The emerging markets have cooled off lately, but they're still growing, even as the rest of the world shrinks. That's one reason why developing countries - and the companies based there - will become more formidable players in the future. A second is that companies on the frontiers saw the downturn coming from developed countries and revised their strategies. They're innovating and improving operations aggressively, while their governments implement policies that will change the game of business. Multinationals need to recognize that and prepare for several tectonic shifts: Developing economies will become less dependent on developed ones, evolve a different model of business leadership, set off countertrends in M&A, and demand unprecedented levels of environmental sustainability. And Africa is poised to become the next hot spot of growth.
Decades of short-term management have inflated the importance of CEOs and reduced employees to fungible commodities. Middle managers, who see the connections between operations and strategy, can be instrumental in rebuilding a sense of community in businesses.
An employee union is threatening Detonation Media with a strike. What should the company do? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0907B and R0907Z: Richard L. Trumka, Richard B. Freeman, and Jeffrey Anderson.
An employee union is threatening Detonation Media with a strike. What should the company do? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0907B and R0907Z: Richard L. Trumka, Richard B. Freeman, and Jeffrey Anderson.
Replacing expensive data centers with outsourced computing or remote portable server farms allows businesses to rapidly change capacity and offers flexibility - an important edge.
Manufacturers in emerging markets are getting fewer orders from multinationals - which are shocked by many suppliers' bankruptcy. Both groups must evaluate potential partners more rigorously.
The head of Georgia Tech's architecture program predicts that new kinds of retail developments will rise from the ashes of today's dying suburban malls.
The case entitled 'Lessons from Breakthrough Strategic Moves Over the Last Century' illustrates how businesses over the last 100 years have periodically broken away from the competition to create and capture new market space - often giving rise to entirely new industries. Yet, to date, there is very little understanding of the underlying strategic logic behind these breakthrough strategic moves. This case and its accompanying video examines whether there is a shared pattern across these strategic moves by examining three representative industries that touch peoples' everyday lives: autos - how people get to work; computers - what people use at work; and movie theaters - where people go after work for entertainment.
The case entitled 'How to Implement Blue Ocean Strategy' challenges participants to apply key concepts of blue ocean strategy implementation to overcome key organizational and management hurdles while leading a strategic shift. The case lays out how Braynesbridge Industries (BI), a fictional conglomerate involved in the steel industry, recently launched a new strategy to break out of the red ocean of bloody competition in the industry. The new strategy, however, represented a significant departure from the status quo, which led to steep cognitive, resource, motivational, and political hurdles in the organization. Hence, to implement the new strategy, BI executives had to overcome these four key hurdles. Despite this challenge, the case reveals that BI's management team successfully implemented the strategy fast and at low cost using tipping point leadership and fair process. BI's Board of Directors, very impressed with the new strategy and its successful implementation, is curious to learn the principles of tipping point leadership and fair process and how these apply to organizations.
The case entitled 'How a US Consumer Products Company Unlocked the Three Tiers of Noncustomers' illustrates how new demand is created by looking to noncustomers instead of just competing for a share of the existing customers of an industry. The case prompts the students to consider how new demand was created in the cell phone, computer and air travel industries by unlocking the three tiers of noncustomers.
The case entitled 'Crafting Winning Strategies in a Mature Market: The US Wine Industry in 2001' examines the competitive environment of the US wine industry in 2001, prior to [yellow tail]'s launch. The case demonstrates how the industry was overcrowded, highly competitive, and increasingly squeezed at the distribution and retail stages of the supply chain. Even though the industry was intensely competitive, wine manufacturers have systematically competed along the same set of factors that have hardly changed over the last few centuries. In July 2001, Australia's Casella Winery introduced [yellow tail] into this highly competitive US market. Small and unknown, they had expected to sell 25,000 cases in their first year. In fact, they had sold nine times that amount. By the end of 2005, [yellow tail]'s cumulative sales were tracking at 25 million cases. [yellow tail] soon emerged as the overall best selling 750ml red wine, outstripping Californian, French and Italian brands. This case examines the strategic move executed by [yellow tail] that made it the number one imported wine and the fastest growing brand in the history of the US and Australian wine industries.
This (B) case to For the Love of Good Food: The pLateTrace Project (A), product #909E06, allows students to synthesize their findings and assessments from the (A) case to recommend a viable, financially sustainable technology-based solution that generates long-term benefits for the multiple parties who would be involved. Given the current focus on local food and environmental responsibility, pLateTrace is a very relevant case that raises awareness for tremendous untapped opportunities to marry inproving existing supply chain models with environmental stewardship.
Mrs. Ebtissam Algosaibi has created the leading high end jewelry company in the Middle East, Erum Jewelry, based in her home town of Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia. She believes Erum has the potential to be a world player similar to Cartier and Chopard. How should she expand Erum beyond the Saudi market? The case also deals with the new opportunities and old challenges for women entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East.
Carl Bistany is struggling with how the global educational management company, SABIS, can grow 100-fold in the coming twelve years. Founded in 1886 in Lebanon, SABIS is the world's largest and only global education management organization (EMO), with schools in the US, Europe, and Middle East.
This case profiles President Barack Hussein Obama's rise to the presidency as an "improbable candidate." The case illustrates the ways in which he overcame criticism from those who questioned his credibility and his values and skepticism from those who were unsure of whether America was ready to elect its first African American President. It also explores how President Obama was able to gain support from the American people despite lagging behind Senator Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic frontrunner, throughout much of the pre-primary period.
The purpose of this technical note is to introduce a creativity exercise based on photo stimuli to business-school faculty and to discuss how it can be used effectively in the MBA and executive education classrooms. Variants of this exercise are in use at design and innovation firms. It works well for a 90-minute class session. The goal is to get participants to engage in the processes of observation and idea generation by using a set of photographs (taken from a random family album) as the subject of observation, and to gain an understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of this type of observational research.
What is business model innovation? A business model is much more than a description of a particular product or service. In addition to describing the offering itself, it lays out the value proposition behind it (i.e., how it creates value for a defined set of customers). It also describes the capabilities and resources needed to execute that value proposition and how the organization will generate profits from doing so. The key stages of business model innovation are exploration, pattern-finding, concept development, prototyping, piloting, and scaling. This technical note examines each of the stages in more detail, with suggested techniques along the way. It includes worksheets for students on value chain analysis, concept development, and piloting. The note is meant to be used in conjunction with "Leading Organic Growth: Module Caselets" (UV1643), which also includes an instructor's teaching note that outlines a course module.