offer to acquire ClearScore for a total consideration of £293 million. Founded by Justin Basini, Dan Cobley, and Nigel Morris in 2014, ClearScore was the UK’s first company to offer consumers full credit reports and scores for free. ClearScore had accumulated over 5 million customers since its launch on July 15, 2015, and was growing rapidly. In the final quarter of 2017, it was set to reach break-even and deliver £27 million in revenues for the year. Was this the time to sell?
In July 2019, Allstate, the United States’ number-three property and casualty (P/C) insurer, released its second-quarter earnings, which reported first-half revenues of $22.1 billion, up 11.4% year-over-year. Shareholders cheered the top-line growth, but, P/C premiums had only grown 6.2%, considerably lower than Allstate’s top competitors, GEICO and Progressive. Indeed, since the beginning of the global financial crisis, Allstate had grown net premiums earned by just 2.1% per year, compared to 7.6% at Progressive and 9.9% at GEICO. As a result, Allstate had fallen from the number-two writer of private passenger auto insurance to number four, losing market share each year. There was, however, some sign that Allstate was returning to faster growth, with net premiums earned up 5.3% in 2018.
During this period, CEO Thomas Wilson had taken steps to reignite growth, concerned primarily with building Allstate’s direct-sales business, expanding its range of usage-based products and telematics solutions, and focusing more on insuring smaller consumer devices. Still, growth remained laggard, despite high-profile acquisitions of the direct online specialist Esurance in October 2011 and SquareTrade, a provider of extended warranty contracts for consumer devices, in November 2016. Nothing seemed to ward off challenges from GEICO and Progressive.
Meanwhile, rapid advances in ridesharing and autonomous vehicle technology promised to disrupt the entire auto insurance industry. Allstate was early to recognize this shift and had begun investing heavily in new technologies and partnering with researchers and ridesharing operators to prepare for the coming disruptions. Wilson had also set up a new business unit called Arity that would oversee Allstate’s efforts at usage-based telematics and to collect and process data on drivers to improve underwriting models.
Allstate was positioning itself for a future in which the insurance industry would look fundamentally different. Still, Wilson needed to convince shareholders that Allstate’s return to growth would continue. The growth of Esurance and SquareTrade had been somewhat promising. Should he focus on building the direct online segment, competing with GEICO and Progressive? Or, should he continue to grow SquareTrade and the services segment, accepting that Allstate auto insurance was a declining business? The future of Allstate was hanging in the balance.
In early 2019, Randell Johnson, Founder and Chief Executive of Acelerex, was reflecting on the company’s first year of rapid growth and the challenges of scaling the business that lay ahead. Acelerex was riding the waves of change taking place in electrical power grids as battery storage was introduced and more renewable energy was integrated into the systems. These changes opened up opportunities for a whole range of software and support services. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, at the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC), Acelerex was leveraging technologies, such as big data and grid analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) forecasting tools, cloud computing, real time control systems, energy storage testing software, monitoring, and blockchain smart contracts, to provide consulting expertise and software-as-a-service (SaaS) products to a diverse group of stakeholders, including state and municipal policymakers, regulators, grid developers, utilities, and investors. Demand for Acelerex’s services had outstripped supply, and, within a year, the company had grown to 14 professionals, with advanced degrees in multiple technical domains. Moreover, the company had made a profit in its first year, had achieved proof of concept and minimum viable products for all of its targeted services, and made sales along all business lines. But, cash flow had been a constant challenge because of slow-paying clients and rising fixed costs, while talent development had proved a “headache.”
Acelerex was Johnson’s first start-up after 25 years of experience working with major firms and research institutions across all segments of the power sector, including generation, transmission, distribution, consumption, and storage. Having doubled in size for four quarters, he had set himself the challenge of doubling in size again, but he was going to take a year to do it. He was confident there was enough business in the USA to support this rate of expansion and that he could hire the team to deliver it, but was uncertain whether he should raise funds to resolve the cash flow pressure. He was also being asked to do more and more work in China, India, and Africa; did this make sense? And to add to his list of opportunities, he had been asked to provide similar services to transport, natural gas, and water networks. As the company’s website claimed, it was “an era of many options” for Acelerex. After a year of 7-day weeks and 150 nights away from home, Johnson considered his next steps.
In April 2019, Asesh Sarkar, co-founder and chief executive of Salary Finance Limited, a London-based FinTech, faced tough choices. Sarkar had founded Salary Finance with Dan Cobley and Daniel Shakhani in 2015. The company’s value proposition was quite simple: partner with employers to offer employees affordable loans that were repaid through automatic payroll deductions. Taking repayments directly from salary, and collecting those repayments in one transaction from the employer, dramatically reduced costs, saving employees large amounts of interest when compared to market alternatives like credit cards or payday lenders. For improving access to affordable credit, Salary Finance garnered considerable praise in the media, being named one of the UK’s most socially responsible and innovative FinTech companies.
Since the beginning of 2018, Salary Finance had introduced a savings product and an earned income advance product that were linked to employee salary. In September 2018, they expanded to the United States, in partnership with the United Way, opening an office in Boston, Massachusetts.
Sarkar was excited by the progress but was still pondering how best to accelerate further growth and improve the business. First there was the question of geographic expansion. Did it make sense to pursue other markets like India? Or, should he focus on building Salary Finance’s position in the UK and US? In these markets, should he prioritize attracting new employers to the platform or adding new products such as mortgages or investments? Should he register as a bank, tapping into low cost deposits and reducing the dependence on commercial borrowing to fund loans? Finally, he was concerned about how to best maintain Salary Finance’s culture – “For People Not Numbers” – during rapid growth. These questions and more weighed heavily on Sarkar’s mind as he considered the company’s future.
In early 2017, Judith Judson (Harvard Business School MBA, 2000), Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER), was reflecting on the results of the initiative she had led to identify the contribution advanced electricity storage could make to electricity generation and distribution in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The study was the first major output from the $10 million Energy Storage Initiative (ESI) launched by Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s administration in May 2015. The advanced simulation techniques employed in the study indicated that over a ten-year period, the optimal deployment of storage capacity would cut the cost of electricity for consumers in the Commonwealth by $230 million per year, deliver $110 million in annual revenues for storage providers, and reduce CO2 emissions by 100,000 tons a year, the equivalent of taking 22,000 cars off the road. Moreover, neighboring states would benefit from $250 million in lowered wholesale prices. To deliver these benefits, 1.77 GWh of advanced storage would be required across the grid, costing between $970 million and $1.35 billion. Incorporating the perspectives of a wide body of stakeholders (from utilities to municipalities to generators), the study wound up recommending a suite of policies that would facilitate the installation of 600 MWh of storage capacity by 2025, representing about six minutes of the state’s daily electricity consumption and delivering $800 million in benefits to ratepayers. It would also make the Commonwealth a leader in advanced storage technology and deliver substantial greenhouse gas reductions. At the end of 2015, according to figures from the Department of Energy, Massachusetts ranked 23rd in the United States in energy storage deployment, well behind the leader, Arizona, with nearly 300 MWh, and Texas, with over 150 MWh. However, with advances in storage technology, California promised to become the leader and had plans for nearly 1 GWh of storage capacity over the next five years. The ESI was seeking input on how to spend the balance of its $10 million budget and whether to authorize an additional $10 million on proof-of-concept deployments of the technology. Commissioner Judson pondered. Was this aggressive enough? And where did advanced storage stand in the priorities for the energy future of the Commonwealth?
In 2017, the global market for rechargeable lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries was 126 gigawatt-hours (GWh) valued at $37 billion, growing by $10 billion in two years. Once confined largely to consumer electronics and appliances, the rapid increase in demand was spurred by the adoption of electric cars and buses. Moreover, the falling cost of batteries was sparking interest in another potential huge market – the electrical utility sector. Batteries could be used to store electricity in periods of low demand and release it when demand was high, significantly reducing the need for peak generation capacity. However, historically, the costs of doing this had been prohibitively high.
In response to the expected demand, several companies had announced “gigafactories,” plants that, combined, could produce many times more output than total global demand in 2017. Tesla, Inc., the electric car maker, was the first. In 2014, it announced a 35 GWh battery plant, costing $5 billion, to be built in Nevada, enough capacity to fulfill global demand in 2013. In 2017, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he would announce an additional four gigafactory locations to supply the global market.
Tesla was not alone in its battery ambitions. In late 2016, start-up Alevo began delivery of its new “GridBank” batteries from a 3.5 million square foot facility in North Carolina, with the potential to scale to 60 GWh. Alevo claimed its batteries lasted four times longer and were safer than the conventional Li-ion batteries used by Tesla. Anxious not to be reliant on third parties, in 2017, several automakers had announced plans to build battery capacity, including General Motors and Daimler. Indeed, Daimler announced two plants for its Mercedez brand cars, one in Germany and one in China. New start-ups were also entering the fray, with Northvolt AB of Sweden partnering with ABB of Switzerland to build a 32 GWh facility. Ten new gigafactories were announced in the first six months of 2017, although not all were Li-ion. For instance, Toyota announced it was to invest in a new solid state technology that would reduce weight and lengthen battery life. Then there were Chinese and Korean players like CATL and LG Chem planning their own gigafactories. Whether the market would develop fast enough to absorb this supply, and which technologies would finally win, was unclear in 2017.
Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "Rechargeable Batteries, 2017: Gigafactory Wars in the Offing?" Harvard Business School Background Note 719-472, March 2019.
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On December 5, 2018, Waymo LLC, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., launched the United States’ first commercial driverless-car ride-hailing service (Waymo One), based in Phoenix, Arizona. As with other ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft, Waymo One riders downloaded an app onto their smartphones that allowed them to request pick-up and drop-off points. At launch, Waymo One was limited to an area of roughly 100 square miles, but few doubted that the service would soon be extended to more geographies. When asked where it would be launched next, CEO John Krafcik commented, “We’re going to grow and be paced by the level of safety that the technology provides in each of the environments that we serve.” Just how fast that pace would be was driven by a whole host of regulatory, technological, and competitive uncertainties. There was also the question of the ultimate role Waymo might play in the autonomous vehicle world. What should Waymo be aiming for?
