Latest cases
January 2014
Kweku Adoboli at UBS
By S. Wiley Wakeman, Celia Moore
The UBS case outlines how individual ambition and lax organisational standards and oversight can lead to consistent unethical behaviour resulting in a crippling loss at a large investment bank. Even though the industry had as recently as 2007 been subject to the ramifications of similar behaviour wi...
October 2018
Julie Brighton
By John Mullins
Julie Brighton had done some secondary research to determine the market size for her new charcoal starter, a product she hoped would be the basis for starting a small company with her friend Jim Henly. First, however, she needed to forecast how many charcoal starters she could sell in California in ...
September 2016
ING Bank: Creating an Agile Organisation
By Julian Birkinshaw, Scott Duncan
Set in 2016, this case describes ING Bank’s implementation of a radical new way of working using agile principles. ING’s agile way of working has been written up in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and McKinsey Quarterly. This case provides a detailed account of how the new struc...
August 2018
Bayer’s Innovation Agenda: Igniting Innovation in a 100,000-person company
By Julian Birkinshaw, Enrique De Diego, Henning Trill, Julia Hitzbleck
The case describes how Bayer, one of the oldest and largest life-science companies in the world, recognised that innovation driven solely by the traditional R&D process that characterised the sector would not be sufficient to remain competitive, given the major changes underway in pharma and cro...
November 2012
innocent Drinks: Maintaining Socially Responsible Values During Growth (B)
By Celia Moore, Luis Fischer, Mike McCarthy
This is part of a case series. This case explores the process a social venture went through in raising funds to expand its business. The case focuses on the risks and opportunities of possible funding methods, and actions that can be taken to protect key values throughout the process. The case provi...