Progressive Insurance, a leader in the automotive insurance market, has succeeded through innovation. The case describes the company strategies for differentiating their service through Immediate Response Vehicles, Express Quote (comparing prices for prospective customers, and multichannel marketing agents, 1-800 numbers, and the Web). Through these programs and a series of creative advertising campaigns the company has built a strong brand in a relatively short time. Channels with their pricing and channel strategies remain.

BzzAgent is a word-of-mouth marketing firm. The founder, Dave Balter, sees blogs as an important way to communicate BzzAgent's unique positioning: transparency. He sees the firm's blog--the BeeLog--as a way for the firm to participate in conversations with clients, employees, and "agents." However, he has been unhappy with the level of interaction the blog has been generating, and is considering shutting it down. The case provides a context for a discussion about word of mouth marketing and social media, as well as about blogs specifically. It also provides examples of other corporate blogs, and allows for students to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of this potentially-important form of communication.

An updated "Four Products" case. This 2008 version includes: sliced peanut butter, foldable bicycle tires, high-end wooden puzzles, and artificial dirt for thoroughbred race tracks. These four products form the basis to assess the drivers of new product adoption. In particular, one of the critical tasks in the marketing of new innovations in predicting demand and rates of diffusion for those products. And while one can speculate on the scope and rate of diffusion for any given product, it's helpful to compare and contrast diffusion across products. Doing so allows one to focus on the drivers or product characteristics that influence product diffusion, making one product a star and another a dog. Specifically, looking across products allows one to pick up on things that get lost in discussing a single product. Note that this case often gets used with HBS Note #505-075, "Note on Innovation Diffusion: Rogers' Five Factors," which either can be distributed along with the case or after the case has been taught.

In May 2007, the Engstrom Auto Mirrors plant, a relatively small supplier based in Indiana, faces a crisis. The business was in the second year of a downturn. Sales had started to decline in 2005; a year later, plant manager Ron Bent had been forced to lay off more than 20 percent of the work force. Plant productivity was dropping, employee morale was low, and product-quality issues had begun to surface. Relationships with key customers were at risk. Downturns were not new at Engstrom. When the plant had reached a similar crisis point years earlier, the institution of a Scanlon Plan, a company-wide employee incentive program, had proven critical in building morale, increasing productivity and product quality, and leading Engstrom into a turnaround. For several subsequent years, Engstrom workers had received regular Scanlon pay bonuses. But the bonuses had stopped in 2006, and now Ron Bent must determine how to get the plant back on track. Should he revise the Scanlon setup? Remove Scanlon and try another plan? Identify and change other organizational factors that may be sabotaging Scanlon?

Alex Sander is a new product manager whose drive and talents are attractive to management, but whose intolerant style has alienated employees. This tension is presented against the backdrop of a 360° performance review process. Sander works in the Toiletries Division of Landon Care Products, which has recently been acquired by a European beauty company. Sander is leading the launch of a European skin care product into the U.S. market, which requires working with a multinational product development team. Sander's interactions with peers and direct reports in the case paint a picture of a tough, inflexible high achiever who uses temper as a management tool. At the end of the day, Sander's supervisor Sam Glass will provide Sander with 360° performance feedback-the first time this process has been used at Landon. Sander remains skeptical about the value of the process and feedback, and of a long-term fit with the organization. On the other hand, Glass has a very high personal interest in keeping Sander at the company, but wonders how the organization can best develop and manage this star performer.

Ken Winston, the regional sales manager at a securities brokerage firm, has reorganized his generalist salespeople into "Key Account Teams" (KAT), to increase sales of specialized, higher-margin fixed income products. Winston is also implementing a new corporate performance management system. To help improve coordination between sales and marketing, Winston must solicit feedback from marketing staff on how responsive his salespeople are to marketing's directives. The marketing group has information on product costs that allow it to forecast product profitability, and by persuading the sales force to focus on those products the marketers can improve firm-wide margins. The KAT model, implemented six months earlier, has challenged the core internal values of the organization - such as a salesperson's control of his or her customer base and the appropriateness of product specialization. However, the long-term test of the new organizational structure will be its alignment with external changes in the securities industry: how securities are bought and sold and the types of new products flooding the market.

TerraCog, a successful privately held high-tech firm that develops GPS (global positioning system) and similar products for consumer markets, has recently been caught off-guard by a competitor's new product that makes novel use of satellite imagery. When TerraCog pursues development of a directly competing product, dubbed Aerial, the projected costs threaten to scuttle the project. The key unit managers gather in a pair of contentious meetings that feature anger, blame, and bewilderment, but produce no effective conclusion. At the end of the case it falls to Emma Richardson, a newly-promoted executive vice-president, to push the group toward a go/no-go decision.