On January 6, 2019, HelloSelf, a London-based “BrainTech” company, founded a year earlier by Charles Wells, soft launched. The proposition was simply to help its members “Be your Best Self.” The company provided its registered members with access to a clinical psychotherapist, a life coach, and an AI engine that personalized advice. The platform provided members with the ability to set goals, track progress, and discover new things about themselves. Throughout the previous nine months, over 500 people had registered interest in the proposition, price points had been tested, competitors analyzed, members and specialists interviewed, and wireframes developed, but there were several questions still crossing Wells’ mind. Did the subscription LifeCoach bot model combined with pay-as-you-go therapist sessions make sense? How could he attract an early cohort of users? How would HelloSelf interact with the broken mental health solutions in the UK? How quickly would the platform scale and learn to provide meaningful AI support for both therapists and the LifeCoach bot? And most importantly, would the platform deliver on the mission “to help everyone discover, understand and experience their Best Self”?
John R. Wells, Benjamin Weinstock and Gabriel Ellsworth
According to many analysts and industry observers, in 2018 Amazon became the largest retailer of apparel in the United States and the second largest in the world, behind Alibaba. Much of Amazon’s apparel was made by third-party retailers on its platform, but Amazon had been working to build its own fashion retail skills for more than 15 years and had made a number of acquisitions to this end. Having failed to convince leading brands to sell on Amazon, the company had also launched several private-label lines to boost its presence in fashion apparel. However, in 2017, it had finally convinced leading brand Nike to sell direct on its platform. Christine M. Beauchamp (Harvard Business School MBA, 1997), the President of Amazon Fashion since June 2017, was contemplating next steps.
Meanwhile, leading online and fast-fashion specialists such as ASOS in the UK and Inditex in Spain did not appear to have much to be concerned about. However, many traditional fashion retailers, struggling to build effective multi-channel strategies, were facing slow growth and pressure on margins. Would 2018 mark the beginning of the demise of traditional fashion retailing? What role would the bricks-and-mortar channel in fashion retailing play in the future? What might the future look like for the fashion industry? And what role might Amazon play in it?
Wells, John R., Benjamin Weinstock, and Gabriel Ellsworth. "Amazon in Fashion." Harvard Business School Case 719-481, February 2019. (Revised September 2019.)
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Electric cars had long been championed by environmentalists as a superior solution to the internal combustion engine (ICE), but, despite large government incentives and strong pioneering efforts by a few automakers over the years, electric and hybrid cars and light trucks still accounted for less than 1% of total global production in 2016. However, events took a turn in 2017 and 2018, when many governments committed to banning ICE vehicles. In response, leading automakers announced plans to launch hundreds of electric vehicle models within five years. Early pioneer Tesla, which, in 2017, had built a stock market valuation exceeding that of General Motors (GM), despite only delivering 103,000 cars compared to GM’s 9 million, looked as if it were about to be engulfed by this new competition. But not all were convinced that electric cars would soon displace conventional ICE vehicles. It was not clear that the infrastructure was in place to charge all these electric vehicles. There were also questions concerning the electrical generating capacity to meet the new demand. Would battery prices fall enough to make mass-market demand a possibility? In low gasoline cost jurisdictions, such as the United States, the economics of owning an electric vehicle didn’t appear justified, unless subsidies were maintained indefinitely. In Europe, where gasoline taxes were high, the case for electric vehicles was stronger. But European governments depended on those taxes to meet their budget needs. Would a significant uptake of electric vehicles necessitate higher taxes on electricity? In 2018, electric cars were an expensive novelty for the rich subsidized by the poor. Would the sudden rush of new models change the balance?
Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "Electric Car Wars, 2018." Harvard Business School Case 719-470, February 2019. (Revised April 2019.)
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This case describes the history of the United Kingdom's domestic energy industry and the country's efforts to create a more competitive, greener, and distributed power sector. On July 24, 2017, the United Kingdom government and the industry regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem), published a report listing 29 actions to be taken to "remove barriers to smart technologies," "enable smart homes and businesses," and "improve access to energy markets for new technologies and business models." The report promised yet more disruption for the 60 suppliers who provided energy for the UK's 27.1 million households.
How welcome the proposals would be to the players in the industry was not clear. The "Big Six" vertically-integrated generators and retailers, which accounted for more than 80% of the market, were facing declining sales and market share in the face of a huge number of new entrants: 30 in the last three years alone. The recent threat of a price cap on bills — or even a government take-over — did little to encourage further investment. Meanwhile, a group of six mid-tier challengers, accounting for 12% of the market, had grown big enough to be burdened with the many social and environmental charges faced by the Big Six and their growth had slowed. Several of them were now diversifying into other service offerings such as broadband or homeowner's insurance, or were looking for opportunities overseas. Then there were more than 50 small players, mostly recent entrants. While many were growing fast, often using their customers' deposits to fund growth, they were not profitable and had limited capacity for investment in "smarter energy."
Meanwhile, the UK government was keen to encourage players such as Google and Amazon into the market to drive disruption. Just how quickly the UK energy market would get smarter remained to be seen.
Founded at the end of 1999 by Juliet Davenport and Martin Edwards, Good Energy was the number-two renewable-energy seller in the United Kingdom at the end of 2016, supplying over 71,000 of the country’s 27 million households and small businesses with 100% renewable electricity and over 44,000 with gas. It also provided administrative support for over 133,000 mostly domestic solar generators selling surplus energy to the grid. Its wind and solar farms generated enough electricity for 20,000 homes. Revenues of £90 million had grown at an average of 33% over the previous five years, while operating profits of £6.0 million had grown at 27%.
However, all was not good at Good Energy. A commitment in 2015 to grow to 900,000 customers by 2020 was revised in 2016 to a target of “sustainable profit growth and enhanced customer service.” Moreover, the long-term goal of generating 50% of energy sold was abandoned in favor of sourcing more from third parties. Part of the challenge appeared to be the entry of many new renewable-energy suppliers that offered tariffs 20% to 30% below Good Energy’s tariffs. But CEO Juliet Davenport faced other challenges. A hostile government was threatening to cap energy rates and reduce renewable subsidies. Meanwhile, Dale Vince, the CEO of Ecotricity, the number-one green-energy supplier in the United Kingdom and Good Energy’s biggest shareholder, was trying to claim two seats on the board. How was Davenport going to navigate through these challenges and maintain Good Energy’s success?
At the end of 2017 First Utility Ltd. was the largest of the middle-tier domestic energy suppliers in the United Kingdom, serving 808,000 of the country’s 27 million households with electricity and gas. In Q1 2017 First Utility captured 3% market share. The company had grown rapidly from 2011 to 2014, doubling in size each year, and CEO Ian McCaig had signaled that he was considering an IPO. However, in 2015 growth slowed, and profits fell by 84%. The same year, the company began expanding into Germany and Poland and building its own billing system. Growth slowed further in early 2016, and First Utility recorded a loss of £12.7 million for the year. Plans for an IPO were shelved. Instead, the company began looking for strategic partnerships to offer new products and services to its UK customer base. Whether First Utility’s new geographies and product lines would revive growth was unclear. Meanwhile, in May 2017, CEO McCaig announced that he would step down in September. In December 2017, the company announced that Royal Dutch Shell would acquire First Utility for an undisclosed sum. The deal was approved in February 2018, and First Utility was rolled into Shell’s New Energies division.
This is the third case in a three-case series on Bulb Energy Ltd. It follows “Bulb (A): Foundation” (719-440) and “Bulb (B): Launch” (719-441). After a wild and volatile year, Bulb, a new entrant in the UK residential energy market, ended March 2018 with 329,127 properties, 1.2% of the total residential energy market. This was 150% ahead of a plan for 130,000 properties and almost ten times the size the founders, Amit Gudka and Hayden Wood, had imagined in August 2015 when they first launched. Bulb was now one of the top 12 energy suppliers in the UK. Gudka and Wood were convinced that if they reinvested all their profits in growth, they would reach 500,000 properties by March 2019, and reach more than 1 million by March 2021. This would mean postponing the launch of a range of value-added services they had included in their original Launch Plan, but it could make Bulb number 7 in the industry and the first real challenger to the UK's "Big Six" leading energy suppliers to pass the one million-member mark. Was it time to seek more funding to really challenge the Big Six, making renewable energy mainstream? And did it make sense to delay value-added services to support energy conservation, distributed generation, and the switch to electric vehicles, or should they seek funding to support these initiatives too?
This is the second case in a three-case series on Bulb Energy Ltd. It comes after “Bulb (A): Foundation” (719-440) and is followed by “Bulb (C): Rapid Growth” (719-442). It describes the launch of Bulb, a renewable energy supplier entering the highly competitive UK market in August 2015. By the end of March 2017, Bulb had grown to supply 29,311 properties, well ahead of its Launch Plan of 23,166 and beyond the point of breakeven. It had been a slow start, and growth had been volatile, reaching a rate of over 3,000 new members per week at one point, putting severe strains on service levels. Founders Hayden Wood and Amit Gudka had been forced to change many aspects of their plan and defer launching value-added services to help customers reduce energy consumption and create Bulb's vision of distributed generation. Now, the company was generating profits; enough to grow, but not at the level of the original plan. Should the founders scale back on their growth ambitions and delay adding services until they had reached the scale to support them? Or should they seek more funding and accelerate growth?
