This case chronicles the role that Harvard Business School alumni play in the healthcare industry. Overall data on alumni is given, and the industry is broken into seven areas in which the careers of twenty-five alumni are highlighted.

Ashdown's "growth" plan called for Mustafa Khalaf to leave his job as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Ashdown Contracting, and to focus his attention on the growth of a separate business entity, Ashdown Pipeline, where Ashdown believed the greatest potential for the future existed. It seemed odd to Mustafa that finding a financial partner capable of providing tens even hundreds, of millions of dollars to reshape an industry was proving to be remarkably easy, while finding a single individual capable of replacing him in his old job was proving to be remarkably hard. As he flagged down a cab, Mustafa's mind wandered back to the challenge that he had been grappling with for many months: how to find his replacement as COO at Ashdown Contracting.

Tamotsu Adachi, Managing Director of Carlyle Japan, wants to formulate a strategy to improve his firm's ability to source high-quality deals at competitive valuations, or prices. Buyout funds like Carlyle typically have two deal phases: sourcing and monitoring. These correspond to (i) "selling" the benefits to a business owner of going with Carlyle as a buyout partner, and then (ii) increasing the value of that business following the buyout. Since the profitability of a buyout depends on finding high-quality deals, the firm has focused to date on leveraging its contacts in the banking business, which has been a powerful institution in Japan for many years. These contacts have brought to Carlyle a number of good quality companies, but the volume of buyouts done by Carlyle in Japan has not been what they hoped it would be. Students are asked how the firm can improve on this deal sourcing approach.

Ideal for a study of entrepreneurship as a phenomenon, this note explores the difference between causal models and effectuation. Whereas causal models focus on maximizing returns by selecting optimal strategies, effectuation begins with a determination of how much one is willing to lose and leveraging limited means in creative ways to generate new ends as well as new means. The effectuator then uses the very process of building the venture to bring other stakeholders on board and creatively leverages slack resources available in the world. At each stage of the process he or she chooses options that create more options in the future.

In 1995, Procter & Gamble (P&G) scientists began researching methods of water treatment for use in communities facing water crises. P&G, one of the world's largest consumer products companies, was interested in bringing industrial-quality water treatment to remote areas worldwide, because the lack of clean water, primarily in developing countries, was alarming. In the latter half of the 1990s, approximately 1.1 billion (out of a worldwide population of around 5.6 billion) people lacked access to clean drinking water or sanitation facilities. An estimated 6 million children died annually from diseases, including diarrhea, hookworm, and trachoma, brought about by contaminated water. Many of these deaths were preventable if a water sanitation product was paired with effective education and distribution. With a long history of scientific research and innovation in health, hygiene, and nutrition, P&G considered ways it could address the safe drinking-water crisis as the new millennium approached. Although the company had a vast array of successful products, P&G did not offer anything that involved water purification, either domestically or in developing countries where poverty, lack of infrastructure, and inaccessibility of remote communities made the prospect of cleaning up the water more difficult.

In 1999, P&G purchased-through the acquisition of Recovery Engineering in a $265 million deal-PUR Water Filtration System, a point-of-use water filtration system. The PUR water filtration system used a combination of the flocculant iron sulfate, an agent that caused particles suspended in water to bind and form sediment, and calcium hypochlorite (chlorine), a disinfectant. After acquiring the product, P&G began to develop and expand it. With the success of PUR Water Filtration System, Procter & Gamble Health Sciences Institute (PGHSI) and its partners created the Children's Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) campaign, which targeted developing countries, in 2003. PUR was distributed, often at no cost, to poor countries where the drinking water was not safe, and elsewhere during emergencies: the Asian tsunami, flooding in Haiti, or cholera epidemics in Africa, among others. Through the CSDW program from 2003 to 2007, P&G had provided the sachets at no cost, made no profit on PUR sales, and donated programmatic funding to some of the CSDW projects. Between 2003 and 2007, 85 million sachets of PUR, treating 850 million liters of water, had been distributed globally in emergency response or sold through social marketing projects. With the help of its various partners, PGHSI had made the product available in 23 countries. Procter & Gamble had finally entered the water purification business but had chosen to augment its commercial and retail sales by helping bring clean drinking water to developing countries.

Founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as a catalyst for the transformation of the public education system in New Orleans, President Sarah Usdin and CEO Matt Candler must adapt their strategy to respond to a continuously shifting local context. By 2008, conditions on the ground begin to stabilize, creating a new set of challenges in realizing the organization's vision to provide excellent public schools for every child in New Orleans.

Leading index company Dow Jones recently signed a license and joint marketing agreement with Transparent Value LLC, the creator of a new fundamentals-based valuation methodology. The agreement allowed Dow Jones to offer a family of indexes based on the Transparent Value methodology. The methodology viewed stock prices as the clearest and most reliable signals of the market's expectations about a company's future performance, and employed a Reverse Discounted Cash Flow (RDCF) valuation model to calculate the revenue required to support a given stock price for a given company. Then, the methodology applied a probability that the company would achieve the needed revenues in the next 12 months, based on its recent track record. Moreover, the methodology endeavored for specificity. For example, when possible, Transparent Value strove to determine what the company needed to do in its business activities to achieve the required revenues. Called "business performance requirements," these could include the number of new store openings, or the number of product unit sales needed, as two examples. The fictitious case protagonist, a business development manager at a leading money management firm, is looking to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) using a fundamentals-based index as the underlying index. She needs to decide whether to base her ETF products on the Dow Jones - Transparent Value indexes. The case study provides an overview of equity indexes and ETF's and a step-by-step description of Transparent Value's methodology.

The case, set in late 2007, examines what MySpace-the largest online social network-should do to respond to its agile competitor, Facebook. Since its inception MySpace had experienced phenomenal growth, acquiring 20 million members in its first 20 months of operation, and another 70 million a year later, to become the most visited website in the United States. Its growth stalled around mid-2007, just a few months after Facebook had released its programming platform which allowed outside programmers to build applications using its social network data. The wealth of new applications on Facebook allowed the company to increase its membership by more than 15 per cent in one month. To remain competitive MySpace had to release its own platform, and now it needs to decide whether to build its own proprietary application platform or join OpenSocial, a Google-sponsored open source platform.

In 2007, popular acceptance of the problem of global warming, and new recognition of its potential consequences, had brought carbon dioxide emissions to the front of Americans' minds. The continued turmoil in Iraq, as well as the United States' worsening relations with other oil rich nations such as Russia and Venezuela, highlighted a lack of energy security for Western countries importing vast quantities of petroleum. Moreover, rising gas prices were beginning to frustrate drivers at the pump while U.S. vehicles consumed 3.3 billion barrels of gasoline and 1.2 billion barrels of diesel fuel a year (as of 2006). These factors combined to create what some observers were calling a "perfect storm," drawing attention to the developed world's widespread addiction to oil. However, as concern about these issues was reaching an all-time high, transportation technology was undergoing a revolution. Advancements in alternative fuels, electric drive vehicles, and hybrid technologies were showing promise for reducing oil consumption. This paper examines some of these emerging innovations.

This is the story of MTC, a Kuwaiti telecom company that has grown from a sleepy, state monopoly to become one of the fastest growing telecom companies in the world, with the largest regional footprint across the Middle East and Africa. The CEO of the company, Dr. Saad Al Barrak had been successful in executing an aggressive growth plan that found its crown jewel in the acquisition of Celtel, one of the largest telecom companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this acquisition threw MTC into a dynamic new context and marked the beginning of a very different phase. If Dr. Saad was going to lead MTC into the topmost ranks of global telecom, his team would have to successfully grapple with all the growing pains of managing across borders, brand names and cultures. All against the backdrop of an unpredictable African market with huge growth potential and rapidly increasing competition.

Lisa Sherman is a successful executive at Verizon who is struggling with the decision to reveal her sexual orientation. After attending a diversity training workshop in which participants expressed extremely negative views about people in her community, Sherman wonders whether the company is the right place for her, or if she should reveal her identity as lesbian and work within the system. Should she meet with the CEO to share her experience, or continue to conceal her sexual orientation while working at Verizon?

