This case invites students to assess the impact that Brexit, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, might have on a New York-based hedge fund's portfolio and, specifically, its UK assets. The case is designed to prompt students to make market assumptions and investment hypotheses based on a combination of numerical data and qualitative information. It requires no numerical computations; instead, it asks the student to interpret both markets' short-term reactions to the Brexit vote and strategy shifts from UK and European business leaders in order to evaluate longer-term implications for the economies of the United Kingdom, Europe, and the world.
In August 2016, Manish Goyal, a student in his second year of the two-year MBA program at XLRI Jamshedpur, India, had to make career-related choices about which industry, company, function, and role to pursue after his MBA. He had limited previous work experience to rely on, but rather than choosing the first job that came his way or trying to join one of the more popular firms among MBA students, Goyal sought a job that best aligned with his own career objectives. Accordingly, he sought advice from three classmates on career options in the investment banking, management consulting, and fast-moving consumer goods industries. He realized that while his friends' input was valuable, ultimately he had to make his own decisions.
In 2008, Graeme Hossie, co-founder and chief executive officer of London Mining, an iron-ore mining firm, was preparing to assist the London Mining team in its negotiations for a project in Sierra Leone. Hossie was to meet with representatives from the government of Sierra Leone, a local city mayor, and landowners to acquire a property that included an old iron-ore mine. The mine was a potentially high-grade iron-ore mine that would be lucrative for London Mining. Hossie needed to develop a negotiating strategy to ensure that the business and legal talks went smoothly and that the company retained as much control as possible over the project. The "A" case focuses on the background of the project, including the business environment in the United Kingdom and in Sierra Leone; the "B" case describes what happened as the negotiations unfolded, and how Hossie managed the various setbacks that he encountered.
Supplement to case W16899. In 2008, Graeme Hossie, co-founder and chief executive officer of London Mining, an iron-ore mining firm, was preparing to assist the London Mining team in its negotiations for a project in Sierra Leone. Hossie was to meet with representatives from the government of Sierra Leone, a local city mayor, and landowners to acquire a property that included an old iron-ore mine. The mine was a potentially high-grade iron-ore mine that would be lucrative for London Mining. Hossie needed to develop a negotiating strategy to ensure that the business and legal talks went smoothly and that the company retained as much control as possible over the project. The "A" case focuses on the background of the project, including the business environment in the United Kingdom and in Sierra Leone; the "B" case describes what happened as the negotiations unfolded, and how Hossie managed the various setbacks that he encountered.
In August 2016, Manish Goyal, a student in his second year of the two-year MBA program at XLRI Jamshedpur, India, had to make career-related choices about which industry, company, function, and role to pursue after his MBA. He had limited previous work experience to rely on, but rather than choosing the first job that came his way or trying to join one of the more popular firms among MBA students, Goyal sought a job that best aligned with his own career objectives. Accordingly, he sought advice from three classmates on career options in the investment banking, management consulting, and fast-moving consumer goods industries. He realized that while his friends' input was valuable, ultimately he had to make his own decisions.
Publicly listed in November 2005, Link REIT was the first real estate investment trust (REIT) in Hong Kong after the Hong Kong government decided to privatize a portfolio of community shopping malls, car parks, and fresh produce markets. Run by CEO, George Hongchoy, the company had evolved from managing retail spaces in public housing estates in Hong Kong into new property types such as offices, and into new geographies such as Beijing and Shanghai in Mainland China. The case centers around the many questions Hongchoy faced on whether the strategic shift would dilute Link's mission of servicing the local community with affordable yet quality retail experience, while balancing his responsibilties to his shareholders while pursuing other growth opportunities.
