Sued for patent infringement, chemical manufacturer C.K. Claridge tries to design a settlement strategy taking into account a decision analysis of litigating v. negotiating. The plaintiffs are the patent holder and its sole licensee, who is also a CKC competitor. (This case is a revised, alternative version of "C.K. Coolidge, Inc. (Abridged)," HBS No. 607-006.)

Murray Douglas is the new chief executive officer (CEO) of Douglas Fine Foods (DFF), a family-owned business in its 80th year. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, DFF has grown to become Canada's largest privately held food services company, doing $30 million worth of business annually. DFF provides business dining, residence and camp food services, catering, vending machine services, and food service equipment and design. The business serves clients in various industries including schools, sports arenas and concessions, warehouses, government offices and corporations. Douglas needs to make several key decisions concerning DFF, including how to pay for a buyout of his brother's shares; whether to renew a contract with an undesirable customer; whether to pursue an active acquisition strategy; and how to transform the business to become a world-class, professionally managed organization. Students must evaluate complexities and trade-offs in making a sequence of decisions; outline a clear strategy and vision for the company; prioritize strategic options; define elements of an acquisition strategy; determine financing options for cash-constrained firm; and manage internal culture transformation.

The city of McAllen, Texas and its partners have worked on attracting an automotive assembly plant to the region for over fifteen years. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provision, this region enjoys the advantages offered by both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border. Even during the economic downturn of 2007 to 2008, McAllen experienced a lower unemployment rate compared to other cities in the United States. One of the primary reasons was its close proximity and economic ties to Mexico. Lower labour cost, a right-to-work state and proximity to Mexico were some of this region's strengths, while a high illiteracy rate, limited numbers of automotive suppliers and small workforce were among its weaknesses. Based on publicly available data and aggregate score evaluation methods, McAllen is compared to other potential sites. The case addresses a wide range of issue regarding site selection factors within the automotive industry.

Canadian Surgical Technologies and Advanced Robotics Centre (CSTAR) had had a successful year during which its new director had ensured that CSTAR's budget deficit was on target to be reduced by 50 per cent. CSTAR still faced significant hurdles to becoming financially stable and a leader in minimally invasive surgery (MIS). The director wanted CSTAR to be financially self-sustainable within two years, and identified goals to overcome these hurdles: development of a sustainable financing plan that would support its annual operating budget; setting strategies for its four revenue streams; and development of an operating plan to support CSTAR's new educational facility. Additionally, the MIS sector had no clear leader to set clinical care standards or establish industry best practices. The director wondered how CSTAR could position itself to fulfill that leadership role and generate funding through its business development activities. As director of the centre, he had to design these strategies and design a financing plan to push CSTAR into the black.

The Sun Life Financial cases allow students to take a cross-enterprise leadership approach in examining Sun Life's effort to re-enter the Indian insurance market. Set in March 1999, a vice-president in Sun Life's international team is looking at international expansion options. In its domestic market, Sun Life, relative to its peers, has had below average financial performance. With the domestic insurers demutualizing (i.e. converting from a policy holder-held mutual company to a public company), Sun Life needs to find avenues of growth. In addition, there are rumours that the domestic insurance industry will be opened up to competition from the Canadian banks, whose market capitalization dwarfs that of the insurance industry. The (A) case, Sun Life Financial: Planning for the Future, product #9B07M045 lays out the macro issues and describes in general the various insurance markets around the world. The (B) case, Sun Life Financial: A Potential Indian Life Insurance Joint Venture, product #9B07M046, hones in on Sun Life's decision to re-enter the Indian insurance market.

This supplement to Sun Life Financial: Planning for the Future, product 9B07M045, hones in on Sun Life's decision to re-enter the Indian insurance market.

The North West Company cases allow students to take a cross-enterprise leadership approach in looking at the dilemma facing the president and chief executive officer of The North West Company (North West), a food and general merchandise retailer operating primarily in Northern Canada. In early 2003, North West had negotiated a master franchisor agreement with Giant Tiger Stores Limited (Giant Tiger) with the objective of opening stores west of Winnipeg. In contrast with North West's push system of product replenishment, Giant Tiger had developed a successful pull system that gave individual store managers tremendous leeway in ordering decisions. The president and CEO wonders whether there is an opportunity to drive better results by adopting Giant Tiger's pull system within its Northern stores. The upside potential may include higher sales and reduced inventory levels as merchandise is tailored for each community. On the other hand, North West may face logistics and human resources issues in attempting to adopt this new system. This case provides detailed information about North West, its environment and Giant Tiger. The supplements The North West Company (B): Supply Chain Management, product 9B07D008, and The North West Company (C): Human Resources, product 9B07C024, look at the supply chain and human resources issues.