This is the first case in a three-case series on Bulb Energy Ltd. It is followed by “Bulb (B): Launch” (719-441) and “Bulb (C): Rapid Growth” (719-442). It describes the foundation of Bulb, a renewable energy supplier entering the highly competitive UK market in August 2015. Founders Hayden Wood and Amit Gudka were hoping to capitalize on the hundreds of thousands of customers switching their energy provider each month, by promising excellent customer service, a simple, low-price tariff, 100%-renewable electricity, and services to reduce energy consumption. At the time there were only about 250,000 households on renewable tariffs, typically paying a high price for the privilege. Gudka and Wood were convinced that many more households would opt for renewable energy and turn it into a mainstream product if prices were more reasonable. Their goal was to sign up more than 23,000 properties by March 31, 2017 to reach breakeven, and then grow to more than 69,000 properties by March 31, 2021. On Friday August 21, 2015, Gudka and Wood sent out a batch of 1,400 emails to friends and family, encouraging them to switch to Bulb. They waited anxiously for the first sign-ups.
In early 2019, The Progressive Corporation (Progressive), the USA’s third-largest auto insurance writer, reported earned premiums were up 20% in 2018 compared to the previous year, and net income was up 64%. Direct sales of personal auto policies rose 21%, while agent sales, which had, until recently been slowing, grew 16%. Homeowner policies were up 30% on a small base. For CEO Tricia Griffith, appointed on July 1, 2016, this was a clear indicator that her commitment to accelerating growth was bearing fruit. In the ten years from 2005-2015, Progressive’s earned premiums had grown at 4% per year. They then grew 13% in 2016, 15% in 2017, and 20% in 2018. In 2018, Progressive captured 10% of the auto insurance business in the USA. Griffith commented that Progressive was in 10% of US homes and would double that “in short order.” This would make it larger than 2018 industry leader, State Farm. But the auto insurance business was plagued with hundreds of competitors and had historically been very cyclical. Would Griffith’s strategy be enough to sustain double digit growth? The markets seemed convinced; in July 2019, Progressive’s stock price had almost doubled in two years.
Wells, John R., and Benjamin Weinstock. "The Progressive Corporation, 2019." Harvard Business School Case 719-413, September 2018. (Revised August 2019.)
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In 2018, Inditex, based in Spain, was the largest specialist fashion retailer in the world, generating sales of $31.5 billion in 2017 from a portfolio of eight retail brands selling through a total of 7,475 stores located in 96 countries and from websites in 49 countries. Its largest brand, Zara, generated sales of $20.8 billion and operated 2,118 stores. Since its IPO in 2001, Inditex had grown sales an average of 14.3% per year and net profits by 16.3% per year, adding over 6,000 stores in the process, and its stock had significantly outpaced the FTSE 100. While many fashion retailers were retreating in the face of weak demand and competition from online retailers, Inditex grew like-for-like sales for the year in all concepts and geographies. Online sales were up 41% year-on-year, reaching 10% of total sales.
For several years, the company had been slowing the growth in retail space and investing in large flagship stores to support its online business. Significantly, in late 2016 Inditex closed four small Zara shops in the company’s hometown of La Coruña and opened a 54,000-square-foot store in its place. Indeed, in the last quarter of 2017, the net number of store additions turned negative for the first time.
Meanwhile, online fashion specialists such as U.K.-based ASOS were growing rapidly, adding thousands of styles a week to their websites and providing thousands of pick-up and drop-off points (PUDOs) at local retail locations around the world to support their online sales. And then there was the threat of Amazon, which had been pushing into online fashion for over a decade. Was Inditex chairman and CEO Pablo Isla doing enough to turn the online threat into an opportunity?
Teaching Note for HBS No. 717-473.
In January 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was surrounded by controversy. The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States in November 2016 had triggered a national storm of protests, and many attributed Trump’s victory to fake news stories served up on Facebook’s Trending News Feed. Zuckerberg was unapologetic. The word that came to define this spread of misinformation was “post-truth,” which became so widely used in 2016 that Oxford Dictionaries coined the term “word of the year.” Did Trump have Zuckerberg to thank? Facebook had sparked many controversies during its short lifespan. By 2017, it had grown into the biggest social networking group in the world, with 1.8 billion people. Was this just another challenge along the way, or were the issues more fundamental?
Wells, John R., and Gabriel Ellsworth. "Facebook Fake News in the Post-Truth World." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 718-456, November 2017.
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Teaching Note for HBS No. 718-426.
Tencent had undergone many transformations since it was founded in 1998 as a simple messaging service. In 2017, it was the largest online games provider in China with a wide range of game types, China’s largest social networking service provider with several of the largest social networking applications in the world, and China’s favorite Internet portal. It was challenging Alibaba’s Alipay as the leader in online payments systems, and it had established strategic relationships with many service providers to help exploit new opportunities in online-to-offline (O2O) services and leverage its huge user base in e-commerce and search. However, there was no room for complacency. Competition from the other big local Internet companies such as Baidu and Alibaba was fierce, and there were always thousands of start-ups looking to enter the sector. Founder and CEO Ma Huateng (“Pony” Ma) remarked, “In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China—execution is.”
Teaching Note for HBS No. 716-455.
On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast to four years of declining comparable-store sales from 2010 through 2013. The stock price rose 17% in March, and on April 20, 2017, it surpassed $50 for the first time since January 2008. When CEO Hubert Joly took over in September 2012, Best Buy was losing share to Amazon.com, which was encouraging consumers to view products at Best Buy and other physical stores and then buy them for a lower price online, a practice known as “showrooming.” Undaunted, Joly had encouraged the practice, convinced that it presented an opportunity to sell to customers as long as Best Buy’s prices were competitive. Joly had committed the company to a multi-channel strategy in North America and exited struggling international operations. Operating margins had increased as a result, but growth was still proving elusive. In early 2017, Joly announced that his “Renew Blue” turnaround effort was complete and that he was now intent on creating the New Blue. Would the new strategy be enough to stop Amazon’s advances?
Teaching Note for HBS No. 716-402.
On January 28, 2016, Amazon announced record 2015 operating profits of $2.2 billion on $107 billion of sales, and the markets responded with cautious optimism. For years, founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos had prioritized growth and investment in new business areas over profits, but pressure from analysts was mounting as growth was slowing and profits were failing to materialize. In 2014, Amazon had recorded a net loss of $241 million on revenues of $89 billion, in stark contrast to China’s leading Internet player Alibaba, which reported $3.9 billion of net income on revenue of $12.3 billion. While Alibaba was a third-party marketplace with no distribution or inventory holding, Amazon’s business model was more diverse. Amazon was primarily an online retail department store, offering a wide range of product categories, but it also maintained a significant third-party marketplace where it offered shipping, customer service, payment processing, and return services to independent retailers. Amazon also offered software and cloud storage services, online video streaming, and its own line of electronic hardware (mobile, e-reader, and smart television products). In addition, Amazon published books, hosted its own app store, funded video content development, and operated Amazon Prime, an annual membership program with a wide range of benefits. Indeed, Amazon’s activities overlapped with those of Apple, Google, eBay, Alibaba, and many other companies. Amazon had proven itself to be aggressive and resilient during the dotcom crash and a revenue-focused, secretive corporation in the years after, providing little information on the profitability of its lines of business, many of which were believed to be unprofitable. Which businesses would drive Amazon’s future growth? Would the investments Amazon was making in market share eventually translate into profits? Or would another major competitor or business model replace Amazon? On a visit to the United States in June 2015, Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, stated, “We’re not coming here to compete.” Could Amazon or its investors afford to believe him?
Tencent had undergone many transformations since it was founded in 1998 as a simple messaging service. In 2017, it was the largest online games provider in China with a wide range of game types, China’s largest social networking service provider with several of the largest social networking applications in the world, and China’s favorite Internet portal. It was challenging Alibaba’s Alipay as the leader in online payments systems, and it had established strategic relationships with many service providers to help exploit new opportunities in online-to-offline (O2O) services and leverage its huge user base in e-commerce and search. However, there was no room for complacency. Competition from the other big local Internet companies such as Baidu and Alibaba was fierce, and there were always thousands of start-ups looking to enter the sector. Founder and CEO Ma Huateng (“Pony” Ma) remarked, “In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share. In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China—execution is.”
Cantel Medical Corporation provided infection prevention and control products and services for patients, caregivers, and other healthcare providers. In 2016, Cantel generated sales of $665 million and net profits of $60 million, double the levels of five years earlier. Chief Executive Officer Jørgen B. Hansen, appointed on August 1, 2016, was aiming to double the size of the business again. Cantel operated in three major vertical market segments: endoscopy, water purification and filtration, and healthcare disposables, which together accounted for more than 95% of Cantel’s sales. Over 90% of revenues were generated in North America. Hansen was looking to add new verticals to the portfolio, but he also saw opportunities to drive growth in Cantel’s core businesses, both at home and internationally. Over two decades, the company had delivered consistent organic growth and integrated over 30 acquisitions, providing total annual returns of 22% to its shareholders, with relatively limited leverage. Hansen was determined to maintain that track record, but the key question was how to achieve this goal. Was there enough growth in Cantel’s three key verticals in North America, or would more be needed? If so, which other verticals should Cantel consider? Should the company stick to infection control or add other products to its offering to leverage its customer relationships? How much would a drive into international markets help? And what organization was best suited to Cantel’s strategy? It had been run as a holding company in the past. Did that structure still make sense as the company ventured overseas?
In January 2017, Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, was surrounded by controversy. The election of Donald Trump as the next president of the United States in November 2016 had triggered a national storm of protests, and many attributed Trump’s victory to fake news stories served up on Facebook’s Trending News Feed. Zuckerberg was unapologetic. The word that came to define this spread of misinformation was “post-truth,” which became so widely used in 2016 that Oxford Dictionaries coined the term “word of the year.” Did Trump have Zuckerberg to thank? Facebook had sparked many controversies during its short lifespan. By 2017, it had grown into the biggest social networking group in the world, with 1.8 billion people. Was this just another challenge along the way, or were the issues more fundamental?
