On January 28, 2009, the president and CEO of the Business Development Bank of Canada is considering the impact of the minister of finance's announcement in his recent 2009 budget that the bank would offer a new financial product to help auto and heavy equipment dealers suffering through the global financial and economic crisis. A wholly owned Government of Canada Crown corporation, the bank's mandate is to help create and develop Canadian businesses through financing, subordinate financing, venture capital and consulting services, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises. It is expected both to complement private-sector financial institutions and to earn a rate of return on common equity greater than or equal to the government's average long-term cost of capital. Taken by surprise due to budget secrecy, the president has spent the last two days in conversations with his staff, senior government officials and his board chair. He needs a plan to quickly launch this new and completely unfamiliar line of business while navigating the complex governance and stakeholder environment that BDC faces.
The pharmaceutical industry was under siege, with regular price rollbacks and the powerful advance of generics frequently making news headlines. Many of the industry's leading companies, including Novartis, were cutting their sales forces, while sales representatives who still had jobs felt increasingly disengaged. David Epstein, the head of Novartis's Pharmaceuticals division, bucked the trend. He introduced a strategic initiative that aimed to fundamentally transform Novartis' selling model. Epstein committed to an aspirational goal of equipping 80% of the company's field forces worldwide with the latest iPad technology by the end of 2012, in just 15 months. A few months later, he set his teams an even more ambitious challenge: to equip 100% of the sales force by the end of 2013, which meant rolling out 25,000 new devices across the globe within a two-year period. Novartis was about to embark on a digital transformation journey, with the ultimate goal of providing the right drug to the right patient at the right time.
Tata Motors, a leading automobile manufacturer in India, pro-actively responded to the changing competitive environment and redesigned its human capital strategy. As part of the new strategy, huge investments were made in revamping the learning and development function for Tata Motors employees. Multiple initiatives were launched to promote a learning culture, which also earned the company international recognition in the learning and development community. The challenge for Tata Motors is to evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives in terms of their relative advantages and their ability to develop a learning culture in the organization. Effectively capturing and measuring these parameters is crucial for justifying future investments in learning and development.
<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER -John Molson MBA Case Writing Competition</strong></p><br>GREENoneTEC, the global market leader in manufacturing flat plate solar thermal collectors, was facing new challenges: the potential market entry of Chinese low-cost competitors and a substitution threat from photovoltaics. The company’s founder and chief executive officer had developed GREENoneTEC from a garage start-up to the industry’s leading firm; however, GREENoneTEC’s research and development, production, quality, sales and distribution strategies, and diversification into other segments of the solar market would all have to be considered from new angles. How could GREENoneTEC create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage in this changing and difficult environment?
The American Airlines in 2011 case was developed to provide a setting for the comparative analysis of two very different business models in the U.S. domestic airline industry-the network carrier and the low cost carrier (LCC). These models offer very different value propositions. Firms allocate resources into distinctively different processes, and they earn returns using parallel but different profit models. Yet while most scholars view the LCC model as disruptive, the two different models have been able to co-exist for over forty years, albeit with substantial evolution. By unpacking how one of the major network carriers was able to evolve its model successfully for such a long time before industry structural changes necessitated a radical overhaul, the cases seek to give students insights into how the different business models were established, how competitive forces have driven their evolution, and the importance of constantly evolving and tuning a firm's model.
Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS) is an Indian not-for-profit organization engaged in assisting differently-abled persons by providing them with the legendary low-cost prosthesis, the Jaipur Foot, and other mobility-assisting devices, free of cost. Known for its patient-centric culture, its focus on innovation, and for developing the $20 Stanford-Jaipur knee, BMVSS has assisted over a million people in its lifetime of 44 years. As the founder, Mr. D.R. Mehta, thinks about the financial sustainability of BMVSS, he must devise a strategy that will sustain its human impact well into the future.
The compromise between capital preservation and growth has always been central to the performance of the Harvard endowment. Setting an institutional structure for effectively governing this compromise became especially important when the Harvard Management Company began operating in July of 1974. HMCs investments in venture capital, which began within a decade, created tensions around risk-return tradeoffs. HMC grappled with issues surrounding short term versus long term investment payoffs, the proportion of the portfolio that should be allocated to venture capital and the most appropriate investment form - direct investing in entrepreneurial startups, later stage businesses, or outsourcing this function and investing in funds. Such decisions would matter from the perspective of generations of students and faculty who depended on HMC maximizing returns and getting the balance of the Harvard portfolio right.
