Franklin Leonard founded The Black List in 2005 as an innovative approach to identifying potential hit movie scripts via crowdsourcing. As the annual Black List proved to hold the scripts of some of Hollywood's most successful films, from "Slumdog Millionaire" to "Spotlight," it became widely respected and highly anticipated throughout the industry. In 2012, Leonard uses the momentum to bring The Black List online as a database where unproduced screenplays can be reviewed and discovered by industry experts. Now in 2016, Leonard is considering other avenues for supporting great screenwriters, including launching a film fund to finance low-budget productions. He reflects on the movie-making business and on the numerous barriers to entry he may face in entering the competitive motion picture industry.
The owner and chocolatier of a small, chocolate manufacturing and retailing company in London, Ontario, was considering an expansion opportunity within Southwestern Ontario. The company's current production facility was sufficient for handling immediate demand; however, there was limited space for expansion in the same building, and the building's administration had plans to prohibit manufacturing activities within the next five to 10 years. The owner wondered whether the time was right to purchase a new storefront and production facility in a small nearby city. Alternatively, should he continue operations in the present location while looking for other opportunities to expand? He planned to create projected financial statements and conduct internal and external analyses to inform his decision-making process.
In February 2014, the chairman and chief executive officer of the third-largest law firm in Canada, Gowlings LLP, was examining his options for taking the firm global. On the verge of retirement, he hoped to establish an enduring platform for international expansion based on three aspects: a new global location, a new global partner, and a new organizational structure. Each point was interlinked, and each presented its own managerial dilemmas. Gowlings had already established offices in three locations outside Canada: Moscow, London, and Beijing. The company had been ranked as the top legal advisor based on deal volume for Canadian mergers and acquisitions in both 2012 and 2013. Gowlings was primed to build on these attributes and move to the next level in positioning itself as an international law firm.
In 2007, the emergency department at Kaiser Permanente's South Sacramento Medical Center was experiencing extremely long patient wait times, and it became clear that a new and better way of doing business was needed. The chief of the emergency department was inspired to change things and became the leader of the lean program-a system of management methods and tools widely used for over 25 years in the manufacturing sector. Changes were made over a six-year period to significantly improve key performance measures of the department. The goal was to create capacity and continuous flow in a health-care setting without negative implications to the emergency department and patients.
The chief financial officer (CFO) of Fuyao Glass Industry Group., Ltd. had to recommend dividend distributions prior to the company's global initial public offering in Hong Kong. Fuyao was China's largest automotive-glass manufacturer and the second-largest, most profitable, and fastest-growing automotive-glass manufacturer in the world. Controlled by its founder and largest minority shareholder, Mr. Cho Tak Wong, Fuyao was in the midst of substantial global expansion into the United States and Russia. The CFO had to project cash flows from operations, as well as substantial investment needs and the potential effects of the IPO, all while taking into consideration the effect of Fuyao's dividends on existing and planned investors.
In 2014, an analyst with a leading investment company wanted to evaluate the financial performance of a kitchen appliances company, TTK Prestige Ltd., headquartered in Bangalore, India. To accomplish this task, the analyst decided to use the economic value added (EVA)-based performance measure, which accorded importance to value creation by management for its shareholders. Recently, there had been a shift away from traditional approaches of measuring shareholder value creation (e.g., earning capitalization and present value of estimated cash flow) towards more value-added approaches like EVA, which offered a more effective method for evaluating financial performance.
One of Susan Shaw's interests is investing in the stock market. She has copied some pages of Facebook Inc.'s 2015, 2014, and 2013 financial statements, and the company sure seemed like an investment winner. But as she peruses these financial statements, she notices that in the 2014 financial statements there are some huge differences from the 2013 statement for a number of line items, such as Total Assets, Goodwill, Additional Paid in Capital, Revenue, Net Income, and Net Cash Used in Investing Activities. The reported dollar amounts for many of these items listed on the 2014 balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows, had more than doubled and she wonders if traditional financial statements and reporting conventions were robust and effective in communicating the intricacies and details of deals such as Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp and were all Facebook's assets and enterprise value reflected inits balance sheets.
Supplement to case UV7211. In the B case, Susan Shaw has finished her review of the Facebook/WhatsApp deal and recalls hearing about AT&T's acquisition of DIRECTV in July 2015. From a financial-statement-impact point of view, she wonders what the similarities and differences were between the Facebook/WhatsApp acquisition and the AT&T/DIRECTV deal.
