GoodJobz was a non-profit organization that funded its job training and education programs by re-selling donated goods through its retail stores. The organization helped train over 11,000 people in 2012 and hoped to double that number within five years. To do so, the vice-president of marketing and community development believed that the organization should adopt a "giver" culture. After making significant progress in instilling a giver culture within his own department, he shifted his focus to another department: Business Services. However, the vice-president of business services hindered any efforts to do so. The vice-president of marketing and community development was faced with the challenge of how to handle this crisis.
In February 2014, a McKinsey Global Institute report proposed tracking an empowerment line that could enable India's citizens to get out of poverty by providing the resources they needed to build better lives. This prompted Ela Bhatt, founder of the India-based Self-Employed Women's Association, to take stock of her initiative to empower women working in India's informal sector. Since 1972, her organization has been widely acclaimed as a global first mover and active champion of grassroots development. Quickly approaching two million members in India and six neighbouring countries, and inspiring similar efforts in South Africa, Ghana, Mali and Burkina Faso, it exemplifies a unique form of positively deviant organizing by speaking to the centrality of human beings at work. Given resources, support and encouragement, its many members have used their own human agency even in the direst of circumstances to better their lives in ways most meaningful to them, for instance, by creating childcare, health care, banking, farming and education cooperatives. However, as she reaches retirement and contemplates the future, Bhatt wonders if the new generation of Indian leaders will take up the Gandhian socially minded path or follow the commercial careers opening up in the country's multinational sector.
Discourses on the links between eating, health, and social standing in America have deep roots. As mechanisms of food production, distribution and storage were developed in the nineteenth century, Americans began receiving information about what to and not-to eat, from public and religious figures, scientists, government officials, and food companies. In an increasingly industrializing and urbanizing society, such information translated into consumer decisions that had both economic and cultural antecedents and consequences. Even before the growth in the market for organic, health, and gourmet foods in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, food choices were associated with lifestyle.
John Davidson, a partner at Ware Street Capital (WSC) and a board member at Fast Ion Battery, had just received a phone call from Don Lerner at Bluelock Ventures telling him that Bluelock would not participate in the $ 5 bridge financing for Fast Ion Battery. Lerner's call could not have come at a worse time. Fast Ion was running out of cash and needed another round of financing urgently to continue developing its revolutionary battery. Davidson faced a real dilemma. On the one hand, the company was finally gaining traction with developing its technology and the search to replace the current CEO had yielded two prospective candidates who were extremely well-suited to drive the company forward with a more capital efficient business model. On the other hand, Ware Street Capital and the two other investors had already invested $10 million into a company that had not performed up to investors' expectations. Would they be throwing more good money after bad by providing the bridge financing? Moreover, would other, later stage, investors be willing to provide the significant amounts of capital required to get the company to an exit event given the changing climate for clean tech investments? These questions became more pressing following Lerner's call that Bluelock had chosen not to continue backing Fast Ion. Was Fast Ion Battery worth saving?
In 2010, Pfizer established four small research units in New York, Boston, San Francisco, and San Diego located close to several premier Academic Medical Centers (AMCs), or hospitals with adjoining medical schools. The goal of these units was to redesign collaboration with Pfizer and academic medical researchers with the purpose of developing new, innovative drugs candidates for testing in patients. Project teams consisted of Pfizer scientists and academics working side-by-side to reduce the time needed to bring a therapeutic drug from the lab to a patient's bedside. This case explores the academic collaboration model developed by Pfizer. What were the strengths of and challenges facing this model? How would the model evolve in the future? And how would new, similar collaboration models surfacing at other major pharmaceutical companies pose a threat to the Pfizer model?
Cree, a North Carolina-based maker of light emitting diodes (LEDs), has just introduced its first consumer product - an LED light bulb. It is designed as an energy efficient replacement for the ubiquitous incandescent light bulb. But given that it is an unfamiliar technology and that it costs ten times what an incandescent bulb costs, there are questions about how best to promote adoption and what sales level might be expected.
By 2014, IKEA Group was the largest home furnishing company, with EUR28.5 billion of sales, and planned to reach EUR50 billion by 2020, mainly from emerging markets. At the same time, IKEA Group had adopted in 2012 a new sustainability strategy that focused the company's efforts on its entire value chain from its raw materials sourcing to the lifestyle of its end consumers. The plan especially centered on wood, which represented 60% of IKEA Group's total procurement in volume and constituted a key lever for the company to increase its positive impact on sustainability. IKEA Group Management therefore had to decide how to manage its portfolio of wood sustainability initiatives, especially in the context of the company's aggressive growth plan.
Established in 2004, Facebook had shown stupendous growth. However, faced with the evolving mobile communication industry and increasing competition, the company was on the lookout to increase its user base by acquiring WhatsApp. Was it the right decision for Facebook to acquire WhatsApp - and at the steep price of $19 billion? From WhatsApp's perspective, the company's founder wanted to continue with his vision of connecting people, irrespective of the decision involving Facebook. Should WhatsApp sell its assets to Facebook or should it insist on an equity alliance instead?