The director of Acute Care Information Management at University Health Network is thinking about how to form a steering committee and several working groups to manage the implementation and ongoing operation of the Medication Order Entry and Medication Administration Record module. This initiative would be the most challenging and complex the IT department had ever undertaken. She would need to address the concerns of administration, physicians and nurses.

The executive director of the Stratford Festival of Canada was contemplating the organization's future. The Stratford Festival had come a long way since the dark days in the early 1990's. The recovery began with the artistic director, who had built substantial audience momentum through his artistic choices. The executive director, a former Stratford Festival actor, had been in the role for less than a year. He needed to determine what course of action he should recommend to ensure the Stratford Festival's survival and return to greatness.

The North West Company cases allow students to take a cross-enterprise leadership approach in looking at the dilemma facing the president and chief executive officer of The North West Company (North West), a food and general merchandise retailer operating primarily in Northern Canada. In early 2003, North West had negotiated a master franchisor agreement with Giant Tiger Stores Limited (Giant Tiger) with the objective of opening stores west of Winnipeg. In contrast with North West's push system of product replenishment, Giant Tiger had developed a successful pull system that gave individual store managers tremendous leeway in ordering decisions. The president and CEO wonders whether there is an opportunity to drive better results by adopting Giant Tiger's pull system within its Northern stores. The upside potential may include higher sales and reduced inventory levels as merchandise is tailored for each community. On the other hand, North West may face logistics and human resources issues in attempting to adopt this new system. This supplement to The North West Company (A): Cross-enterprise Strategy, product 9B07M047, discusses the human resources issues.

The North West Company cases allow students to take a cross-enterprise leadership approach in looking at the dilemma facing the president and chief executive officer of The North West Company (North West), a food and general merchandise retailer operating primarily in Northern Canada. In early 2003, North West had negotiated a master franchisor agreement with Giant Tiger Stores Limited (Giant Tiger) with the objective of opening stores west of Winnipeg. In contrast with North West's push system of product replenishment, Giant Tiger had developed a successful pull system that gave individual store managers tremendous leeway in ordering decisions. The president and CEO wonders whether there is an opportunity to drive better results by adopting Giant Tiger's pull system within its Northern stores. The upside potential may include higher sales and reduced inventory levels as merchandise is tailored for each community. On the other hand, North West may face logistics and human resources issues in attempting to adopt this new system. This supplement to The North West Company (A): Cross-enterprise Strategy, product 9B07M047, discusses the supply chain issues.

Dale Morse, MD, MS, could feel the tension rising in the room. He was chair of a special meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) called for July, 2009, that would make recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on whether to prioritize vaccine distribution to protect the population against a possible H1N1 influenza pandemic in the fall. Dr. Morse was particularly concerned that if ACIP did not set priorities now, he and other state and local public health officials could be faced with a vaccine shortage amid high demand-a situation he described as a potential public health disaster.

Executives know that how they respond to the sustainability challenge will profoundly affect the competitiveness of their organizations - and perhaps even their survival. Yet most are struggling with how to integrate environmental efforts into their core business strategies. Many have a hodgepodge of green initiatives but no overarching vision or plan. The problem is not that they don't see sustainability as a strategic issue. Rather it's that they think they're facing an unprecedented challenge. But there is a roadmap, say authors David Lubin and Dan Esty. They argue that sustainability is a "megatrend," a transformative change in the competitive landscape - like the rise of the quality movement in the 1970s and IT in the 1980s and 1990s - whose course can be predicted. By understanding how firms won in prior megatrends, executives can craft the strategies and systems they'll need to gain advantage in this one. The key: Companies that pulled ahead in prior megatrends developed early capabilities in leadership, tools and assessment methods, strategy development, management integration, and reporting and communication.

Practically every company these days has some form of program designed to nurture high-potential employees. But a recent study by the Corporate Executive Board demonstrates that nearly 40% of internal job moves made by people identified by their companies as "high potentials" end in failure. Disengagement within this cohort of employees also is remarkable: One in three emerging stars reported feeling disengaged from his or her company. Even more striking, 12% of all the high potentials in the study said they were actively searching for a new job-suggesting that as the economy rebounds and the labor market warms up, organizations may see their most promising employees take flight in large numbers. Why do companies have so much trouble bringing along their next generation of leaders? The Corporate Executive Board's research showed that senior managers make misguided assumptions about these employees and take actions on their behalf that actually hinder their development. When dealing with high-potential employees, firms tend to make six common errors: assuming that all of them are highly engaged, equating current performance with future potential, delegating the management of high potentials down in the organization, shielding promising employees from early derailment, expecting stars to share the pain of organization-wide cutbacks, and failing to link high potentials and their careers to corporate strategy. These mistakes can doom a company's talent investments to irrelevance-or worse.

