For several months, things had been spiraling downwards at Savage Beast, the music-recommendation company started three years before by Tim Westergren. The company's founder-CEO recently left due to pressures both at home and within the venture. Dozens of investors turned thumbs-down on the venture; salaries had been cut; and, tensions had risen within the founding team. Now Westergren, the founder who has taken over as CEO, is facing even deeper pressures as he finds out about a lawsuit filed by former employees, and he is wondering if it is time to give up on ever achieving his vision.
To deliver 5-6 major new Chinese joint ventures annually, Hong Kong China Gas executives began extracting cross-border negotiating lessons from their 80 existing Chinese JVs. Chairman Alfred Chan and CEO Peter Wong knew that HKGC's growth strategy required significant mainland expansion through negotiating joint-ventures to run gas and water distribution systems in diverse urban and rural locations throughout mainland China--often in the face of entrenched local interests who could have blocking power. Discussions with HKGC's negotiation teams revealed an increasingly sophisticated negotiating approach from target identification and party mapping, to "social mapping" and building guanxi, to creative deal design and tactics, in order to most effectively work out issues of equity, management control, territory, and exclusivity.
This note explores the idea identification stage of becoming an entrepreneur. It covers common sources of inspiration for ideas, such as career, education, hobbies and interests. It discusses the importance of team creation, execution and passion. It emphasizes 4 different categories of trends that create opportunities for new businesses to emerge, illustrated with examples. Finally, the note covers testing the basic viability of an idea, including the customer, product, competition, industry, timing, and risk and reward relationship.
The Bridgespan Group was launched in 2000 by management consulting group Bain & Company as a nonprofit focused on strategy consulting for nonprofits and philanthropists. Over the next eight years, Bridgespan expanded its services to include executive search, knowledge sharing, and a web-based job matching service. While its growth was welcome, Bridgespan's leaders and board wanted to strengthen Bridgespan's positive impact on the nonprofit sector as a whole.
The case is intended for use with the HBS Educational Technology Group "Construction Bidding Simulation." Material that can be taught includes quantity survey methodology (from the case); analyzing preliminary estimated costs per building trade (from the discussion questions); playing the multiparty real time competitive bid simulation to receive and process market costs; and debriefing on which bids should be accepted and why. Discussion points include what criteria to use in making the decision, how to process subcontractor bids, and how to award contracts. Many of the issues can be extended from construction into any bidding situation and any industry with multiple subconsultants or vendors.
Teena Lerner, the CEO of Rx Capital, had a problem. Her three-year-old hedge fund was highly profitable, but in 2004, one of her four equities analysts lost a lot of money for the firm. If Lerner followed her existing compensation system, designed to reward teamwork, he would wind up significantly underpaying her other analysts, all of whom had performed well. Should she follow the compensation system or not? And what should be done about the underperforming analyst?
In April 2007, Kristin Richmond laced up her sneakers and began the four mile run to Kirsten Tobey's house. It was a Saturday morning, but the two co-founders of Revolution Foods (RevFoods), a provider of healthy meals and nutrition education to schools in San Francisco and Los Angeles, felt pressure to finalize a plan for effectively managing their relationship with Maria Nunez. Nunez, a skeptical and influential food service administrator, had been undermining the RevFoods program at Green Academy, a charter school in California's Bay Area. Richmond and Tobey believed that if they did not address the issue now, their contract with the school could be revoked, an outcome that could threaten RevFoods's standing with other schools. As Richmond jogged up the last hill before reaching Tobey's residence, she wondered how best to turn their tense relationship with Nunez into a productive partnership.
