Acumen Fund was founded in 2001 to provide modest amounts of capital, together with business expertise, to help build thriving enterprises that would serve large numbers of poor people. In 2004, Acumen Fund invested in the Series B round of WaterHealth International (WHI), a company that was developing approaches for providing clean water to the poor worldwide. In 2006, WHI planned to launch a major initiative in India. It also planned a new round of fundraising to support the company's continued growth. Provides background information on venture philanthropy, and on Acumen Fund. Also describes the problems associated with safe drinking water in developing countries, and WHI's approach to addressing those problems.
Lone Star Power was a midsize power-generation and power-distribution company. The company's new chief investment officer must evaluate a number of financial-reporting issues raised by an outside analyst. Those issues relate to (1) revenue recognition, (2) consistency of accounting policies, (3) expense timing, (4) classification of reported line items, (5) supplemental interpretive guidance from management, and (6) interim voluntary disclosures. Using a very simple setting, the case blends issues of financial transparency, financial accounting, SEC reporting requirements, and Reg. FD disclosures.
The founders of Lynx Solutions have survived tensions within the founding team, the firing of Lynx's founder-CEO, and a crisis sparked by media allegations that it had been spying on its users. Now the founders are considering a proposal from one of their directors to make a dramatic shift in the venture's strategy and have to decide how to react.
Incoming and outgoing foreign direct investment in an environment of politics, geography, globalization, and history. Since the end of apartheid, South Africa had undertaken substantial economic reforms in order to attract more foreign direct investment, but it was slow in coming. At the same time, South African firms had become major players in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. Collectively, these investment decisions could have a major long-run impact on South Africa's economic growth and political stability. South African policymakers needed to decide what they wanted from the private sector, and how to achieve it.
Describes how the "Moonshine Shop," a group of plant-savvy creative generalists, is helping a great industrial company become more innovative. Chronicles the history of the Moonshine Shop, its successes and failures, and describes innovations they've helped put in place. The group routinely creates savings equal to multiples of their own budge through front-lines process innovation and support of staff on-the-floor.
The founding entrepreneur of Honey Care Africa (Honey Care) revitalized Kenya's national honey industry by focusing on small-holder farmers across the country. Central to the success was an innovative business model: a synergistic partnership between the development sector, the private sector, and rural communities that drew on the core competencies of each party as well as their complementary roles. This tripartite model was combined with local manufacturing of beehives, effective beekeeping training and community-based extension service provision, and the provision of a guaranteed market to small-holder farmers through forward contracts as well as prompt payments. Four years later, Honey Care has achieved 68% market share in Kenya, distributes several brands of organic, fair-trade honey internationally, and is a lead distributor of beeswax. The business model has been successfully replicated in neighboring Tanzania, with expansion plans to Uganda and Sudan.
Two managers attending a week-long executive education course are working on an assignment which requires them to estimate the cost of capital for EnCana Corporation, a leading North American oil and gas producer. The two managers disagree about which costs need to be taken into account to complete the assignment. They are not sure about the costs of different sources of capital, the overall cost of capital and the appropriate use of the hurdle rate.
The failed McDonald's hotel project is a good example of a "real option"--a set investment for an uncertain but potentially high return--and shows that the company is willing to nurture innovation.
More women than men at Fortune 1000 firms have reached executive officer positions in their 30s, 40s, and 50s--and they've done it faster. Still, nearly half of those companies lack female executive officers altogether.
Making employees prove their ideas' worth results in better concepts and more motivated workers. Executives must give people the tools to stand behind their ideas and must follow up with strong rewards.
The best way to foster an appreciation for intellectual property rights in China is to let partner firms experience the benefits of locally generated knowledge.
The Q&A should be more than just an afterthought, says communications consultant Michael Sheehan. It may be the only part of your speech people actually listen to.
Consumers are slow to notice positive or negative changes in a product's quality, and that could have important implications for your company's marketing plan.
This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The way a company views its markets determines what it decides to produce, how it will take those products to market, who it believes its competitors to be, and how large it believes its market opportunities are. Most companies segment along lines defined by the characteristics of their products (category or price) or customers (age, gender, marital status, and income level) since that is the most easily accessible type of data, but product and customer characteristics are poor indicators of customer behavior because that is not how markets are structured from the customer's perspective. Customers simply need to get things done, whether that is fixing their car, staving off boredom, or finding something fun to do with their kids. These situational needs for which customers are looking to "hire" products or services go unnoticed during traditional market research and segmentation. As a result, the true breadth of competition often goes unnoticed too. When companies understand what they are up against in the mind of the customer, they can piece together the real size of the market in which they compete. Using examples from the fast food industry, furniture retailing, the automobile industry, and health care, and citing a wide variety of companies and brands, including FedEx, Starbucks, Google, Blackberry, TurboTax, and OnStar, this article describes the benefits that executives can reap when they segment their markets by job (the risk and cost of innovation is minimized), the methods that those involved in marketing and new product development can use to identify the job-based structure of a market (interviews, surveys, observation, empathic and co-evolution techniques), and how the details of business plans can be made more coherent and focused when innovators understand the job to be done.