IDS Group was a provider of supply chain solutions. Based in Asia and founded by William Fung of global trading company Li & Fung Group, IDS developed a supply chain concept called "Value Chain Logistics." Value Chain Logistics took a holistic view of the entire value-chain by positioning logistics as the fundamental enabler to drive maximum efficiency and responsiveness in all the steps: from manufacturing to distribution to the final consumers. Given the geo-social diversity of various Asian markets, companies often faced distribution challenges as it tried to bring high quality products to its final consumers at a reasonable costs. As a pioneer of this new supply chain concept, IDS had helped its customers to achieve overall lower supply chain costs while meeting dynamic customer needs. Actual IDS customer examples were included in this case to illustrate the Value Chain Logistics concept.
The assistant coach of the Toronto Maple Leafs (Leafs), had just seen the team lose. In order to increase their chance of scoring, they had added a sixth offensive skater to the ice by sending their goaltender to the bench (known as "pulling the goalie") in the last 60 seconds of the game. Doing this did not give the team an advantage. In fact, a member of the opposite team was able to shoot the puck into the unguarded net, which cost the Leafs the game. The assistant coach had questioned whether the practice of pulling the goalie was a good one. He had also heard that models had been used to investigate strategies in sports. He wondered if mathematical modeling could be used to determine if pulling the goalie was a good strategy.
In 2007, the Philippines passed the Biofuels Act of 2006, which requires all gasoline sold in the country in 2008 to contain at least 5% ethanol by volume. The law's objectives are to reduce Philippine dependence on imported fuel, with its erratic price fluctuations, by providing a local supply of alternative and renewable energy. The success of the implementation of this law depends greatly on how well the country's agricultural sector will respond. Because of this, the Department of Agriculture is crafting a feedstock development strategy.
Tom Nies, charismatic CEO of Cincom Systems, is considering a public offering of his software enterprise, but the 1987 stock market crash checks his plans. Nies reflects that capital for expansion will keep Cincom at the frontier of technological development in a changing industry. He also realizes that an IPO might negate his firm's efforts to deliver high levels of customer satisfaction and change Cincom's unique corporate culture.
In the fall of 2006, the president of Conroy's Acura was examining reports of the company's quarterly sales. He was concerned that despite a healthy economy, sales at his dealership were stagnant. The vice-president of sales of Conroy's Acura was constantly coming up with new marketing schemes to boost sales. But the president had difficulty determining how successful past marketing efforts had been in increasing profitability. He needed a way to put the numbers into context.
When Quanta Computer, Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of laptop computers, first joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative, it faced a challenge trying to balance the cost objectives of a laptop computer targeted at children of the developing world with the escalating content demands from the marketplace and the non-profit OLPC Foundation. It also had to fit the project into its company business model which served global lead PC brands like Apple as a high volume, low cost ODM provider. The case is a vehicle for discussing new market disruption and the impact of modularity and the evolution of the value network in the global PC supply chain.
The emergence of the MP3 file-based music format not only disrupted the market for portable audio players, it also had a huge impact on the business models of major record labels. Modularity, and the commoditization spill-over enabled by modularity in the personal computer industry, was a major force in the development of the market. While Apple's iPod today holds the dominant market position, new forces of commoditization continue to drive shifts in the value chain. The case examines the commoditization cycle and contrasts integrated solutions such as the iPod-iTunes software-iTunes Music Store with emerging competition from other MP3 players and the Amazon.com Music Store.