Tata Motors, a leading automobile manufacturer in India, pro-actively responded to the changing competitive environment and redesigned its human capital strategy. As part of the new strategy, huge investments were made in revamping the learning and development function for Tata Motors employees. Multiple initiatives were launched to promote a learning culture, which also earned the company international recognition in the learning and development community. The challenge for Tata Motors is to evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives in terms of their relative advantages and their ability to develop a learning culture in the organization. Effectively capturing and measuring these parameters is crucial for justifying future investments in learning and development.
GREENoneTEC, the global market leader in manufacturing flat plate solar thermal collectors, was facing new challenges: the potential market entry of Chinese low-cost competitors and a substitution threat from photovoltaics. The company's founder and chief executive officer had developed GREENoneTEC from a garage start-up to the industry's leading firm; however, GREENoneTEC's research and development, production, quality, sales and distribution strategies, and diversification into other segments of the solar market would all have to be considered from new angles. How could GREENoneTEC create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage in this changing and difficult environment?
Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Inc. (Jos. A. Bank), a men's apparel retail chain, made a bid to acquire its industry rival, the Men's Wearhouse. The Men's Wearhouse not only rebuffed the bid but turned around and made a counter bid to acquire Jos. A. Bank. Initially, Jos. A. Bank merely rejected the offer as inadequate but subsequently made an offer to buy Eddie Bauer, a chain selling outdoor apparel, to make itself an unattractive target for the Men's Wearhouse. Surrounding this takeover drama were a host of other actors, including Beacon Light Capital, a hedge fund that called for significant governance changes at Jos. A. Bank, and a second hedge fund, Eminence Capital, that owned stock in both Jos. A. Bank and the Men's Wearhouse, and had filed a lawsuit against Jos. A. Bank to push for the deal to go through. The chairman of Jos. A. Bank's board was faced with a critical decision regarding the acquisition offer from the Men's Wearhouse and his own company's offer to buy Eddie Bauer.
Eco-Motors, funded in part by Khosla Ventures, has to decide how to go to market with a new technology for internal combustion engines for automotive and industrial use. The OPOC engine has opposed pistons and is a two-stroke engine, as compared to a more traditional in-line or V-oriented 6, 8, or 12 cylinder gas or diesel engine. A two-stroke engine is cheaper to build and has higher power output than a four-stroke engine but historically has been more polluting. At present in the U.S., two-stroke engines are mostly deployed in lawnmowers and chainsaws with four-stroke engines the leaders in cars, boats, and generators. Should the company be an invention company licensing its technology; an engine designer and manufacturer selling to auto, marine, and fixed OEM companies; or a fully integrated power and transport solution? How is the value chain currently organized, what obstacles are there in going to market, and how can this company thrive with this innovation that is cleaner and cheaper than the incumbent but hard to explain and to deploy?
Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Inc. (Jos. A. Bank), a men’s apparel retail chain, made a bid to acquire its industry rival, the Men’s Wearhouse. The Men’s Wearhouse not only rebuffed the bid but turned around and made a counter bid to acquire Jos. A. Bank. Initially, Jos. A. Bank merely rejected the offer as inadequate but subsequently made an offer to buy Eddie Bauer, a chain selling outdoor apparel, to make itself an unattractive target for the Men’s Wearhouse. Surrounding this takeover drama were a host of other actors, including Beacon Light Capital, a hedge fund that called for significant governance changes at Jos. A. Bank, and a second hedge fund, Eminence Capital, that owned stock in both Jos. A. Bank and the Men’s Wearhouse, and had filed a lawsuit against Jos. A. Bank to push for the deal to go through. The chairman of Jos. A. Bank’s board was faced with a critical decision regarding the acquisition offer from the Men’s Wearhouse and his own company’s offer to buy Eddie Bauer.
This industry note provides an extensive overview of the wireless communications industry in China at the end of 2012. At the time China had over 1.1 billion mobile subscribers, and the country was predicted to have 500 million smartphones in use by the end of 2013. The note discusses the industry's value chain (carriers, device manufactures, component providers, content and applications providers, and telecom equipment providers), and the role of the Chinese government in the industry's evolution. The note also presents the strategic positioning and business models of China's three main carriers (China Mobile, China Unicorn, and China Telecom), and of the major international and domestic handset manufacturers, including Samsung, ZTE, Nokia, Apple, Lenovo and Huawei. In addition, the note covers the strategic positioning of the main chipset suppliers in the Chinese wireless market: Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung and Intel.
