Case Study 7.4 UADamage – Solving a Wicked Problem

Much of the recent literature on strategic management has discussed how difficult it is to implement strategy in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) business situ- ations. The Ukrainian technology company UADamage is not only facing the extreme challenge of conducting business during a war but also trying to find a better solution to one of the world’s wicked problems: landmines. It is estimated that there are 110 million landmines around the world and over 25,000 people are killed or maimed by explosions each year. In addition, local farming is hindered for decades as land remains off-limits. Unfortunately, mines are cheap to produce ($3 to $30), but expensive to remove ($300 to $1,000) and, typically, only around 100,000 mines are removed per year, whereas about 2 million more are deployed. The process of mine clearance is notoriously slow and dangerous manual work, involving de-miners searching for mines with metal detectors, digging them out by hand and then defusing them. If de-mining efforts continue at the same pace as today, it will take over 1,000 years to clear all the mine- fields in the world.