In 2013, Third Point LLC, a hedge fund based in New York, became the largest owner of Sony Corporation (Sony) shares. In May 2013, Daniel Loeb, CEO of Third Point, sent a letter to Sony President and CEO Kazuo Hirai with a proposal for restructuring Sony. The proposal included two main items: (1) Take public a 15-20% stake in Sony Entertainment, and (2) Focus on industry-leading businesses to bring growth to Sony Electronics. Sony replied that it was not interested in selling the entertainment division. According to a Sony spokesperson, "The entertainment businesses are important contributors to Sony's growth and are not for sale. We look forward to continuing constructive dialogue with our shareholders as we pursue our strategy."
Zingerman's co-founders Ari Weinzweig and Paul Saginaw have a non-traditional approach to growth, allowing employees that receive extensive training through the organization to fulfill their wildest aspirations. Charting a partnership path to ownership, the pair allows employees to forge the businesses of their dreams while benefiting the greater Zingerman's Community of Businesses. The strategy has resulted in the creation of eight successful businesses, with several more in the pipeline and annual sales of approximately $50 million. Students assess this non-conventional approach and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such a strategy.
The case is set in January 2012, and begins with Kenneth Yap, the founder of Quantine Pte Ltd, strategising on an effective growth plan for his company. Quantine is a job candidate pre-screening service provider specialised in asynchronous video interviews. In the three years since its inception, market forces and internal factors necessitated a change in its original corporate strategy. The business originally started out in 2009 as a competency assessment service for testing technical skills in the information technology industry. But due to strong competition in the market, likely demise of the platform for its technology, and lack of funds, Quantine was forced to re-evaluate its business proposition. It now focuses on a different business idea - a new method of candidate pre- screening: on-demand video. The Next-5 platform, as it is called, was created as an ecosystem for recruitment agencies, companies and prospective employees. From 2009 to late 2011, Quantine has gone through four rounds of fund raising. With the latest grant of US$392,000, Yap wonders how he can best use this money to market his company's suite of pre-screening services, and implement an effective growth plan for the company.
Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, Kat Rose was founded in 2009 to produce small strategic business conferences and corporate hospitality events. After mixed success, it was presented with an opportunity in 2011 to organize a cricket match in Toronto. Although sports were not on its radar, the company decided to use the project as a base for expansion. It put in place an aggressive advertising plan, largely aimed at South Asian and West Indian communities in the city who were fans of the game, and contracted Universal Productions, an ethnic marketing agency, to procure sponsorships. However, with only 10 weeks to go before the International Cricket All-Star T20 Match was scheduled to kick off on May 12, 2012 at the Rogers Centre, Toronto, only $60,000 had been raised; $750,000 was needed to break even. Management had four choices: give Universal Productions more time, offer it a financial incentive to step up performance, switch to another agency with a proven track record in this field or increase its own in-house sales force to focus on countertrade barter agreements. Each option required different skills, knowledge, experience and risk. Given the severe time constraint, any change must be implemented immediately. What should Kat Rose do?
It is year-end 2013 and management at Gabriel Resources, a Canadian junior mining corporation, is attempting to handle investor relations and political tensions surrounding its Rosia Montana mine project in Romania. Recently, the Romanian Parliament voted overwhelmingly against granting the final permit for the gold and silver mine until a more thorough environmental and legal framework is established. Although the company promises that its project will bring significant financial benefits to the state and needed infrastructure improvements and employment in the region, both national and international civilian and non-governmental organizations have protested vociferously against a development that they see harming not only the fragile geographic ecosystem but also historical artifacts that have been a major tourist draw. The draft bill was set to allow the company to begin work on developing the potentially lucrative mine, which has been 15 years in the making and has not yet generated any revenues. Investors are worried and the company’s share price is sinking. How can the company calm shareholder panic and negative stock price movement? What can it do to persuade the Romanian government and people to support the mine? Spreadsheet for students is available, see 7B14N025.
The CEO of clothing manufacturer and retailer Abercrombie and Fitch defends his decision that the company will not offer plus sizes for women, although extra large sizes are available for men, because average- to large-sized female consumers do not fit the company's target market. This insistence on a standard of female beauty as young, svelte and tall has enraged consumers who have criticized the company, and the CEO in particular, in both the traditional and social media for exacerbating problems of body image and gender stereotypes, especially among teens. Increasing sizes, however, presents not only logistical and manufacturing challenges but may lead to charges that the company is encouraging obesity and unhealthy lifestyles as happened when a competitor, H&M, introduced large-size models and mannequins in its stores. Abercrombie and Fitch's popularity with its target teen market depends on its promulgation of exclusivity, which in turn depends on its vision of what is "cool." Yet, in the face of mounting criticism and declining sales, does sticking to the segmentation strategy make sense?
Emirates Airline (EA) needs to fund the purchase of 30 new A380 aircraft. On March 11, 2013, EA announced plans to issue US$1 billion of Islamic bonds (sukuk) and $750 million of regular bonds. These bonds arguably share similar risks and seniority even though the sukuk bonds sold with a lower implied yield. This difference in pricing for securities with similar default risks seems at odds with conventional finance thinking. Against this backdrop, the EA treasury department must decide on the appropriate funding for this next batch of A380 airplanes.
