Meyers Norris Penny is one of the leading chartered accountancy and business advisory firms in Canada. The vice-president of technology must decide whether to replace the company's practice management system or continue to upgrade the system as needs arise. The system has performed well, has stable hardware and software and staff are familiar and satisfied with using the system, however, he must consider the company's need to be innovative and proactive to maintain the firm's competitive advantage.

ZS Associates is a consulting company with offices in the United States, Europe and plans to establish an office in Canada. The manager of scheduling realizes that the company's scheduling system would not be able to keep up with the needs of the firm. The current system tracks the consultant's skills and their assignments to various projects. An MBA student working as an intern with the firm must provide a recommendation whether to develop software in-house, have new software custom built externally or purchase off-the-shelf software. He must analyse the options while considering the growth needs of the firm, features required in the software and cost.

Terralumen is a family-owned agricultural company that has expanded into consumer products. A senior executive with the company has helped build a successful joint venture over a period of 16 years with Delta, an American fast food chain. After a directors meeting, he senses that the American joint venture partners want to end the partnership, but he is unsure why. The joint venture has been profitable, and he also believes his company contributed the most to its success and that prior to the joint venture Delta had limited success in foreign markets. With the break up of the joint venture pending, he must determine how to extract the largest return on Terralumen's investment.

After opening the first Gordon Biersch brewery restaurant in July 1988 in Palo Alto, California, Dan Gordon and Dean Biersch successfully built Gordon Biersch into a $20 million company, with restaurants in five locations and a small retail beer business. By early 1995, they aimed to open 20 new restaurants throughout the United States by 1999 and to expand the brewing side of the business. To do so, they needed to grow at a much faster pace, which required additional funding and management expertise. Therefore, in November 1995, they accepted an investment of $11.2 million from the Fertitta family. In exchange, Dan and Dean gave the Fertittas majority control of the company. This case provides students with an update of what happened at the Gordon Biersch Brewing Co. after receiving funding from the Fertitta family in 1995 and up to 2002.

In September 2001, Houston-based Enron Corporation (Enron) was embroiled in a long-running dispute with various levels of government in India. The dispute involved the Dabhol Power Company (DPC), a 2,184 megawatt (MW) power project in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The dispute began in the mid 1990s. In April 1995, Enron began construction of a $2.8 billion power plant in the state of Maharashtra. In August 1995, the Maharashtrian government announced that the project was canceled based on the recommendations of a committee set up by the government to review the project. After the contract was renegotiated, construction resumed and Phase I was completed in 1999. In 2001, with Phase II of the project 95% complete, Enron announced that it would sell its DPC stake because of payment disputes with its sole buyer, the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB), and the failure of the Indian central government to honor its counter-guarantee.

In 2000, Samsung Electronics was the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductor memory chips. Its main line of business was the manufacture of DRAM chips, but worldwide demand had plummeted. Moreover, Intel, the world's largest producer of microprocessors, had formed an alliance with Rambus, a memory design company, to develop a new super-high-speed DRAM design that would represent a new industry standard. Senior management at Samsung faced fundamental strategic issues: Should it continue to invest in the high-risk DRAM business alone, and could Samsung be a market leader by itself? Should it be steadfast in its opposition to the alternative standard, which represented new opportunities? If it adopted the Rambus design, how many resources should be devoted to the manufacture of Rambus chips? Diversification out of the volatile memory business was a key strategic issue and represented one possible means for reducing Samsung's vulnerability to industrywide downturns, but Samsung's past efforts to expand its nonmemory business had met with only limited success. This case provides the background to the issues Samsung faced as it debated how to meet these challenges while remaining a leading player in the semiconductor industry.

Performance Indicator is a start-up that holds patents on the use of color-change technology to indicate when golf balls have been damaged by exposure to water. Because golfers put two to five used golf balls into play for every one new ball they buy, the used golf ball market cuts severely into the sales of manufacturers. Performance Indicator's technology would dramatically curtail the availability of used balls, doubling or tripling the size of the market for new golf balls. At the time of the case, the founders have been pursuing this idea full time for five years, but have yet to convince any manufacturers to license their technology.

Tim Blanchard struggles to balance all the demands facing him as a partner of a consulting firm. He must decide how to serve clients, mentor his people, provide strategy and direction to the high-tech group, and spend time with family. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

LVMH Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton (France) acquired a large interest in the Gucci Group (Italy and Netherlands) in January 1990. Gucci accused LVMH of undertaking a "creeping acquisition" and refused to cooperate in LVMH's efforts to gain representation in Gucci's management. The case details the actions of the purported takeover attempt, and the defense mechanisms employed by Gucci. The defenses employed included the use of a poison pill and a white knight. Ultimately, Gucci found a white knight, Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR) of France to save it from LVMH's unwanted advances. The primary question, which the case addresses, is whether the actions taken by Gucci's management in defending its independence were actually in the best interests of shareholders.

