Climate change will affect everything businesses do, as government efforts to mitigate carbon emissions cause their prices to rise steeply. This special edition of Forethought takes a hard-nosed look at the risks and opportunities of climate change. Michael E. Porter and Forest L. Reinhardt argue that the effects of climate change on companies' operations are now so tangible and certain that the issue is best addressed with the tools of the strategist, not the philanthropist. Reinhardt also posits, in another article, that success in a carbon-constrained world will be determined by innovation and acumen, requiring companies to make bold moves. Peter Schwartz explains that firms that do business in vulnerable regions can advance their interests if they help those areas adapt to global warming. Daniel C. Esty notes increasing pressure on corporations to reduce emissions, predicting that companies that fail to do so will face grave consequences. Andrew J. Hoffman says that corporations need to know what regulatory issues are at stake--and where. Alyson Slater of Global Reporting Initiative discusses the challenges and benefits of voluntary disclosure. Auden Schendler cautions companies buying up renewable energy certificates that they could end up tarnishing their green credentials. Theodore Roosevelt IV and John Llewellyn explain that virtually any firm in any sector can reap the benefits of investors' surging demand for green business ideas. Vicki Bakhshi and Alexis Krajeski show how climate change will affect businesses in the midterm. Maria Emilia Correa describes a key plank of the strategy at Masisa, a company in Chile, that is engaging B2B customers in efforts to become greener. Mark Way and Britta Rendlen explain why insurer Swiss Re is persuading employees to reduce their carbon footprints. HBR also provides a forecast of the extreme climate phenomena likely to occur in the future, and their expected repercussions on industry, agriculture, and settlements.
The vice-president marketing (VP) for iMPath Networks, a leading provider of managed video networks for surveillance and enterprise applications, is presented with an offer to take over as CEO of the firm. It was October 2001 and iMPath was in poor shape after growth in expenses outpaced sales growth from 1999 to 2000 when the firm pursued aggressive growth targets in international markets while increasing the number of employees. Unfortunately for the firm, the dotcom bubble burst in 2000 and along with it, hopes of rapid expansion. Faced with an essentially insolvent entity, iMPath's venture capital backers decided to extend the VP an offer to save the firm.
Dr. David Cechetto, a University of Western Ontario (UWO) medical professor, left Rwanda after a distressing week. Having seen first-hand the impact of the 1994 genocide and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, Cechetto committed himself to accept the request from UWO and the Rector of the National University of Rwanda to direct a project to help rebuild Rwanda's health sector. As he was flying back to London, Ontario, he began to prepare a proposal for funding to be submitted within six months. His first decision was who his Rwandan partner or partners should be in this project.
Anduro Marketing is a Canadian company that sells technical services to companies wanting to improve their search engine website rankings. Though small, Anduro has attracted several major clients in both Canada and the United States, and expects steady profitability and growth. Anduro believes it can generate substantial additional profit by developing and selling a suite of software products that automate its technical service offerings. Anduro's managers must decide whether Anduro is better off staying with its current safe and profitable strategy or if Anduro should instead pursue a riskier but potentially more profitable software sales model. Several tough questions must be answered to determine whether the risk is worth the reward. The Anduro case provides an interesting description of an Internet technical/marketing services business and contrasts this with software sales.
This case study chronicles the creation and transformation of a Singaporean joint venture, Eagle Services Asia (ESA). The case describes some early start-up problems, including a forced shutdown by the Civilian Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). The resulting shakeup of the ESA management team provides a fresh start and an opportunity to reinvigorate the company using lean management principles. Managerial decisions play a key role in ESA's success, together with the discipline and training of the workforce. Students will gain an understanding of cultural difficulties associated with international joint ventures, and learn fundamental aspects of lean management including how to create and sustain a lean culture. The case also provides insight into the worldwide aircraft engine business, the engine overhaul process and cultural barriers that may arise when managing operations in foreign countries.
Helps students develop an elevator pitch for their most important asset--themselves. Before class students are asked to interview a potential employer and to develop preliminary elevator pitches. Once in class, students work through an exercise that helps them refine their elevator pitches and better understand several key marketing principles. Leads to an engaging and thought-provoking discussion.
The challenges and best strategies for the commercialization of university technologies are illustrated in this case which documents an MRI breakthrough that arose from the Charles Marcus laboratory at Harvard. Students discuss the interdependencies of intellectual property protection, strategy choices for science based breakthroughs, and business models for university technology.
Partners in Health is a Boston-based, not-for-profit that provides health care to people in some of the poorest regions of the world, including Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda, and Peru. In 1998, PIH established a program (PACT) in Boston to bring care to AIDS and TB patients who were not well served by existing care delivery systems. Describes PIH's programs in the developing world and the way in which lessons learned in these countries informed the design and management of PACT. Examines the balance between customized and standardized approaches to care and challenges students to examine their preconceived notions of the social role of a health care delivery organization. Dr. Heidi Behforouz, PACT's director, must decide whether a service design honed in developing countries can be rolled out more broadly in one the world's richest nations.
