Nippon Steel Corporation, the largest Japanese steel producer and second largest in the world faces challenges in pursuing strategy to become a true global player. Nippon Steel had long been the top Japanese company, however the emergence of a global player, Arcelor-Mittal, prompted globalization of the steel industry. The company feels the urgent need to also globalize the company by not just increasing overseas production but also making necessary changes to the company structure.
The case describes the political, regulatory and stakeholder challenges confronting the founder of Porter Airlines, located in Toronto, Ontario, during the 2002/03 period when he was seeking formal permits to launch the airline from Toronto City Centre airport. The case also includes information on the market opportunity for a new airline, enabling students to assess a) the business case for new entry into a hyper-competitive industry, b) the appropriate competitive strategies for successful performance and c) the political or "non market" strategies for managing stakeholder and political opposition.
Stakeholder climate change actions worldwide have prompted companies to measure their greenhouse gas emissions and reduce their carbon footprints by decreasing energy and fuel use. In the process, they are cutting costs, decreasing exposure to severe weather, reducing energy vulnerability, and potentially opening up revenue sources for carbon credit sales in the emerging markets for carbon trading. This note is effective in MBA, undergraduate, and executive education courses on clean commerce innovation, carbon markets, sustainability, and environmental and regulatory issues. This technical note stands alone and also works as a companion note to "Frito-Lay North America: The Making of a Net-Zero Snack Chip" (UV2025). For instructors, a teaching note is available, along with a supplemental Excel spreadsheet for use in performing carbon emissions calculations.
The case introduces students to the nature of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) and the CDO origination process, with emphasis on the corporate structure of the special purpose vehicles, cash flows to various CDO tranches, and motivation behind CDO origination. Students will learn to quantitatively evaluate the risk-return profile of CDO tranches with emphasis on the equity tranche (also known as "toxic waste"). This is ideal for MBA and advanced undergraduate level courses on financial markets, financial institutions, and investments. In the case, an associate at the Debt Capital Markets desk of Lehman Brothers prepares a CDO issuance for Western Asset. Western Asset had been contacted by a group of commercial banks eager to sell senior secured bank loans and high-yield corporate bonds to lower their capital requirements and free up capital for additional lending.
Intermountain Healthcare is a 21-hospital integrated delivery system serving Utah and southern Idaho that is nationally recognized for its highly structured approach to managing the quality of clinical care. This case describes Intermountain's system for improving clinical performance that makes use of the organization's extensive set of standardized clinical protocols and associated clinical process and outcome measures. The measures underpin a sophisticated set of financial incentives that are applied to both administrative and clinical staff. The case allows students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of financial incentives in clinical medicine.
The multi-million dollar technology licensing agreement was in danger of falling apart. It was late September 2001; some months previously, The University of Western Ontario's (UWO's) Industry Liaison Office had signed a conditional agreement with a major pharmaceutical company operating throughout the People's Republic of China (PRC). The agreement permitted the company to utilize specific technology developed at UWO in health products to be marketed throughout the PRC. The agreement was conditional upon ratification being signed not later than October 31, 2001 - but, within that period, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the months immediately following September 11, 2001, the appetite of the PRC for buying Western technology had greatly diminished, and the PRC Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Development continued to delay ratification of the agreement. UWO's legal counsel, Peter Ross, was asked by his university to lay out the framework and possible alternative courses of action within which a decision could be made as to what the university could do in this situation. The learning objectives of the case are: 1) to become aware of the forms of intellectual property (IP) that can be involved in international cooperation, the potential difficulties and risks involved in sharing IP, the types of agreements that can be drawn up to minimize the risks, and the legal frameworks within which disagreements can be resolved 2) to become aware of how different partner countries respect or allegedly disregard rights to IP and commercial transactions generally 3) to develop strategies for coping in this environment.
The executive committee of SaskTel had recently approved a proposal to launch its LifeState health monitoring system to the Canadian marketplace. The company's senior director of marketing must develop a marketing plan, including distribution and promotion, for the proposed product launch in six months' time. She will have to make decisions quickly in order to present a proposal to the executive committee within two weeks.
An executive from pharmaceutical company GSK must choose how much to integrate a recently acquired biotechnology firm, Sirtris. Moncef Slaoui, GSK's Global head of R&D, championed the acquisition of Sirtris to gain access to its potentially revolutionary science. Slaoui must balance the need to recoup shareholder value after paying a two-times premium for Sirtris with his desire to retain Christoph Westphal, Sirtris's co-founder and CEO, and other key individuals at the company. His desire to protect Sirtris from GSK's size and bureaucracy occurs in a period when GSK has launched major changes in its R&D organization, which focus on decentralizing and externalizing R&D, as well as revamping the resource allocation process to parallel more of a venture capital-based model. The case also explores the views of Christoph Westphal on the early challenges of the integration and the impact GSK was having on Sirtris. Can be used in conjunction with a separate case that focuses on Sirtris's business model.
Peter Barge, CEO of the newly created Corporate Solutions Group of Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), is executing a restructuring of the U.S. corporate real estate services division that will enable the company to offer its clients integrated solutions. Barge has created an account management function to coordinate the activities of the three, product-based business units which, until now, have operated autonomously. As he is executing the restructuring, Bank of America, an important account of the firm, announces its intention to reduce its providers to the two or three who can offer forward-looking, integrated services. While Barge's new organization is not yet fully in place, he is determined to win the Bank of America business, and moves quickly to hire a senior account manager and establish an organizational architecture that will encourage collaboration within his group. The case examines the many tradeoffs Barge must make in balancing the benefits of the former organization with those of the new structure to achieve the firm's strategic goal of becoming more customer solutions oriented.