In 2002 Weber Shandwick, a leading global public relations agency, instituted a Client Relationship Leader (CRL) Program for its top 32 global accounts. The purpose of the program is to ensure that all of the firm's resources across geographies, practice areas, and specialty areas are coordinated and effectively delivered to Weber Shandwick's most important clients. Each of these clients is assigned a "Client Relationship Leader" and the case discusses the skills and abilities that are needed to be successful in this role in a very complex multidimensional organizational structure. There are two basic types of CRLs: hunters whose job is growing accounts with a lot of potential and farmers whose job is to maintain strong and broad-based relationships. CRLs must walk a fine line between being close to the client, even considered part of their team, and not being too close by "going native" and ignoring their responsibilities as Weber Shandwick employees. Unlike office managers, who are measured based on the bottom line, CRLs are measured on top-line growth. Another objective of the CRL program is to enable Weber Shandwick to differentiate itself in a highly competitive environment where it is very difficult for PR firms and their holding company media conglomerate parents to do so. The public relations industry in the broadest sense has undergone a tremendous amount of consolidation through acquisitions over the past 20 years. It is also being challenged to adapt to new technologies like blogging and social networking, which both change and enhance existing service offerings. Another way that Weber Shandwick is adapting to new technologies is through an Internet-based platform called WeberWorks (3.0) that fosters communication and collaboration between the firm and the client and within the client team.
Social networks have evolved into influential, compelling and persuasive systems, the portals of Web 2.0 and one of the most powerful media phenomena in 2008. This note provides a brief background and description of various social network sites including MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube. We also discuss recent trends and strategies stemming from the social network phenomena including widgets and online advertising.
Since 1963, Bernard Watch Company has been manufacturing watches for widely known brands, such as Dolce & Gabbana and Roamer. The company is headquartered in Denmark and has a branch office in Hong Kong and an assembly plant in Shenzhen, China. Anson Leung, chief financial officer, has conducted a series of audits on the various cost aspects of running the assembly plant. This is to ensure efficient management of the plant's human capital, which is a vital resource for the company due to the need for stable production quality with just-in-time delivery at competitive prices-a common goal for the watch-making industry. Leung is alarmed by findings that reveal a high voluntary turnover rate of 39.3% among assembly line workers during 2006, costing Bernard as much as Rmb 718,188.9. She is concerned that this may jeopardise the company's long-standing market position in watch-making. This case examines the different types of costs that may incur from voluntary turnover, including both direct and intangible costs such as those that are related to separation of leaving employees, recruitment of new staff and loss in productivity. It can be used to teach the concept of human resources accounting and to introduce how human resources management practices may help reduce voluntary turnover costs.
This note gives a broad overview of the energy sector, highlighting trends and market dynamics in 2008. It is intended to be used as a basic primer for entrepreneurs and investors interested in the energy sector, not an exhaustive or definitive textbook for scientists and engineers. It discusses the importance of incumbent energy sources, including fossil fuels, as well as renewable power.
This article explores the licensing strategies pursued by firms whose business model is based on developing and licensing out their intellectual property. These "intellectual property (IP) vendors" are not traditional suppliers, since they do not engage in production or commercialization, but specialize solely in the generation of IP. Considerable anecdotal evidence exists about these creative and enterprising firms. However, there has been no systematic investigation of how they use licensing to capture value from their IP. Our research indicates that their licensing strategies can be differentiated along two main dimensions. The first concerns the nature of the contractual relationship: whether the license stands alone or whether it is part of a larger package including other R&D collaborative agreements. The second concerns whether the technologies concerned are of high or low cumulativeness. These dimensions yield a typology outlining four different strategies IP vendors can use.
The 2004 amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines state that organizations should "create a culture that encourages ethical conduct and a commitment to comply with the law." This article presents data that show that procedural fairness-which concerns the objectivity and consistency of organizational procedures-is an essential component of such a culture. The data show that employees tend to believe that procedurally just organizations are legitimate. This belief in legitimacy, in turn, encourages them to act ethically and to comply with rules. This is a "market" approach to compliance because employees "buy in" to the organization, its values, and rules. Command-and-control approaches based on reward-and-punishment programs are significantly less effective, suggesting that rigid, rules-based approaches such as Sarbanes-Oxley are counter-productive. Procedural justice encourages employees to go beyond their job descriptions to create organizational value. This value creation aspect of procedural justice suggests a new role for ethics officers. Finally, this article includes an instrument organizations can use to measure their own level of procedural justice as well as a set of national benchmarks.
