The case "Beyondsoft Co., Ltd. (A)" completed in early 2010 described the strategic path of Beyondsoft over its history of more than 10 years since its foundation in 1995, containing its major business lines and the relations with the major customers at that time, the market environment faced by the company, competitive power of major rivalry players and Beyondsoft's own resources and capabilities, as well as the future objectives set by President Ben Wang for the company. The focus was put on the development strategy Beyondsoft should choose in the next 3-5 years, given its actual external business environment and internal business conditions. This case is an extension of case (A), focusing on the strategic path of Beyondsoft during 2010-2011, the market environment at the new historical moment faced by the company in early 2012, when Beyondsoft did its IPO, including the situations of major competitors and Beyondsoft's own resources and capabilities, as well as its bushiness adjustments and future objectives designed by Ben Wang and his top management team.
Beyondsoft, a leading software outsourcing enterprises in China, began to make preparations for its overseas listing in 2004, including establishing a red-chip structure needed by overseas listing and introducing overseas institutional investors. However, a global financial crisis broke out when Beyondsoft was going to submit its listing application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2007. As a result, Beyondsoft had no choice but to temporarily shelve the listing plan and to wholeheartedly cope with the sudden crisis. Only after Beyondsoft showed steady performance and cash flow in 2009 did its listing was put on agenda again. However, the U.S. capital market was no longer as booming as it had been in the past after the peak of the crisis, making it difficult to reopen a window for the listing in the U.S. To wait patiently, looking forward to the next boom in the U.S. capital market to come soon, or to turn to other overseas markets or resolutely give up the overseas listing plan and go back to the domestic A-share market? Beyondsoft President Ben Wang fell into repeated comparisons and options. Finally, Beyondsoft chose to return to the domestic A-share market and was successfully listed at the SME board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on January 6, 2012. The cases of Beyondsoft IPO include part (A) and part (B). (A) is used mainly for classroom discussion and (B) is an after-class reference for students
Founded in 2004, TGOOD is now the largest specialized developer and producer of cubicle-type transformation and distribution equipment in China, with the main products of outdoor cubicle-type power equipment supplemented by indoor switchgear cabinets, offered mainly to the railways, coal-mining and power industries. In 2001, TGOOD president Yu Dexiang led a dozen of his young colleagues to resign from state-owned enterprises and dive into the market. By 2011, by riding on the huge wave of China's railway construction and struggling arduously, TGOOD has developed from an unknown business of 20 people and RMB 8 million assets into a growing enterprise with net assets of over RMB 1.1 billion, annual operating revenue of over RMB 600 million, and employment of around 1,000. In September 2009, TGOOD became the first company in China to trade on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange GEM. At the same time, Yu Dexiang has crafted in his special way a cohesive and complementary entrepreneurial team and core employee team. In 2011, due to the stepping-down of railway minister Liu Zhijun for corruption reasons and the severe HSR accident happened in June 2011, China slowed down its railway construction, causing a great setback to TGOOD's development. This case was written at a time that TGOOD was starting to readjust its industrial structure and Yu Dexiang was pondering about the strategic directions of the company's "second starting-up" and the new task of team building.
With the rapid growth of China's economy and China's increasingly integration into the global economy in the past two decades, China's leisure clothing and garment enterprises achieved a rapid rise and became an important competitive force confronting with the foreign brands in the Chinese market. Zhejiang Semir Garment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Semir Group") was founded in 1996 and currently owns two brands ("Semir", targeted at 16-25 year olds, providing affordable casual clothing featuring "fashion and vitality"; Balabala, providing children's clothing, targeted at 3-12 year-old children in better-off families). Both brands occupy a leading position in the Chinese market. However, with the intensified market competition and changes of cost elements and new sales channels, Semir Group faces new challenges.
This case is the follow-up of Kingdee A(6-311-351). In 2011, Kingdee made strategic investments and business expansions, suffering net profit decline despite operating revenue growth and also changes to top managers.
In 2012, China attained a historic development milestone with more Chinese citizens living in cities than in the countryside. China's rapid urbanization, and the accompanying conversion of agricultural land to non-agricultural uses, raised a number of economic, social, and political concerns. Could China maintain its food security in view of the sharply rising demand for land for urban development? How could it ensure the sustainability of local government finances? Was the growing number of land protests the harbinger of major changes in China's political institutions? How would the challenges of urbanization affect the business environment for private firms? The success and viability of China's overall growth strategy depended crucially on managing a successful urban transition.
