In September 2025, after a successful pilot trial of the Hyundai Intelligent Navigation Assistant System, the vice-president of shipping at Hyundai Glovis in Seoul, South Korea, was facing a complex strategic dilemma. The pilot project demonstrated improvements in fuel efficiency and operational performance, validating the technology for the company’s digital transformation and environmental, social, and governance targets. A rapid full fleet rollout .....more

By late 2025, Jensen Huang—chief executive officer of NVIDIA Corporation (NVIDIA), an American technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California—faced a critical strategic decision. NVIDIA and Norma Inc. (Norma) collaborated to apply hybrid quantum computing with classical artificial intelligence to drug discovery using the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform. Their work achieved a 73 times speed-up of quantum drug discovery and showed how quantum and .....more

This case examines the strategic challenge faced by Lily Hsu, overseas regional manager for Asia-Pacific at Chacha Food Co. Ltd. (Chacha), as the company sought to expand its business in South Korea. Although Chacha had achieved broad retail distribution for its core sunflower seed products through an exclusive distributor, growth remained constrained by cultural consumption barriers and a heavy reliance on overseas Chinese consumers. Hsu had to decide .....more

LG Energy Solution (LGES) faced complex human resource management (HRM) challenges after US immigration authorities raided its construction site for a battery factory in Georgia, United States. LGES had been actively encouraged by state and federal authorities to build local facilities in Georgia as part of a new automotive cluster around a recently opened Hyundai Motor Company (Hyundai) assembly facility. Yet, the increased vigilance of immigration .....more

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (SEC), a once-dominant high-tech giant renowned for its stronghold in commodity memory chips, found itself grappling with a profound crisis. As of November 2024, strategic challenges confronted SEC’s semiconductor business, overseen by the Device Solutions (DS) division. Despite reporting its highest quarterly revenues in two years, SEC struggled to maintain competitiveness in critical business areas such as high bandwidth .....more

Los Borrachos was a specialty bar in Seoul, South Korea, with the unique vision of creating an intimate gathering place that celebrated sparkling wines and European-style dishes. While the bar generated enough revenue to cover its monthly expenses, it fell short of providing significant income for its co-founders. To fulfill their vision for Los Borrachos, the co-founders need to determine how to attract more of Los Borrachos’ target clientele and .....more

In 2019, Starbuck Corporation (Starbucks) launched Deep Brew, a platform driven by artificial intelligence (AI) designed to enhance personalization, optimize operations, and manage inventory across its vast global retail network. By leveraging AI, Starbucks aimed to improve customer engagement, streamline store efficiency, and strengthen its data-driven decision-making. However, the adoption of Deep Brew introduced significant challenges, including .....more

In May 2024, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Company Ltd. (SEC) faced its first-ever strike in its 55-year history, as the National Samsung Electronics Union called for a one-day work stoppage on June 7, 2024, to demand better pay. The strike targeted SEC’s semiconductor division, which produced critical components like memory chips, universal serial bus drives, and camera sensors. This division, once a leader in global semiconductor revenues, had .....more

Inter IKEA Systems B.V. (IKEA) entered Korea at a relatively late stage of its global expansion and encountered an overwhelmingly positive customer response, which emboldened it to open several additional stores at a relatively fast pace. However, IKEA encountered much stronger headwinds after the COVID-19 pandemic hit Korea. It had to shift to online sales channels, mitigate customer dissatisfaction, face aggressive Korean competitors, accommodate .....more

In late 2022, E-Mart, South Korea’s leading supermarket chain, had pulled out of major Asian markets such as China and Vietnam after experiencing poor performance, and the company planned to expand into the US market. In the Asian markets, E-Mart relied on a direct entry mode, but in the US it changed its mode of entry by acquiring local companies and planning to open new grocery brand stores. Although the US market has substantial growth opportunities .....more