Business strategy
October 2023
De Beers: Reverse-disrupting the Diamond Industry
By Stefano Turconi, Thomas Horton, Minerva Rojanapenkul
Set in September 2018, the case describes De Beers’ attempt to halt the escalating disruption to its core business posed by diamonds grown in laboratories. Since its inception over a century ago, De Beers had created and nurtured the perception of diamonds as rare objects and exclusive symbols of ...
October 2023
Gucci in the Metaverse
By Stefano Turconi, Umberto Lobina
Set in April 2022, the case chronicles how Kering-owned luxury-fashion house Gucci underwent a comprehensive creative and cultural transformation, making it more inclusive, agile and digital. Faced with the emergence of the metaverse, Gucci decided to take the lead, bargaining that a test-and-learn ...
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...
November 2021
MOVE Guides (C)
By John Mullins, Tiffany Putimahtama
Having decided to go where her customers wanted to take her, CEO Brynne Kennedy had led MOVE Guides into the managed-moves market segment, in addition to the lump-sum moves segment that had given her company its start. By any measure, the company had grown: in top-line revenue, in head count, and (t...
November 2021
MOVE Guides (B)
By John Mullins, Tiffany Putimahtama
It was August 2014. The MOVE Guides team had successfully converted two of their initial pilot clients into paying customers whose employees were delighted with the company’s support of their moves. Brynne Kennedy and her team were successfully closing a couple of additional lump-sum clients reg...
November 2021
MOVE Guides (A)
By John Mullins, Tiffany Putimahtama
It was a crisp autumn day in London in 2012. Brynne Kennedy and Steve Black, the co-founders of MOVE Guides, were huddling with their lead software developer, Peter Almasi, and their lead angel investor, Kevin Eyres. Their fledgling business had come a long way since its July launch, with pilot prog...
August 2021
Natura &Co: Sustainability at Scale
By Stefano Turconi, Pranjal Singh, Rui Wang
Established in 1969 as a cosmetics lab in the city of São Paulo, Natura grew briskly over the ensuing decades and by 2004 it had become Brazil’s largest beauty company. Unlike its competitors, Natura was built on the principle of reconciling socioecological sustainability with value creation. Dur...
August 2021
NiPay’s Pricing Conundrum – Compact Case
By Marco Bertini, Oded Koenigsberg
NiPay is a software provider competing in the Nigerian business-to-business payments market. Founded by Idaku Ibrahim nearly 20 years ago, NiPay sells two products to retailers and other merchants, which enable individual shoppers to transact either online or via a mobile device....
October 2020
The Marketing Process – Background Note
By Nader Tavassoli
The Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK defines marketing as: “The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably” 1 This note describes the marketing process...
October 2013
Nokia Siemens Networks: Branding a Global Merger from the Inside Out
By Simona Botti, Nader Tavassoli, Gudrun Herrmann
A handful of global players dominated the telecommunications infrastructure industry in 2007. The benefits to scale were significant: substantial funding requirements were necessary to sustain continuous innovation and development of networks, products and services; key customers themselves were glo...