This case chronicles the challenges of establishing an innovative tissue bank service to accelerate the research and development processes of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Asterand's two major challenges involved achieving a standardized approach to collecting tissue samples in hospitals all over the world and achieving the highest possible quality of tissue samples shipped to their primary customer, Amgen. Despite the identified need for high-quality tissue samples, Asterand was experiencing multiple quality control problems in their processes and procedures. Tissue samples were being packaged poorly, labeled incorrectly or delivered at the wrong time or to the wrong place. Additionally, there were quality issues with the RNA analysis of the samples, which was a critical factor in the usability of the tissue sample for research and development of new therapies and drugs. The head of pathology at Amgen's California facility was threatening to terminate their existing order and communicate the failure of Asterand to all company employees, which would have had a devastating ripple effect across the industry and likely destroyed opportunities for any future orders with Asterand. If this happened, Asterand would not have been able to secure contracts with customers and would've been at risk of losing investors and going bankrupt.
A hybrid entrepreneur working at a full-time job has come up with the idea for his first product, a smartphone car stereo. He has invested $10,000 of his own money plus $3,000 from an early investor to develop his prototype. He needs to put together a viable commercialization plan and is considering crowdfunding as a viable funding source. He also needs to decide whether to distribute his product through direct sales or a traditional retail mode
In the summer of 2010, the members of the business development team of Target Systems were carefully considering the possibility of entering the Electronic Health Information (EHI) systems arena. The company had both breadth and depth of experience in providing logistics, project management and information technology (IT) services to clients in the public and private sector. Although the employees of Target Systems were experts in a full range of IT services, no one in the company had deep expertise about the way IT applications were being used to manage patient care or administer health care organizations. The lack of expertise implied that a movement by Target Systems into the EHI systems arena would call for the company to simultaneously develop new products and services for a new set of clients -- to engage in growth by related diversification. That strategy would stand in contrast to the growth by concentration strategy the team had employed throughout company history. To pursue a diversification strategy the team would have to decide if it should provide services to regional health information organizations, hospitals or individual physicians' practices. It would also have to decide whether it would cultivate new capabilities by investing in internal development or by seeking a strategic partner that was already operating in the arena. Ultimately, the way the business development team weighed the opportunities versus the challenges of adopting a new growth strategy in the context of a still uncertain external environment would strongly influence its decision as to whether or not the company should enter this new arena.
Schneider Electric has focused primarily on urban customers in the energy management space. The question is the extent to which it should prioritise rural opportunities for meeting the energy needs of the bottom of the pyramid, and whether these initiatives can be transitioned from subsidised social responsibility projects to self-sustaining businesses.
This case chronicles the challenges of establishing an innovative tissue bank service to accelerate the research and development processes of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies worldwide. Asterand’s two major challenges involved achieving a standardized approach to collecting tissue samples in hospitals all over the world and achieving the highest possible quality of tissue samples shipped to their primary customer, Amgen. Despite the identified need for high-quality tissue samples, Asterand was experiencing multiple quality control problems in their processes and procedures. Tissue samples were being packaged poorly, labeled incorrectly or delivered at the wrong time or to the wrong place. Additionally, there were quality issues with the RNA analysis of the samples, which was a critical factor in the usability of the tissue sample for research and development of new therapies and drugs. <br><br><br><br>The head of pathology at Amgen’s California facility was threatening to terminate their existing order and communicate the failure of Asterand to all company employees, which would have a devastating ripple effect across the industry and likely destroy opportunities for any future orders with Asterand. If this happened, Asterand would not be able to secure contracts with customers and was at risk of losing investors and going bankrupt.