Generation X employees will bring a new sensibility to the leadership of corporations, precisely because they are broadly dissatisfied with corporate life. Alternative thinkers with a strong streak of realism, they're ready to take charge-by leading differently. Gen Xers grew up during times of major restructuring, and many of them reject status-quo definitions of success, such as climbing the corporate ladder, in favor of work/life balance. This point of view equips them to engage in five context-creating leadership activities that are well suited for today: fostering collaborative capacity; asking compelling questions; embracing complexity and welcoming disruptive information; actively shaping corporate (collective) identity; and appreciating diversity. Xers may feel like underappreciated workhorses, squeezed between two much larger cohorts: Baby Boomers and the twenty-something members of Generation Y. And they worry that management jobs will skip a generation because Boomers and Gen Y share a natural kinship. But if we give them the chance to lead as their time arrives, their affinity for realism over idealism will serve modern corporations extremely well.

The makeup of the global workforce is about to undergo a seismic shift. In four years, Millennials-the people born between 1977 and 1997-will account for half the employees in the world. In some companies, they already constitute the majority. That shift may sound daunting to the managers charged with coaching these young workers, who have a reputation for being attention sponges. However, recent research into the varying expectations and needs of employees across four generations, involving 2,200 professionals, offers a more nuanced view of Millennials and reveals several resource-efficient ways to mentor them: reverse mentoring, group mentoring, anonymous feedback, and microfeedback. Using such innovative approaches, companies can give Millennials the guidance that they need-and that they want immediately-without having their experienced managers spend all their time coaching.

You've been ordered to reduce overhead by 10%, 20%, or even (wince) 30%. How do you do it? First, don't expect to reach your target with a single big idea; you'll need a combination of 10 or more separate actions. Second, match the kinds of opportunities you examine and implement to the degree of cost-reduction required. To cut 10%, use an incremental approach-for instance, reduce spending on department management, hold down pay increases, and repropose previously rejected cost-saving ideas. To get to 20%, think in terms of redesign or reorganization. Strive to eliminate any work for which the cost exceeds the value. This will involve changes in process, mind-set, and how departments serve one another. Finally, to reach 30%, you'll need to broaden your perspective even more. For example, try coordinating parallel activities in the organization, doing away with low-value meetings and forums, and eliminating entire programs.

Surprisingly, your best tool for getting customers to see beyond price may be the price itself. New research finds that four pricing moves in particular can cause buyers to stop treating your offering as a commodity and instead consider its quality and relevance to their individual needs. You can change the basis of your pricing structure, as Goodyear did when it priced tires according to how many miles they would last. You can stimulate curiosity with willful overpricing, as Burt's Bees does with its natural beauty products. You can partition a price into component charges to make customers notice a key benefit-as IKEA does by charging separately for a table's top and legs, reminding people of its useful modularity. Or you can price the options you provide uniformly-as Apple does when it charges 99 cents for any track on iTunes-so that customers simply focus on their preferences. The power of each of these strategies is illuminated by controlled studies the authors conducted to understand the link between price and customer attention.

Despite the popular image of entrepreneurs as risk-loving cowboys, the reality is that great entrepreneurs don't take risks-they manage them. The authors counsel managers to recognize that not all risks are created equal: When you're launching a new venture, first consider deal-killer risks that, if left unexamined, could kill the whole business. Next tackle the risks that could sabotage the project if it took a path you're not currently anticipating. Then focus on high-ROI risks-the questions you can answer without spending much money (but that will trip you up if left unanswered). Once you've identified the most important risks facing your new venture, manage those risks the way the best venture capitalists do: Spend a little bit of money at a time; create experiments that will test your assumptions; keep your timeline as short as you can; test only one thing at a time; and listen carefully for what an experiment's results are really telling you. Hint: You should be trying to prove that your assumptions are wrong, not simply to confirm your own biases.

Multinational companies are pinning their hopes for growth on emerging markets, specifically in the BRIC countries-Brazil, Russia, India, and China, which together account for 15%-20% of today's global economy. But these companies face a critical obstacle: a cutthroat war for talent. Despite the enormous labor forces in BRIC, top-notch talent is hard to find. India produces as many young engineers as the United States, but according to the McKinsey Global Institute, only 25% of them are suitable for employment by multinationals. Fewer than one out of 10 university graduates in China are prepared to succeed in a multinational environment. To better understand the talent dynamics in emerging markets and how multinational companies can succeed there, the authors launched a study of 4,350 college-educated men and women in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the United Arab Emirates. They found that the talent solution is in plain sight: Millions of educated women have entered the professional workforce in these countries over the past two decades. Though this talent pool is currently neglected and underleveraged, it represents the future. Women in emerging markets are enormously ambitious and passionate about their work, but they face complicated challenges that are fundamentally different from those of women in the developed world. Here's what companies like Google, Siemens, Intel, GE, and Pfizer are doing to shape talent models that work, especially for women in emerging markets.