This technical note sets the groundwork for a module on macroeconomics by introducing concepts and definitions that will be revisited in subsequent technical notes. The note begins by introducing national income accounting and the components of GDP, and by discussing why economists care about GDP. It then discusses how the determinants of the components of GDP interact on the market, and how we can predict GDP and interest rates through the lens of a model-a framework that maps assumptions into outcomes. The note introduces students to basic economic modeling by walking them through examples of how to determine endogenous variables from systems of equations and exogenous variables. The note concludes by discussing the role of assumptions in macroeconomics and by listing some of the assumptions that we will maintain in subsequent technical notes.
This technical note introduces the basic structure of the workhorse IS/LM model for a closed economy (i.e., one that does not engage in international trade). The note derives the core components of the model and derives predictions of effects of fiscal and monetary policy. The price level is assumed to be fixed, and aggregate demand determines output. This note precedes a more comprehensive treatment of aggregate demand and aggregate supply found in subsequent technical notes.
Charlie Reese, an operations manager for a fragrance manufacturer, is given a directive to reduce costs in order to free up working capital for other initiatives. Reese discovers that his initial plan to approach the problem from an inventory perspective would be unsustainable. In evaluating his options, he must determine which other areas of the production process to focus on.
Executing Strategy introduces the principles of effective strategy implementation. The Reading emphasizes the interdependence of strategy formulation and execution in achieving and sustaining superior competitive performance. It discusses why organizations must sometimes shift their strategies and identifies reasons that strategies often fail. It argues that organizational ambidexterity and dynamic capabilities are required to execute strategies successfully. The main reading then develops an approach that emphasizes the congruence framework and its building blocks. It concludes by highlighting the need for ambidextrous leaders. Executing Strategy also contains three supplemental readings. The first examines ambidexterity and congruence at IBM under Louis Gerstner. The second considers the Balanced Scorecard as an alternative framework for strategy execution. The third discusses the role culture in strategy execution at NUMMI, the joint venture between General Motors and Toyota.
"Financing Entrepreneurial Ventures" introduces key issues involved in the financing of entrepreneurial enterprises. The Reading begins by examining how business models shape external financing requirements. It then contrasts the choice to bootstrap with the option to raise external funds, as well as the traits of debt versus equity investment. Readers learn about the different types of equity investors-including angels, VCs, and strategic investors-and follow an entrepreneurial venture's path through the financing stages. The Reading also examines how entrepreneurs can adjust business models to match financial conditions, and how they can reduce financing needs through alternative models such as partnerships. Finally, the Reading covers emerging funding models-such as crowdsourcing and accelerators-and the global aspects of entrepreneurial finance. There are 6 Interactive Illustrations included in the Reading: "Calculating a Cumulative Cash Flow Curve," "Asset Intensity Ratio," "Building a Cap Table," "How Investor Expectations and Target Returns Drive Company Ownership," "Payouts from Simple Equity and Convertible Investments," and "Seed Note Ownership and Value."
Selling and Marketing in the Entrepreneurial Venture discusses key aspects and challenges of selling and marketing in an early-stage or new venture. The Reading explains how to identify and test a venture s potential with early adopters, how to identify core customers, and how to integrate selling and marketing activities in a new business. It also sheds light on how entrepreneurs can sharpen their understanding of customers, as well as gain valuable insights into the venture s product or service, by conducting visits with potential customers. In addition, this Reading provides an in-depth example of a relatively young company that discovers a need to redefine who its best customers should be. The Reading dispels myths about what defines an effective salesperson and explores basic aspects of integrating selling and marketing in a venture, including applicable uses of the sales funnel framework, multi-channel mapping, and how to make decisions about the company s go-to-market system. A supplementary reading offers deeper insight into the considerations that potential customers evaluate in deciding whether to switch from a product or service they are currently using to one offered by a new venture. A second supplemental section analyzes the selling and marketing challenges faced by the founders of an engineering startup and the strategies the founders formulate and execute to surmount those challenges and drive growth in the business.
Marriott, GE, and other traditional companies are finding opportunities to join the so-called collaborative economy--the space best known for start-ups such as Airbnb and Uber. In the process, they are conducting ambitious experiments aimed at fundamentally reevaluating their business models.
Teams that take the time to inventory and discuss each member's relevant knowledge before embarking on a task outperform others. Engaging in such reflection changes the criterion for power on the team from social influence to informational influence and helps members tune out irrelevant factors such as confidence, extroversion, status, experience, tenure, assertiveness, gender, and race.
Some 40% to 80% of mergers fail to meet objectives--and new research shows that human factors, especially collective leadership capability, are a key driver of M&A success.