Business model innovation
December 2023
citizenM: Radical innovation in the hotel industry (Chinese language)
By Freek Vermeulen
In 2008, a group of five entrepreneurs and executives teamed up to launch an innovative hotel chain into what seemed like a highly competitive industry. Rattan Chadha, the founder of fashion company MEXX and Michael Levie, a hotel industry veteran, teamed up with Hans Meyer, a hotel development spec...
June 2022
Anne Boden at Starling Bank: Disrupting an industry
By Herminia Ibarra, Luisa Alemany, Nick Mickshik, Ken Mark
The case describes the start-up and evolution of UK-based digital bank Starling. Founded in 2014, Starling offered personal and business accounts, and lending products, promising a better customer-service experience, faster approvals and a more digital-friendly approach than traditional banks. By 20...
March 2022
Refinitiv: A private equity-led transformation
By Julian Birkinshaw, David Craig
In August 2019 CEO David Craig was considering the likely benefits and challenges of merging his company, financial-markets data and infrastructure provider Refinitiv, with the London Stock Exchange Group. Craig had led a turnaround of Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk division (F&R), then...
February 2022
TrueLayer: Innovation, regulation and the future of financial services
By Julian Birkinshaw, Ken Mark, Farhan Lalji
In April 2021, having just raised $70 million in a Series D funding, Francesco Simoneschi, Co-Founder and CEO of TrueLayer, was thinking about expansion plans. Should the company focus on product innovation, broadening its line-up within the 13 countries in which it operated, or should it look to gr...
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....
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...
April 2024
Dollar Shave Club: Disrupting the Shaving Industry (Spanish language)
By Nader Tavassoli, Karin Kollenz-Quétard, Jamie Anderson
The case describes how Dollar Shave Club proved to be a disruptive force in the shaving industry, one dominated by Gillette for over a Century. It did so without a single patent to its name, and with a direct-to-consumer subscription and a content-based customer engagement model that was new to the ...
March 2009
Reuters Market Light: Strategic Innovation at the Bottom of the Pyramid
By Costas Markides, Laura Winig, Daniel Oyon
This case is set in 2008 and examines the challenges facing Amit Mehra, Managing Director of Reuters Market Light (RML), a newly formed unit within Thomson Reuters, as he tries to grow the business amid organisational and market upheaval. RML represented a creative venture by Thomson Reuters to leve...
February 2015
NayaMed (B)
By Costas Markides, Lisa Duke, Daniel Oyon
This is part of a case series. As the Alps disappeared into the darkness through NayaMed’s window, the General Manager Aarnav Sendutta considered how to grow his fledgling unit. It was February 2014, and NayaMed, a unit of medical device giant, Medtronic, was just over two years old. It was formed...
February 2015
NayaMed (A)
By Costas Markides, Lisa Duke, Daniel Oyon
This is part of a case series. As the Alps disappeared into the darkness through NayaMed’s window, the General Manager Aarnav Sendutta considered how to grow his fledgling unit. It was February 2014, and NayaMed, a unit of medical device giant, Medtronic, was just over two years old. It was formed...