Box Inc. Case Study

Box’s story is one of rapid institutional change brought about by the competitive drive that made the organization successful. Now they are facing a situation where the company and culture are evolving at such a rapid rate that organizational values are beginning to clash. We see this evolution as unsustainable. In addition to the organizational changes, profit goals have been a low priority and the company has been operating at a financial loss since its inception. Our approach is to offer our strategic goals and collective capabilities for Box from 2015 and beyond, and evaluate those new goals and capabilities against existing talent levers.

We created strategic goals (Exhibit 1) for the company based on the historical data provided in the case which will guide the company from 2015 until 2017. Our goals adopt the best parts of Box’s recent organizational growth, and provide an actionable path for navigating the cultural frictions resulting from the growth. Financially, our goal is to achieve profitability (net gain) by 2017 while maintaining a revenue growth trajectory.

In the last five years, Box has achieved steady revenue growth culminating in an impressive $154 million in sales in 2014. However, due to intensive investments in sales and marketing efforts, the company is operating at a net loss. We recommend that Box set an attainable goal of achieving profitability by fiscal year end 2017, and pursue this goal with the collective capability of reorganizing the company into individual business units (IBUs) responsible for their own profit and loss results (P&Ls). Our market goal for Box is to gain total market share of 20% by 2017, and keep the current growth trajectory by constantly looking for new products and markets to maximize market potential while maintaining an environment of ownership & entrepreneurship. Box is already in a good position to do this. Our strategy relies on the collective capability of market development through speed, entrepreneurial drive and a self-starter culture. This collective capability complements the reorganization capability derived from our financial goal. IBU’s will be lead by driven, motivated entrepreneurial self-starters who are motivated by their own P&L obligations. Our customer goal is to establish Box as the industry leader in cloud file synchronization & sharing, and act as a “platform” for their enterprise customers to accelerate customer’s push into the future. Box is in a position to not only land big clients, but develop unique products that help secure the client’s future within their industry.

Our collective capabilities connect the strategic goals with the capabilities required to achieve them. We evaluate the talent levers provided in the case and the collective capabilities created by the levers against our new goals and capabilities.

Box Human Capital Framework (HCF) - Strategic Goals