This case describes barriers to adoption of malaria rapid diagnostic tests in Zambia and highlights the importance of understanding end users in promoting product adoption. Rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) are simple, easy-to-use tools that provide a relatively reliable, inexpensive way to confirm diagnoses of malaria. In addition to ensuring that patients' febrile illnesses are properly diagnosed and treated, confirming malaria diagnoses has broader public health benefits, including promoting the efficient use of limited malaria medications and preventing increased resistance to first-line malaria treatment. However, despite the evident potential benefits of RDTs, many clinicians in Zambia do not use them or simply ignore their results. Why don't they trust these tools, and what can be done to improve adoption? Various barriers to uptake and methods to overcome these challenges are explored, with broad implications for technology adoption and health policy. A particular emphasis is placed on the role of behavioral preferences.
This case presents financial statements and selected rations for 14 unidentified healthcare organizations and asks that each set of financial information be matched with one of the following healthcare companies: a biotechnology firm, a community nursing company, a distributor (medical), a DME licensee and seller, a DME developer and seller, a home care provider, a hospital (diversified), an insurer, a lab/diagnostic firm, a medical device manufacturer, a nursing home operator, a pharmaceuticals company (branded), a pharmaceuticals company (generics), and a private practice.
During the past five to 10 years, several different intermediation business models have emerged for the intellectual property (IP) market. This note describes the most prominent ones: nonpracticing entities (or patent trolls), defensive patent aggregators, online IP platforms, live IP auctions, and IP exchanges.
The IASB and FASB propose new contingency loss recognition, measurement, and disclosure rules (A case). The B and C cases apply these proposals to British Petroleum's Mexican Gulf oil spill and Union Carbide's Bhophal gas discharge.
The case describes the introduction of a human resources (HR) system named Project Vishwamitra (PV) in 2000 in a large, public-sector manufacturing organization, T.P. Engineering Corporation (TPEC). PV was introduced with considerable leadership support and visibility. It was intended to provide every engineer trainee at TPEC a friend and guide to ease their entry and socialization into the organization. The senior managers assigned to guide the trainees were called mentors. For about five years, the project ran smoothly — the trainees felt supported whenever they needed help, and the mentors were happy to guide trainees. But afterwards, certain important changes took place in the organization in the staffing of leadership positions. With expansion and new projects, the growth trajectory of TPEC showed a sharp increase. With longer-standing employees moving out and a significant rise in the number of trainees recruited, PV ran into difficult times. However, no changes were made in the system or processes. Meetings between trainees and mentors became more infrequent and, in certain areas, there was no contact between the two. In the midst of degeneration, one of the leaders was able to revive the project in one of the company units. TPEC had highly ambitious growth plans and the number of trainees was expected to increase from 450 in 2010 to 750 in 2011. The company faced a choice regarding the form in which PV should continue.
In the 1990s, Red Hat established itself as a leading proponent of the open source software movement and sought to carve out for itself a significant role in the open source marketplace. As of 2011, the company reported $177 million in non-GAAP operating income in FY2010, based on revenues of $748 million. Red Hat’s market capitalization was set at $8 billion as of January 25, 2011. It operated 65 offices worldwide, including 12 Global Support Service Centers, and employed 3,580 people. The Red Hat brand was most closely associated with Linux even though its stable of product offerings had grown to include a number of other noteworthy system software and middleware products, such as JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. As Red Hat’s Linux product line had come to be widely accepted as an enterprise software platform, the company had transformed its thinking about and delivery of customer support. This case study explores the innovative ways that Red Hat went about this transformation process.
Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M) is a manufacturing leader in the utility vehicles (UVs) segment in the Indian automotive industry. Since 2004, M&M has been exporting UVs to South Africa, the only country in the African continent with a significant middle-class population. M&M has set up a fully owned subsidiary in South Africa, which enjoyed the growth wave in the South African automotive industry up to 2007, then fell into a three-year slump, largely as a result of a recession in the global automotive industry. Now on the verge of industry renewal in 2011, the subsidiary needs to plan its next steps. The case is positioned in May 2011, when M&M’s subsidiary must choose from four alternatives. M&M can continue with its prevailing business model of importing completely built units (CBUs) from its Indian operations to meet local demand while using South Africa as a re-export hub for the burgeoning markets in sub-Saharan Africa. It can also choose to collaborate with a local vendor to assemble vehicles locally from completely knocked down (CKD) components imported from India. Alternatively, M&M may choose to set up its own manufacturing facility in South Africa, like many of its competitors. Lastly, M&M can choose to wait and watch until it notes definitive signs of revived demand. The case provides an opportunity for students to examine each alternative and make a decision on M&M’s way forward in South Africa.