At the end of 2003, Clear Channel Communications, Inc., a diversified media group with revenues of $8.9 billion, could claim leadership positions in all three of its main businesses. Clear Channel Broadcasting was the largest radio-station operator in the world, with sales of $3.7 billion and EBITDA of $1.6 billion. Clear Channel Outdoor was the largest outdoor advertiser in the world, with revenues of $2.2 billion generating EBITDA of $581 million. Clear Channel Entertainment was the world’s largest live-entertainment promoter with revenues of $2.6 billion and EBITDA of $191 million. Media entrepreneur L. Lowry Mays (MBA 1962) had built Clear Channel through a concerted campaign of acquisitions over 30 years by consolidating fragmented media businesses, delighting shareholders in the process. But maintaining the pace of acquisitions was proving challenging, and the synergies he had hoped for between his businesses had proven elusive. Shareholders were upset. How might Mays return Clear Channel to its former glory?
On July 2, 2016, Danaher Corporation completed the spinoff of Fortive Corporation. The previous day, Danaher’s stock price had reached an all-time high. In 2015, Danaher had decided to split off its test and measurement, fuel and fleet management, and automation businesses, leaving the “new Danaher” focused on life sciences, diagnostics, dental, water quality, and product-identification businesses. It was hardly the first industrial conglomerate to spin off major divisions; Tyco International PLC, ITT Corporation, Illinois Tool Works, Johnson Controls, and Ingersoll-Rand PLC had made similar moves in recent memory. However, its peers had often experienced declining profitability or pressure from activist investors. Danaher, by contrast, had performed strongly in the years leading up to the spinoff. It had spent the previous decade strengthening its portfolio in sectors such as life sciences and dental products with acquisitions including Beckman Coulter in 2011, Nobel Biocare Holding AG in 2014, and Pall Corporation in 2015.
In 2015, the U.S. health-club industry generated revenues of $25.8 billion, up from $14.8 billion in 2004. Members of health clubs accounted for 17% of the population, up from 14%. The number of clubs had grown from 26,830 in 2004 to 36,180. In the process, the list of leading chains had changed significantly. While a higher proportion of Americans exercised on any given day, the majority still did not, and the average number of hours exercised had remained essentially flat. Meanwhile, the prevalence of people classified as overweight and obese had grown from 66.3% to 70.2%. A slowdown in growth and other challenges that the health-club industry had faced since 2004 meant that investors were more careful with their money. The steady rise of LA Fitness to industry leadership with a 7% market share suggested that there were still opportunities for consolidation. However, some observers argued that the industry would always be fragmented—it was simply too easy to enter. Another key debate concerned how best to position in an industry where new formats and business models proliferated. The sector had attracted a great deal of private equity in the past. Would it prove a good opportunity for investors in future?
In September 2016, Johnson Controls, Inc. completed the acquisition of Tyco International PLC, a $9.9 billion business with operating profits of $884 million. The purchase consideration was $14.4 billion. Although the deal was billed as a merger, Ireland-based Tyco effectively acquired U.S.-based Johnson Controls in a tax inversion deal that saved $150 million a year in taxes. Operating synergies were estimated at $500 million over three years. Tyco International was all that remained of what 15 years earlier, in 2001, had been a $36.4 billion conglomerate with a market capitalization of $120 billion. It took the charismatic CEO, Dennis Kozlowski, 10 years to grow the business from $3 billion to $36 billion, increasing its value by more than 60 times along the way. But Kozlowski went to prison on fraud charges in 2005, and the portfolio was slowly unwound under his successor. Now in 2016, Tyco was to disappear.
In 2016, JCDecaux was number one in the world in outdoor advertising. This was a far cry from the situation in 2003; at that time, JCDecaux had been unseated by Clear Channel from the number-one spot that it had held for decades, and it was fighting for second place with OUTFRONT (then owned by Viacom). Over the 12 intervening years, JCDecaux had doubled in size, building leadership positions in China, Japan, Latin America, Africa, and Russia, and in 2010, it had passed Clear Channel to lead the industry once more. Now, co-CEOs Jean-François Decaux and Jean-Charles Decaux were looking for new ways and new places to grow. After the company overtook Clear Channel in 2010, Jean-François had indicated that he believed that another doubling in size was feasible, but it would probably take a major acquisition to do so. And JCDecaux faced more pressing short-term issues. The contract for London bus shelters that the company had won with much fanfare in August 2015 was behind schedule. To make matters worse, the United Kingdom’s June 2016 “Brexit” vote to leave the European Union cast a shadow over the project, and the markets reacted negatively. By the start of November, JCDecaux’s share price had fallen 21% since the beginning of the year. Just what the economic uncertainty of Brexit would mean for global outdoor advertising in general, and U.K. outdoor advertising in particular, was not clear. Doubling in size in such an environment appeared a daunting task.
In 2016, 24 Hour Fitness was the number-two fitness chain in the United States, generating revenues of $1.4 billion from 441 clubs serving 3.8 million members. Based in San Ramon, California, 24 Hour Fitness operated clubs in 13 states. Having grown rapidly to become the largest club operator by 2004, the company was sold to a private equity group in 2005 for $1.6 billion. The growth continued until the original founder, Mark Mastrov, left in 2008. Since then, growth had stagnated, and the company lost its leadership position to LA Fitness in 2012. Throughout, 24 Hour Fitness had retained its traditional positioning, offering several club types to satisfy a wide range of customers concentrated in a particular area at affordable prices averaging $39 per month. However, this positioning was increasingly coming under pressure. Small studios offering focused facilities at as little as $10 per month were growing, while LA Fitness provided full-line gyms for an average of $33 per month. Premium clubs also continued to flourish, while the competition from not-for-profits such as university and employee gyms continued unabated.
In 2016, the new CEO announced a new strategy to counter these challenges: rebranding 24 Hour as a lifestyle and media company. He declared, “We know we can do great things. We’re very excited about the platform that we have to build on.” Perhaps this strategy would help restore the company’s fortunes.
By many measures the largest health-club chain in the United States in the early 2000s, Bally Total Fitness sold most of its remaining fitness clubs to 24 Hour Fitness in 2014 and disappeared from the industry top 100 rankings. After Bally was bedeviled by accounting fraud, which indicated that it had never made a profit, several groups of investors tried to rescue the company, but their efforts were to no avail. It was an ignominious end.
In 2016, LA Fitness was the largest chain of non-franchised fitness clubs in North America, operating 676 clubs, serving 4.9 million members, and generating revenues of over $1.9 billion. Founded by Chinyol Yi, Louis Welch, and Paul Norris in 1984, the privately held company revealed little about its future plans or its operations, leading one journalist to write of “the quiet ascension of LA Fitness.” However, it continued to expand aggressively, focusing on a full-service model, often including swimming pools and racquetball courts, at moderate prices. Rumors of an IPO had circulated for over a decade, triggered by the fact that several private-equity houses had invested in the business and might be looking for an exit. In 2014, the company had arranged up to $1.6 billion in debt to fund expansion and buy out some investors. Whether this would be sufficient to appease its owners and support future growth was not clear. Nor was it clear how much more expansion LA Fitness could expect with its full-service model in the highly competitive fitness-club industry.
On March 1, 2017, Best Buy Company, Inc., North America’s largest retailer of consumer electronics and appliances, announced a third year of comparable-store sales increases and a 20.8% increase in domestic comparable online sales. These results were in marked contrast to four years of declining comparable-store sales from 2010 through 2013. The stock price rose 17% in March, and on April 20, 2017, it surpassed $50 for the first time since January 2008. When CEO Hubert Joly took over in September 2012, Best Buy was losing share to Amazon.com, which was encouraging consumers to view products at Best Buy and other physical stores and then buy them for a lower price online, a practice known as “showrooming.” Undaunted, Joly had encouraged the practice, convinced that it presented an opportunity to sell to customers as long as Best Buy’s prices were competitive. Joly had committed the company to a multi-channel strategy in North America and exited struggling international operations. Operating margins had increased as a result, but growth was still proving elusive. In early 2017, Joly announced that his “Renew Blue” turnaround effort was complete and that he was now intent on creating the New Blue. Would the new strategy be enough to stop Amazon’s advances?
Launched in 2000, ASOS was one of the world’s largest online fashion specialists in 2018. Focusing on young consumers aged 16–25 years, the company offered over 85,000 items on its websites, many times more than the largest fashion stores, and added several thousand new lines every week. Based in the United Kingdom, ASOS shipped products to 230 countries and territories, and international sales represented more than 62% of total revenues. When new CEO Nick Beighton took over from founder Nick Robertson in September 2015, he faced some significant challenges. While ASOS was large by online standards, traditional fashion retailers were building their own online sales capabilities, and Amazon was expanding its apparel offering. Meanwhile, new online competitors were emerging at a rapid rate. After ASOS issued several profit warnings in 2014, its growth had slowed to 18% in 2015. Beighton was convinced that ASOS’s strategy was right and that the company needed to improve its execution to recapture its historical success. In 2018, the company’s performance under Beighton seemed to indicate that he was right, and the stock price was at record highs. However, the threat of Amazon remained.
IC Group owned several of Scandinavia's leading premium fashion brands. How should it respond to the decline of its primary wholesale distribution channels (independent fashion boutiques and department stores)? Should it open more physical stores or focus on e-commerce? Where should the Group focus its international expansion? How could it best leverage its operating platform to drive the profitability of its brands? Should it acquire existing brands or build new ones itself? In short, what should its "omni-channel retailing" strategy be?
In October 2015, Walmart surprised investors by announcing that it expected flat sales growth for 2015 and growth of only 3% to 4% over the coming three years. Profits would also fall due to significant investments in people and technology. The company’s stock price dropped 10% on the news, the largest one-day decline since 1998. In February 2016, Walmart reported that revenues for 2015 had dropped 0.7% to $482.1 billion, the first decline in Walmart’s history. The company also downgraded its sales forecast for the coming year, suggesting sales would now be flat. Meanwhile, online retailer Amazon was growing rapidly and, despite being less than one-quarter of the size of Walmart, now boasted a higher market capitalization. Moreover, in April 2016, Alibaba of China announced that it had passed Walmart in global sales to become the biggest retail platform in the world. To add to Walmart’s woes, in the United States traditional dollar discount stores and convenience outlets were gaining ground, and wage rises were putting pressure on profits. Meanwhile, international markets continued to underperform. Indeed, some analysts had suggested that Walmart retreat to its U.S. home base to improve performance. Many feared that this was the end of the 50+ year inexorable rise of Walmart. However, CEO Doug McMillon remained determined to get the company back on track and vowed to eschew short-term profits and invest in the future. Investors were not impressed. They had waited a long time for improvements; in 2015, Walmart generated three times the sales and profits it had achieved in 1999, and yet the stock price had barely changed. Patience was running out.
