Haiti Hope was to provide 25,000 Haitian farmers with world-class business and industry expertise to help them grow mangos more efficiently and abundantly, and secure access to new markets with the aim of doubling their income and raising their standard of living and, ultimately, contributing to the revitalization of the Haitian economy. The project structure devised by the partners to govern execution consisted of an implementation team and operating and steering committees. The partners with the implementer, TechnoServe, had agreed on a strategy that turned out to be difficult to execute due to local institutions, farmer cooperatives, which acted as gatekeepers and made it difficult to reach the critical mass of farmers to participate in the project. TechnoServe's project manager had to convince the partners to shift strategy to work directly with cooperative members rather than with the leadership. The project manager succeeded - Partners accepted to create a new intermediary channel with and for smallholder farmers, termed Producer Business Groups (PBGs). PBGs eschewed the diverse political goals of most cooperatives, and focused on the production and commercialization of members' mangoes and other agricultural products. By 2013, 18,000 farmers had been organized into PBGs for better access to markets, information and agricultural extension services, and approximately 70% of them had adopted best practices from training. Project trained farmers were earning higher prices for mangoes, which rose by 32% on average.
In February 2015, Facebook’s Free Basics platform was launched in India by Internet.org, a partnership between Facebook and six mobile service and device companies. The platform was meant not only to enable Internet access on a smartphone but also to deliver low-cost Internet connectivity to the masses. Internet.org had already successfully launched Free Basics for a population of eight million people in nine countries across Asia, Africa, and South America. In India, however, the platform was not well received by a few eminent corporations and, more importantly, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. The launch of Free Basics stirred a nationwide debate about whether Internet.org was trying to control Internet services in India, creating an imbalance among the existing telecom service providers and causing a disproportionate development of business opportunities. Would Free Basics succeed in its goal, or would it be banned across India?
This background note explains Cuba's past and current agriculture policies, as well as provides insights into its future potential as relations with the U.S. normalize.
Based on client meetings, this case profiles a situation in 2014 where pension plan members are struggling to make decisions due to inappropriate account reporting. A sense of urgency permeates the case. The husband's pension account has recovered much of the value he lost in 2007, but he is concerned that another loss could occur, at a point in his life where he will not have time to recover. Two themes are addressed through a discussion involving a couple and their financial planner: the first considers the differences between defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans, while the second considers appropriate performance reporting for pension plan members.
This case explores the International Finance Corporation's (IFC) creative and effective use of the private equity business model as a tool to mobilize financing for economic development around the world. In its bid to provide more capital for private sector investment in developing countries, IFC played a key role in the emergence of the private equity industry in these markets through its funds' investments and, later, created its own third-party fund management platform-IFC Asset Management Company (AMC). Through the experience of AMC, the case considers broader issues typically faced by a private equity business in setting its strategy. These include: how can a fund manager decide the optimal size of assets under management? Given its resources and capabilities, what new funds could a firm raise, and what sectors should it target? The case further delves into the working mechanisms of AMC and thereby explains how AMC, as a special type of fund manager, handles different phases of private equity business. Finally, the case considers the key challenges IFC and AMC face today and assesses what the future might hold for each. As the largest global development institution focusing on the private sector, IFC had been an important player in developing countries. However, IFC's target markets continue to rapidly evolve and attract more capital and players, both local and international. How could IFC stay relevant and continue to play a differentiated leadership role in emerging markets under these circumstances? What other products and services could it offer to support the private sector in these countries in a distinct and impactful way?
Mary Jones was the CEO of the Richardson County Community Association (RCCA), a nonprofit with assets of $250 million and annual grants totaling $50 million to charitable organizations in Richardson County, Colorado. As CEO of RCCA, Jones engaged personally with over 250 donors per year. She described her job as primarily one of relationship management, and at times, those relationships could prove challenging. In the RCCA Vignettes, Jones's first difficult situation deals with her board member, David Jacobs, who recently assumed the role of board chair. Jacobs had begun to assign the RCCA staff his own small projects and, after making his "rounds," he would sit down in Jones's office, expecting her to drop whatever she was doing in order to interact with him. Jones would need to find a way to diplomatically yet effectively convey her feelings about Jacobs's behavior. In the second vignette, Jones receives a $1 million stock donation from an esteemed donor, Leo Farnand, who asks her to hold the stock until the recently-announced sale of his company is complete. Jones and the board agree to make an exception to the company policy given the size of the donation and hold the stock. However, after delays in the sale, Jones decides she must sell the stock against Farnand's wishes. The vignette ends with Jones preparing for what will undoubtedly be an unpleasant conversation with one of RCCA's largest donors.