The Water Cooler case is support to a DVD (Windows Media Player) depicting Geoff Mueller's first day at work at the fictitious company called Ginko. The first part of the DVD details the day through the eyes of the many employees at Ginko and how they view Geoff. The second part shows how Geoff Mueller personally experienced that day. The two perspectives are entirely different. The Water Cooler DVD is available, product # 7B08M024. Please contact Ivey Publishing for the DVD.

The vice-president of operations at Lighting Group Corporation (LGC) was looking over some financial statements at the end of the workday. For the first time he could remember, there were no sales recorded on the daily sales statement. It appeared that the efforts of employees were diverted into a project related to the scrap metal that was a by-product of the manufacturing process. To complicate matters, the son of the company's president and chief executive officer was the one directing the scrap metal project.

Critical Mass was a highly successful Internet marketing services firm with a blue chip client list. The rapidly changing Internet environment demanded continuous innovation and an exceptional level of creativity from the Technology Group. The company invested substantial resources in a creative-friendly physical environment and organized an array of activities intended to keep creativity bubbling. The company was ready to embark on a significant expansion in its customer base and management had decided to review and reassess these activities to determine if they were having the desired effect and if corrective changes were required.

Muhtar Kent had just been promoted to the CEO position in Coca-Cola. He was reflecting upon the past leadership of the company, in particular the success that Coca-Cola enjoyed during Robert Goizueta's leadership. The CEOs that had followed Goizueta were not able to have as positive an impact on the stock value. When his promotion was announced, Kent mentioned that he did not have immediate plans to change any management roles but that some fine-tuning might be necessary.

The popularity of hedge funds grew in the volatile markets surrounding the technology bubble. Hedge funds take both long and short investment positions in the market, attempting to achieve reliable gains while insulating the fund's assets from market fluctuations. The challenge facing hedge fund managers is to demonstrate that investing in a combination of long positions, short positions and cash matching the strategy of the fund can, at an agreed level of risk, provide a higher return than that of traditional mutual funds.

The president of Industrial Accessories Ltd. (IAL) was preparing for a meeting to consider a management buyout of IAL. IAL was a privately owned maker of attachments for construction vehicles based in British Columbia, Canada. IAL was founded in 1970 by Gerald Stone, now chairman and CEO of IAL. Stone had decided to sell IAL because of health problems. Because he had no suitable heirs to take on leadership of the company, the president and three other senior managers were considering a buyout strategy. Students must size up the acquisition, a place value on the company and propose a financing plan for the acquisition.

During the last decade, Wyeth transformed itself from a holding company to a global company using information technology (IT) as an important enabler. The first half of the case details the importance of global integration and how globalization was initiated at Wyeth. The original role of IT is introduced along with the challenges and barriers of starting a globalization strategy. This is followed by a discussion of how the role of IT started changing at Wyeth. An ambitious IT globalization plan is outlined. The second half of the case details the implementation of the IT globalization plan. The implementation started slowly, faced many challenges, and took longer than expected. The original plan was modified several times to address funding and management challenges. The case ends by discussing how Wyeth was able to complete the IT globalization plan. The case is anchored in the United States but considers global issues. The case includes issues and concepts that make it suitable for teaching management information systems, international business and strategy.

On Tuesday, August 23, 2005, meteorologists in the US National Weather Service spotted a tropical depression in the southeastern Bahamas. As it strengthened into a tropical storm, weather officials gave it a name, Katrina, and closely tracked it as it turned into a hurricane, crossing south Florida and then moving into the Gulf of Mexico. There, fed by the gulf's warm waters, Katrina turned into a monster: a "Category five" hurricane, with winds gusting past 170 miles per hour and an unusually wide span of over 100 miles. Katrina initially appeared to be heading next for the Florida Panhandle, but on Friday it made a dramatic shift; it turned westward and appeared to take dead aim at one of the most storied and fragile cities in the US: New Orleans. With landfall expected on Monday morning, state, local, and federal emergency response officials sprang into action, following the roadmaps laid out in their emergency plans. This case tells the story of the lead-up to the storm, detailing the plans that officials would draw on to prepare for the hurricane's onslaught, the steps that were taken to evacuate and shelter hundreds of thousands of residents in metropolitan New Orleans, and the communications among different agencies and levels of government as the storm drew near; it shows officials concerned about the effects of the hurricane, but confident that their preparations were commensurate with the challenges that Katrina would pose. The case asks readers to consider why local, state, and federal governments all proved unready to respond effectively to a catastrophic event which had been long predicted. Part A can be taught alone or in tandem with Part B of the case, which describes the post-landfall response to the devastating impact of the hurricane; it would be useful in classes on emergency or strategic management as well as on intergovernmental relations. HKS Case Number 1914.3