discussion about the firm's overall strategy, post Gulf Oil spill, moving forward. The case describes how within a single decade, BP had emerged as one of the largest energy companies in the world. Within that scope, BP had an odd achievement: It had been building an alternative energy business and had gained a reputation as being an oil company with a regard for the environment. Then a series of preventable accidents, in the United States in particular, started to chip away at the firm's status. In a matter of five years, BP went from celebrating its most profitable period to finding itself selling assets while industry watchers wondered whether the company would survive after being responsible for the largest oil spill in the United States.
Anna Amphlett, a recent MBA graduate, was a newly hired financial analyst at Thor Industries, Inc., the largest manufacturer of recreation vehicles in the U.S. Amphlett was asked to benchmark the company's inventory management performance against other firms in the industry, and suggest areas where the company might eliminate waste and reduce costs. The company's Board of Directors, which now used free cash flows as a key performance indicator, believed that Thor could boost cash flows through lean management practices. Amphlett realized that comparing inventory management across companies was challenging, because inventory accounting methods differed across companies in the recreation vehicle industry.
In 2010, a sticky accelerator pedal tarnished the once-vaunted reputation of the Toyota Motor Corporation. These authors, who have written two widely acclaimed books on Toyota, argue that the pedal’s stickiness was caused not by relaxed manufacturing standards, as was commonly believed, but rather by failing to reconcile the means with the ends in trying to meet a corporate goal. Readers who hope to create a culture of excellence will learn why that particular reconciliation is important and how to achieve it.
Pricing is no longer a purely economic challenge, or a problem that can be solved through simply lowering prices or allocating costs and adding markups. Pricing must focus on value exchange — that customers will buy a product when it delivers value in excess of its price after adjusting for alternatives — and the marketing orientation of the firm. The challenges of pricing can be categorized as price setting (setting the right price in the first place), discounting, price structures (the strategic approach through which specific transactional prices are set), and overall pricing strategy. Various qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques have been developed that help with pricing challenges. Executives must realize that they cannot rely upon the output of a single equation or quantitative analytical technique, as pricing is a strategic challenge, not an “engineering” challenge. In examining the four basic challenges of pricing, this article reminds us that firms exist to serve customer needs profitably. The right price reflects the ability of the product to address a customer challenge, and the right price extracted from customers must exceed the firm’s cost to deliver. Price structures enable executives to align their prices with customers’ willingness to pay without resorting to discounting. The modern understanding of pricing, as detailed in this article, is crucial for executives to embrace in order to make better decisions for their firms.
Promoting women to executive positions and nominating them to sit on boards are goals that are still, for the most part, a long way from being realized. As these authors show, responsibility for stepping up to meet these goals starts at the top. This article provides five principles that can be applied to accelerate the promotion of women to executive positions and board rooms.
Building from within isn’t necessarily a new approach, but in a flat-growth environment it represents a significant opportunity for entrepreneurial business. This article explains how many successful companies focus on internal growth, improved relationships with existing customers, and incremental innovations, rather than mergers, risk-taking, and radical new innovations. It is the paradoxical combination of entrepreneurship and restraint in small and medium-sized businesses that will lead to much business growth of the future.
There has long been discussion about the need for more innovation in Canada. This article uses interviews with business and education leaders and summarizes the obstacles to innovation, including a risk-averse culture and lack of cross-sector collaboration, and the enablers of innovation, such as creating a culture of innovation. Recommendations for advancing innovation in Canada are synthesized under the categories of awareness, intent, and actions.
The battlefield may provide a metaphor for all manner of success in life. Survive, and you’re likely agile, decisive, quick-thinking, and courageous; and that courage manifests itself not just in war. As this Ivey doctorate and battle-tested Canadian Forces officer writes, courage means much more than bravery. It means having the character traits that make one an effective leader on the battlefield — and in the C-Suite.
While there are advantages to being proactive, the best strategy for today’s volatile, slow-growth environment may be one that is essentially reactive — a strategy in which CEOs, like some great athletes, allow events to “come to them.” This is emergent strategy, one that is formed spontaneously, in constant reaction to events and fast-changing realities. This author, a colleague of Henry Mintzberg, argues that an emergent strategy is the right strategy for a slow-growth business environment and stresses the importance of frugal innovation, or Jugaad (an idea whose time for implementation has come).