In spring 2016, Kameda's CEO, Michiyasu Tanaka, is facing difficult questions from board members over the lackluster performance of the company's US subsidiary. Kameda was the leading player in the Japanese rice cracker market and was looking to expand overseas to achieve growth, with the vision of becoming a global food company. Starting in 2008, it had tried to market its best-selling product in Japan, Kakinotane, as well as other types of rice-based snacks to US consumers. Despite years of offering samples to consumers, modifications to the naming and packaging design, the addition of new flavors, changes in the supermarkets it placed its product, and offering retailers slotting fees - sales were well below expectations and losses were mounting. The situation was especially baffling as the company believed that the gluten-free trend as well as a growing desire for healthier food should have bode well for its rice-based snacks; moreover several Japanese food makers had recently achieved success in the US (such as Calbee with snapeas and Ito En with teas). On the bright side, Kameda's recent acquisition of a US company, Mary's Gone Crackers, was showing steady sales growth; though profits were very low due to high manufacturing and raw ingredient costs, and distribution coverage was limited. Tanaka and his management team had only a few years to turn things around or consider closing the Kameda USA subsidiary. Every marketing element was on the table: from changing the packaging to rethinking the retail approach to accepting private label deals to investing in more efficient plants to partnering with a well-known US brand in the snack food space. Could Tanaka save Kameda USA and dramatically improve the profits of Mary's Gone Crackers?
Akshaya Patra, an Indian NGO, had set an ambitious goal of serving 5 million free meals daily to India's schoolchildren. Founded in 2000, Akshaya Patra had thus far opened 25 high-capacity kitchens in 10 different States to provide a midday meal to nearly 1.65 million school children every day. With 110 million children in 1 million schools eligible for a mandatory midday meal, there was room to grow. Shridhar Venkat, its CEO, had to devise a plan to get it there.
Today, 14% of the world's population (US, Japan and Europe) accounts for over 80% of the medical devices market. Lower income countries (aka the Global South) do not have access to essential medical imaging devices such as X-Ray machines. The main reasons are initial costs, reliability and maintenance. An EPFL-led team of 40 academics and specialists developed a proof-of-concept for a digital radiography machine. It was designed specifically to address the harsh environment and unreliable electrical supply found in the Global South at a tenth of the cost of competitors. Bertrand and Klaus, the two project leaders, have been struggling to find investors to enable their EssentialMed foundation to complete the development and commercialization of the product in Africa. But investors didn't seem to get it. What were they missing? EssentialMed was nearly out of funds, with its one full-time equivalent employee position at risk. EssentialMed desperately needed to raise additional funds but did it have the right strategy, business model and approach to investors? Learning objective: The case can be used to achieve the following learning objectives: 1) How to create and capture value for end users and investors. 2) How to provide access to high capital intensive equipment to low income countries (service instead of product). 3) How to compare and choose financially between different projects (e.g. IRR, NPV, breakeven). 4) How to involve stakeholders in product development (co-creation).
That Corey Thomas, vice president at Boston-based Rapid7, Inc., was about to enter his investor's boardroom to negotiate a potential acquisition of Metasploit, LLC, was already an unlikely achievement of sorts. After all, Rapid7 was a venture-backed, corporate client-focused cybersecurity company, and Metasploit was a white-hat hacker community with a reputation that ranged from esoteric to "notorious." And awaiting Thomas for the deliberations wasn't a typical business partner, but rather HD Moore, Metasploit's founder, chief contributor, and in 2009 one of the most well-known hackers on the planet. The groundwork that had been laid to convince Moore to come to Boston for the discussions would all be for naught if Thomas couldn't come to terms with Moore... and if Thomas couldn't persuade his own executive team and board of directors that whatever package he ultimately agreed to with Moore was a reasonable one, even though an acquisition of Metasploit would come with no meaningful revenue and considerable execution, legal and reputational risks.
For roughly six weeks between late December 1936 and February 1937, a major strike at several critical General Motors (GM) plants in Flint, Michigan essentially halted the corporation's U.S. production and resulted in significant gains for the nascent United Automobile Workers of America union and the Committee for Industrial Organization, both of which had supported the strike. The Flint, Michigan Sit-Down Strike represented a stunning victory for organized labor in a context where New Deal era legislation - most notably the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 - created a labor-friendly environment in the short run, with possibly adverse consequences for the performance of the U.S. automobile industry in the long run.
