Cases

This case study describes how IPS, a project management company, helped Tom Hendrickx, the manager of a Catalan chocolate factory, to prepare a project to install two new dark compound chocolate lines to replace an old white chocolate line, to cope with a higher demand of their products. IPS had a project manager, Winnie Vanrespaille, working full time for the manufacturing company, in charge of managing all the ongoing projects of the factory. In the case text, Hendrickx makes a first basic estimate of the planning and budget, as to ask Vanrespaille to prepare a detailed project management plan, including the planning, a stakeholder analysis and a risk analysis. With this, he wanted to get the green light for the project from the steering committee in their next meeting of March 2017. The class discussion, described in the teaching note, follows the waterfall project management methodology. Although it is one of the oldest methodologies, it is still one of the most useful for projects of the predictive type, such as many industrial projects, including the one of the chocolate lines treated here.

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This case explains how a Swedish engineer and entrepreneur plans to address the problem of wet biomass (sludge) with the possible solution of hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) to convert such waste streams into a useful material called hydrochar (also called biochar or biocoal). This solution led him to create a start-up which showed encouraging growth and had secured a number of real customers. We use this case as a base to introduce, discuss and practice customer validation techniques by interviewing stakeholders. The main learning objective is how to perform a good customer validation interview, that is: 1) How to prepare for the interview; 2) How to ask good questions; and 3) How to analyze interviews.

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This case study focuses on the strategic leadership of innovation. It centers on a unique, one-of-a-kind company in the world: ILUNION, incorporated within the ONCE Group. The National Organization for Blind Spaniards (Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles, ONCE) was created in 1938. In 1988, it launched the ONCE Foundation, whose aim is to help ensure the full social inclusion of people with all types of disabilities by promoting their training, employment, and universal access. In 2014, ONCE created the ILUNION Group, with ONCE maintaining 47.51% of the group’s shares and ONCE Foundation controlling the remaining 52.49%. Alejandro Oñoro was named the CEO of the ILUNION Group at that time. This case study specifically examines the ILUNION Group’s strategic decision to acquire or lease a building in 
order to open a new 5-star hotel in 2013 as part of the Group’s expansion in the hospitality industry. However, this caused some friction between ILUNION’s business practices and values and those of the real estate firm, Sattle (fictitious name). The key protagonists of this case are Alejandro Oñoro, ILUNION CEO, and José Ángel Preciados, ILUNION Hotels CEO. Before making a decision, the case highlights the strategic, social, and operational innovation and transformation of the “hospitality” concept from 2014 to 2022 based on the key issue of incorporating people with disabilities (PwD).

In this sense, we believe that this case study would be suitable for use in executive management subjects due to its analysis of executive committee decision-making, as well as in MBA and EMBA programs in terms of making decisions to promote innovation within higher organizational levels and operating structures. The first part of the case study describes the decisions ILUNION’s executive committee made to keep the hotel chain within the group. Oñoro believed that, above any economic and operational concerns, the Group had to stand by its guiding ethos. The case details how Oñoro convinced the executive committee to trust José Ángel Preciados as ILUNION Hotels CEO to transfer the essence of ONCE’s social commitment to the hotel chain, “eliminating physical and mental barriers” and integrating people with disabilities. The second part centers on the operational process Preciados and his PwD team adopted when deciding to innovate the organization by: 1) creating mentoring networks; 2) promoting key personnel; 3) transforming the basic product into smart rooms; and 4) digitalizing its reservation and client management processes. The case study begins and ends with Oñoro and Preciados looking to the future and reflecting on the strategic move to acquire or lease a five-star hotel from a chain that didn’t share ILUNION’s values, but which would be essential to firmly position ILUNION Hotels in the five-star league.

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