Innovation
January 2021
Building an Agile Organisation at ING Bank Netherlands – Compact Case
By Julian Birkinshaw, Ken Mark
ING Group was established through a merger of three Dutch financial services firms in 1991. It expanded internationally into Europe and the Americas, and created a no-frills savings account business called ING Direct in the late 1990s. In 2007 it merged its two main subsidiary banks, Postbank with ...
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...
July 2020
Haier’s (2019) ecosystem revolution: From Rendanheyi 2.0 to Rendanheyi 3.0
By Michael Jacobides, Lisa Duke
2019 was an important year for Haier. Its new version of its radically decentralised structure, dubbed Rendanheyi 2.0, based on many independent ‘Ecosystem Micro-enterprise Communities’ (EMCs) had been devised to help it respond to the shifting ways of adding value in the digital, internet-based...
July 2020
Haier in 2014: An entrepreneurial juggernaut facing a world of platforms and ecosystems
By Michael Jacobides, Lisa Duke
Until the 2010s, China had been known for inexpensive products and efficient, low-cost production and for copycat or OEM products rather than for leading-edge innovation. Yet, in a few short years, Chinese firms turned to quality and innovation, drastically increasing their market share. A shining e...
January 2008
Silverglide Surgical Technologies (B)
By John Mullins
This is a two-case series. From a rocky perch above the city of Boulder, Colorado, Jon Thorne gazed across the city and onto the great plains that stretched eastward before him. 'There's nothing like a vigorous mountain bike ride into the hills,' Thorne thought, 'when crucial decisions have to be de...
January 2008
Silverglide Surgical Technologies (A)
By John Mullins
This is a two-case series. From a rocky perch above the city of Boulder, Colorado, Jon Thorne gazed across the city and onto the great plains that stretched eastward before him. 'There's nothing like a vigorous mountain bike ride into the hills,' Thorne thought, 'when crucial decisions have to be de...
August 2018
M-Pesa & Nick Hughes
By Lisa Duke, Rajesh Chandy
It was February 2009, and Nick Hughes, head of Global Payment Solutions at Vodafone, contemplated his notes as he waited to enter the company’s Executive Meeting at its headquarters in Newbury, amid the Berkshire countryside outside London. M-PESA (M for mobile, Pesa meaning ‘money’ in Swahili...
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...
September 2011
Desso (B): Going Forward
By Ioannis Ioannou, Amandine Ody-Brasier
This is part of a case series. This case describes the strategic transformation of DESSO, a Dutch manufacturer of carpet tiles and flooring solutions. The first part of the case describes the difficult situation in which the company found itself in the early 2000s, following a series of changes in o...