Wise Family Business

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.

This short case exercise presents a rare but critical real-world business scenario: A large, multi-country, multi-site beauty company wishes to evaluate its capability to execute a major product recall. The need for a recall may be due to an internal quality issue or one caused by quality defects from a supplier. The CEO has seen a competitor struggle when faced with this challenge, along with the severe, potentially lasting damage to the brand, and has asked the head of supply chain to assess and provide a brief on the ability of their company's supply chain to respond should they find themselves in the same circumstances. The case provides a vehicle for students to consider the supply chain challenges a company might face in constructing policy, processes and tools to be capable of quickly and effectively executing a product recall with customers and consumers. It will spur them to consider the need for traceability from several tiers of suppliers, through the transformation into finished goods, to inventories located at customers or already sold to consumers. The broad array of distribution channels in today's supply chains adds another layer of complexity. Although the case is fictitious, it is anchored in the real world and will elicit challenges that are universally present in companies today.

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Though little-known outside of its home country of France, the Mulliez family enterprise is one of the largest privately held business networks in the world. The Association Familiale Mulliez (AFM) unites over 1,000 family shareholders and oversees a portfolio of more than 90 companies operating across retail, services and other sectors. Its flagship companies include Decathlon, Auchan, Leroy Merlin, Cultura, Kiabi, Pimkie, Norauto/ATU and Flunch. Collectively, these businesses employ over 700,000 people in 80 countries and generate estimated revenues of nearly €100 billion annually. Case A begins in 1905, when Louis Mulliez founded a yarn twisting factory in northern France. This modest textile operation laid the foundation for what would become one of Europe's most influential family businesses. Over the decades, the family diversified beyond textiles, entering retail in 1961 when Gérard Mulliez opened the first Auchan store in Roubaix. The hallmark of the Mulliez dynasty is its collective ownership model. In 1968 the family enshrined its 'Everyone in everything' (Tous dans tout) approach in a family constitution and launched an association to oversee its constellation of family-owned companies. Its governance model – anchored in principles of solidarity, long-term orientation and entrepreneurial spirit – has enabled the Mulliez family to remain competitive while sustaining cohesion and entrepreneurial vitality across generations. The case reveals some of the biggest challenges that enterprising families must overcome to survive as well as how to build enough trust to traverse delicate moments such as generational successions. Case A ends in 1992, as the family experiences a crisis of confidence and must decide whether it should sell off all its businesses.

Case B of the Mulliez Family Business case series examines the family's entrepreneurial 'DNA': the unique set of characteristics that have enabled the Association Familiale Mulliez (AFM) to successfully nurture the ventures of the next generations. Case B picks up in the 1990s, as the Mulliez family renews its focus on entrepreneurship. It first explores the tension between preserving family unity and fostering individual entrepreneurial ambition. It then explains how the Mulliez family designed governance and financial mechanisms – such as a shared investment pool – to encourage risk taking while maintaining cohesion among hundreds of shareholders. The story of the Mulliez clan underscores the importance of cultural values, long-term orientation and trust in sustaining entrepreneurial vitality over decades. It also examines the challenges of balancing inclusivity with performance, as the family seeks to empower new generations without diluting strategic focus or accountability.

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