Most consumers who comprise "the bottom of the pyramid" reside in hundreds of thousands of villages located beyond most multinationals' distribution networks. Their access to essential goods is limited not just by high prices, but also by inadequate rural distribution, which also restricts the ability of poor producers to distribute their products. The term "socially responsible distribution" describes initiatives that provide poor producers and consumers with market access for goods and services that they can benefit from by either buying or selling, thus neutralizing the disadvantages they suffer due to inadequate physical links to markets, information asymmetries, and weak bargaining power. This article identifies how socially responsible distribution can be achieved by strategies that reduce costs, reinvent the distribution channel, or incorporate a long-term approach to investment. It offers guidelines for setting up distribution channels that integrate the rural bottom of the pyramid and identifies the payoffs from adopting them.
Explores the reason why Charles Goodyear, inventor of rubber vulcanization, was unable to profit from his discovery despite securing international property rights over his invention through a patent in 1844. Considers the utility of patents as an incentive for innovators in light of international industrial espionage associated with Goodyear's idea and international differences in patent laws. Also examines commercialization strategies based on Goodyear's choice between developing the innovation himself and licensing to third parties.
There is a dearth of research on the capabilities of innovative small-to-medium software enterprises (SMSEs). Understanding how SMSEs build and apply business and information systems (IS) capabilities is important, as such firms account for over 90% of software enterprises operating in Europe and the US. This paper elaborates and applies dynamic capability theory to explore and help understand the web of conditions and factors that shaped and influenced business and IS capability development and application in one European SMSE. Drawing on the overarching theory of dynamic capabilities, a theoretical model is presented that posits relationships among (1) a firm's past activities; (2) its integration, learning and reconfiguration, and transformation capabilities; (3) its financial, complementary, locational, and technological asset positions; and (4) the products and services that result, and which are of value to an SMSE's customers. The paper refines and elaborates the model by describing and enumerating the business and IS capabilities, assets, and products and services of the SMSE under study. To properly assess whether this firm's products and services were of value to its customers, research was also conducted at two customer sites in Ireland and the US, in addition to the investigation at the primary research site in Dublin. The study therefore informs both practitioners' and researchers' understandings of this complex and under-researched phenomenon: for practitioners, it highlights the characteristics required to build innovative software solutions; for researchers, it illustrates the patterns and regularities associated with the development and application of business and IS capabilities.
Our annual survey of ideas and trends that will make an impact on business: Stan Stalnaker heralds a peer-to-peer economy in which consumers become consumer-producers. Tamara J. Erickson dissects the expectations of Gen Y workers. Dr. Jerome Groopman writes a prescription for avoiding misdiagnoses in decision making. Michael Sheehan warns not to resort to the tools of competition when it's really opposition that threatens your company. John J. Medina conceives of a brain-friendly workplace that applies modern science to daily performance. Dan Ariely studies the minds of "honest" people when they cheat. Paul Root Wolpe and Daniel D. Langleben share truths about technologically sophisticated lie detection. Scott Berinato shines a light on the cybercrime service economy. Mark Kuznicki, Eli Singer, and Jay Goldman showcase Toronto, where a technology-driven event led to real social change. John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas argue that online games are preparing the twenty-first-century workforce. Jane McGonigal calls alternate reality games the promising new operating systems for real-world business. Miklos Sarvary mines the history of broadcasting for wisdom about competing in the metaverses of the internet. Judith Donath asks how true to yourself you'll be in the virtual world. Jan Chipchase surveys the soon-to-be-charted territory of metadata trails. Lew McCreary points a finger at people who blame technology for their bad behavior. Jaime Lerner sees the city of the future in a turtle's shell. David Vogel catalogs the advantages of socially responsible lobbying. George Pohle lets the numbers prove the mass-market promise of China's second-tier cities. Aamir A. Rehman and S. Nazim Ali discuss the boom in sharia-compliant finance. Michael J. Mauboussin identifies the shrinking domain in which experts are the best problem solvers. Garrett Gruener reveals his list of sustainable and unsustainable trends.