On July 30, 2015, Procter & Gamble (P&G) announced headline double-digit earnings per share growth for the year ended June 30. A closer look at the numbers suggested a less healthy picture. Sales, volumes, and operating profits were down. Investors were not impressed; shareholders were becoming increasingly impatient with the results of Chairman and CEO A.G. Lafley's attempted turnaround. Five-year shareholder returns were well below those of the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 Consumer Staples index. After returning to the company in 2013 in the face of stalling growth, Lafley had announced that P&G would focus on 10 high-growth categories and divest 100 smaller brands in the portfolio. As of September 2015, Lafley had negotiated the sale of 93 brands. Shareholders were left wondering whether this would be enough. Two days before the results were published, P&G announced that 35-year P&G veteran David Taylor would become CEO on November 1, 2015. Lafley would remain Chairman. At the time, Taylor respectfully declined to be interviewed by the press. He had a lot to think about.
John R. Wells, Benjamin Weinstock, Gabriel Ellsworth and Galen Danskin
On January 31, 2019, Amazon.com Inc (Amazon) announced 2018 operating profits of $12.4 billion on sales of $232 billion, and the markets responded enthusiastically. For years, founder and CEO Jeffrey Bezos had prioritized growth and investment in new business areas over profits. Earlier in January, Amazon’s stock had rallied, making the company the most valuable in the world, above Microsoft, Apple, and Alphabet (Google). The year before, Bezos became the richest man in the world. In April 2019, he retained the title, even after a high-profile divorce reduced his net worth by over $35 billion.
Not all were happy with Amazon’s progress, however. Many traditional retailers in the United States were going bankrupt, while major competitors such as Walmart and Best Buy were forced to invest aggressively in online retailing to prevent their market share from eroding. Every sector appeared to be affected; according to many industry analysts and observers, Amazon became the largest retailer of apparel in the United States in 2018, Amazon’s rapid category expansion and dominance fueled anxieties that America’s tech giants were becoming too big and powerful. This led some, including US Senator and Democratic presidential nominee Elizabeth Warren to call for the breakup of the company. The European Union then launched an investigation into Amazon’s use of third-party retailer data on its platform. Meanwhile, just three months after Amazon announced that it would split the long-awaited HQ2 between New York City and Arlington, Virginia, the company pulled out of the New York City headquarters after facing significant pushback from local communities.
Just a year earlier, it seemed as if nothing could stop the inexorable rise of Amazon. But in 2019, despite continued rapid expansion, Amazon faced growing criticism from regulators and the public. Did its unprecedented success threaten its very existence?
Wells, John R., Benjamin Weinstock, Gabriel Ellsworth, and Galen Danskin. "Amazon.com, 2019." Harvard Business School Case 716-402, August 2015. (Revised August 2019.)
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In 2015, Canadian-based High Liner Foods Ltd was one of North America's largest frozen fish processors with extensive shares of both the food service and retail channels in Canada, the USA and Mexico. With over C$1 billion in revenues, the company had grown four fold in the previous decade. President and CEO Henry Demone was pleased with recent progress, but things had not always been so good. As he approached retirement after 25 years as president, 61 year-old Demone reflected on the company's past challenges. When he first took office in 1989, High Liner operated Canada's largest fishing fleet, operating within the country's newly established 200 mile limit into the Atlantic. But storms were on the horizon. To conserve fish stocks, the Canadian government first cut fishing quotas by 12% and then followed this up with more draconian cuts. Demone recalled, "Imagine a paper company, if 95 percent of the forest disappeared." In response, Demone took High Liner out of the fish harvesting business and focused on processing fish. In 2015, the company imported fish from hundreds of suppliers around the world and was a leading supplier of frozen fillets and value-added fish products to retailers and food service distributors throughout North America.
In 2015, Demone was planning for his succession while charting routes to sustain the company's growth. In Canada, High Liner was number one in both the food service and retail channels and had achieved four times the retail brand share of the next competitor. What goals should he be setting the newly appointed head of Canadian operations, Jeff O'Neill? Should he retain focus on frozen fish or broaden horizons? In the USA, High Liner was also leader in food service, but number two in the retail channel and facing strong competitors. Did it make sense to fight well-entrenched firms for market share? Or should the company's focus be on developing markets such as Asia? High Liner already sourced from the region. Should its use its expertise in frozen fish to build its business there?
In early 2011, Danaher was contemplating the acquisition of Beckman Coulter. With $3.7 billion of revenues in 2010 and $431 million in operating profits, California-based Beckman Coulter was a global leader in blood cell count diagnostic systems and also supplied a wide range of clinical research equipment. The USA accounted for 46% of sales. The company had delivered almost 7% growth in revenues and earnings for over a decade, but 2010 had been fraught with problems. Two earnings warnings, a recall of an important blood test, and a dispute with the Federal Drug Administration over regulatory approval were all weighing on the company. In September 2010, the stock price hit a low of $48, down from a 2009 high of $60, valuing the business at $4.0 billion. The CEO resigned. In December, the company announced that it had put itself up for sale; the stock price jumped to $72, suggesting that the markets expected a suitor to pay in the region of $6 billion. Interest was indeed high with a number of trade investors, including Danaher, vying with private equity groups for the company. Danaher's CEO, Larry Culp, had to decide whether it made sense to bid and, if so, at what price.
In 2014, Nestlé was the largest producer of packaged foods and beverages in the world. 2013 revenues were $103.7 billion and operating profits $16.1 billion (15.5% of sales). The company owned 29 mega brands, each generating more than Euro 1 billion ($1.25 billion). Based in Switzerland, Nestlé was one of the most global players in the sector, and more than a third of its revenues came from developing markets. Oxfam consistently ranked Nestlé number one in the world's top ten food companies for the way it addressed the issues impacting the lives of people living in poverty around the world.
Nestlé's size and social impact posed challenges for CEO Paul Bulke and his leadership team. To meet the company's target of 5-6% annual organic growth, the team needed to add over $5 billion in sales annually. Profitability was also an issue; although Nestlé's operating margins had been rising, they did not compare favorably with some of its major competitors. Meanwhile, pressures from the supply side included increasingly volatile material prices, demands for more supply chain security, and calls for ever-more social responsibility towards developing market suppliers.
Bulke did not see the need for major acquisitions to maintain the momentum at Nestlé. He had identified 4 platforms for organic growth: health, nutrition and wellness for all Nestlé products; a greater focus on emerging markets, providing good nutrition at affordable prices; out-of-home consumption in developed markets; and premiumization, luxury niche products commanding brand premiums and higher margins. Would this be enough to sustain Nestlé's long record of success?
In 2012, McKinsey & Company (McKinsey) was the world's premier management consultancy, providing advice to CEO's and top executives of leading companies around the globe. Many consulting firms were bigger but few could match the reputation McKinsey had built over more than half a century or the level of fees that McKinsey consultants could demand for their work. With almost 24,000 alumni working in 120 countries in senior positions in almost every sector of the economy, McKinsey also represented one of the most powerful business networks in existence. Many Fortune 500 CEO's were McKinsey alumni, and the firm had been dubbed by Fortune Magazine "The best CEO launch pad." In 2012, Managing Director Dominic Barton presided over an organization of more than 9,000 consultants generating more than $7 billion a year. As the world stumbled from crisis to crisis, there was no shortage of corporations and institution seeking McKinsey's advice, and Barton continued to meet his personal target of visiting with two CEOs each day.
But Barton was also managing a public relations crisis. In 2010, Anil Kumar, a long time McKinsey partner who built the firm's dotcom practice, pleaded guilty to insider trading and implicated Rajat Gupta, MD of McKinsey from 1994 to 2003. Gupta was subsequently sentenced to two years in Federal prison for insider trading. Barton described this as "incredibly embarrassing and tough to deal with, particularly internally" and he launched a full review of all of the firm's policies. He commented, "From the client point of view we have been very fortunate. We are very grateful, we have a lot of support so there has literally been no impact on that side. But there is no way it cannot affect our brand … I think it will take some time (to repair the damage). I think it's going to be determined by how we respond, the actions we take, and our behaviors moving forward."
In early 2014, Mothercare was the UK's leading retailer of mother-and-baby products. In fiscal 2013, it generated £341 million in revenues from its 255 UK stores and £128 million online, and was more than three times the size of its next biggest competitor, Mama and Papas. It also sold through 1,069 franchised international outlets, which generated 60% of the company's total volume and added £250 million in franchise and other fees to its revenues. Mothercare remained the UK's leading retailer of children's pushchairs, car seats and nursery furniture but it had long lost its leadership position in maternity wear and children's clothes, and its UK operations were losing money. At the beginning of the third year of one of many turnarounds in Mothercare's history, the latest Christmas trading figures looked weak in what had been a highly competitive market, and the company was well behind what many Mothercare executives thought was an unrealistic plan. CEO Simon Calver, less than two years into the job after a widely acclaimed performance as CEO of video rental and streaming business Love Film, pondered on the upcoming January board meeting. The top management team had identified five major initiatives to get the turnaround back on track, but Calver was not convinced this would be enough to restore Mothercare's fortunes. On January 8th, the company issued a profits warning. UK sales were down 4% and international sales, long the source of Mothercare's growth, were disappointing. Investor confidence in the turnaround collapsed, and the share price dropped 31%. The next board meeting was only a week away. Calver reflected on what he would say.
