Founded in 2004, China''s leading design house, LKK, started from scratch and soon established itself by winning countless international design awards and pursuing Fortune Global 500 clients. From its beginning, founder Jia Wei hoped that LKK could represent the highest level of China''s design circle and rectify the stereotypic image that Chinese designers were only imitators and did not have original ideas. His personal mission was .....more

This case is about the growth of one of China''s top design companies. The design trade is a knowledge-intensive and traditional industry. The protagonist Jia Wei started LKK in 2004. Following the industry''s traditional organizational model, over 10 years he managed to grow the company''s staff size to over a thousand and reach the peak of the industry. Jia''s understanding of how the organization structure could .....more

Small farmers in a big country" is an accurate portrayal of the tea industry in China. China''s tea industry chain links thousands of tea farmers and more than 70,000 tea-related enterprises. However, the highly dispersed structure of the tea industry restricts its development. Sunriver Holding Group Co. Ltd. ("Sunriver Group") started to invest in and acquire the time-honoured Keemun Black Tea Factory after signing an agreement .....more

Heilongjiang Feihe Dairy Co., Ltd. (Feihe) was located in Qiqihar City, a medium-sized city in Heilongjiang Province, northeastern China. Situated in the golden milk source zone at 47 degrees north latitude, the city had been producing powdered milk products and sold them to domestic consumers for 58 years. However, the 2008 melamine incident (MLM) almost wiped out local brands in the domestic infant formula market and left a vacancy for foreign brands .....more

In 2019, Bestore Co. Ltd. went public on the mainboard of China''s Shanghai Stock Exchange. With the mission of bringing Chinese delicacies to the world, the RMB 6 billion-revenue company proposed an ambitious revenue goal of RMB 100 billion with the new financial resources acquired from the public offering. Bestore expanded from its base market, Wuhan city, in central China to southern and eastern parts of the country. It opened flagship .....more

The Indian Railways (IR), the country''s largest transporter, is considering a plan to fully electrify its network. The move will cut its fuel expenditure by a whopping 50%. However, the project will require a capital investment of INR 350 billion (approximately USD 4.9 billion1). The investment is beyond the normal capital that is available for annual investment, as the IR is not run with a profit mindset and has limited retained earnings. .....more

Spreadsheet Supplement for Case ISB278

This technical note is designed to introduce students and practitioners to the body of work associated with creativity and its applications for professionals and the organizations they lead. Creativity is often seen as an intangible subject, and a half-century of research remains remarkably unknown. This note describes actions that professionals can immediately implement to accelerate creativity in the work place.

The Auction Mobility case covers the founding of, and raising capital for, a new venture in the app industry. Doug Brenhouse and Jeremy Paradise (founders) launch a business to bring auctions to cell phones. Initially, they conceived of a peer-to-peer platform (meaning users would put items up for auctions, targeting other users), but eventually found that an enterprise solution to existing auction houses was a better opportunity. As the company evolves, .....more