As yoga grew in popularity in Singapore, there were many new yoga studios set up in attempts to tap into this growing service industry. Space & Light Studios Pte Ltd was one of them. A small and medium enterprise set up in December 2012, it differentiated itself by offering yoga classes that emphasised on the optimal alignment of the body. This case study explores the entrepreneurial journey of the owners of Space & Light Studios and examines the viability of this yoga business utilising Cost-Volume-Profit analysis - a management accounting tool.
As yoga grew in popularity in Singapore, there were many new yoga studios set up in attempts to tap into this growing service industry. Space & Light Studios Pte Ltd was one of them. A small and medium enterprise set up in December 2012, it differentiated itself by offering yoga classes that emphasised on the optimal alignment of the body. This case study explores the entrepreneurial journey of the owners of Space & Light Studios and examines the viability of this yoga business utilising Cost-Volume-Profit analysis - a management accounting tool.
As yoga grew in popularity in Singapore, there were many new yoga studios set up in attempts to tap into this growing service industry. Space & Light Studios Pte Ltd was one of them. A small and medium enterprise set up in December 2012, it differentiated itself by offering yoga classes that emphasised on the optimal alignment of the body. This case study explores the entrepreneurial journey of the owners of Space & Light Studios and examines the viability of this yoga business utilising Cost-Volume-Profit analysis - a management accounting tool.
As yoga grew in popularity in Singapore, there were many new yoga studios set up in attempts to tap into this growing service industry. Space & Light Studios Pte Ltd was one of them. A small and medium enterprise set up in December 2012, it differentiated itself by offering yoga classes that emphasised on the optimal alignment of the body. This case study explores the entrepreneurial journey of the owners of Space & Light Studios and examines the viability of this yoga business utilising Cost-Volume-Profit analysis - a management accounting tool.
Headquartered in Pune, India, Cybage was one of the plethora of players in the Indian software and information technology ("IT") services sector. Nevertheless, Cybage had enjoyed a double-digit growth rate in the past few years, compared to the industry's growth rate of 14.9% in 2011. Could Cybage's growth be attributed to the general expansion of India's knowledge economy, or had Cybage developed a set of capabilities that differentiated the company from its peers and drove the company to expand from a handful of IT practitioners to a company with a global footprint of nearly 4,000 professionals? What were Cybage's differentiators and how did they become the company's core competencies, allowing it to make headway despite competition from top-tier Indian IT companies?
John Stack was the visionary Head of Digital Transformation at the Tate, a collection of four major art galleries in the UK, including Tate Modern, the most visited gallery devoted to modern and contemporary art in the world. Stack was the architect of the Tate's "fifth gallery," its online presence. Stack had guided the Tate through two digital strategy planning processes and his team had experienced much success in developing the Tate's fifth gallery into a virtual place filled with immersive and engaging content, activities, experiences, and communities. Looking to the future, Stack was working to execute a new digital strategy, one that included digital as a dimension of everything the Tate did, both physically and virtually. This effort was raising important questions about organizational structure, marketing strategy, product and service design, and return on investment. What would it take to be a truly digital organization where digital was the norm?
A company with a strong commitment toward corporate social responsibility since its founding days, Green Mountain faced an ethical decision point in 2007 as new information from the field uncovered a chronic dire problem facing coffee communities-seasonal starvation. Company leaders are driven to re-assess their social impact and address this widespread problem while aligning their efforts with their broader, rapidly expanding business of selling coffee.
Strongest Families is a 12-week distance treatment program for children with various mental health disorders and their families. The program was started in Nova Scotia in 2001 to address issues of stigma, lack of access to primary care specialists and difficulty of obtaining care, especially in rural areas. To meet these needs, the program utilizes long-distance communication methods such as weekly telephone meetings with trained personnel who are available days, nights and weekends, so access to care is easy and convenient for families. The founder of the program has already proven its efficacy in a major outcome paper that disseminated the supporting evidence to the research community. As chief executive officer of the Strong Families Institute, a federally registered not-for-profit organization, he and his founding partner, now chief operating officer, want to scale up the program to other provinces and eventually other countries, but they must get government ministries and other stakeholders on side in the interests of making mental health care widely available to the children and families who need it.
In January 2005, the vice-president of International Affairs at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, must decide how to respond to a request for proposal from the Hamad Medical Corporation of Qatar. In order to reach its global mission of "Healthier Children, A Better World," the Toronto hospital, which had an international reputation for excellence in pediatric medicine, had established an arm called SickKids International. In addition, it was anxious to find new ways to recover from an operating deficit caused by the aftershock of the SARS outbreak. Hamad Medical Corporation, a major state hospital medical supplier in Qatar, was looking for international centres that would want to partner with it in the development of what it hoped would become the best children's hospital in the Middle East. The vice-president understood the enormous benefits that the partnership had to offer but recognized the need for a comprehensive strategy to mitigate all of the associated risks, such as the difference in cultures between Canada and Qatar, the pressure on the Toronto hospital's staff to make the project successful and the uncertain political and business environment in the Middle East. Should she recommend to her executive team that they go ahead with their first international request for proposal?