In 2013, Progressive was the fourth largest player in the auto insurance market, having lost the third position to GEICO in 2008. As the industry shifted from agency to online sales, GEICO's direct selling model positioned it strongly for growth. Progressive's direct sales mix had increased from 36% of total sales in 2006 to 42% in 2012, well ahead of the industry average of around 25%. As a result, both Progressive and GEICO continued to gain ground on industry leaders State Farm and Allstate, who sold less than 5% of their policies direct. In 2013, Progressive hoped to revolutionize the purchasing of auto insurance and to build its competitive position with Snapshot, a new usage-based pricing product. First introduced in 2011, Snapshot had low rates of adoption through 2012, but Progressive was redoubling its efforts in 2013 to educate consumers about the product's benefits, which included potential savings of as much as 30% for some drivers. Progressive was also intent on building share with customers who purchased multiple insurance policies since they tended to be more loyal and profitable. Whether these moves would be sufficient to catch up with GECIO was unclear, but they seemed to be working well against State Farm and Allstate.
In 2013, Radiometer continued to lead the world in blood gas analysis equipment and accessories, selling direct and through distributors to hospital central laboratories, point-of-care locations, and non-hospital medical locations. Founded in 1935 and based in Denmark, Radiometer was acquired in January 2004 by US-based Danaher Corporation. Under Danaher's direction, Radiometer began an intensive program of process improvements using the Danaher Business System (DBS), an iterative tool system and company culture that sought to continuously improve the company's growth and lean and leadership capabilities.
However, as CEO Peter Kürstein reviewed the successes of the last ten years, he conceded that Radiometer still faced significant challenges. Progress in the USA, the world's largest market, remained elusive. How would Radiometer break through in the US? Then there was the issue of long-term growth. Roche and Siemens were investing heavily in multiple diagnostics segments. How should Radiometer respond? Which other segments of diagnostics should Radiometer consider? Quest Diagnostics was selling HemoCue, a Swedish-based global niche leader in hemoglobin testing. Would acquiring them make sense for Radiometer?
In 2003, Radiometer was the world's leading supplier of blood gas analysis equipment and accessories for critical care patients. Based in Denmark, Radiometer sold through a combination of sales subsidiaries and distributors around the world, and generated sales of over DKr 1,791 million ($272 million). Blood gas analysis formed part of the $27.7 billion in-vitro diagnostic market.
Although sales were strong, Radiometer remained focused on its future. The market for blood gas analysis was growing slowly, driven mainly by new technologies that threatened to displace the high volume testing equipment that Radiometer supplied. Radiometer's recent attempts at competing in these new technologies had failed. Should it remain focused on blood gas analysis and redouble its efforts? Or should it turn to other opportunities for growth? CEO and controlling stockholder, Johan Schroder, had denied rumors of a potential sale, but an acquisition by a stronger partner could help the company expand into the United States. How should the company position itself for future success?
In 2013, Babcock International Plc (Babcock) was the largest engineering services provider in the UK with sales of over £3 billion. Under the leadership of CEO Peter Rogers, Babcock had grown revenues and profits nearly tenfold over the previous decade as it benefited from increased public sector outsourcing. In 2012, for the UK's Ministry of Defense (MOD), Babcock trained over 50,000 troops, maintained the nuclear submarine fleet, provided engineering support for military vehicles, and managed numerous facilities at military bases. On the civil side, the company decommissioned aging nuclear plants, maintained the Metropolitan Police auto fleet and other emergency services fleets, and was the UK's leading trainer of engineering apprentices.
Babcock's leadership team believed that continued pressure on public spending would provide opportunities for double digit growth in the UK for at least five years. However, this might not come from Babcock's primary customer, the Ministry of Defense. What other national and local government agencies might the firm target? On the civil side, the resurgence of the salience of nuclear power generation in the mid 2000s had appeared to be good news for Babcock with its long-standing nuclear expertise, but the April 2011 Fukushima nuclear leak in Japan had shed doubt on future construction, while the fracking of shale deposits to extract natural gas promised a much lower cost supply of abundant energy. Nevertheless, decommissioning nuclear power stations promised steady and growing work. What other opportunities might Babcock pursue in the UK? Meanwhile, analysts were pushing for more international expansion but efforts at building business in South Africa, Canada, and Australia had been slow, with only 16% of revenues coming from outside the UK in 2013, a figure little changed since 2005. What would drive Babcock's long term future growth?
Growth itself also posed challenges. Babcock relied heavily on informal processes to extract synergies across its portfolio. Would this continue to be effective as the scope of operations continued to expand? Meanwhile, analysts were concerned about succession. Rogers and many of the leadership team were approaching retirement. Where would the next generation of Babcock leaders come from?
In the 11 years since its public offering, Inditex and its flagship brand, Zara, had expanded into 86 countries, achieved $21.6 billion in revenue, and become the largest specialty apparel retailer in the world. In marked contrast to the general malaise of the Bolsa de Madrid, Inditex's share price tripled from 2008 to 2012 and traded at 25 times expected 2013 earnings, a 15% premium over Swedish rival, H&M. From 1,080 stores in 2000, it had expanded to 6,009 locations while sales and operating profits grew 25% p.a over this period. It had also established online stores across 23 different markets, with plans for launches in Russia and Canada during 2013, and it managed eight different brands. CEO Pablo Isla remained confident of future success and anticipated store expansion would continue growing at 8%-10% per year for the next three to five years. How could Inditex best maintain its strong growth and fend off competition?
In 2000, Inditex was one of the largest specialty apparel retailers in the world, with $2.4 billion in sales from 1,080 stores across 33 countries. Zara, Inditex's main brand, produced popular designer items at a fraction of design-house prices and could push an item from design to display in less than two weeks. This left most other fashion retailers, who took between 9-12 months for this process, far behind. However, Inditex was still only one-sixth the size of the world's largest specialty retailer, US-based Gap, and two-thirds the size of its Swedish rival, H&M. Amancio Ortega, Inditex's notoriously private Chairman and founder, was committed to challenging these industry leaders. This expansion required more capital and, in July 2000, the company announced it would IPO in 2001. There was also the question of a new management team to take the company forward. Ortega was approaching retirement as was the CEO, José Maria Castellano. The first attempt to find a younger CEO had failed. Hopefully, an IPO would attract a new management team that could maintain Inditex's rapid expansion.
In 2012, Hennes & Maurtiz (H&M) was the second-largest specialty apparel retailer in the world. Sales for fiscal 2012 were $18.1 billion and operating profits were $3.3 billion. H&M operated 2,776 stores, 93% of them outside its home base of Sweden. Over the past decade, H&M had passed Gap in sales, but the company had failed to keep up with Inditex's growth and its Spanish rival had larger sales and greater profitability than H&M. H&M had also lagged behind Inditex in supply pipeline speed, brand diversification, online retail presence, and expansion into China. Meanwhile, the world's leading hypermarket chains, including Wal-Mart and Tesco, were making significant headway in apparel and challenge H&M's basic clothing segment.
In 2012, CEO Karl-Johan Persson, grandson of the company's founder Erling Persson, promised increased expansion into underdeveloped markets, a stronger push to online retailing, and the launch of a major new retail brand. Whether Persson's plans were enough to catch up with Inditex remained to be seen.
In 2000, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) was the second-largest and most global player in the fashion retail business. It operated 682 stores, 80% of them outside its home country of Sweden, and achieved revenues of $3.0 billion and operating profits of $375 million. In 1999, when H&M announced plans to enter the U.S., sales had grown 20% per year and operating profits, 30%, for a decade. After the August announcement of U.S. expansion plans, its share price hit a record $35 (a P/E of over 90). But the new millennium brought challenges and uncertainty. In March 2000, the first nonfamily CEO, Fabian Mansson, resigned after only two years at the helm and the company issued a profits warning. In September 2000, H&M's share price closed at $18.68, a fall of nearly 50% from the prior year. Meanwhile Gap, the world's leading fashion retailer with revenues of $13.7 billion, was adding 600 stores a year and expanding into Europe from its U.S. base. Rolf Erikson, Masson's replacement, impressed few analysts and questions lingered about H&M's ability to maintain its rate of expansion. What did new CEO Rolf Erikson need to do to avert the threat from Gap and restore the company's fortunes?
Between 2000 and 2012, Gap, Inc. (Gap) ceded its world leadership position in specialty fashion retailing to Inditex of Spain and H&M of Sweden. These two companies, each less than a quarter of Gap's size in 2000, were now setting the pace in the global mass fashion market, and Gap appeared to be falling ever further behind. In the intervening twelve years, three CEOs had struggled to turn around the fading brand. While several temporary profit boosts appeared to herald a recovery, a sustained rally remained elusive.
Mickey Drexler, Gap's CEO since 1983, who had been responsible for Gap's rise to global prominence, was fired in 2002 after two years of double digit, same-store sales declines and a 75% drop in the stock price. His successor, Paul Pressler, appeared to have engineered a remarkable recovery, but was fired in 2007 after disappointing sales and another slump in profits. His replacement, Glenn Murphy, fresh from a successful turnaround at a Canadian drug-store chain, promised tighter price controls, lower administrative costs, and a leaner, more aggressive Gap, but sales continued to decline over his tenure. After four years of troubles, Murphy brought in former J. Crew President, Tracy Gardner, to consult with the Gap brand and Murphy began a bold program to close one fifth of Gap's North American store base. In 2012, sales had lifted 8%, same-store sales were strongly positive for all of Gap's domestic sub-brands, and the company's share price had lifted nearly 50% from the prior year. After 12 years of poor performance, had Glenn Murphy finally discovered the answers to Gap's problems?
From humble beginnings as a Levi jeans store, by 2000 Gap, Inc. had grown to become the world's leading specialist clothing retailer. Its CEO, Millard S. Drexler, the "merchant prince," was credited with transforming Gap into a global empire, leading the company through eighteen years of 21% p.a. growth to reach sales of $13.6 billion in 2000. Gap had expanded to 2,848 stores under its three brands: Gap, Banana Republic, and Old Navy, and controlled 6% of U.S. apparel sales. Drexel had also pushed Gap through a global expansion program, and international accounted for 12.5% of total sales in 2000.