In the summer of 2010, the members of the business development team of Target Systems were carefully considering the possibility of entering the Electronic Health Information (EHI) systems arena. The company had both breadth and depth of experience in providing logistics, project management and information technology (IT) services to clients in the public and private sector. Although the employees of Target Systems were experts in a full range of IT services, no one in the company had deep expertise about the way IT applications were being used to manage patient care or administer health care organizations. The lack of expertise implied that a movement by Target Systems into the EHI systems arena would call for the company to simultaneously develop new products and services for a new set of clients –– to engage in growth by related diversification. That strategy would stand in contrast to the growth by concentration strategy the team had employed throughout company history. To pursue a diversification strategy the team would have to decide if it should provide services to regional health information organizations, hospitals or individual physicians’ practices. It would also have to decide whether it would cultivate new capabilities by investing in internal development or by seeking a strategic partner that was already operating in the arena. Ultimately, the way the business development team weighed the opportunities versus the challenges of adopting a new growth strategy in the context of a still uncertain external environment would strongly influence its decision as to whether or not the company should enter this new arena.
In 2010, a hybrid entrepreneur working at a full-time job has come up with the idea for his first product, a smartphone car stereo. He has invested $10,000 of his own money plus $3,000 from an early investor to develop his prototype. He needs to put together a viable commercialization plan and is considering crowdfunding as a viable funding source. He also needs to decide whether to distribute his product through direct sales or a traditional retail model.
Whether the government or markets, or a mixture of both, can provide efficient and effective incentives for encouraging entrepreneurial activity and new venture financing is an age old question. Public promotion efforts are controversial and in most cases they tend to fail. In the United States, debate about the role of government in these areas can be traced back to at least the Great Depression and the period immediately after World War II when the issue became a particular concern. Policy makers considered that existing financial institutions could neither provide the necessary due diligence nor the pool of risk capital that was necessary to spur entrepreneurial ventures. Furthermore, there were calls for additional inducements in the form of tax related incentives. The mechanisms that were used raise questions about benefits, costs and unintended consequences. Can, and should, the government influence entrepreneurial activity and venture financing? What are the limits to government intervention?
Genentech is a rare success story in the biotechnology industry. Hundreds of billions of dollars of venture capital have been invested without the expected transformational effects. Established in 1976, Genentech was to develop the new science of recombinant DNA into viable therapeutic products with mass market appeal, something that most scientists agreed was at least a decade away. The founders, Herbert Boyer and Robert Swanson had limited financial resources, so they turned to Tom Perkins, the co-founder of Kleiner-Perkins, for venture funding. Genentech developed through an effective union between scientific and venture investment mindsets. In 1980 an IPO valued Genentech at $300 million. In 2009 it was fully acquired by the Swiss-based healthcare company, Roche, for $47 billion. Roche had held a majority stake in the company since 1990.
The case described the issues faced by a mid-sized Indian generic pharmaceutical firm, in its attempt to acquire a small unlisted Japanese generics manufacturer. It showcases the strong motivation of a successful emerging market pharmaceutical firm to expand into the developed market, buoyed by its cost competitiveness. The case presents an opportunity to discuss the trade-offs involved with most of the dynamic decisions in a cross-border acquisition, such as estimation of synergies and value, bidding, and financing the acquisition. The case may be used in programmes on valuation, and mergers and acquisitions.
This case teaches the impact of variability on process performance. In 2009, media coverage of long wait times in a local hospital brought considerable embarrassment to the state secretary of health. The hospital, located in a midsize European city, had the only emergency care facility in its metropolitan region. After the delays in care were brought to light, the secretary of health ordered the hospital's CEO to produce an action plan-and measurable progress-before the end of the month. But the CEO faced scarce resources and was already under pressure to reduce spending. What reforms should he make? Would he need to increase the emergency department's staff, and if so, how should he balance the costs? As this case explores the challenges of the healthcare industry, students learn to address questions of process mapping and operations.
This case concerns the implementation and strategic direction of LGBTA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and ally) initiatives at TD Bank Financial Group (TD). In order to maintain its position as the “employer of choice” for the LGBTA community, TD must expand the measures it had taken since its Diversity Leadership Council was created in 2006 to promote a comfortable, barrier-free and inclusive work environment for all employees. TD’s corporate diversity group had been providing a growing number of resources, events and LGBTA-related sponsorships for the past six years, resulting in an exponential growth of engagement by LGBTA employees, but lately the bank’s competitors and other large companies were catching up. Moreover, a recent review showed that there was a large variance in the quality of experience between the different subgroups of TD’s LGBTA community. The bank’s senior manager of corporate diversity must report within a week to the Diversity Leadership Council on how to solve these issues.