Innovate for Impact — Liwanag Consumer Group's 90-Day Strategy Mandate

A four-round, advanced corporate-strategy and social-innovation simulation set inside Liwanag Consumer Group, a ₱52 billion (PHP) diversified food and household-goods company headquartered in Cebu City, Philippines. Liwanag reaches consumers through 140,000 sari-sari stores and sources coffee, coconut and corn from ~28,000 smallholder farmers — the place where its largest cost and largest risk both sit.

A supply shock has left 22% of coffee volume unsecured while a competitor signs Liwanag's farmers on exclusive contracts; a modern-trade customer worth 15% of revenue (₱7.8B) demands audited inclusive-sourcing evidence within 12 months or it de-lists; and the average supplying farmer earns ~₱78,000/year (about 60% of a rural living income) with 9%/year attrition and an average age of 58.

The board gives the strategy team 90 days, a ₱1.2 billion three-year investment envelope, an 18% financial hurdle, and an inclusive-growth threshold — and a warning: if the plan is judged philanthropy in disguise, it is defunded and the firm reverts to the spot market.

Playing the Chief Strategy Officer's team, you apply Herrera's research on institutionalizing corporate social innovation and Innovation for Impact (I4I). Round 1 — Diagnose: distinguish extractive procurement, disconnected philanthropy and institutionalized social innovation, find where impact and business value can be co-created (the smallholder supply base), and define what 'institutionalize' concretely means.

Round 2 — Redesign the business model so securing supply and lifting farmers become the SAME activity: scale the foundation (the headline philanthropy trap), squeeze procurement (the extraction trap), or a farmer-equity shared-value sourcing model / digital farmer-services platform with structural embedding and a real barrier to imitation.

Round 3 — Allocate the ₱1.2B against the dual constraint (clear 18% AND move the inclusive-growth index), and design governance: avoid splitting impact and ROI into two budgets, give the initiative a real P&L owner in the core business rather than a standalone sustainability office, and build all three Herrera enablers — strategic alignment, responsible purpose and institutional drive.

Round 4 — Defend the strategy to the board and the ESG customer, absorb a live shock (competitor, typhoon or NGO 'fair-trade-washing' attack) without collapsing into philanthropy or extraction, and name the single metric that proves it is strategy not charity.

The math wires the concept's common errors as sticky, run-defining penalties: scaling the foundation, pure cost extraction, split budgets, no P&L ownership, and a copyable differentiation claim each cap competitive advantage and gate the top verdict so no later good round can wash them out.

Final KPIs track blended return vs the 18% hurdle, the inclusive-growth index, coffee supply secured, and competitive advantage / defensibility — and the board's verdict moves from 'philanthropy in disguise' to 'institutionalized social innovation' only when supply, impact, return and defensibility all land together.

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.