But as Gap entered the new millennium, dark clouds were building on the horizon. While sales in 2000 were up nearly 18% over the previous year, operating profits fell by 20%, only the second profit fall since 1984. Gap found itself plagued with concerns about fashion misses, logistics failures, the departure of senior managers, and increased foreign competition. New fast-fashion competition in the form of Inditex, H&M, and Club Monaco threatened Gap's market share both domestically and abroad.
Drexler remained confident of recovery and promised to fix infrastructure problems and recent fashion misses while expanding the high-growth GapBody and BabyGap concepts. Would these changes be enough to keep Gap competitive in a new retail era?
On May 31, 2012, after 36 years on the Milan Stock Exchange, Benetton was officially delisted and taken private by Edizione, the Benetton family's holding company. Since 2000, Benetton shareholders had seen its market value fall from $4.3 billion to $720 million at the end of 2011. At $2.6 billion, Benetton's sales in 2011 were virtually the same as they were in 2000, but Inditex from Spain, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) from Sweden and Fast Retailing from Japan had all grown several times larger over the same period. What happened to this global retail giant?
Under the direction of four different CEOs since 2000, Benetton had attempted to move from being an Italian supplier of knitwear with licensed small retailers throughout the world to a vertically integrated global player by tightening management over its supply chain and rolling out directly operated superstores. These moves helped Benetton gain more control over its operations, but they also ate into its profitability. In 2012, Benetton found itself competing with fashion giants who could respond faster to market trends and deliver comparable clothes at half the cost. With Benetton under private ownership, would Harvard Business School graduate Alessandro Benetton be able to make the changes required to return the company to its former strength?
In 2000, Benetton was one of the leading mass fashion competitors in the world with approximately $1.9 billion in sales across 5,500 stores in 120 countries. But the company's fortunes seemed to be on the wane. Operating profits had fallen 9% from the prior year to $299 million. Having almost matched global leader, Gap Inc.'s revenues in 1985, Benetton was now only one seventh of Gap's size. Moreover, Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) of Sweden had passed Benetton in 1996 and now claimed more than double the sales of Benetton. Inditex of Spain and Fast Retailing of Japan had also passed Benetton in revenues by 2000. To make things worse, Inditex and H&M had announced in 2000 that they intended to enter Italy, Benetton's heartland.
Chairman and co-founder Luciano Benetton was determined to fight back and toward this end had just launched a major new retail strategy to expand the size of Benetton's current stores, invest in large superstores and build greater control of the supply chain. The company also had high hopes for its new drive into sports equipment and apparel. Would this be enough to halt the rise of its mass fashion competitors?
It was October 3rd, 2012, and all was not well at Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket chain with revenues of £64.5 billion ($104 billion). CEO Philip Clarke unveiled the first half-year profit drop in almost 20 years and, in the UK, the majors Asda and Sainsbury were closing the market-share gap, while niche players like hard discounter Aldi, with prices as much as 20% below Tesco's, and premium-grocer Waitrose were both growing fast. What did Clarke need to do to restore confidence and get Tesco back on track?
In 2012, J Sainsbury Plc (Sainsbury's), the number three supermarket chain in the UK with £22.3 billion in sales, appeared to have put the troubles of the past behind it. For over 70 years, Sainsbury's had been the UK's largest grocer, but Tesco had overtaken it in 1995 and then Asda knocked it into third position in 2003. When Justin King took over as CEO in 2004, UK sales were flat and UK profits languished at 40% below their 1999 levels. He cut prices and restored sales growth, and from 2007 onwards, Sainsbury's had outperformed Tesco on same-store sales growth. What did King need to do to sustain Sainsbury's revival?
On January 16, 2009, after a dismal holiday season, Circuit City was forced into liquidation. Unable to meet creditors' demands, and with no acquirer in sight, Circuit City began the process of liquidating its remaining 567 U.S. stores. Circuit City had been the leader in consumer electronics retailing for nearly twenty years when its profits peaked in 2000. What led to its dramatic decline? Why did three CEOs fail to turn it around? Were these problems present before the 2000 peak?
In fiscal 2000, Circuit City was at the top of its game. The world's leading consumer electronics retailer had delivered record sales and profits for the first year of the new millennium. It was a fitting moment for Richard Sharpe, the CEO of the last 14 years, to step down. Over his tenure, revenues had increased 18 times and operating profits 13 times. In June 2000, Alan McCollough succeeded him as CEO. A 12-year veteran of Circuit City, McCollough expressed confidence in the future, citing trends such as the digitization of televisions, music players, and cameras. But challenges loomed from the increasingly aggressive discount sector. Was Circuit City as strategically strong as its financial results suggested? Would it be able to maintain momentum and retain its leadership?
In June 2012, Best Buy was in crisis. In 1996, Best Buy overtook Circuit City as the world's leader in consumer electronics retailing; however, 18 years later, Best Buy now found this position threatened. With $51 billion in revenues, it was still the biggest CE retailer, but sales were flat and profits had collapsed. Meanwhile, Amazon's sales in Best Buy's categories were growing at more than 50% p.a. and its total sales, at $48 billion, were approaching those of Best Buy. As Wal-Mart cherry-picked popular items for steep discounts and Amazon encouraged consumers to compare prices using smart phones, Best Buy was becoming a showroom for lower cost retail models. International expansion was struggling and domestic sales of digital televisions were cooling. Although the popularity of mobile devices suggested easy growth, many devices were sold by telephone service providers, creating increased retail competition. To add to Best Buy's problems, on April 10, 2012, CEO Brian Dunn resigned after an investigation into his personal conduct. On June 7, 2012, Dick Schulze, the firm's founder, who had navigated the company through many strategic changes since 1966, also decided to leave and "explore all available options" for his 20.1% stake in the company. Best Buy had seen off many competitive challenges in the past. Would it be able to fend off these challengers and maintain its position?
Stephen P. Bradley, David J. Collis, Kevin P. Coyne, Andrei Hagiu, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Jan W. Rivkin and John R. Wells
Addresses a common concern among strategy students: "How should I tackle this case?" Describes a process for diagnosing a strategic situation, then generating, evaluating, and choosing among strategic options.
Bradley, Stephen P., David J. Collis, Kevin P. Coyne, Andrei Hagiu, Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, Jan W. Rivkin, and John R. Wells. "How to Crack a Strategy Case." Harvard Business School Background Note 707-549, March 2007. (Revised February 2009.)
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Bharat N. Anand, Stephen P. Bradley, Pankaj Ghemawat, Tarun Khanna, Cynthia A. Montgomery, Michael E. Porter, Jan W. Rivkin, Michael G. Rukstad, John R. Wells and David B. Yoffie
It's great to have a blockbuster quarter or a revolutionary product or service, but true business excellence demands sustainability. Maintaining your competitive advantage requires a strategy that makes your business unique and carries you forward as the world around you changes. What makes a winning, sustainable strategy? Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage is a multimedia resource developed by ten faculty members in the Strategy Department at Harvard Business School. Included in this resource are faculty presentation, animated frameworks, print- and video-based case studies, and workbooks to help business leaders formulate action plans specific to their own companies.
"Strategy: Building and Sustaining Competitive Advantage." Harvard Business School Class Lecture 705-509, June 2005. (Revised September 2008.)
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In 2007, Allstate was the number two property and casualty insurer in the USA and had enjoyed five years of rapid profit improvement. The question facing CEO Thomas J. Wilson was how to maintain the momentum. This case tracks the evolution of Allstate's strategy over 20 years, examining the logic behind the strategic changes, and the challenges of implementing them. It identifies sources of inertia from within the organization and from without and summarizes the strategic issues facing Allstate in early 2007.
For decades, Progressive has proven to be one of the most innovative players in the US auto insurance industry, but can it maintain its lead? Progressive has moved up to the number three position in the industry in 2006, but competitors are finally waking up to the threat the company poses. Can they make it to the number one slot? If so, how? What advice would you give CEO Glenn Renwick?
It is 1988 and David Glass has just taken over as CEO from the legendary Sam Walton at Wal-Mart. Meanwhile, Joe Antonini has just taken the CEO position at Wal-Mart's arch rival, Kmart. Although Wal-Mart is still well behind Kmart, it appears to be in great shape and is catching up fast. Glass seems committed to continuing with "business as usual." Is this enough? What might Kmart do to stop him?
Can a short-sleeved, sandal-wearing, college dropout create a company manifesting love, joy, and happiness? Chainsaw John Mackey did. This CEO took a five-month sabbatical to hike the Appalachian Trail. More credentials: Sales-per-square foot of $690 and rising. Hiring by means of teams and a vote requiring a two-thirds majority. A single store in Austin, Texas in 1980; 144 stores in 2004. A seven-year streak near the top of Fortune's list of best companies to work for in America. Team-based hiring with a two-thirds majority required. Incentives based on the bottom line. Morale surveys. No salary higher than eight times the average salary. So how did John Mackey come to be christened Chainsaw John Mackey?
Ever since ex-Ben and Jerry's CEO Perry Odak took over as CEO of Wild Oats in 2001, he has been trying to turn the company around. After some apparent false starts, profits now seem to be on the rise in 2005 and 2006. Has he finally done it?
Tracks the development of the Kmart discount store chain from its inception in 1961 to its peak in 1990 and examines the contribution of each Kmart chief executive to the chain's success. In, parallel, compares the performance of Wal-Mart over the same period along a number of financial and strategic dimensions.
On October 3, 2005, Washington Mutual acquired Providian Financial Corporation, the ninth-largest credit card issuer in the U.S., for $6.5 billion. At the time, Providian had approximately 10 million customer relationships and a balance of $18.6 billion. For some observers, the transaction was merely the end of another chapter in the history of the fast consolidating credit card market. For Providian CEO Joseph Saunders, it was vindication of four years' hard work in turning around a company that many thought was close to bankruptcy.
