LanzaTech: Scaling carbon to value

Elon Musk’s reported Terafab project and Huawei’s Tau Scaling Law look, at first glance, like two versions of the same trend: the return of vertical integration in semiconductors. But the similarity is superficial. Terafab, if it materializes, is ...

For more than a decade, ESG-linked funds and corporate sustainability strategies have run on the same quiet assumption: spend more on sustainability, and the market will eventually reward you for it. The problem, however, is that this theory is mo...

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The case tracks the development of Slow Forest Coffee, a company launched in 2017 on the belief that when producing food in a regenerative way, everyone benefits. Farmers flourish, nature thrives and the economy prospers. By 2025 Slow had converted almost 600 hectares of degraded monoculture coffee plantations in Laos into booming agroforestry farms, ensuring the preservation of an additional 1,000+ hectares by working with local smallholders. The coffee was roasted, packed and delivered by Slow to offices, hotels and coffee chains across Northern Europe. Thanks to vertical integration and investing in soil health and the whole ecosystem, unlike its competitors, Slow was not impacted by volatile and rapidly increasing coffee prices. The Slow model seemed to be working, both in environmental and financial terms, regenerating nature while yielding healthy, stable returns. A host of ongoing initiatives and matters needed to be discussed at the forthcoming board meeting, including which new customer segments the company should enter, how to adapt and scale marketing communications to support growth, the integration of the newly acquired coffee roaster in Kenya and the expansion of the supply base in the region, not to mention evolving resource needs as the company prepared to enter a bigger league. Slow was indeed buzzing with positive energy.

Explore how weak signals, geopolitical shifts, and climate strategy shape tomorrow’s leadership. Learn horizon scanning and scenario planning with Florence Gaub

For years, executives were sold a compelling idea: doing good would also mean doing well. Surveys suggested that consumers were increasingly willing to pay more for products seen (or marketed) as better for the planet. Consultants reinforced the m...

In the years before its dramatic rise on the back of GLP-1 therapies, Novo Nordisk was best known for disciplined execution, a strong focus on diabetes and a long record of home-grown innovation. It met its targets with near predictable consistency, supported by stable structures and deeply embedded ways of working. Yet technological change, scientific uncertainty and increasing market pressures challenged whether a model built on reliability and internal self-sufficiency could keep pace. This case examines how Marcus Schindler, an externally hired leader who would later become the company's Chief Scientific Officer, attempted to future-proof Novo Nordisk's research and development organization. Rather than relying on incremental improvements, he introduced ambitious aspirations, pushed teams to experiment beyond their comfort zones, normalized failure as a source of learning and tested new organizational structures alongside the existing core. As students follow these choices, the case exposes a set of concrete leadership dilemmas: How fast should a leader push change in a stable, successful organization? How do you gain credibility as an outsider without full consensus? How do you balance accountability and psychological safety? And how do you allocate attention between short-term execution and long-term renewal? The dilemma becomes sharper as Novo Nordisk's GLP-1 therapies deliver extraordinary commercial success, shifting focus toward operational execution and raising questions about whether exploration risks being crowded out by exploitation. A deeper leadership question also emerges: How does a leader stay true to a long-term vision when runaway success pulls attention toward the here and now? This case challenges readers to think critically about leading change in high-performing organizations, driving transformational innovation, managing competing time horizons, and making leadership choices when success itself becomes the biggest constraint.