The case of Lisa Sherman (B) describes a highly successful executive at Verizon, who decides to leave the company because of the negative views of gays and lesbians expressed at a diversity training workshop, and her final meeting with Verizon CEO Ray Smith to describe the challenges she has faced. The case describes the actions that Smith took inside the company, and his decision to testify in front of Congress on the issue. It goes on to describe Sherman's highly successful career after leaving Verizon, and her work at MTV in launching the Logo channel.

Mohammed Harib placed his phone on the desk in front of him. As he sat back in his chair and looked out the window, he began to take stock of how his life had taken such a dramatic path over the last few years. Life was good for the founder and CEO of Lammtara Pictures, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) first 3D animation studio. Recently dubbed 'Dubai's answer to Pixar' in a recent magazine article, Lammtara's first animated television show, FREEJ, had taken the Arabian Gulf region by storm a year ago. It was November 2007, and the second season of FREEJ had aired earlier in the fall, smashing the first season's record-breaking viewership numbers.

This two-part case study describes the initial merger and cultural transformation of Aviva's Norwich Union (NUI) operation in the UK. It examines the complexities of integration that arose following a series of mergers that created NUI from 1998 to 2000. Case A describes how, after CGU Plc and Norwich Union joined forces to become NUI, top management's priority was to restore profits. Behind the scenes, however, the need for a whole new corporate culture was becoming increasingly imperative. It shows the tension between the need for immediate gains in efficiencies vs. longer-term approaches to the business that required careful nurturing and attention. It ends as the executive team's announcement of the new corporate philosophy - "to be a service provider with insurance at our core and care at our heart" - is greeted with complete disbelief by employees. Case B describes the actions taken to overcome their skepticism and successfully implement the new philosophy - actions that required significant change to the organisational culture.

This two-part case study describes the initial merger and cultural transformation of Aviva's Norwich Union (NUI) operation in the UK. It examines the complexities of integration that arose following a series of mergers that created NUI from 1998 to 2000. Case A describes how, after CGU Plc and Norwich Union joined forces to become NUI, top management's priority was to restore profits. Behind the scenes, however, the need for a whole new corporate culture was becoming increasingly imperative. It shows the tension between the need for immediate gains in efficiencies vs. longer-term approaches to the business that required careful nurturing and attention. It ends as the executive team's announcement of the new corporate philosophy - "to be a service provider with insurance at our core and care at our heart" - is greeted with complete disbelief by employees. Case B describes the actions taken to overcome their skepticism and successfully implement the new philosophy - actions that required significant change to the organisational culture.

Describes a set of key strategic decisions facing the scientific founder and CEO of a promising, Early stage bio-pharmaceuticals company.l Should the company establish a proposed alliance with a pharmaceutical firm? Should it create a nutraceuticals business in parallel to its effort to develop anti-aging therapeutics? And, should it in-license a second drug development candidate?

Intuit's "Spotlight" employee recognition system had rapidly become an integral part of the company's culture after it was introduced in late 2004. The program enabled any employee to recognize outstanding performance by any other employee by sending an online "thank you" to the employee, with a copy to the recipient's manager. The program also allowed managers and senior individual contributors to give monetary awards, which could be redeemed for gift certificates, to employees for exceptional performance. Recognition was seen as an important way to increase employee engagement, and the success of Spotlight was seen by Intuit's management as an important aspect of the company's performance management. The case describes the evolution of employee recognition at Intuit, from informal methods, to a merchandise-based program, then to the gift-certificate-based Spotlight program. It describes the culture and values at Intuit, employee input into program design, and the elements of program success. The case also provides a brief discussion of the general subject of employee recognition.

EURid considers possible market mechanisms to allocate initial domain names within the Internet's newly-created "dot EU." European Union regulations and community norms substantially constrain EURid's approach, preventing the use of the most natural economic mechanisms (such as auctions).

EURid considers possible market mechanisms to allocate initial domain names within the Internet's newly-created "dot EU." European Union regulations and community norms substantially constrain EURid's approach, preventing the use of the most natural economic mechanisms (such as auctions).