As 2018 neared its end, Laetitia Toupet, international general manager of L’Oréal’s La Roche-Posay brand reflected on the brand’s achievements over the past year. At 1 billion in revenue, La Roche-Posay had recently become the number one dermocosmetics brand in the world. While Toupet was pleased with this feat, she believed that the brand was at a critical juncture. It was time to make some significant marketing decisions related to brand positioning to try to accelerate La Roche-Posay’s future growth trajectory as dermocosmetics moved from serving a niche market to the mainstream.
Vaccines for children has been a long-standing focus for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and its critical role in public health made its production an important economic and political issue. This case describes the Foundation's investment in a breakthrough vaccine manufacturing platform for the Sabin inactivated polio virus. While the new technology promised a much lower cost per dose, it also raised questions about the consequences of lowering entry barriers to vaccine production, maintaining high quality and production standards, a strong regulatory environment were critical to protecting the integrity of the vaccine supply. The new technology also threatened to encourage more developed country vaccine manufacturers to exit the market, not an outcome the Foundation was hoping for, as they possessed the capabilities and resources to invest in future developments. It raises the question of whether vaccines are a public good, and who should be responsible for their production.
The Opportunity Hub was a cloud-based platform that enabled managers to market projects they were working on and associated resourcing needs as ‘Opportunity Owners’ and employees, or ‘Opportunity Seekers’, to browse these statements of need and engage when they had interest and availability. The premise was that the commitment would be no more than 20% of an employee’s time, and could be much less, but it would be highly transparent. The Opportunity Hub was intended to offer a solution to Shell’s business challenge of lacking digital capability. The core objective was to organize and dynamically access internal talent to get work done in a more automated way and at pace.
See more research
Vincent Dessain, a Belgian national, is the Executive Director of the Europe Research Center (ERC). Vincent has extensive management and business education experience. He is a co-author of two books in finance, a book chapter on intercultural management and a co-author of a wide variety of articles in academic journals, case studies and course development notes (cases can be found on https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/ or here). He is a frequent guest speaker invited by academia, business and government to speak on topics in management and education.
Prior to his appointment at the Europe Research Center, he was Senior Director of Corporate Relationships at INSEAD in Fontainebleau and elected as the representative of the INSEAD administration on the School’s Board of Directors. Earlier in his career, Vincent has been active as a management consultant with Booz-Allen & Hamilton in New York and Paris. His field of consulting was international market entry strategies, financial products, strategy, negotiation and implementation of cross border alliances, financial restructuring, mergers and acquisitions. He has also been active as a Foreign Associate with the law firm Shearman & Sterling in New York in Banking and Finance and as an Advisor to the President of the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.
Vincent speaks five European languages (French, English, German, Dutch and Italian). He holds a law degree from Leuven University (Belgium), a Business Administration degree from Louvain University (Belgium), an MBA from Harvard Business School (Boston, USA), and a PhD in management and communication from Université Paris VIII, France, on corporate social responsibility.