This case study focuses on how Huawei had developed and used Huawei Innovation Research Program (HIRP) as its open innovation platform, showing how the company has changed its role from a research fund provider to a research collaborator, bringing mutual benefits to university-enterprise research collaborations. The case features the challenges of managing open innovation projects, such as looking for suitable external research partners, keeping the research projects on track, and evaluating research outcomes. It also shows how Huawei has tackled the problems common to open innovation projects, including the Not-Invented-Here syndrome, intellectual property protection, industry-university communication difficulties and research output evaluation.

The Chevalier case demonstrates how a family-controlled and publicly listed group can make use of a listed company’s idle assets and turn them into a private equity-like endeavor generating better returns for all shareholders.

Founded in 1970, Chevalier Group was a Hong Kong-based conglomerate operating a wide range of businesses. It was a negative change in the fortunes of the IT products distribution business that had inspired Oscar Chow, Executive Director and son of the group’s founder, to enter the food and beverage (F&B) business in 2005. The purchase and subsequent sale of Pacific Coffee in June 2010 were landmarks to revitalize Chevalier Pacific Holdings Ltd under Chevalier Group.
While parts of the business showed strong growth and recorded healthy profits, others had reached their peak and were showing signs of decline. By late 2011, Oscar was devising a long-term strategy leveraging the group’s core competencies. What should the plan be and how should he implement it?
 

Cathay Pacific Airways Limited, a leading international airline providing both passenger and cargo services, had been operating under a collaborative arrangement with HATCL, the largest air cargo terminal operator in Hong Kong, since the opening of the new airport. Demand for Cathay Pacific’s air cargo handling services outgrew the terminal’s capacity of the operator. There were on-going discussions between the two partners on opening a new terminal, but no agreement had yet been reached on the service fee paid to HATCL.

As a last resort, Cathay Pacific would need to consider the possibility of building an air cargo terminal for captive use. Peter Lee, a senior executive at the airline, was put in charge of the feasibility study. Although Peter had experience in leading special projects in the past within the company, this particular one was completely different given its scale and the amount of investment involved. Perceptibly, fundamental business elements such as targeted capacity, return on investment and competition had to be included in the study. Other soft issues like management expertise future cooperative relationship with HATCL should also be studied. Peter wondered what other considerations he should include in addition. He wanted to be sure that by tackling these issues from all angles, it would allow him to come up with a recommendation to the board: whether Cathay Pacific should build its own terminal.

The protagonist Robert Warren knew what was expected of him when he was appointed as the CEO of Langham Hospitality Group LHG in March 2014 LHG was a direct subsidiary of Great Eagle Holdings Limited a Hong Kong Chinese property conglomerate controlled by Dr KS Lo and his family board members Great Eagle was looking for robust growth in its global hotel business and it expected Warren and LHG to deliver that growth via multibranding and brand differentiation strategies