leadership case

1 Running head: PERSONAL CASE STUDY

Personal Case Study

Abdullah Al Saud

Northeastern University

LDR 6140 Strat. Dev. and Implementation

Professor James Lux

November 08, 2019

2 Running head: PERSONAL CASE STUDY

1. Overview of company

In 2018, I invested as a 10 percent shareholder in what I believe to be a new and exciting startup

in Boston that produces a unique power bar. The power bar is called I-Bar, and it is a healthy,

non-artificial protein bar that offers different flavors. Even though the protein bar industry is

very competitive and tough to do well in, I believed in the concept and was passionate about its

vision. What makes the bar unique is that it has developed ingredients and recipes that

correspond to famous healthy foods in certain major cities. As of today, we have developed bars

corresponding to three cities and popular healthy flavors in those cities: the Avocado and Macha

Bar representing Tokyo, the Raspberry Bar representing Naples, and the Maple Bar representing

Canada.

2. Competitors with similar product and why they are competitors

The protein nutrition market is heavily saturated, so we have many competitors. One of the most

popular protein bar companies is Quest. Another one is the Macro Bar. These have been in the

market for a long time and because of that have an advantage in many ways over I-Bar.

3. Members of the company

The startup was founded by a young college international student who has a passion for the I-Bar

concept and has devoted all his energy and time to it. He is currently the I-Bar CEO and he has

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surrounded himself with four other individuals including a CFO, Director of Marketing, and

Director of Product Development. I know the Founder personally. I saw in him great leadership

skills and the potential to be a successful CEO who can build this product into something special.

I have observed in him the qualities of a transformational leader. Aside from being very

intelligent and knowledgeable about how to grow the I-Bar, he is someone who listens from

others and is willing to set aside his ego in order to advance what’s best for the company. He

applies a lot of democratic values in the sense that he really appreciates input from anyone and is

willing to apply it. In fact, even though he is the Founder and CEO, he does not like to make a

final decision until he has consulted with all the stakeholders. There have been several times

where he wanted to make sure that I was comfortable with what he was doing, and whether I had

other ideas than the ones he had. I can best describe all this as qualities of a transformational

leader.

4. A short description of a particular situation facing the organization that requires

strategic action or decision (we should clearly understand what the team will be helping the

company solve).

Investing in a product that his heavily saturated in the market is a big risk. Aside from this

fundamental challenge, there are other challenges as well. One of the challenges has been

agreeing on the expansion of our team. Some of us would like to bring in an investor who can

help us grow

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in the Boston area first. However, others want to put more effort in expanding elsewhere. Then

there is the challenge of educating the public about what makes us unique compared to other

protein bars. Though we have had a few marketing campaigns to introduce the I-Bar, it has not

been enough because we have been constrained by budgetary issues.

I would say that one of our biggest failures has been in marketing. As mentioned, we have not

had the adequate budget for marketing, and this has slowed us down in terms of receiving orders

and generating more revenue. The positive for us has been that even with this failure, we actually

increased sales compared to last year. This is really encouraging given that we are only two years

into this.

5. What skills do I bring as a team facilitator to help the team complete their strategic

analysis and recommendation?

One of the strong attributes I have according to a strength assessment I recently took is that I am

someone who is a problem solver and enjoys being in situations where I have to resolve issues.

In my role as facilitator, I would work towards addressing several issues with I-Bar. To begin, I

believe we need to add more creative talent and positions to help us grow. It might mean going

beyond our budget, but I believe this will pay off down the line. I also believe that we need to

focus a lot more effort on reaching the college students and young professionals in the Boston

area. This is a prime group for our product and establishing a foothold among this demographic

in Boston can go a long way to achieving overall success. With this comes generating more

units, and we need to be prepared with having the right number of units for expansion. I also

believe that we need to add more new flavors that correspond to different cities. And the cities

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should not only be international, but also in the US. For example, there are certain ingredients

that are associated with certain cities in the US, and so we need to be creative in capitalizing on

this (e.g., beans-Boston). We need to leverage on our concept of representing the foods of

different cities in a way that brings people together, both employees and our customers. Also, our

I-Bar has a wonderful healthy feature that can serve to benefit. We need to channel the idea of

benefit to helping those in

areas that lack proper nutrition. By doing this, we will feel as a company more of a sense of

worth than just achieving material benefit. And material benefit might also come with it.

6. Why you believe your proposal should be selected as a case study for the class (and any challenges the team may face).

One of the main reasons why I believe this proposal should be selected is because it will provide

a case study of a company in the early stages (a startup). The advantage of this is that there will

be a lot of opportunities for the team to explore different areas and apply much of what we’re

learning to these areas. Another reason is the inspiring and exciting mission of the product. I-Bar

aims to appeal to a target audience of students and young professionals, which the team will be

able to easily relate to. The plan for I-Bar is to have it become the go to bar for those of the

younger middle-class demographic who care about their nutrition and performance, to expand

gradually to new markets in the US and then abroad, and to remain loyal to our all-natural

sustainable concept. We are also currently developing exciting new flavors corresponding to new

cities, which should broaden our market.

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References

Mendenhall, Mark, E. et al. (2018) Global Leadership: Research, Practice, and Development, New York, NY: Routledge.

Rothaermel, Frank, T. (2019) Strategic Management, New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Vielmetter, G., & Sell, Y. (2014). Leadership 2030: The six megatrends you need to understand to lead your company into the future. Amacom.