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This case is part of a series on Netflix. Case (A) discusses the company’s growth until July 2011. Case (B) tells the story of Netflix’s sharp share price decline after it announced it was splitting the business in two and increasing prices. Case (C) covers the years 2012/13, when Netflix found its way back to success. Seeing that the industry bottleneck was shifting from the channel (who can reach the viewers?) to the content (who owns the movie rights?), Netflix started to produce its own TV shows (e.g., House of Cards, Hemlock Grove). Case (D), set in 2020, focuses on a diverse set of strategic challenges Netflix is facing. First, as indicated already in the (C) case, the cost of content through licensing and production continued to increase. Netflix users had to get used to more frequent cancellations of their favorite show. Second, the “streaming war” between Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and YoutTube was intensifying on two fronts: competition for subscribers and for content. Third, Netflix was increasing its global presence to accelerate economies of scale by introducing new pricing strategies in foreign countries. Fourth, most movies are watched on mobile phones, where a vertical format is more natural than the traditional horizontal format. It was an open question whether movie producers should adopt this trend set by Instagram and TikTok. Thanks to the growing subscriber base, Netflix’s revenue and profitability were increasing. But is the company well equipped for the intensifying “streaming war”?

In June 2022, pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG announced it was cutting 8,000 jobs, i.e., 7% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring plan that involved integrating its pharmaceuticals and oncology units into an Innovative Medicines business. By reorganizing as separate US and international commercial setups, making operational improvements and reducing duplications in the business, the company’s goal was to increase focus, strengthen competitiveness and drive synergies. According to market analysts, Novartis stock was undervalued. CEO Vasant Narasimhan was driving a strategy for Novartis to become a 100% medicines company powered by advanced therapy platforms and data science. He carried out bolt-on acquisitions, investing approximately $30 billion since 2018 in more than 10 deals. However, the company faced several challenges: integrating the acquired companies, stiff competition from peers, a looming patent cliff, setbacks in clinical trials of innovative drugs, scandals around kickbacks, data falsification and price collusion, and a recent overhaul of the top management team following the restructuring moves. While the makeover of Novartis was underway, the CEO had to chart the strategic roadmap to power the next phase of innovation, growth, productivity and value creation. What would the roadmap look like? What should the company prioritize for the short term and initiate for long-term success?

Over the past decade, Asian companies have been launching accelerated and wide-ranging digital transformation initiatives. This has enabled some of them to become leading national and even international players, as well as digital pioneers in their respective industries. This case examines the successful digital transformation undertaken by the Chinese company Midea, one of the world’s leading home appliance manufacturers. By digitally transforming the company, Midea improved its financial performance and reshaped its business on a wider scale. While many cases that address digital transformation focus on the early phases of the process, Midea’s case illustrates a successfully completed digital business transformation. This allows participants to have an overview of the entire digital transformation journey and see what the potential outcomes might be.

Henkel, a 145-year-old family business, had unintentionally started its digital transformation journey in 2013. Only a few years later it had reached such a level of digital maturity that digital became a decisive element of the company’s strategic framework and one of the key drivers to achieve growth. In less than ten years, Henkel received international recognition as a global leader in using Industry 4.0 technologies to transform factories, value chains and business models. The first part looks at how this journey started, what it had to do to reach this impressive level of digital competence and to make the journey self-sustaining. Can Henkel also build on the success of this digital transformation to make its products carbon-neutral during production and consumption? This is the question that will be explored during the second part. Henkel had made good progress to reduce its own operational CO2 emissions, but realized that this represented less than 5% of the total. Two-thirds occurred during consumption and one-third during the production of raw materials. Making a 50,000+ workforce and operations digitally savvy is one thing, but reducing carbon-emissions at stages of the process over which Henkel had no direct control is something else. The dilemma facing Henkel was where it should focus on to reduce its overall CO2 emissions. Should it continue to prioritize making its own production sites carbon-free, in the knowledge that this represents only a fraction of the total emissions, or should it prioritize making its products carbon-free in the other parts of the value chain where the impact on our planet is higher? Prioritizing the latter would make sense, but what could Henkel actually do to change the attitudes and behaviors of thousands of suppliers and hundreds of millions of consumers?

Throughout its 60-year history, luxury carmaker Lamborghini had been consistently visionary, innovative and inspiring. Bold entrepreneurial moves – such as bringing the attributes of a racing car to mainstream, non-racing vehicles, or pioneering a luxury SUV – became an intrinsic part of the company’s DNA. Yet, entering the 2020s, the unfolding social, geopolitical, environmental and industrial transitions presented luxury players, including auto companies, with monumental challenges. Sustainability – and, in the car sector, electrification – came to define the new decade. In an effort to push for net-zero climate-change targets, between 2021 and 2022 EU legislators announced a virtual ban on the sale of traditional combustion engines past the year 2035. Future-proofing the organization for the challenges ahead required (i) reinventing the iconic brand so that it remained desirable in what will be a radically different automotive space, based on sustainability targets, new materials, and digital technologies; (ii) shifting the workforce composition and culture from one that was firmly rooted in engineering, precision, and a parochial, heads-down, male-dominated outlook to one that emphasized cross-functionality, diversity of backgrounds, curiosity, hyperawareness, and shared organizational and social values; and (iii) maintaining a position of thought, industry, technological and innovation leadership, alongside the timeless quality of the made-in-Italy label, at a time when customers as well as society at large are looking to global brands to come up with a renewed, compelling vision of purposeful luxury.