The case is a follow-up to two companion cases, ""Jaguar comes to Halewood: The Story of a Turnaround"" and ""Supply Chain Design at Jaguar: Bringing ""Nirvana"" to Halewood"". It reviews the magnitude of the change programme (involving new work culture, workforce, processes, suppliers, and supply chain architecture) implemented by the newly-appointed management team at Halewood prior to the launch of a new Jaguar model, the X-Type. It illustrates the challenges faced by the company during ramp-up to full volume in a brand new, re-designed, revamped, and transformed plant catering to a premium market.

The case focuses on opportunities and challenges for a traditional, bricks-and-mortar retailer to use the Internet as an added channel. A major implementation issue, which raised a heated debate among retailers, concerns Tesco.com's order fulfilment approach, based on in-store picked (rather than dedicated warehouses). It also insists on how can one make Internet retailing a profit-making story.

The case considers the problem of diversifying Chile's economy, in particular its export industries, away from primary products and toward manufacturing. Starting with a recent debate around Chile's failure to attract a major investment by Intel to build a factory for the Pentium III, the case reviews Chile's economic performance in the last quarter-century, devoting particular attention to the following issues: (a) Whether the Chilean economy's heavy reliance on copper and other primary or first-transformation products ought to be a source of concern to policymakers (b) To what extent FDI could contribute to the economy's diversification, and (c) How recent policy debates around the need (or absence thereof) for a government-led ""development strategy"" tie in with traditional political debates in Latin America.

Set in May 2000, these cases reflect the separate perspectives of the CEOs as they approach the negotiations of TSE International to acquire Yeats Valves. The task for the student is to complete a valuation analysis of the target and buyer, and to negotiate a price and exchange ratio with the counterparty. Each case contains a financial forecast only for that side; therefore an important element in the negotiation is to obtain the private information of the other side, analyze it, and successfully negotiate terms of acquisition. The cases are relatively simple, and are offered as a first exercise in the valuation of the firm and negotiation of an acquisition.

James Aramanda, head of Mellon Investor Services, must decide how to change the focus of his business. He works with consultants to create a change strategy to enhance a business that is already doing well. Will he be able to interest his professionals in changing the nature of the way they meet customer expectations and demands while simultaneously motivating and including his professionals in the process?

You can choose from 4 key strategies to systematically create and master new markets. Path 1 is to start from a blank slate with unknown customers and unknown products. This is the most exciting path to take, but the most formidable and riskiest; Path 2 is to deliver new products to known customers; Path 3 takes known products to unknown customers; and Path 4 is building a new market with known customers and known products--usually results in product line extensions and runs the risk that you will become defined by your knowledge. The opportunity to create and dominate a new market offers the prospect of working without competition and with increased margins. However, the firm must choose the path that leverages its knowledge. It is important to remember that the product is not just the device or service, but also the delivery process, customer interfaces, and support systems. Examples from FedEx, AT&T, GlaxoSmithKline and other companies illustrate the pitfalls and advantages of each of the 4 paths to new market strategies.

Many managers have adopted a balanced scorecard approach to measuring performance. But "balance" implies that all measures are equally important in all settings. The authors endorse the multimeasure approach, but challenge the idea that all measures are equally important regardless of the product-market strategy adopted. Results of a survey of more than 200 businesses support this position. The most successful performers emphasized the measures and perspectives (customer, internal business, innovation and growth, financial) most appropriate to their strategy type (prospector, analyzer, low-cost defender, differentiated defender).

JIT, TQM, reengineering, lean manufacturing, supply chain management, and ERP are just some of the major programs that have been adopted by many companies and then abandoned without achieving the expected results. Why are programs that receive accolades at some companies trashed at others? Sustained effort is often the difference. If programs are to endure the test of time, they must be given the chance to do so. Managers must be willing to learn from difficulties encountered early during implementation and adapt the program for the firm's own unique situation. Here we share the lessons learned by a manufacturer that successfully implemented a new process improvement program. Key to its success was monitoring organizational and operational indicators over time with good measures that reflect program actions. New programs do not improve bottom-line results right away. Patience is well served if valid measures show that relevant effects in processes are in a favorable transition mode. If those effects are not realized when expected, adaptation of the program to the firm's unique context might be what is needed and worth exploring.

The net is a powerful medium for reaching and servicing customers around the world. However, companies are learning that cross-national differences in infrastructure, regulation, language, buyer demographics and behavior, payment methods, and currencies pose formidable challenges to the simple global model of international operations. The author examines not only the opportunities for global integration but also the needs for local responsiveness, showing how firms operating across borders can use the net effectively as a marketing tool. Books, music, wines, industrial components, information, and financial services serve to illustrate the potential and pitfalls of net-based selling across borders.

Describes the marketing of Prozac and Paxil, two of the best-selling mental health drugs in history. Set in 2001, several months before the expiration of Prozac's patent, Eli Lilly (Prozac's manufacturer) and GlaxoSmithKline (Paxil's manufacturer) must decide how to respond to the introduction of generic Prozac into the market.