SST offered a subscription-based gunfire detection service, ShotSpotter Flex, to cities across the United States, and a few abroad. Over its 20-year history, SST had mostly honed a reliable business to government sales model, and the company had been focused on expanding to new cities. But Ralph Clark, President and CEO, was also interested in investigating new services. Mass shootings, in U.S. schools to cities abroad, were consistently followed with calls to his office: "Do you have a solution for us?" Could a ShotSpotter Flex-like service be sold to college campuses and other venues concerned with shootings? Should SST adapt the hardware and the software for indoor applications, like shopping malls and movie theaters? Was the next step in the company's growth a move towards city-wide deployments through smart cities, even to detect gunfire during terrorist attacks? Clark had been cautious about moving the company into new services. However, he was also aware, as were his investors, that the market of U.S. cities with gun-violence problems would eventually cap out. Entering new markets posed a great opportunity, but also significant technical and operational challenges. Now in 2016, Clark weighed the implications.
IguanaFix is a rapidly scaling Latin American startup that provides an online platform that connects consumers with home improvement contractors. The founders have acquired customers through both B2C and B2B methods. But in seeking to grow and scale the business, they now must make decisions about the relative emphasis on building their consumer brand or its B2B partnerships, and the implications for product offerings and marketing methods ranging from search engine marketing and Facebook ads to sales and account management.
When Bruce Wayne hired Anthony Starks, he thought he had hit a homerun by getting the most brilliant and passionate scientist-leader in the field to be his CSO. But a few months in, Wayne and Starks begin to clash over crucial forward-looking decisions about the direction of the company. As CEO, Wayne needs to make tough decisions about how to manage his passionate but increasingly unpredictable CSO.
This module reading provides tools and analyses for acquiring and allocating resources. The module begins by reviewing the importance of setting strategic boundaries as a basis for asset acquisitions. Next, a distinction is made between new assets acquired to meet regulatory requirements, those acquired to enhance operational efficiency and/or increase revenue, and assets acquired to enhance competitive effectiveness. Different techniques are required for analyzing these different categories of assets ranging from traditional cash flow and rate of return analyses to strategic analysis focusing distinctive capabilities, alignment with strategic initiatives, and the risk of deciding not to acquire the asset. Most importantly, this module demonstrates how asset allocation fits into and supports a business's overall strategy. While this module is designed to be used alone, it is part of the Strategy Execution series. Taken together, the series forms a complete course that teaches the latest techniques for using performance measurement and control systems to implement strategy. Modules 1 - 4 set out the foundations for strategy implementation. Modules 5 - 10 teach quantitative tools for performance measurement and control. Modules 11 - 15 illustrate the use of these techniques by managers to achieve profit goals and strategies. View the full Strategy Execution series at: hbsp.harvard.edu/strategy-execution.
In March 2016, eEquity, a small firm providing online training and software to corporate human resource professionals, faced a dilemma. A year after new ownership and management took over, the channel sales strategy that was expected to support the growth of the promising Software as a Service division failed, and cash was running out. Management had devised a new sales and marketing strategy that it believed would be successful, but lacked the funds to implement the strategy. This same management team identified four options to acquire the necessary funds, each of which had inherent strengths and weaknesses. The firm's success depended on making a good choice under conditions of incomplete information and a short time frame.
SmoothPay, a 14-people start-up in Canada that offered mobile payment and loyalty solutions, enjoyed initial achievements after its launch in 2014. In less than two years, through industry partnerships and community engagement, SmoothPay grew to have over 100 merchants in its system, with over 5,000 users. However, the future was full of risks and uncertainty: businesses and consumers in Canada were both slow in adopting mobile payments, and, as a small firm, SmoothPay had not yet established brand awareness. SmoothPay's management needed to address several key challenges. How could SmoothPay differentiate itself from its many competitors? What strategic direction should the company take? What market should SmoothPay target to enable sustainable growth?
The case is based on the inventory situation faced by Arome Bakery, one of the leading bakery chains in Hong Kong. Sarah Cheng, assistant operations manager, wants to increase the bakery's competitiveness by improving its operation. A key goal is to reduce the number of unsold products that are returned to the central baking factory for disposal. Sarah is looking for a systematic method to determine the optimum order quantity, so as to minimize product wastage while balancing stock-out risk.
Faced with the imminent loss of 40% of its revenues due to patent expirations, pharma giant Eli Lilly sets out on a dramatic transformation process in 2009. The case considers how Lilly restructured the organization into business areas to aid better decision making, faster innovation and clearer customer insight; the forward guidance and minimum performance guarantees that Lilly provided to the market during the transformation; the difficult HR adjustments that were required; and how the top leadership encountered and overcame market skepticism towards the innovation-focused plan.
Spring cleaning season 2015 was about to begin in a small community north of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and a prospective business owner was deciding whether to launch a new business. Totally Tidy by Tilly would provide cleaning services, professional organizing services, or both. Before moving forward, this new entrepreneur first needed to understand the environment for her new venture. Based on that understanding, she needed to decide what services to offer and at what prices, and how best to promote her new business. To determine financial feasibility, she projected the company's financial performance for the first three years of operations. Should the entrepreneur stay close to home, within her community, or would a viable and profitable business plan involve a larger area? Would the business provide a reasonable income, or would this significant change in her lifestyle only prevent her from enjoying the flexibility of being a stay-at-home parent?