On Tuesday, August 23, 2005, meteorologists in the US National Weather Service spotted a tropical depression in the southeastern Bahamas. As it strengthened into a tropical storm, weather officials gave it a name, Katrina, and closely tracked it as it turned into a hurricane, crossing south Florida and then moving into the Gulf of Mexico. There, fed by the gulf's warm waters, Katrina turned into a monster: a "Category five" hurricane, with winds gusting past 170 miles per hour and an unusually wide span of over 100 miles. Katrina initially appeared to be heading next for the Florida Panhandle, but on Friday it made a dramatic shift; it turned westward and appeared to take dead aim at one of the most storied and fragile cities in the US: New Orleans. With landfall expected on Monday morning, state, local, and federal emergency response officials sprang into action, following the roadmaps laid out in their emergency plans. This case tells the story of the lead-up to the storm, detailing the plans that officials would draw on to prepare for the hurricane's onslaught, the steps that were taken to evacuate and shelter hundreds of thousands of residents in metropolitan New Orleans, and the communications among different agencies and levels of government as the storm drew near; it shows officials concerned about the effects of the hurricane, but confident that their preparations were commensurate with the challenges that Katrina would pose. The case asks readers to consider why local, state, and federal governments all proved unready to respond effectively to a catastrophic event which had been long predicted. Part A can be taught alone or in tandem with Part B of the case, which describes the post-landfall response to the devastating impact of the hurricane; it would be useful in classes on emergency or strategic management as well as on intergovernmental relations. HKS Case Number 1915.3.

On Tuesday, August 23, 2005, meteorologists in the US National Weather Service spotted a tropical depression in the southeastern Bahamas. As it strengthened into a tropical storm, weather officials gave it a name, Katrina, and closely tracked it as it turned into a hurricane, crossing south Florida and then moving into the Gulf of Mexico. There, fed by the gulf's warm waters, Katrina turned into a monster: a "Category five" hurricane, with winds gusting past 170 miles per hour and an unusually wide span of over 100 miles. Katrina initially appeared to be heading next for the Florida Panhandle, but on Friday it made a dramatic shift; it turned westward and appeared to take dead aim at one of the most storied and fragile cities in the US: New Orleans. With landfall expected on Monday morning, state, local, and federal emergency response officials sprang into action, following the roadmaps laid out in their emergency plans. This case tells the story of the lead-up to the storm, detailing the plans that officials would draw on to prepare for the hurricane's onslaught, the steps that were taken to evacuate and shelter hundreds of thousands of residents in metropolitan New Orleans, and the communications among different agencies and levels of government as the storm drew near; it shows officials concerned about the effects of the hurricane, but confident that their preparations were commensurate with the challenges that Katrina would pose. The case asks readers to consider why local, state, and federal governments all proved unready to respond effectively to a catastrophic event which had been long predicted. Part A can be taught alone or in tandem with Part B of the case, which describes the post-landfall response to the devastating impact of the hurricane; it would be useful in classes on emergency or strategic management as well as on intergovernmental relations. HKS Case Number 1916.3

The case follows Josh Greenberg and John Fowler, two recent graduates from the Stanford GSB, as they complete the entire search fund process. It covers the formation of their search fund vehicle, Montebello Capital, their 16-month search phase, the acquisition of Aero Logistics, the operation and growth of the company, and the eventual exit. The case discusses many of the personal and professional elements of the search fund model.

This case was written for the "Ethics-The Core Value of Leadership" forum (2007) organized by Hong Kong's Independent Commission against Corruption. Attended by over 200 directors of listed companies, the forum aimed to educate directors of listed companies on issues of ethics and corporate governance. Set on the eve of a friendly takeover, the Manfold case introduces a wide variety of ethical and corporate governance issues faced by the (independent) directors, accountant, company secretary and management of the company.

Haier Group was China's largest white goods manufacturer and one of the world's fastest growing white goods companies. The company started out as a nearly bankrupt refrigerator plant in Qingdao, China, equipped with a group of low-skilled and undisciplined workers, low productivity, inferior product quality and a loss making business. Its current CEO, Zhang Ruimin, first took over the company in 1984 and established corporate rules and culture, revamped business strategy and set up an incentive-based management control system. All of these transformed Haier into a global player in less than 2 decades. This case study examines the establishment of Haier's management control system and how it was adapted into the company's internationalization strategies, how it motivated employees to reach high performance goals and how it structured the business units to obtain optimal operational efficiency.