April 25, 2019. Shanghai – CEIBS eLab Director and Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship Dr. Vincent Chang and CEIBS case writer Zhu Qiong have received the top prize in the Sustainable Business Model category in the 2018 EFMD Case Writing Competition for their case series on Hema: Alibaba's New Retail Platform (A) & (B). Organised with the support of The Case Centre, the EFMD Case Writing Competition has been held annually since 1988 and encourages innovative and impactful case writing and teaching. The winners of the 2018 competition were selected by an international judging panel from among roughly 400 submissions.

Prof. Chang and Zhu Qiong’s winning case outlines the formation and evolution of Chinese retailer Hema’s integrated online/offline strategy with a focus on the data and technology drivers behind the platform’s business model. The case also examines some of the defects that appeared during the evolution of this business model and how they might be addressed.

Prof. Chang and Zhu Qiong say they hope their work can help students better understand the building blocks of the Business Model Canvas – first proposed by Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, et al. as a way to assist companies in aligning their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs – as well as how data and technology can drive business model innovation. They also state that they hope to inspire students to think about how to develop innovative business models from a strategic perspective and to scrutinize whether or not businesses should follow the traditional lean-startup pathway of first going from “0 to 1” and then from “1 to n.”

Prof. Chang has more than 10 years of entrepreneurial experience and more than 30 years of experience in teaching entrepreneurship, innovation, and technology. As Director of the CEIBS eLab he leads a mission to create a real-world entrepreneurship education which requires participants to engage in the complexities associated with entrepreneurial ventures. For more about his research and teaching interests, visit his CEIBS faculty profile here.

Zhu Qiong has been a case writer at the CEIBS Case Center since 2014. She has co-authored more than 50 cases on a range of topics such as strategy, marketing, finance, organisation, and human resource management.

The final results of the 2018 EFMD Case Writing Competition were announced on April 23, 2019. The win marks the second prize Prof. Chang and Zhu Qiong have claimed recently, following their Best Case Award in the 2018 Global Contest for the Best China-Focused Cases for their work on Freshippo – A New Species in Chinese Retail (A/B): Business Model Evolution/Data-Driven Core Competencies. Details about that award here.