Center for Health Communication at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Director Jay Winsten spearheaded a national mass media campaign, the Harvard Alcohol Project, also known as the Designated Driver Campaign, to rapidly diffuse the "designated driver" into the American lexicon and culture. The campaign broke new ground in the process, most notably by harnessing on an unprecedented scale the Hollywood entertainment community's power to disseminate messages and facilitate social learning. Writers incorporated the campaign's designated driver message into the scripts of more than 160 prime-time television episodes during four television seasons. The campaign persuaded large numbers of Americans to adopt the practice of choosing a designated driver-i.e., a member of a social group who agrees to stay sober in order to safely drive others in the group who have been drinking alcohol. The campaign provided a model for a generation of advocates seeking to mobilize the power of Hollywood to advance social causes, and convinced funding organizations that media advocacy campaigns were worth supporting.
The case traces the birth of 1436, a new luxury brand specialized in cashmere garments. It describes how this venture emerged organically out of a combination of manufacturing and retail expertise with the ambition of creating the first pure Chinese luxury brand. The brand name was inspired by the measurement of superfine baby cashmere fibre (14 micrometers in diameter and 36 millimeters in length). It is estimated that only 2 out of 1,000 grams of cashmere measure up to the standard of 1436. Describing the brand evolution over its first 8 years of existence, the case allows for an exploration of the challenges associated with creating a luxury brand and reconciling several strategic imperatives: the need to build a strong and desirable brand identity, grow the business but also protect the brand integrity and exclusivity. The case also provides an opportunity to discuss the benefits and challenges associated with being 1) a luxury brand "made in China" and 2) a category specialist (cashmere). As Jane Wang, 1436's founder and CEO, looks to the future, she has to decide what to do to establish 1436 as a recognized luxury brand on a global scale.
This note gives students a systematic and comprehensive framework for analyzing and managing competitive advantage. It pays explicit attention to both creating and sustaining advantage and considers both alignment and assets (or resources) as sources of advantage.
In September 2014, Tom Montgomery (SVP of strategic initiatives at the De Beers Group) and his team launched a pilot program in the United States to explore the $1 billion diamond market for pre-owned (recycled) diamonds. According to Montgomery, the motivation for the pilot program was to improve the consumer reselling experience and to enhance "diamond equity". Somewhat paradoxically, consumers typically received very low prices when they tried to sell diamonds (5-20% of the original retail price) leaving them reluctant to purchase diamonds in the future and making them into ambassadors of ill will. At a meeting scheduled for November 2015, the De Beers Executive Committee would have to decide whether to end the pilot program, extend it for another year to gather more information, or convert it into a new standalone business unit. Because De Beers had historically focused on producing rough diamonds (the "upstream" business), yet the new business unit offered an opportunity to enter and enhance the market for polished diamonds (the "downstream" business), the decision was particularly noteworthy.
After several years of effort, Dalian Zhongding Information Co. (DZI) had become the leading prepaid card distributor in Liaoning Province. When government regulations and the rise of online third-party payment options sent the prepaid card business into decline, DZI transformed itself into an online intermediary by building a regional e-commerce platform offering fast home delivery, mainly of supermarket products. Despite its marketing efforts, the company faced fierce competition, difficulty attracting users, and a low secondary purchase rate. In 2015, the company needed to adjust its development strategy. What practices should this regional e-commerce platform adopt to obtain traffic, increase purchasing conversion rate, and increase visitor retention?
Mary Kay (China) Cosmetics Co., Ltd. (Mary Kay China) was one of China's leading direct-enterprises in skincare products and cosmetics. In September 2015, the president of Mary Kay China was considering how best to continue to grow the company in the face of increasing e-commerce. The parent company and all its subsidiaries ascribed to the mission of enriching women's lives; its guiding principles emphasized relationships and connections between people. Mary Kay China's development was a testament to its success as a people-oriented culture that contributed to the environment and society. However, the Internet era had raised concerns about whether the connections among the company's people were strong enough to succeed against competitors who maintained a broad network developed through the Internet. Should Mary Kay China expand into e-commerce, or would relying on the Internet undermine the principles and values that grounded the company?