Formatted like a comic-strip, this case showcases how Firmenich achieved resilience and strong sustainability commitments thanks to its family ownership. The case investigates how family ownership spanning across four generations and 125 years, has influenced the company’s core values and brought a long-term perspective to its strategy, which allowed sustainability, diversity, and inclusion on the executives’ agenda many decades before its peers. The case concludes by illustrating how these core foundational values allowed Firmenich to weather the COVID-19 storm by prompting the organization to react very rapidly, in a display of strong resilience. Firmenich is the winner of the 2019 IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award.
Chugai (C): Navigating the next century of global innovation
Summary
Chugai C focuses on the company's future as it celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2025. In 2021, Chugai launched its ambitious 'TOP I 2030' growth strategy, aiming to transition from Japan's top innovator to a global leader. The strategy sets two primary targets: doubling RD output and launching one in-house global product annually by 2030. These goals are supported by three key drivers: a RED SHIFT toward early-stage research, comprehensive Digital Transformation DX, and Open Innovation. The case examines the progress made and the significant challenges that lie ahead. These include intense competition from firms in China and India, technological disruption from AI-driven drug discovery, geopolitical risks and cultural barriers to attracting global talent. The central question posed is whether Chugai's proven model for success can sustain its bid for global leadership in an era of unprecedented market shifts.
Reference
IMD-2711
Copyright
©2025
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Chugai Pharmaceutical
Industry
Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Chugai (B): Alliance with Roche to be among the best
Summary
Chugai B examines the pivotal strategic alliance formed in October 2002 between Chugai Pharmaceutical and Swiss giant Roche. Facing constraints in RD funding and global reach, Chugai's President Osamu Nagayama sought a partnership to achieve the firm's ambition of becoming Japan's number one pharmaceutical enterprise while preserving its autonomy. The case examines the unique business model by which Roche acquired a 50.1 equity stake while Chugai retained its management, public listing and corporate identity. This structure created a powerful synergy: Chugai gained exclusive rights to develop and market Roche's innovative products in Japan, while Roche leveraged Chugai's RD pipeline for its global distribution network. The case details how the alliance transformed Chugai from Japan's 10th largest pharma firm into its market leader in oncology and by market capitalization by 2024. It provides a rich context for analyzing how strategic partnerships can bridge resource gaps, foster a 'capability revolution,' and accelerate a company's path to becoming a global innovation powerhouse.
Reference
IMD-2710
Copyright
©2025
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Chugai Pharmaceutical
Industry
Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Aprender a desaprender: cómo adaptarse a un mundo que ya no responde a lo esperado
Summary
En entornos volátiles, complejos y en constante transformación, la experiencia acumulada puede volverse un lastre difícil de superar.
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Emerging Economies - Energy Transition
Summary
Brazil, India, and Nigeria, among others, present opportunities and challenges for business in a rapidly developing energy landscape.
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AI strategies that are working
Summary
IMD’s 2025 AI Maturity Index highlights how leaders of the most successful companies are scaling AI technologies across 10 industries for competitive advantage
Copyright
©2025
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications
Europe’s irreplaceable innovator: ASML’s CEO on powering the digital future
Summary
ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet discusses EUV innovation, AI chip demand, sustainability, and how Europe’s top tech firm powers the digital economy.
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Digital ecosystems - Lower-carbon future
Summary
Digital ecosystems hold a key to the lower-carbon future, and help businesses achieve net- zero targets while maintaining operational continuity in a warming world.
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Chugai (A): Overcoming adversity with a transformative leap
Summary
Chugai A traces the transformative journey of a leading Japanese biopharmaceutical firm from its founding in 1925 to the early 2000s. Starting with founder Jz Ueno's vision to 'create medicines that benefit society,' the case details the company's evolution from an over-the-counter OTC drug importer to a research-driven enterprise. Key milestones include the shift to prescription drugs in the 1960s and a strategic pivot to biotechnology in the 1980s. Despite Japan's limited biotech expertise at the time, Chugai successfully developed groundbreaking therapies by forging global partnerships, such as with the US-based Genetics Institute, and laid the foundation for its leadership in biopharmaceuticals. The case highlights visionary leaders like Jz Ueno, Kimio Ueno, and Osamu Nagayama, who drove pivotal strategic transformations in response to environmental and policy changes from 1925 to the 1990s. The central conflict focuses on how President Nagayama, upon taking office in 1992, navigated the limitations of the traditional business to seize the immense opportunities in biotechnology, ultimately realizing the firm's ambition to become an international enterprise.
Reference
IMD-2709
Copyright
©2025
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Organization
Chugai Pharmaceutical
Industry
Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals
Available Languages
English
Contact
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No blind spots: The board’s role in sustainability
Summary
Boards play a crucial role in sustainability, guiding ESG governance and addressing climate risk to ensure strategy integration and long-term business resilience.
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Building an IT ecosystem at Intertech
Summary
In April 2021, Sava oban, the newly appointed EVP of Intertech, faces a perfect storm of Turkey's economic crisis and the global scramble for tech talent. This forces him to confront an operational meltdown at Intertech, the IT subsidiary of DenizBank. The massive talent exodus results in a 60 turnover rate, which threatens to derail critical projects as Intertech is now competing with both local firms and global giants hiring remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic. With traditional solutions proving insufficient, Sava proposes a radical strategy: pivoting from being a direct IT provider to an orchestrator of a platform ecosystem. The case challenges participants to map the practical steps necessary to build the ecosystem from the ground up by learning how to create trust with skeptical clients, internal teams and wary partners in the high-stakes fintech sector.
Reference
IMD-2698
Copyright
©2025
Copyright owner
IMD Copyright
Industry
Information Technology;Finance and Insurance, Financial Services
Available Languages
English
Contact
Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications