United Kingdom
September 2021
Treeapp: Plant a tree for free, every day
By Ioannis Ioannou
The case describes the launch in the UK and Ireland in April 2020 of the mobile app Treeapp, intended to help combat the effects of climate change by enabling users to plant trees for free. The app is funded by Treeapp’s brand partners, who pay £1 to Treeapp every time a user watches an advert on...
February 2021
ProMed Ltd
By John Mullins, Robert M Johnson
For Sid Worley, it was decision time. He had spent the last two years courting the management and the family owners of his largest competitor, and finally (and unexpectedly) they had indicated that they would be receptive to “a serious offer” to buy the company. Worley was excited and determined...
February 2021
Valuing Privately Owned Companies: Valuation Techniques – Technical Note
By John Mullins, Robert M Johnson, Steve Pesenti
It is commonly said that the valuation of companies is more of an art than a science. The essence of this statement is that arriving at a valuation is a matter of judgment, balancing the consideration of various factors, rather than the mechanical application of a mathematical formula. This is espec...
January 2021
Pharma UK: The Transdermal Technology – Compact Case
By Julian Birkinshaw
Pharma UK was the UK subsidiary of Pharma, a major international pharmaceuticals company with expertise in oncology, hormone replacement drugs and fertility. Pharma UK was responsible for selling drugs in the local marketplace. However, it also had 50 people in R&D, doing local development work ...
January 2021
Costa Coffee: Project Marlow – Compact Case
By Julian Birkinshaw, Ken Mark
For Jim Slater, head of Costa Express in 2014, the biggest new growth opportunity was to roll out the company’s third-generation vending machine, called Marlow. The product had been developed in record time, but Slater faced several strategic and operational challenges in launching it....
November 2020
Twisterden Pricing a go-to-market strategy – Compact Case
By Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg
English wine has come a long way. In Britain, sweet and poorer quality wines dominated the palates of the 1970s, when domestic producers were almost nowhere to be seen. Today, the range of wine available to British households is global and local wineries have grown to take market share with increasi...
November 2020
Protean Electric: Innovation upon innovation
By David Arnold
The case is intended as a vehicle for analysis of the challenges involved in launching an innovative product. It is set against the background of the wave of innovation in the vehicle market, as manufacturers race to replace internal combustion engines (ICEs) with electric power. Protean Electric, a...
October 2020
COVID-19: Pret a Manger’s Fight for Survival
By Nader Tavassoli, Jessica Spungin
The case describes how Pret a Manger—a London casual-dining institution—was significantly adversely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how they tried to pivot by launching several business experiments in fast succession. The long-term outcome of these experiments was far from certain, but th...
March 2020
Ros Atkins and the 50:50 Project at the BBC (B)
By Aneeta Rattan, Oriane Georgeac, Siri Chilazi
Ros Atkins, the presenter of the BBC’s nightly primetime news programme Outside Source, had a distinguished and successful career at the BBC. Despite his successes as a journalist and presenter, however, he knew he was not living up to his own and the BBC’s values and mission when it came to gen...
March 2020
Ros Atkins and the 50:50 Project at the BBC (A)
By Aneeta Rattan, Oriane Georgeac, Siri Chilazi
Ros Atkins, the presenter of the BBC’s nightly primetime news programme Outside Source, had a distinguished and successful career at the BBC. Despite his successes as a journalist and presenter, however, he knew he was not living up to his own and the BBC’s values and mission when it came to gen...