Cases accompanied by teaching plans for instructors include:
1. Apple's iPhone and developing circular economy models: The trade-in program encouraged customers to trade in their old devices, which were then refurbished and resold, or recycled for valuable components. With about 80% of the second-hand smartphone market comprised of iPhone and an increasing percentage of materials being recycled and reused in manufacturing, Apple was making progress towards circularity. But what was the impact of circularity on revenues, operating profits and carbon emissions?
2. BMW's decarbonization and electrification strategy: automakers, consumers, regulators, and investors were focusing on the transition from internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to electric vehicles (EV). While this would reduce tail-pipe emissions, the production of EVs—and especially their batteries—increased emissions in the supply chain. BMW was focusing on life cycle emissions and was pursuing a flexible powertrain strategy by offering vehicles with several powertrain options: gasoline and diesel-fueled ICE, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and battery electric vehicles (BEV). Was this the right strategy to pursue?
3. Galy's efforts in lab grown agriculture: GALY, founded in 2019, aimed to produce cotton and other crops from cells grown in the lab. The company hoped to create 500,000 tons of products by 2030, and by 2023, had produced proof of concepts of cotton, coffee, and cacao. Bueno had a number of decisions to make. How should the company scale? Where should it locate production? Should it build its own production facilities, or license its intellectual property to partner firms? Should the company continue operating an office in Brazil, or centralize operations in Boston? The answers to these questions would point the way forward, but which path was best?
4. Solvay's product portfolio management tool: The case describes the announcement of a new strategic plan to grow the business, increase return on capital, decrease absolute emissions and transition the product portfolio to be a leading environmental solutions company. Were those objectives in conflict or synergistic? Solvay had developed a sustainability tool called Sustainability Product Management to identify promising business applications. How effective was the tool? What business lines should Solvay promote to grow and at the same time be more sustainable?
5. Northvolt's development of a vertically integrated battery producer: Having raised billions of dollars of capital and secured tens of billions in customer offtake agreements, Northvolt was making progress towards building gigafactories to produce batteries and compete with established battery manufacturers. How did the founders succeed to get both the capital and customer agreements? Where should they focus their expansion plans?
Teaching plans are under development for the other cases in the course.