Case (A) describes how a major player in the agricultural chemicals industry struggles to transform a fragmented group of newly acquired businesses into an integrated supply chain. The case highlights the firm's operational and organizational problems from the perspective of the European supply chain manager, whose primary objective is to streamline operations and cut costs.
The case briefly outlines the European strategy for a major player in the agricultural chemicals industry. This description provides the basis for developing a Balanced Scorecard program to help align the firm's European supply chain operations with the company's strategic goals.
The critical issues facing young adults from family businesses involve balancing responsibility to family with their own career aspirations. The Love and Work case helps students recognize that there are many ways - other than full time employment - for participating in their family business. Rena-a young MBA student from a business family - discusses the deeply emotional issues she faced as she was deciding whether to return to the family firm or seek her own career outside. The case study is structured to allow students to study her conflict and dilemmas, and project their own family business career issues. The final case segment is designed to help students recognize the many forms of important participation that a family business can create, including governance, ownership, and advising. Students' understanding of Rena's emotional struggle and resolution is enhanced by the accompanying 15-minute video interview available through the dedicated case website: http://cases.insead.edu/love-and-work (copy and paste the url into a browser)
Lauri Union graduates from Harvard Business School and takes over her family's steel-corrugated roofing and siding manufacturing firm, which her mother has most recently run. The industry is mature, entry barriers to competitors are low, and the company is over 50 years old and performing poorly. This case details Union's efforts to turn the company around by changing the management team to help increase sales, streamline operations, improve customer service and employee morale, and confront a culture of low expectations and performance.A rewritten version of an earlier case.
Gazprom, the Russian natural-gas production and distribution firm that, by some measures is the largest energy company in the world, and has been very cheaply valued ever since its privatization. Reasons for this include the general uncertainty prevailing in Russian equity markets and the alleged corruption in the company, including serious asset-stripping by management. Hermitage Capital Management, a Russia-focused hedge fund run by William Browder, began investing in Gazprom in 1998, hoping that shrewd activism would increase its performance as well as its share price. This case looks at Gazprom's halting efforts at reform and discusses issues Browder must consider in deciding how to proceed.
The CEO of a two-year-old start-up must now decide whether to become a technology provider or a service agency. In a time of enormous uncertainty about the viability of various business models for Internet-delivered services and products, Collabrys has survived the burst Internet bubble by partnering with brand-name large companies and by responding to market feedback. This case traces the company from its earliest days and its original value proposition to a point at which the two very different future strategies appear feasible. Originally funded by venture capital, the company has changed key personnel, experimented with different distribution and partnering schemes, developed some sophisticated intellectual property, and raised a second round of funding.
John Crowley, CEO of Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, a start-up biotechnology firm developing an orphan drug to treat a rare lysosomal storage disorder from which his children suffer, must choose between a partnership and a buyout to have sufficient funds and support to get the drug to the market. Accompanying this dilemma are questions relating to Novazyme's clinical trial strategy, marketing, sales, production, and pricing. This case introduces students to the FDA drug approval process and government-supported financial inducements to develop drugs for small patient populations. Also provides insight into the nature of strategic relationships in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.
eShip is a small Israeli start-up with a potentially exciting new concept for the residential package-delivery value chain--the Automatic Delivery Machine (ADM). Much like today's ubiquitous ATMs, ADMs would allow consumers to have parcels delivered to a nearby ADM rather than to their residences. When a package is delivered, the consumer would be contacted, given a PIN, and could retrieve the package anytime, day or night. Currently, carriers (FedEx, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service) bear huge costs for local deliveries (the so-called last-mile cost), perhaps as much as $6 billion annually. Most of this cost would disappear if packages could be delivered to ADMs rather than to residences. At the core of eShip's concept is a sophisticated information system that links all the ADMs over the Internet. This case focuses on eShip's attempt to formulate a business model to facilitate entering the U.S. market. The dilemma centers on the role that eShip should play in the value chain and with whom it should partner. Although the ADM concept potentially creates huge value, capturing some of that value is a daunting challenge, particularly in the face of the size and power of U.S. carriers.
On September 25, 2002, Peter Anderson was due to meet with Morgan Stanley in ten minutes. Anderson had been the finance director of Canary Wharf Group (CWG) since Paul Reichmann and a group of investors had repurchased Canary Wharf in 1995. Anderson had joined Olympia & York in 1989 to finance Canary Wharf and had struggled through the bankruptcy of the project and its parent company, Olympia & York. He had stayed with Reichmann through those difficult years and worked with him to buy back the project from the banks. Largely due to Anderson's ability to raise the capital necessary for Canary Wharf to fund its growth, the project was now universally acclaimed as hugely successful. Anderson had now invested over half his professional life in Canary Wharf and he was anxious to find a solution to the conflicting objectives of the CWG.
Hong Kong's first avian flu crisis started in March 1997, when close to 7,000 chickens on three rural farms were wiped out by an H5 strain. To contain the outbreak, the Hong Kong government ordered a mass slaughter of all poultry. Altogether, the first outbreak led to 18 confirmed H5N1 cases in humans, resulting in 6 deaths. The decision to slaughter the chickens was controversial at the time. Poor coordination and inefficiency characterized the first cull and damaged the Hong Kong government's credibility. The crisis put pressure on the chief executive, Mr. Tung Chee-wah, to find new solutions to curb the avian flu. Against the background of the first bird flu crisis, the Environment and Food Bureau and the Hong Kong government faced repeated bird flu outbreaks in May 2001 and February 2002. With the recurrence of the avian flu, there was an opportunity for the Hong Kong government to show the public how it learned to manage the continuing crises.
Describes T.P. Lee, the founder and CEO of Jinwoong, a 19-year-old entrepreneurial company in Korea that has grown to become the world's largest manufacturer of camping tents. Labeled by Fortune as one of the most promising entrepreneurs in Asia in 1993, Lee faces some serious management challenges by October 1998. Largely due to the Korean financial crisis of 1997-98, Lee must rethink the financing and expansion plans for his firm. To deal with these challenges, he could seek outside funding from two different groups of private equity investors or from a corporate restructuring fund set up by the Korean government. All of these decisions reflect Jinwoong's long-term strategy and Lee's assessment of the different offers.
Describes the transition to a new CEO at Intuit, a successful software and financial services firm in California. The new CEO must decide what to change and how fast. He must also navigate within a culture everyone believes to be successful but he envisions can be improved.
In August 1998, George Cohon, founder and senior chairman of McDonald's Russia, is facing an economic state of emergency. Russia is in the midst of a severe currency crisis--the ruble has plummeted in value, creating massive inflation and widespread economic disarray. Traffic in the 26 restaurants has plummeted, and Cohon is struggling to figure out how to entice consumers back to McDonald's. Cohon is debating two issues: whether to raise prices and whether to add low-priced items, such as cabbage soup, to the menu.
Introduces a discussion of management earnings disclosure and the growing use of pro forma reporting by corporations. Highlights the background of pro forma reporting, how it has been used in the past couple of years, and what the regulators at the capital markets think about this form of earnings disclosure. Also examines two companies' use of pro forma.
Paul Nicholson, Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) Executive Director, announced that he would retire at the end of the 2012 season, after a 32-year tenure at OSF. His successor, only the third in 77 years of existence, would take over during the final year of the 2009-2013 Long Range Plan, creating great uncertainty as well as great opportunity. OSF is an arts organization that defies trends. It achieves high artistic quality, attendance, and financial stability, despite presenting challenging, classical material 280 miles from the nearest urban center. However, it is also a company whose core strengths-rotating repertory, longevity in staff-can also work against innovation. To determine focus, OSF goes through a strategic planning process every five years, often bringing about large-scale change. This case describes the planning process for the 2009-13 Oregon Shakespeare Festival Long Range Plan. It explores challenges around innovation and leadership transitions that the executive team faced, and how OSF moved forward despite a strategic plan that was lacking. As the final year of the plan approaches, OSF must determine what it wants in and hire a new Executive Director, a major milestone for the organization, while simultaneously designing the next long range plan.
William Browder, the top executive of the Hermitage Fund, the best-performing international equity fund over the last five years, attributed much of his funds' strong returns to its focus on shareholder activism and corporate governance. In 2001, he was putting this approach to the test by accusing the Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom and the international accounting firm Price Waterhouse Coopers of not stemming governance problems. Although the press provided extensive coverage of Gazprom's problems and the share price rose, Browder failed in his other efforts to get a board seat, and his lawsuits were dismissed. Was it time to refine or change this activist strategy? These were the questions Browder (and his investors) considered as he left on a long overdue vacation.
The Swedish Model--sometimes presented as a third way between savage capitalism and unrealistic socialism--was much lauded in the 1960s. It was viewed as a strategy that addressed social concerns while supporting economic growth. However, the financial and currency crisis of the early 1990s threw the model into doubt and prompted much soul searching and reform among Sweden's establishment. The welfare state introduced in Sweden imposed a high tax burden on individuals and business. By the late 1990s, some concerns were emerging that these costs were acting as a deterrent to doing business in Sweden. In an international market for labor and capital, Sweden was a less attractive home for high-flying MBAs or multinational companies than other countries.