Organisational development
December 2023
Building an organisation for the ecosystem era: Weighing up the Recipe of Haier’s Internet of Food
By Michael Jacobides, Tom Albrighton, Monwei Chou, Lisa Duke, Dalbert Ma, Aryan Mittal
Ecosystems offer a new way to bring multiple firms together in order to deliver new value propositions. By working together, the hub firm and its complementors can create innovative ‘product plus service’ bundles that span traditionally separate industries to offer an experience that simply wasn...
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
Takeda: The governance of strategic transformation (B) (Japanese language)
By Harry Korine, Kazuhiro Asakawa
The case series describes strategic transformation at Takeda, the largest Japanese pharmaceutical company, with a special focus on the R&D function. Since 2015, the 237-year-old industry doyen has narrowed its strategic focus from six to three therapeutic areas, reorganised its global R&D fo...
October 2020
Takeda: The Governance of Strategic Transformation (A) (Japanese language)
By Harry Korine, Kazuhiro Asakawa
The case series describes strategic transformation at Takeda, the largest Japanese pharmaceutical company, with a special focus on the R&D function. Since 2015, the 237-year-old industry doyen has narrowed its strategic focus from six to three therapeutic areas, reorganised its global R&D fo...
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...
January 2005
Brahma versus Antarctica: Reversal of Fortune in Brazil’s Beer Market
By Donald Sull
The case is set in June 1999 as Marcel Telles, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Companhia Cervejaria Brahma (Brahma) – the largest brewer in Brazil – considers a possible merger with the Antarctica Group (Antarctica), the second-largest Brazilian brewer. If the merger were to be completed...
February 2019
Jack Ma at Alibaba: Building a Learning Organisation
By Herminia Ibarra, Jessica Spungin
In September 2018 Alibaba’s co-founder and executive chairman, Jack Ma, announced his plans to step down from the $420 billion Chinese internet company to pursue philanthropy in education. The case describes the evolution of Alibaba’s corporate strategy from Chinese e-commerce pioneer to a compl...
March 2017
UEFA 2016: The Opportunities and Challenges of Connectivity
By Costas Markides
UEFA is considering how best to use the new technologies of the social era to improve fans’ experience with football in Europe. The case describes the key challenges facing UEFA and raises the issue of how to introduce change in a successful organisation....
August 2018
The UK Government Digital Service
By Julian Birkinshaw, Scott Duncan
The case describes how Mike Bracken, the newly appointed head of the UK Government Digital Service (GDS), took on the massive challenge of setting up, from scratch, a centralised team to deliver online public services efficiently online across all of the government’s digital channels. This involve...
November 2018
Takeda: The governance of strategic transformation (B)
By Harry Korine, Kazuhiro Asakawa
The case series describes strategic transformation at Takeda, the largest Japanese pharmaceutical company, with a special focus on the R&D function. Since 2015, the 237-year-old industry doyen has narrowed its strategic focus from six to three therapeutic areas, reorganised its global R&D fo...