Prashant Lakhera, senior analyst at Credit Rating Agency Limited (CRA), has been working with Deepak Ghosh, project manager of the Construction Development Board, on a report that needs to be submitted within the next few days. Because Ghosh had been acting inappropriately in front of clients, Lakhera and Gagan Vedi, the other analyst working on the report, were concerned about how this might damage the image of CRA. Shortly before the report was due, Lakhera asked Ghosh for his contribution to the report. Ghosh indicated that he did not care and he walked away from the team. Now Lakhera had to decide what to do about the urgent deadline for the report.
An intern at SC Johnson requested a meeting to discuss a new initiative he wanted to pursue after analyzing coupons for SC Johnson's Glade brand. The intern had identified a large variance in coupon redemption rates and coupon return metrics, and wanted to discuss the possibility of developing a better way to plan coupon promotions.
Anupam Majumdar, relationship manager, and Aditya Mehta, regional head of Hindustan Neon General Insurance Limited, India, were meeting an important client. Mehta asked Majumdar to serve them tea. This really embarrassed and infuriated Majumdar. It was not the first time that Mehta, Majumdar's boss, had treated him like a peon. Majumdar was about to take a three-week leave of absence to attend his brother's wedding in New York so he was not sure if this was the right time, if ever, to do anything about the situation.
"We don't need more production capability. What we need is a higher design level and a bigger sales network", said the CEO of Haier, China's largest white goods manufacturer and one of the world's fastest growing white goods companies. Haier began its efforts to go global in 1999 by tapping into the US market with niche products. In 2006, Haier announced that it planned to launch a new global development strategy to bolster its global brand awareness. It hoped to sell bigger and technologically-rich white goods in the overseas markets and differentiate itself from other Chinese commodity players. This case study explores Haier's roadmap in transforming itself from a Chinese household name to a global brand, and examines the effectiveness of its product diversification and design strategy in its global expansion.
The Mormon Church focuses on self-reliance and being prepared for emergencies. Part of their program encourages each member of the Church to have a reserve food supply on hand at all times. Given U.S. and global food stock levels, is the Church program a good model for the country?
Describes the efforts made by the Boston Red Sox to sign superstar Japanese pitcher Daisuke (Dice-K) Matsuzaka within the context of the team's attempts to keep pace with longtime rival, the New York Yankees. In late 2006, Dice-K is viewed as the prize of the free agent pitching market. However, negotiations between the Red Sox and Dice-K's camp have broken down with the signing deadline less than 24 hours away (if Dice-K is not signed by the deadline, he must return to Japan for a year). How high should the Red Sox be willing to go with their offer? What are the alternatives if they fail to sign Dice-K? What kind of performance should they expect from Dice-K in the 2007 season? And finally, how does the signing fit into the greater strategic context of competing with the much-better funded Yankees?
This award-winning case series examines how optimization-based decision-making leads to a new business design for a timeshare exchange: an exchange fair. Students model a complex managerial problem as a linear program, identify the types of data needed, and use models to provide decision support. The series covers linear and integer programming, multiple-criteria decision-making, network flow problems, local search heuristics, and Pareto-optimality. The series demonstrates the advantages and difficulties involved in applying management science techniques to a real-life business environment. It teaches standard techniques of extracting relevant data from a mass of more- and less-relevant information and forces students to confront issues consultants face: How do you motivate management to even consider a management science approach? How do you build a "business case" demonstrating the shortcomings of the methodology already in place? The case provides background on the timeshare industry, exchanges, and the exchange fair, in which owners submit their existing intervals to a centralized pool, together with requests for the intervals they want to exchange; the exchange determines who gets which interval. Various aspects of a functioning exchange fair are presented, and, starting from a heuristic, the series effectively guides students toward the "better" optimization-based way of executing the exchange. This case series is a winner of the 2005 INFORMS case competition and received an honorable mention at the 2005 DSI case competition. Suitable for both general MBA and executive education programs and as a basis for an exam or assignment, this series is also appropriate for specialized undergraduate and graduate programs in services management (e.g., tourism and hotel administration), logistics, and industrial and systems engineering.
This case provides an extension of the A case (UVA-QA-0709) by including two types of owners' requests that were omitted in the A case for simplicity. Solving it requires knowledge of integer programming and how it can be used to reinforce logical conditions. Could be used as an assignment or part of an exam. A supplemental Excel spreadsheet is available.
Describes the hardball tactics facing Peter Welz, who seeks to negotiate a make-or-break contract with a vastly larger potential client. Welz's counterpart team is led by Preston Spitzer, a notoriously tough player who fully understands his side's massive advantages in the process. With the economic fate of Welz's newly public smaller firm in the balance, Welz and his team must figure out how to handle some very tough tactics by Spitzer and his minions aimed at extracting lopsided contract concessions. These tactics include demeaning remarks, repeated threats to opt for a competitor, misrepresentations, repudiation of previously agreed provisions, last-minute demands, divide-and-conquer moves, and a waiting game that exploits the smaller firm's evidently urgent need for a closure. The (A) case sets up the negotiations and poses an immediate tactical challenge in the context of the overall process. The (B) case describes the strategies, tactics, and results of these negotiations, along with Welz's broader insights into a more productive approach to the common challenge of dealing with very hard bargainers.
Describes a compensation dilemma with a father and his three children, who work in different businesses under the family holding companies. The father, James Kohl, must set compensation that meets the needs of the family and the business.