John R. Wells, Elizabeth A. Raabe and Gabriel Ellsworth
From a single, modest club in 1962, Bally Total Fitness had grown to become—in management’s words—the “largest and only nationwide commercial operator of fitness centers” in the United States in 2004. Bally had faced its share of challenges, but the last couple of years had proven particularly difficult. Competition in its markets had intensified, Bally’s stock price had collapsed, the company had restated earnings to the chagrin of shareholders, and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission had begun to investigate Bally’s accounting procedures. Under the direction of Paul Toback, CEO since December 2002, Bally had revisited its unique approach to pricing and selling health-club memberships, boosted the accountability of club managers for profitability, launched new efforts to help club members meet weight-loss goals, altered its marketing message, and begun to strengthen its internal control systems. Toback and his team were committed to increasing the number of Bally members and maximizing revenue per member. Would Toback’s efforts restore Bally’s battered stock price, stave off companies that were rumored to want to buy the company, and enable Bally to remain a major player in the industry?
While Circuit City struggles, Best Buy has overtaken it to become the premier consumer electronics retailer in the United States. What has driven its success? How can it be sustained?
Coughlan, Peter J., Jordan I. Siegel, and John R. Wells. "Lamoiyan Corporation of the Philippines: Challenging Multinational Giants (TN)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 707-554, March 2007.
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The global recorded music industry was undergoing a major transition in 2006. Sales had been declining for a decade, and consumers were buying music in new formats and through different distribution channels. CD sales still accounted for the majority of revenues, but sales of music in digital formats (downloads, videos, ringtones) were growing significantly and accounting for approximately 10% of the industry's revenues in 2006. Many considered digital the future of the music business but the format posed both opportunities and challenges. While it had revitalized the singles market, for instance, digital had also facilitated rampant piracy. The music industry was retaliating, launching lawsuits against illegitimate peer-to-peer operators such as groups caught downloading illegally. Whether this would be enough to stop the trend was a matter of much debate. Meanwhile, the industry continued to consolidate. In 2004, Sony Music and BMG, the third- and fifth-largest record firms at the time, merged to form Sony BMG. Surprisingly, in 2006 the European Union's Court of First Instance annulled the merger--which the European Commission had approved two years earlier--after a group of independent music labels complained about the merger's effect on competition. While Sony and BMG were defending the merger in court, EMI Group plc wondered if its desired takeover of Warner Music Group--which it had been pursuing since 2000--would ever happen. If it did, how much business would the new entity have in the rapidly changing environment? All wondered how the industry would evolve.
Designed as an overview of all aspects of the strategy process: industry analysis, positioning, dynamics and sustainability, and scope issues of corporate strategy, including vertical integration, horizontal diversification, and location issues. Ice-Fili is the largest ice cream producer in Russia in 2002, but is facing strong competition from Nestle despite its success over other multinational competitors. Contains detailed exhibits, allowing deeper analyses. A rewritten version of an earlier case.
Wells, John R., Pai-Ling Yin, and Michael G. Rukstad. "Ice-Fili (Abridged)." Harvard Business School Case 705-441, November 2004. (Revised January 2007.)
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From 10-cent tickets to $17 billion television contracts, examines how a game became a multibillion dollar industry. Looks at the birth and growth of the NFL, how the NFL responded to competitive challenges, how the NFL maximized revenues, revenue sharing, the salary cap, and a financial comparison of the NFL with MLB, NBA, etc. The NFL from start to finish.
John R. Wells, Sean Hazlett and Niladri Mukhopadhyay
Colonel Moore reflects on his command of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment and its preparation of the United States Army for 21st century adversaries. During his command, Colonel Moore had transformed the regiment from a unit focused on providing conventional force-on-force training as the world-class Opposing Force (OPFOR) to an organization that was preparing to deploy to Iraq to fight the insurgency. He also transformed the very nature of training at the Army's premier Nation Training Center from standard force-on-force conventional battles between two well-equipped adversaries to more complex training scenarios that better reflect the changing nature of warfare that the United States Army was experiencing on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Colonel Moore left his command, he could not help but wonder if the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment would successfully meet the challenge of combat operations in Iraq. When the Army tapped the 11th Armored Cavalry regiment for combat duty in Iraq, Colonel Moore could not help but reflect on the changes he made to the OPFOR. Could the Blackhorse adapt successfully to fighting the insurgency in Iraq? Would the National Guard successfully replace the vaunted Blackhorse Regiment as the OPFOR? Was the OPFOR successfully preparing units for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan? Only time would tell.
Describes how JCDecaux, the second largest global outdoor advertising company, became the world leader in street furniture advertising in a fast consolidating business environment. Also explains why, in the late 1990s, JCDecaux diversified its activities into billboards and transport outdoor advertising in reaction to competitor attacks. Places students in the position of Jean-Francois Decaux and his brother Jean-Charles Decaux, the sons of the founder and JC Decaux's co-CEOs who, in late 2004, explore ways to continue the success of the 73% family-owned business.
The entire pharmaceutical industry faced uncertain times in 2005. Many of the industry's most pressing issues--patent expirations, new drug pipeline development, price pressures, regulatory issues, and political pressures--were long standing. Fundamentally new technologies were changing the way drugs were discovered, developed, and tested, allowing smaller, specialized competitors to enter the industry, compete in new ways, and grow to challenge the majors. Some observers were even questioning whether the blockbuster model on which the industry was based could continue. Blockbuster drugs, with sales of more than $1 billion a year, were becoming increasingly difficult and costly to develop. In this context, and with stock prices depressed, the industry majors were reflecting on their strategies.
What happens when an MBA buys a football team and hires a bunch of MBAs and a coach with an economics degree to run it? In this case, a historic three Super Bowls in five years. The end run Bob Kraft (HBS '65) used to acquire the New England Patriots. Why Kraft ignored the advice of friends and hired Bill Belichick, a man with a losing record as a head coach. The strategies. The principles. The techniques. How the Patriots not only achieved success but sustained it.
Genius? That is not what they were calling Bill Belichick in Cleveland. Why? Four losing seasons in five years. Fans hurled trash and insults. The media resented him. Ownership abandoned him. Players quit on him. Very different from the three Super Bowls in five years Belichick would win with the New England Patriots a few years later. Different players? Different ownership? Different management styles? Different strategies? Different coach? Find out. What happened when the Browns hired a man who began studying football strategy at the age of six? A man with a degree in economics who almost became an MBA candidate before accepting a job in football that paid $25 a week. A man who was long recognized as one of the best assistant coaches in the NFL. Learn how Belichick managed the players, the coaches, the owner, the media, etc.
John R. Wells, Elizabeth A. Raabe and Gabriel Ellsworth
In October 2004, Mark S. Mastrov, CEO of 24 Hour Fitness, reflected on how far his company had come in just over 20 years. From humble beginnings in 1983 in San Leandro, California, 24 Hour Fitness had grown to become the largest privately-owned health-club chain in the world. The company operated 346 clubs in 15 U.S. states and 10 countries, and it employed 16,000, serving 3 million members. Revenues exceeded $1 billion. The challenge ahead for Mastrov was making choices in the face of so many opportunities. Should he focus the business on the domestic market and expand into the many states the company had not entered yet or devote more resources to international expansion? If he decided to expand into the Northeast, how should the company enter against entrenched competitors like Bally Total Fitness? Would a major acquisition make sense, or would it threaten the company’s culture? And how should he fund such an acquisition? An IPO had many attractions, but it would expose the company to a whole new set of challenges.
John R. Wells, Gabriel Ellsworth and Benjamin Weinstock
In 2004, the $16.8 billion U.S. health club industry continued its strong record of growth. There were almost 27,000 health clubs in the United States, up from 6,700 two decades earlier, and these clubs claimed 41 million members, over 14% of the U.S. population. Nearly 67 million people used these clubs in 2004. As the industry grew, many large chains began to emerge, opening new outlets and buying up smaller chains and independents. Most industry observers believed the growth and consolidation would continue, providing many opportunities for investors. However, few health club chains were publicly listed, and the leading listed company, Bally Total Fitness, was under U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation for accounting irregularities. Yet this investigation did little to dampen enthusiasm for the new personal health phenomenon, and rumors abounded of private equity deals in the offing. The key question for investors seemed to be how best to take advantage of the opportunity.
The aluminum industry has suffered from long periods of depressed prices and profits interspersed with relatively short-lived price and profit peaks. The case investigates why this has occured, focusing on the decision Alusaf must make on whether to invest in a major new facility in the face of depressed aluminum prices. Courseware provides cost data on all the facilities in the industry to develop a supply curve. It also provides a supply and demand model that allows students to investigate: the drivers of average industry profitability and relative profitability of individual players in it; the impact of changes in demand over the economic cycle on the price of metal; the impact of different elasticities of demand on price and profitability; the impact of oligopolistic pricing on industry profitability; the impact of adding capacity on industry profitability; and the ability of a firm to preempt the aluminum market. A rewritten version of an earlier case.
Corts, Kenneth S., and John R. Wells. "Alusaf Hillside Project." Harvard Business School Case 704-458, December 2003. (Revised October 2014.)
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Describes the history of Energis, one of the United Kingdom's major alternative telecommunications network service providers (altnets). Tracks the company from its birth as a diversification move by the National Grid, the U.K.'s leading electricity distributor, through its dramatic growth, buoyed partly by the Internet boom, to its ultimate collapse. Illustrates the impact of major exogenous regulatory, technological, and demand shocks on an organization and highlights how these can be exaggerated by endogenous factors such as strategy, organizational structure, and systems.
Analyzes the major home appliance industry in the U.S. in 1984 and gives a profile of the key competitors. May be used with Major Home Appliance Industry in 1988 and Maytag in 1984.
Porter, Michael E., and John R. Wells. "Corn Sweetener Industry." Harvard Business School Background Note 386-154, March 1986. (Revised June 1986.)
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