The case describes existing performance management systems at a leading business school in India, the National Institute of Management - Central India campus (NIM CI campus). The institution, which is ranked among the top 20 business schools in India, is facing critical issues of attracting and retaining faculty members. The director of the NIM CI campus has implemented a unit based performance measurement and incentive system, which has worked favorably and enabled the institute to recruit top academicians. However, the management committee believes that the system has outlived its utility and desires to replace it with more robust systems that are less vulnerable to misuse. The faculty members, however, support retention of the existing system. The key teaching objective of this case is to understand performance management systems from the perspectives of different stakeholders and develop a framework that meets all objectives of performance management. The case enables users to understand all steps in performance management and examine shortcomings at each stage. The role of incentive systems, both as a tool to enhance individual performance and as a management control mechanism, is also discussed. The case provides users an opportunity to evaluate the strategic significance of performance management.
The case describes existing performance management systems at a leading business school in India, the National Institute of Management - Central India campus (NIM CI campus). The institution, which is ranked among the top 20 business schools in India, is facing critical issues of attracting and retaining faculty members. The director of the NIM CI campus has implemented a unit based performance measurement and incentive system, which has worked favorably and enabled the institute to recruit top academicians. However, the management committee believes that the system has outlived its utility and desires to replace it with more robust systems that are less vulnerable to misuse. The faculty members, however, support retention of the existing system. The key teaching objective of this case is to understand performance management systems from the perspectives of different stakeholders and develop a framework that meets all objectives of performance management. The case enables users to understand all steps in performance management and examine shortcomings at each stage. The role of incentive systems, both as a tool to enhance individual performance and as a management control mechanism, is also discussed. The case provides users an opportunity to evaluate the strategic significance of performance management.
We discuss the challenges of implementing an Internet-based platform for creating collaborative supply chains using a case study in the retail sector. The case presents how an Internet-based collaboration platform was implemented to address the strategic issue of increasing shelf availability and customer service in grocery retailing, an issue that has emerged as one of the major confrontations for the whole sector over the past years. The case presented shows the challenges of executing such strategic collaborative supply-chain initiatives which, although arguably beneficial, can be hindered by IT adoption failures. A longitudinal view of the case is presented, from an initial pilot back in 2001 to the final success in 2005. We discuss the particular challenges of the execution of Internet-enabled collaborative supply-chain initiatives as well as possible managerial actions through a simple framework we develop based on the lessons from the case.
This case puts students in the role of Target Corporation's CFO as he considers the pros and cons of a variety of capital-investment proposals. The CFO is preparing his thoughts prior to a meeting of the Capital Expenditure Committee (CEC) with other Target senior executives to consider the merits of ten capital-project requests (CPR), five of which were expected to require extra attention. Each CPR has a "dashboard" that summarizes the critical inputs used to compute the net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) as well as data about the type of investment (new store or remodel), market size, location, customer-demographic information, as well as the sensitivity of NPV and IRR to changes in various inputs. Students are tasked with evaluating the CPRs by balancing corporate-growth objectives with the economics of the projects.
Set in May 2008, this case reflects the separate perspectives of chief executive officers Tom Eliot and Bill Flinder as they approach the negotiations of RSE International Corporation to acquire Flinder Valves and Controls Inc. The task for the student is to complete a valuation analysis of the target and buyer and to negotiate a price and exchange ratio with the counterparty. The intent of the case design is for students to be organized into teams and assigned to play the part of either Flinder Valves or RSE International in the negotiation. The case provides supplementary private information for each side of the transaction. Therefore, a unique element of the case is negotiating the terms of acquisition in an environment of asymmetric information. The case is relatively simple and provides a first exercise in the negotiation of an acquisition. It could also be taught in the usual case-discussion fashion instead of the intended joint-negotiation exercise
Just when John Penman thought Nodal Logistics Corporation (NLC or "Nodal") was ready to move into Brazil, a new hurdle was thrown in his path. Only a few days ago-on December 11, 2007-he had finally obtained approval from the U.S.-based company's executive board to invest $45 million in an 800,000 square foot industrial property project in São Paulo, Brazil. But that was before yesterday's phone call from the legal department. Nodal's legal staff had received confirmation from their São Paulo-based associate that under Brazilian law, commercial real estate contracts must be denominated in Brazilian reais. One of Nodal's basic operating practices which had been so important to its international success had been to write all industrial real estate agreements in U.S. dollars. This posed a serious problem, as most industrial leases ranged from as short as five years to more than 12, and that was a very long time to be exposed to the Brazilian currency. John now had to delve into the multitude of strategies and derivatives that might allow the company to manage the currency risk; otherwise, the deal was dead.