Benecol Spread, a cholesterol-lowering margarine, was a product with unusual media-planning challenges. With a narrow target group and unproven market potential, Johnson & Johnson needed to get the most "bang for the buck" from its Benecol advertising. Would a media-planning model (optimizer) requiring executives to quantify their judgment on several key inputs be helpful in this process? A spreadsheet accompanying the case allows students to weight the target groups and to choose among different advertising vehicles to form the best possible media plan.
Entrepreneur Eric Ries coined the term "lean start-up" to describe organizations that follow the principles of hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship. In these ventures, entrepreneurs use experimentation: first, translating their vision into a business model hypotheses, then testing the hypotheses using a series of minimum viable products (MVPs), each of which represent the smallest set of features or activities needed to validate a concept. Founders of a lean start-up also know that time counts among their scarcest resources. Put simply: speed matters. Like lean manufacturing, the lean start-up method accelerates the tempo of innovation by using rapid iteration, small batches, and short cycle times. Experimenting in the Entrepreneurial Venture begins by contrasting the hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship approach with other methods. The Reading also explains, step-by-step, how to formulate business model hypotheses, test them, and act on the test feedback. In the final section, the Reading considers what settings are best suited for hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship. The Reading also includes a section on special topics, a glossary of key terms, and suggestions for cases and articles for further reading.
Wok is a restaurant chain founded in BogotaÌ in 1998. By 2011, Wok was on its path to becoming the first "green" restaurant chain in Colombia, following its strategic decision to integrally incorporate social and environmental dimensions into its value chain. At that point, consolidating its position as the leader in sustainability required more than philanthropic decisions from senior managers. How far should that transition progress? To what extent could Wok mobilize industry players without jeopardizing its competitive positioning? Did transition benefits outweigh costs? Were the risks worthwhile?
In July 2012, three freshly-minted Harvard Kennedy School graduates bought one-way tickets to Medellin, Colombia, to launch a nonprofit startup they called Instiglio. Their idea: to bring Social Impact Bonds, still experimental even in affluent nations, to Colombia and other low to middle income countries. This public policy case-one of two HKS cases about Instiglio-provides background about the SIB model (a financing mechanism for experimental social programs, with private investors shouldering the financial risk of failure) and tracks the early experience of the HKS graduates in Colombia. The case focuses on two of the most critical decisions the Instiglio group faced: (1) how to pick a project topic, in the midst of competing demands and limited information and (2) with a project topic in hand, how to design a SIB agreement that would satisfy the needs of both investors and government leaders. A second case on this topic, ''Devil in the Details: Designing a Social Impact Bond Agreement in Medellin,'' is a statistics case. It includes much of the same background information as ''Betting Private Capital,'' but hones in on the technical challenges of designing a SIB agreement. HKS Case Number 2026.0.
Qihoo, one of the largest Internet companies in China today, was founded in 2005. The company started its business by offering a security software product, and quickly dominated the market in China after its unusual move of giving its product away for free in 2009. Later, it expanded its offering to cover a broad spectrum of Internet and mobile security products. In 2012 the company launched its own Internet search engine called So.com. By August 2013, So.com captured 18% PC market share, and had posed a threat to Baidu, China's largest and most established search engine provider. Yet to compete against Baidu and other Chinese Internet giants in the long run, Qihoo needed to find a way to replicate its PC market success in the mobile market. How could Qihoo continue to evolve its search engine business and what was the best mobile strategy to help the company grow?
On the eve of the announcement of the results of India’s 2009 elections, a senior research analyst with a leading brokerage and investment house in India was trying to predict the possible outcomes of the election and to gauge their impact on the stock markets. The analyst wanted to recommend some optimal options strategies to his clients, as the outcome of events such as elections always led to high volatility and consequently high risks and returns. The formation of a majority government would likely give a significant boost to the markets, while the formation of a coalition government would likely have the opposite effect. The analyst was struggling to determine the kind of strategy (aggressive or defensive) he should suggest. He was working to help his clients make exponential profits in a short span of time without the fear of losing significant money.