Real Case Stories

CEO of Ryanair Michael O'Leary's vision is to make most of its seats free by the end of this decade. The goal, he says, is to make money by getting a share of the shopping and retail revenues from airports, where the airlines attract traffic. In 2016, Ryanair earned $2 Billion in ancillary revenues from snacks, check-in luggage, seat selection, insurance etc, amounting to nearly 30% of its total revenues. Mr Leary's predictions are bolstered by the fact that a quarter of its customers are already being offered free fares. Passengers only pay the taxes and duties while the airlines make money through extras like checked luggage, snacks, food, water and in-flight merchandise sales. source: Principles of Marketing: A South Asian Perspective,  13th Edition, Kotler Philip Further, the airline also saves costs by selling 99% of the tickets online with offers of travel insurance, hotels, car rentals and various other packages. To reduce costs, they have introduced...

The industry average in the clothing industry to take a design to distribution is around 9 months. Zara, through efficient use of technology, has developed a distribution model that takes new models from design to the store in just 3 weeks . As a result, the company produces approximately 20,000 designs a year! To make this work, Zara uses  technology to make sure departments and outlets the world over constantly know what is needed when and where.  Designers keep in daily contact with store managers, discussing which items are most in demand and which aren't.  This, supported by real-time sales data, allows the designers to action repeat orders and create fresh designs, and from La Coruna they are shipped directly to the stores, eliminating the need for expensive warehouses. Some of the unique features Zara's business model is: It employs 100s of designers at its HQ in Spain Half its production facilities are close to its HQ in Spain, Portugal and Morocco - ...

In May 2014, Sierra Leone confirmed its first case of death from Ebola , a viral hemorrhagic fever killing an average of 50% of those infected. The outbreak, that claimed nearly 4000 lives, began silently and gradually built up to a burst of cases. source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention A Kenyan Doctor in protective overalls does a Usain Bolt gesture as last Ebola patient is discharged.  Credit: International Medical Corps For the next year and a half, as the world's worst known Ebola epidemic continued to spread in the area, widespread quarantines were a regular fixture. On 30th July 2014, a state of national emergency was declared. All schools were closed down indefinitely. Locked up in their homes, the largely illiterate populace of Sierra Leone turned towards the radio for news and entertainment. At the time, radio was the most preferred means for receiving information for 85% of the population .  The then  Gov...

Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, in his book Principles:Life and Work , he writes about learning Transcedental meditation at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and how it has benefited him throughout his career because it produced a calm open mindedness that allowed him to think clearly and creatively. In this HBR article  ,  Alak Vasa, founder of Elements Truffles,  a trader at Goldman Sachs and ITG claims meditation helped her keep fear and panic at bay, even under duress.  She speaks of an instance where the market crashed causing panic on the desk. Thanks to her meditation practice she was able to keep my composure and propose solutions to reduce the impact of the market crash. Jonathan Tang, founder and CEO of VASTRM fashion, first introduced meditation to his staff after 9/11.  “In the aftermath of 9/11, the employees at my company were noticeably shaky and distracted.  I decided to bring in a m...

Silent Spring , published in 1962, galvanized a whole nation, started the environmental revolution and brought upon the ban of one of the most valuable chemical ever, DDT. Once nicknamed as a "miracle weapon" against insect-borne diseases, in the 1950's DDT was extensively promoted by the US government and industry for use as an agricultural and household pesticide. In 1957, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sprayed the northeastern forests with a mixture of DDT and oil to eradicate an insect pest – the gypsy moth. A month after spraying, residents on Long Island filed suit in federal court charging that the DDT was killing fish, birds, farm and garden crops. It was then that the Audubon Naturalist Society, a non-profit dedicated to conservation and education, actively opposed to such spraying programs, and recruited Carson to help make public the government's exact spraying practices and the related research. Carson began the four-year project of what ...

Author Kevin Ashton, speaks about what led to the coining of "The Internet of Things"  in his book " How to Fly a Horse: The Secret History of Creation, Invention and Discovery ". A popular shade of lipstick by P&G was not being adequately restocked on store shelves. Half of the stores were out of stock at any given point of time and it was the customers who were noticing it and either buying another shade or leaving the store without buying it. In the late 90s inventory information was stored in computes and manually keyed in. Store workers did not have time to go and look at the shelf and key in information about availability or lack of it. He attached a small radio microchip to the lipstick and an antenna on the shelf which connected to the internet to update the information and initially called it the "Storage system". He later extended this to all P&G products like diapers, potato chips, detergent and coined the term "Internet of Thi...

When Arthur T Demoulas, the CEO of Demoulas Supermarkets was sacked by the Board in June 2014, the company was stunned when the employees went on strike to demand his reinstatement. What was even more shocking was when even the customers started boycotting the store in support of the CEO and suppliers stopped restocking the stores. source: wiki Market Basket protests What then makes employees, customers and even suppliers so loyal to a CEO in an age when only money rules. The CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas was perceived as a father figure. He was known for his ability to remember his employees' names, birthdays and milestones. He is also known to check on ill employees and asking about spouses and children of his workers. In this Boston Globe article one employee recollects the time he received a call from Arthur when his daughter had a serious car accident and was in the hospital. Arthur enquired about his daughter, whether the hospital was doing a good job and if they needed...

Teenagers, ages 12–17, report using phones to text message in their daily lives more than any other form of communication, including face-to-face socializing. The extensive time that children and teenagers engage with media and communicate using screens may be taking time away from face-to-face communication and some in-person activities. A field experiment examined whether increasing opportunities for face-to-face interaction while eliminating the use of screen-based media and communication tools improved nonverbal emotion–cue recognition in preteens. Fifty-one preteens spent five days at an overnight nature camp where television, computers and mobile phones were not allowed; this group was compared with school-based matched controls (n = 54) that retained usual media practices. Both groups took pre- and post-tests that required participants to infer emotional states from photographs of facial expressions and videotaped scenes with verbal cues removed. Change scores for the t...

In his book " Reclaiming conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age ", author Sherry Turkle writes about how communication between youngsters is changing dramatically because of Technology. She cites an example of a short film where a girl does not have her phone for a day and she observes the behavior of people around her. Her boyfriend is busy texting in bed Her boyfriend chats about laughter at a comedy show without actually laughing. At a bowling alley her friends do not hi five her when she makes a strike

How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It’s about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes Music Store. Journalist Stephen Witt traces the secret history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet. Through these interwoven narratives, Witt has written a thrilling book that depicts the moment in history when ordinary life became forever entwined with the world online—when, suddenly, all the music ever re...