Stainless Steel Studios is the latest entrepreneurial venture of renowned computer game designer Rick Goodman. Goodman must now decide the role of customer feedback in crafting the next generation of computer games. This case addresses how operations systems can be designed to manage significant uncertainty.
Thomas Weisel, longtime leader of Montgomery Securities, realizes that the sale of Montgomery to NationsBank was the biggest mistake of his life. After his exit from NationsBanc Montgomery Securities, Weisel develops a business plan for a new merchant bank, Thomas Weisel Partners.
After its launch in February 1999, Thomas Weisel Partners experiences rapid growth in its first year. This case details the inaugural year's development and probes what steps the firm should take to continue the momentum.
A new associate at a venture capital firm must choose which of three potential investments to recommend to the firm's partners. Each potential investment has strengths and drawbacks.
Entrepreneur Nassib Chamoun has created an innovative anesthesiology device that monitors patients' consciousness levels during surgery. This case tracks how Chamoun and his executive team built the infrastructure of the company and actively managed the adoption process through product design and development, clinical trials, close work with regulatory agencies, selection of appropriate lead users, and active management of the learning process for the lead users. Now faced with a relatively unfavorable market and increasing competition, Chamoun must decide how to increase current and future adoption of the monitor. Three options are presented: contracting for OEM deals with large, well-established distributors; expanding the range of services offered to include other aspects of the perioperative process; and exploring the use of the monitor in other clinical areas such as Alzheimer's.
Ethan Berman, CEO of J.P. Morgan's risk management spinoff, has grown RiskMetrics Group (RMG) from a small team of 30 to a 70-person firm contemplating an IPO. Along the way, the consensus-based decision-making process that he espoused started to prove unwieldy; his personal and informal managerial style also could not meet the growing demands on his time. More senior managers were needed--but who? Could the unique, informal culture of the group be maintained as it grew into a mid-sized firm? How should Berman go about making these decisions?
Magdalena Yesil, investor and former entrepreneur, must decide whether to become a venture partner at US Venture Partners. This case discusses career progression, entrepreneurship, and deciding among career alternatives. Yesil's entrepreneurial experiences include UUNET, CyberCash, and MarketPay.
Offers a framework and set of conceptual ideas to guide firms in approaching the strategic challenge of casting their business lines overseas and building global presence: How should a multiproduct firm choose the product line to launch it into the global market? What factors make some markets more strategic than others? What should companies consider in determining the right mode of entry? How should the enterprise transplant the corporate DNA as it enters new markets? What approaches should it use to win the local battle? How rapidly should a company expand globally? Becoming global is never a precise result of a grand design, but it would be naive to view it as a sequence of incremental, ad hoc, opportunistic, and random moves. The wisest approach would be one of directed opportunism within a broad direction set by a systematic framework.
The received wisdom--which many practitioners rigidly follow--assumes that competitiveness in a global economy requires companies to focus on core competencies, reduce their number of suppliers, and develop strong partner relationships built on shared information and trust with the remaining suppliers. But interviews with leading practitioners indicate that blind adherence to this three-step approach trivializes the issue and may be bad medicine. We provide a simple guideline for choosing the appropriate relationship for each supplier. An important consideration is whether the supplier relationship aims at cost reduction or value-added benefits for the customer, or both. The appropriate relationship could be one of competitive tension, cooperative partnership, or strategic alliance. In this study, the firms with successful outsourcing strategies began with well-developed and rigorous technological forecasts. Otherwise, strategic outsourcing will be filled with many blind avenues and deeply regretted decisions.
Jill Greenthal, managing director at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, is leading her team of investment bankers to negotiate on behalf of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) on a potential landmark deal with AT&T. Representing TCI in the negotiations is the culmination of relationships that Greenthal has nurtured over the course of a decade. Despite the best efforts of her team, negotiations appear poised on the edge of an impasse. Greenthal wonders what, if anything, her team can do to help find a better alternative.
Documents the hectic and grueling work done by Jill Greenthal's team at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in an attempt to execute a landmark deal on behalf of a key client.
Silicon Valley Bank, a $4 billion institution in California, has made its reputation by working with venture capitalists in backing start-up companies. In 1999, it is forced to compete with nonbank financial institutions that can give money on better terms and in a market that is driven by momentum rather than fundamental value. What strategy should it use? The larger question: What is the appropriate role of bank financing in private equity?
Describes the details of IBM's dramatic corporate turnaround in the early 1990s led by CEO Louis V. Gerstner. Accounts of events are from interviews with IBM executives. Covers the factors that led to the company's decline and actions taken to recover.
David Riker, the founder and chairman of eCoverage, an online insurance company, describes the various phases of company development, such as presenting a business plan, gathering a management team, getting the word out, and running the site.
Vina San Pedro (VSP) is the third-largest vineyard in Chile and has recently expanded its capacity. The new president is considering how fast to push into both foreign and domestic markets, where efforts should be focused, and how to balance capacity within the context of uncertain, volatile markets and the vagaries of foreign exchange. Meanwhile he must position growth in the context of new return-on-capital-employed objectives.
A Lockheed Martin manager is faced with the decision of where to focus the organization's resources in order to develop a world-class employee development system. The manager's recommendation will serve as the basis for the company's goal of becoming an Employer of Choice in the minds of its current and prospective employees. Compounding the difficulty of his decision is the pressure from the current financial, operational, and cultural challenges facing the business. With the defense industry becoming more cost competitive and contracts being awarded to non-traditional defense industry suppliers, Lockheed Martin is faced with a need to reduce its cost structure while developing employee talent and future leaders who can adapt quickly to change and effectively lead in this new environment.
Describes in operational detail the activities involved in creating a collaborative and artistic product. Parallels to companies in dynamic industries emerge from the management philosophies and artistic methods of the case protagonist, Artistic Director Abigail Adams.
This case involves part of a module on financing large projects in the elective curriculum course entitled "Large-Scale Investment." It is set in August 1999, just after Iridium, a global communications firm, declared bankruptcy. Although the case describes Iridium's creation, development, and commercial launch, it concentrates primarily on the firm's financial strategy and execution as it raised more than $5 billion of capital. It describes the specific securities Iridium issued, the sequence in which it issued them, and the firm's financial performance prior to bankruptcy. Using analyst forecasts, students can value the firm prior to its bankruptcy, but will recognize how difficult it is to value technology start-ups given the uncertainty in demand.
Synthesizes and extends work on barriers to negotiated agreement. Five key types of barriers are described--structural, strategic, psychological, institutional, and cultural. Approaches to overcoming these barriers are discussed.