In October 2021, Facebook changed the parent corporation name to Meta and announced plans to build a metaverse, a 3D virtual world for work and fun. This case explores whether Meta’s metaverse is likely to be a blue ocean utopia for people and society at large or some form of dystopia.

With a focus on China’s biggest internet companies, Alibaba and Tencent, the case study describes their respective histories, fintech subsidiaries and platform-based ecosystems.

The case describes General Electric’s transformation from an industrial manufacturer to an industrial analytics giant. It opens in 2009 when CEO Jeff Immelt decides that GE, a hardware maker, needs to be more capable in software. The narrative traces his early efforts to consolidate and coordinate software capabilities in a central unit (GE Software Center) headed by Bill Ruh in Silicon Valley.