The Chinese financial system has historically been one of secrecy, distrust, and corruption. The process does not align with the western standards of transparency and auditing. In contrast to the transaction-based business culture of the West, Chinese business society is relationship-based (quanxi), which still seems to play a key role in the credit decision. With the growth of the emerging middle class, access to financial instruments such as credit cards, life insurance, stock purchases, and the like will play a greater role in the life of the Chinese consumer. Based on these forecasts, the authors recommend seven actions to manage financial activities in China, all of which are explored within this article.     
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) looks at how firms treat their stakeholders. One key stakeholder group that is frequently overlooked is the firm's shareholders. All too often, the corporate social responsibility literature focuses on customers, employees, and the natural environment, but rarely on shareholders. The focus of this article is the impact of the firm on its shareholders as expressed through its corporate governance practices. If a firm can't treat its shareholders well, what hope is there for the other stakeholders? Herein, we argue that there are market forces at work which reinforce good CSR behavior.     
Chris Warner led a team of experienced mountain climbers on an expedition to reach the summit of K2-the second-highest in the world. After failing to succeed on their first few attempts, Warner and his team brought together other teams hoping to reach the summit, and representing eight different countries, to work together for success. Their story is a narrative full of examples, where in some instances, a leadership point of view was taken, and other times it was not. The successes and failures of the expedition's approach makes for a story bursting with real-world examples and offers an exciting framework to house theoretical concepts about team-building and leadership. Although grounded in the written cases, the series also includes an optional a multimedia supplement offers compelling photos and video for students and instructors. The A case presents a challenging moment in the climbers' trek: After the tragic death of another team's Sherpa, Warner must decide case whether his team should abandon its summit push or continue forward.
Chris Warner led a team of experienced mountain climbers on an expedition to reach the summit of K2-the second-highest in the world. After failing to succeed on their first few attempts, Warner and his team brought together other teams hoping to reach the summit, and representing eight different countries, to work together for success. Their story is a narrative full of examples, where in some instances, a leadership point of view was taken, and other times it was not. The successes and failures of the expedition's approach makes for a story bursting with real-world examples and offers an exciting framework to house theoretical concepts about team-building and leadership. Although grounded in the written cases, the series also includes an optional a multimedia supplement offers compelling photos and video for students and instructors. After working together with several other international teams to reach the K2 summit, the descent becomes extremely dangerous. The B case finds the climbers in the midst of a raging blizzard. With a missing Italian mountaineer, a Czech climber suffering from hypothermia and cerebral edema, and the theft of a critical survival tool, Warner must decide whether to go look for the missing climber or try to get his expedition off K2 safely.
Chris Warner led a team of experienced mountain climbers on an expedition to reach the summit of K2-the second-highest in the world. After failing to succeed on their first few attempts, Warner and his team brought together other teams hoping to reach the summit, and representing eight different countries, to work together for success. Their story is a narrative full of examples, where in some instances, a leadership point of view was taken, and other times it was not. The successes and failures of the expedition's approach makes for a story bursting with real-world examples and offers an exciting framework to house theoretical concepts about team-building and leadership. Although grounded in the written cases, the series also includes an optional a multimedia supplement offers compelling photos and video for students and instructors. The C case epilogue describes the daunting physical and moral task team members face while descending K2. One of Warner's team members suggests they faced the ultimate moral dilemma: Do you look to your own self-preservation and survive, or do you look to try to help somebody else at all costs?