Submitted By-

Group 3
Arpit Malviya- MBA2020-040
Amulya Sanivarapu – MBA2020-026
Amisha Gupta- MBA2020-024
Pranay kundu – MBA2020-116

Que 1 - it possible to compete with cash?

Let us analyse this with reference to Master Card through a SWOT Analysis

Strength Weakness
• Banga initiated Master Card Labs, an • Laid back attitude of the people in the
initiative to generate disruptive company where they were ignoring
products and services. deals.
• The company identified that start-ups • Difficulty in nudging the population
were wanting to increase their sales towards card payments.
with easy cash remittance processes •
thereby increasing the footprint of the
company’s services
Opportunity Threat
• 85% of the world’s payments were still • Competition from Visa.
made using cash or cheque.
• The above points data is true given that
in emerging economies populations are
still underbanked.
• High cash-imposed transaction
• Exploring different types of business
and using the services of MasterCard to
increase their sales.
From the above analysis we can conclude that competing with cash is possible, in fact it
turned out to be the new future of cash remittance and transactions.

2. What in MC’s approach to innovation works well? What does not work well?
Mastercard needed to change its business model and strategy to stay afloat and compete
with the emerging changes in the market. They needed to jumpstart a transformation. For
this, Ajay Banga, first needed to change the thinking of the employees of the Mastercard.
Next in order was the need to create pathways for innovation. He create innovation labs
which directly report to him and work with the portfolio managers and regional innovation
leads. These labs, under the leadership of Ken Moore, had four major components:
The Innovation Management Team: This team focusses on develop innovation opportunities
and create a culture for it by developing an innovation funnel. As part of these funnels,
Mastercard organized “Take Initiative” events in different countries to develop testing ideas
and support new strong ideas.
R&D Team: This team was responsible to accelerate the testing of ideas which took a lot of
time for many companies.
Labs as a Service Team: Mastercard also started to help their clients and partners to develop
their own innovation processes which Mastercard would later pilot.
The Start-up Engagement and Acceleration Team: This team was responsible to find the best
start-up ideas globally and encourage them to do business. This team had proved very
useful as many new ideas got accumulated which can later be incubated by Mastercard as
per the need.
The most successful campaign under this was the “Ideabox” funnel through which new ideas
either around one particular innovation challenge or in general are collected. Promising
ideas through this was encouraged and supported by Mastercard through three levels
namely, Orange Box, Red Box and Green Box. Ideas able to cross the Green Box were
incubated in the Mastercard labs itself, hoping to create new start-up within Mastercard.
Ideas through all the level in the funnels are evaluated through three lens, Client Lens,
Feasibility Lens, Commercial Lens.
Smart Stickers was one such idea that was implemented by Mastercard as a game-changing
solution for the hospitality industry. Though Ken Moore saw potential in this idea to be a
differentiator for Mastercard’s hospitality partners, it lacked clear value proposition. It also
could not expand its use beyond the hospitality industry.
But the idea of targeting the cash handling population paved the way for digital
transformation for Mastercard. Transportation and food industry were some the places
where people were tired of using cash for their repeated transactions. Mastercard’s
contactless payment solution to the Transport for London, helped them save 100 million
euros in the very first year itself. This strategy to compete with cash also provided
governments with huge amounts of data which it was able to use to solve problems like
rush hour transit. Mastercard’s digital ID based solution to improve hepatitis C treatment
was a sign to its expansion and imbibition of the digital world. Building business
opportunities around digital ID, business model strategy separating cards from payments
and becoming a digital services and infrastructure provider have proved to work well for
Mastercard.

Que 3 – What Is an adaptive ecosystem and why did MC adopt such a strategy?
Answer – An adaptive ecosystem is something which brings together different alliances and
partners to collectively create a common solution. Master card exercised this strategy with
various alliances like with Mytag to create a cloth-spin a wireless laundry equipment pay-
per-use solution, a fast secure and convenient electronic payment solution in the
commercial laundry space.
Similarly in partnership with General Motors to provide digital services for connected cars to
provide customer or driver a digital service in accessing menu, ordering food and drive
through the restaurants.

• Why did MC adopt such a strategy?

The motive behind adapting such strategy was to analyze the problems from different
perspectives, from the perspectives of consumer and operator then identify the benefits
and connect the apt technologies.
Adoption of this strategy helped master card to move in to new domains and helped solving
social problems with inclusion of 10 sided network which offers the coordination challenges
of multi-party innovation.
The strategy helped MC in collaboration with NGO’s, UN agencies and various private
partners to create an ecosystem to enhance digital ID programmes. The adaptive ecosystem
approach enabled the creation of a platform that allowed all the beneficiaries to receive
services from multiple organizations through a single ID and providing a data privacy and
secured access.
Que 4 – What role did adaptive ecosystem play in Master Card’s transformation?
MasterCard adopted an “adaptive ecosystem strategy” linking with multiple uncommon
partners to create a solution. MC’s avoided strategies which led them rely on brokering or
capturing value by keeping alliance partner apart. The role this strategy played in
Mastercard’s transformation are:
1. MC when adopted adaptive ecosystem strategy, they were able to bring together
uncommon partners within an adoptive ecosystem to create a novel solution. MC worked
with mytag (a brand owned by Whirlpool) to create clothespin which is wireless laundry
equipment which is on pay per use solution. They created a cloud communication system
which involved smartphone and laundry equipment services provider, this helped MC create
fast secure and convenient electronic payment solutions in commercial laundry space.
2. Adaptive ecosystem help MasterCard collaborate with NGOs to help them with solving
the problem of distributing the charity fund among people. The NGO was following digital ID
card system to enable vulnerable population to get access to services but the system was
complex and cost was incurred. But MC adaptive ecosystem help them solve this problem
where they created a platform that allowed people to receive service from multiple
organisations through single ID. this helped in in reducing complexity and the cost.
3. Even the system was applied in digital vouchers. Hitherto 95% of aid was in kind (wheat
and rice) due to this, beneficiary used to get very less amount of aid in real due to fraud. so,
with the help of MC, NGO started issuing prepaid cards which helped the ID recipients to
have access to the whole aid amount. they can use the card at retail location to avoid any
kind of frauds. this helped the NGO in finding reports and accounting efficiently.
So MC adaptive ecosystem help them grow as well as they helped the other's company to
solve the problems by collaborating with them.