GE Healthcare was on a continuous lookout for investing into new and innovative super value products for the Bottom of the Pyramid markets in India. After launching its first successful super value ECG machine Mac 400, GE had recently launched its twenty-fifth super value product a PET CT machine. Serving the BOP markets has its own unique challenges that may be different for each product that is placed in the market. However, GE has so far successfully sailed through all the challenges and developed a steep learning curve about BOP markets. However, it is now facing the challenge of ensuring sustainability of product pipeline. The company is also keen to exploit the opportunities for reverse innovation that super value products have provided. The company also wants to assess the disruptive impact of these products in domestic medical device markets as well as markets outside India.
Since its IPO in 2007 and following the global financial crisis, Blackstone largely outpaced its alternative investment firm peers in assets under management, new business launches, profitability, and market capitalization. Under the leadership of Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO, and president and COO Hamilton ("Tony") James, Blackstone's growth derived from substantial horizontal expansion into new alternative asset products and services, both organically and through acquisition. These included businesses in private equity, real estate, funds of hedge funds, alternative credit, opportunistic transactions ("Tactical Opportunities"), and secondaries investments. The firm has also innovated in sourcing capital from a variety of limited partners. Blackstone's culture of centralized investment processes and risk management coupled with entrepreneurial leadership contributed to its growth in important ways, but the firm faces important external and internal challenges as it seeks to continue its growth.
In April 2015, Bharti Airtel - India's largest telecom provider and a leading global telecommunications company - launched Airtel Zero, an open marketing platform that would allow Airtel customers to access mobile applications with zero data charges. Application developers would pay Airtel to join the platform, but would in turn attract more users to their products. Immediately after its launch, Airtel Zero was subjected to severe criticism on the grounds that it violated the net neutrality principle, which advocated that content should be available to customers without any form of prioritization. Subsequently, in support of net neutrality, Flipkart - a prominent Indian e-commerce company - pulled out of the platform. Was Airtel Zero a potential threat to net neutrality? With the pending decision of the government of India on the regulatory framework for over-the-top (OTT) applications and services, would Airtel Zero stand out as a viable platform?
Four Canadian non-profit organizations have a mandate to prevent injuries and face similar and worsening problems. Each organization is spending an escalating amount of time fundraising to support its operations. Key stakeholders are expressing confusion because injury prevention is a crowded space and many non-profit organizations are seeking both dollars and partnerships. Most troubling, the four non-profit organizations are struggling to assess whether they are actually making a difference by preventing injuries and saving lives. The leaders of the four organizations must decide how to proceed - and whether the best solution is offered by collaborative or competitive strategies. Use role play supplements.
Started in 2000, GiveIndia is a web-based donation platform headquartered in Mumbai, India. It uses online tools and social media to engage with donors and encourage donations to be made to various non-governmental organizations. GiveIndia's chief executive officer wants to develop a strategic approach for social media communication, which is gaining greater acceptance in India. As part of its online initiatives, GiveIndia has been running a search engine marketing program with Google Grants. The chief executive officer wants to optimize the program by using the right metrics. He is also interested in applying the concept of customer lifetime value to manage the donations. GiveIndia is already present on popular social media websites such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter, but how can the company hone its strategic focus on each of these websites?
Process behavior charts-also called control charts or Shewhart charts after their creator-provide a means to interpret data as they are generated. While many statistical methods and graphs are useful only for post hoc analysis, control charts provide a visual and statistically sound basis for identifying issues in a process as they arise, ideally allowing prevention of failures before they occur.
A fundamental policy decision every government must make is whether, and to what extent, to manage the exchange rate. This note discusses some of the basic costs and benefits of fixed and floating exchange rates.
This note, intended to accompany the short booklet An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments, discusses the logical framework behind argumentation and presents the basic logical rules necessary to reach sound conclusions. Throughout, it refers to the philosophical foundations of logical reasoning and attempts to address these concepts in the framework of management. By the end, diligent students should be able to identify the necessary structure and components of a sound argument-as well as the fatal attraction of unsound arguments-and be able to apply these ideas to create long-term value as leaders of firms and organizations.
Since ethics is an integral part of management, it is vital for managers to become comfortable with the language of ethics, and to understand how it is inextricable from the language of business. Students will examine key theories of ethics and how they apply to management decision making.
The following note attempts to catalog and analyze a set of flawed but common arguments made in business and organizational settings to drive strategic and operational decision making. The arguments are deconstructed into syllogistic form-a set of premises leading to a conclusion-and analyzed for validity and soundness. The final part of this note pays attention to ways decision makers can avoid such bad arguments and the rationalization that often goes hand in hand with them.
Intuition can be a good guide for decision making when the current situation generally matches the situations in which the intuition was formed. But for novel or ambiguous situations, relying only on intuition can blind us to possible negative consequences by focusing our attention only on data that support our intuition. To reduce the likelihood of these errors and to better imagine and prepare for the outcomes of our choices, we use a decision-making framework. This note outlines the process of how to apply a framework.