This note addresses the issues that arise and the complexities that must be addressed when designing a channel of distribution. Content includes the definition of a distribution channel, the steps in its design, functional discounting and margin allocation, the role channels play in branding, and recent trends.
The Silk Soymilk brand evolves from a single homemade product to a regional then national brand, facing challenges such as investment influx, acquisition, and competition from new entrants into the market it created. Silk's marketing angles at various growth stages are discussed, and students consider whether the company should expand its presence or develop new categories and how its efforts could best realize growth targets. Which option carries the biggest risks, and which would best enhance its position as a market leader?
Can the return of its founding CEO turn a lagging Starbucks around? Howard Shultz must map a strategy that addresses the company's decreasing sales and perhaps too rapid growth. Had the previous CEO's efforts to streamline operations compromised the Starbucks experience or was a changing economy to blame? Schultz considers whether to close existing stores, slow U.S. growth while expanding overseas, and improve the customer experience, which he believed had eroded the company's value proposition.
Schneirocksie Electric is an asset-focused company that has been a successful manufacturer of high-quality electrical components that transmit, control, and monitor electrical power. Management has long considered sales and marketing's job as selling what the plants make. However, customer demand indicates that this approach will no longer work; lower-cost competitors are now capable of duplicating Schneirocksie's products and services. The company must transition to providing and selling solutions to its customers, but doing so will involve the creation of an effective strategic account sales position. The current company structure, compensation system, and culture are significant obstacles to this transition and must also be changed. Finally, the company's management must learn to focus first on the job its customers are hiring it to do and then redesign itself to do this job.
With the competitive 2007 holiday season approaching, Gary Hawkins (CEO of Green Hills Market, an independent grocery retailer in Syracuse, NY) was looking for a promotional program that would keep his best customers coming to Green Hills for all of their holiday meal shopping. Hawkins knew that his larger competitors (such as Price Chopper, Wegmans, and Wal-Mart) would use their size and buying power to procure products at the lowest possible cost, enabling them to offer rock bottom prices. Hawkins was looking for a program that would take advantage of Green Hills' proprietary systems for tracking customers' buying patterns and shopping preferences. The promotional program under consideration was a continuity program, in which shoppers earned points that could be redeemed for pieces of Arzberg porcelain. Hawkins and his team needed to establish their objectives for the holiday season and decide whether or not the Arzberg promotion was right for Green Hills Market. The case can be accompanied by a data set ("M318 Green Hills Data Set") that captures weekly expenditures by a sample of 1000 households shopping at Green Hills Market before, during, and after the Arzberg promotional program. The students can use these data (and other information available in the case) to examine how well the Arzberg promotion actually worked. "M318 Green Hills Data Set" can be obtained from [email protected].
In January 2008, Márcio Luiz Simões Utsch, president & CEO of Sâo Paulo Alpargatas S.A., and his management team are looking at how to turn Havaianas, a leading brand in rubber flip flops, into a major global brand. Learning objectives: The case looks at how a Brazilian footwear company is trying to build a global brand in a highly competitive industry.
This note gives step-by-step instructions on how to build a Monte Carlo simulation model in Microsoft Excel without using spreadsheet add-ins. The note explains the difference between "random" and "uniformly distributed." The note also explains: how the Excel function RAND() works, how to use Excel functions like NORMINV() to simulate random numbers from distributions other than the uniform; how to use VLOOKUP() with tabulated data to simulate numbers from any arbitrary distribution, and how to use Data Tables to produce multiple iterations of a simulation model. The note concludes with an example that illustrates the use of all of these concepts.
In June 2008, the chief executive officer of Talisman Energy Inc. (Talisman) and his senior executive team met with the company's board of directors. The purpose of this meeting was to debate Talisman's proposed entry into the oil-rich Kurdistan region of Iraq. This move was potentially very lucrative for Talisman but was fraught with risks. These risks were exacerbated by Talisman's previous foray into Sudan; during that expansion Talisman had been accused of complicity in human-rights abuses, stemming from industry-accepted royalties and fees it had paid to the government. This payment of fees was held as an example by public interest groups to allege that Talisman was indirectly funding the Sudanese civil war. Talisman's reputation had suffered to the point where the ire of investors and U.S. and Canadian governments was sufficient for Talisman to exit Sudan in 2003. There were many questions about the proposed move to Iraq, including the political situation, the views of the U.S. and Canadian government, and especially the US$220 million fee payable to the Kurdistan Regional Government. Should Talisman enter Iraq, and if so, could they avoid experiencing the same outcome as Sudan?
LAB International (LAB) has two divisions that have vastly different strategies. The research and development division has a continuing need for funding and a high degree of risk, while the contract research division is a cash generator and is less risky. LAB is attempting to raise additional capital but believes that the shares of the company are undervalued in the market. It is contemplating a spinoff of one of the divisions to raise the funds and to make each company more of a pure play and therefore to achieve a more appropriate market valuation. Students must assess the merits of this strategy and place a value on the spinoff.