Sustainability
February 2023
Cree (C)
By John Mullins, Elizabeth Philp
Another four years had passed, and it was now April 2018. After two attempts to shut down the venture totally, Hubert Rhomberg’s father Walter-Heinz presented Hubert with an opportunity to buy their cash-burning company, CREE, for €1. CREE had been “his baby” for the better part of a decade,...
February 2023
Cree (B)
By John Mullins, Elizabeth Philp
After having been spun out of the family business, CREE’s progress had been disappointing, to say the least. Despite the fact that two towers had been built using CREE’s innovative approach, and to considerable acclaim, it was proving difficult to sell additional projects. The result was that CR...
February 2023
Cree (A)
By John Mullins, Elizabeth Philp
Hubert Rhomberg was contemplating the wall of photographs at the entrance to the headquarters of his family business, Rhomberg. They showed the history of the company and his forefathers. With such rich heritage, should he really be pushing for innovation so strongly? But if he didn’t, he would be...
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...
September 2021
Treeapp: Plant a tree for free, every day
By Ioannis Ioannou
The case describes the launch in the UK and Ireland in April 2020 of the mobile app Treeapp, intended to help combat the effects of climate change by enabling users to plant trees for free. The app is funded by Treeapp’s brand partners, who pay £1 to Treeapp every time a user watches an advert on...
November 2019
BanaPads: To grow or not to grow? That is the question
By Luisa Alemany, Nicholas Andreou, Alma Gutierrez
In the summer of 2018, Richard Bbaale sat in a rural village in Uganda, looking over a banana plantation. He recalled the inspiration behind BanaPads as he contemplated what to do next. It had been 10 years since he had founded the non-governmental organisation (NGO) to help women and girls in rural...
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...
September 2011
Desso (A): Taking on the Sustainability Challenge
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...