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Real estate investor Javier Faus invests in a luxury hotel development in central Paris, and must select a management company.

This case examines the powerpoint presentation that Ranjith Kumaran, founder of the start-up PunchTab, Inc., is using for his investment pitches to venture capital firms. Students can discuss the materials that Kumaran has included, his presentation style, and what they would retain or remove from the presentation.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers, a major Wall Street investment bank, sent shockwaves through financial markets as global liquidity dried up and investor confidence reached an all-time low. Banks with exposure to complex financial instruments in high-debt environments were considered particularly vulnerable. ICICI Bank - India's largest private-sector bank with maximum international exposure among Indian banks - was hit by rumours about its exposure to Lehman assets. Solvency fears drove its depositors to withdraw large sums of money and the bank's stock value started to erode. ICICI's management responded to the crisis by initiating an intense public relations effort: the bank released information on its exposure and supported its position through media appearances of its top executives and statements issued by rating agencies, regulators, and the government of India. The bank emphasized the strength of its balance sheet, the limited exposure to risky assets, adequate provisioning, and a healthy cash reserve ratio. It alleged malaise and rumour-mongering by market intermediaries as the reason behind the crisis and denied any threats to its solvency. The public relations effort had barely concluded when another episode of stock collapse and customer withdrawal started. The case gives students an opportunity to evaluate crisis communication efforts in the age of new media and its link with business reputation. The student, in the role of a PR consultant, must decide why the efforts failed. What else could have been done to restore trust?

Foro Energy developed proprietary and patent-pending fiber-laser technologies that could disrupt existing processes and services for the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. These breakthrough laser technologies were protected by a strong intellectual property (IP) portfolio, which provided Foro with the flexibility to pursue a number of different business models. The market potential for oilfield applications was large, as global spending in the O&G E&P industry was expected to approach $600 billion in 2012.

Great Western Hospital (GWH) is a community hospital in Wiltshire, South West England and one of England's largest maternity providers, responsible for delivering over 9,000 babies per year. The case discusses the efforts of Dr. Harini Narayan, consultant obstetrician and gynecologist, to reorganize antenatal care delivery at GWH. Rather than treating high-risk pregnancies as a homogeneous group, Dr. Narayan pioneered the development of eleven condition-based, high-risk clinics led by dedicated multidisciplinary teams of physicians, midwives and nurses. The case profiles the Multiple Pregnancy Clinic in particular and its impact on perinatal indicators and outcomes.

In 2006, surgeon Ara Darzi identified several key areas, including acute stroke care, for improving health care across London. In response to his seminal call to action, stroke care was reorganized around eight hyper-acute stroke units covering London's five sectors, replacing the more than thirty units that previously delivered acute stroke care. This case profiles the roll-out of the new care delivery model in North Central London, where acute stroke care had previously been fragmented among five acute hospital trusts with varying care resources, capacity, and protocols. In the new model, stroke care would be delivered across facilities in an integrated fashion, with a single hyper-acute facility designated for care of the most acute and severe cases.

In 1996, Ted Happold, the founder of the engineering services firm Buro Happold passed away and Padraic Kelly became the firm's new Managing Director (MD). One of his first initiatives was "Aim for Growth" which was intended to help the firm grow beyond its current size where it was constrained by a structure of having each of the firm's founding partners responsible for a group of 25-30 engineers. This initiative was very successful but the firm then found itself with a lack of leadership skills at all levels of the organization to manage a company of a much larger size, growing by a factor of 10 over 10 years. The lack of leadership skills was recognized by clients who gave the firm feedback on this. In response, Buro Happold developed its first formal internal training programs under the name of "Archimedes Academy." The first two programs were: (1) the Job Leader Program, targeted for senior engineers and designed to help them be more effective in working with clients, and (2) the Project Leader Program, targeted for project leaders and designed to help them develop the "softer" management skills to complement their technical ones. A distinctive aspect of Archimedes Academy is that these first programs were developed and delivered by the cohorts who first attended them. Rather than partner with a university to develop an accredited program, the firm decided it would be better off developing the program itself, with the help of an outside consultant who had done something similar at his previous employer, in order to make sure the programs were specific enough to Buro Happold's needs and relevant to the firm's culture. The first two programs were a big success and the firm expanded the training offerings under the Archimedes Banner.

This is the tenth in a series of lecture notes which, if tied together into a textbook, might be entitled "Practical Regression." The purpose of the notes is to supplement the theoretical content of most statistics texts with practical advice based on nearly three decades of experience of the author, combined with over one hundred years of experience of colleagues who have offered guidance. As the title "Practical Regression" suggests, these notes are a guide to performing regression in practice. This note uses the theory of "supplier-induced demand" from health economics to illustrate key issues including reverse causality, the role of instrumental variables in establishing causality, and the characteristics of good instruments.

This is the eleventh in a series of lecture notes which, if tied together into a textbook, might be entitled "Practical Regression." The purpose of the notes is to supplement the theoretical content of most statistics texts with practical advice based on nearly three decades of experience of the author, combined with over one hundred years of experience of colleagues who have offered guidance. As the title "Practical Regression" suggests, these notes are a guide to performing regression in practice. Using an extended example on hospital lengths of stay, the note explains how to "deconstruct" a regression in order to parse out how each variable contributes to the overall result. Regression is viewed as an exercise in "benchmarking"-explaining why some observations in the data "outperform" or "underperform" others. The residual is viewed as a potential measure of managerial effectiveness, albeit one that must be treated with caution. The note provides step-by-step instructions for using regression for benchmarking.

This case concerns Microsoft's attempt to completely restructure its major global finance processes and operations through what the authors call a Vested Outsourcing agreement. In February 2007, Microsoft signed an outsourcing agreement with Accenture, with an original contract term of 7 years at a value of US$185 million. This was extended 2 years later, to 2018, with expanded scope, and a total contract value of $330 million. Called the OneFinance initiative, the effort outsourced nearly all back office finance transactions spread across 95 countries to service provider Accenture under a new kind of outsourcing model. Under the agreement the parties operate under incentives to improve performance and deliver increased value year-over-year, while sharing in the risks and rewards of doing so. The case focuses on the rationale for this distinctive approach to outsourcing and transformational change, and provides details of the definitions of work, measurements, pricing models and governance structures adopted. The fine-grained account of the OneFinance outsourcing arrangements provides an opportunity to identify the distinctive principles and practices adopted by the parties. Readers can compare and contrast the case with other outsourcing deals and assess the challenges in choosing the supplier and the approach. The case also invites an assessment of the risks being incurred, the inherent implementation and operational challenges and how they might be met. The case also raises questions about what levels of success might be achieved, and what conditions would need to be present for success. Finally, the case raises the issue of whether, and if so how, this distinctive 'vested' approach could be adopted elsewhere.

The CEO of a bicycle manufacturing company is considering outsourcing the production of one of the company's lines to a low-cost manufacturer. Students must analyze the relevant costs and strategic implications.

A middle manager has an attractive new product proposal that is expected to make a lot of money. However, senior management is rejecting it. Students must analyze the proposal and determine whether it is as good as presented and, if so, how to present it.

A multi-product company has a dysfunctional management control system. The system had gone into effect 18 months ago, and this year had become fully operational. The CEO was questioning its utility,

The CEO of an electric utility company is considering requesting a rate increase. At issue is the cost of the various services that the company provides and how overhead is to be allocated fairly to them.

The CEO of a health spa is trying to determine the cost of each of the Spa's services to as to improve pricing.

The CEO of a supplier of parts to automobile and truck companies has three concerns about the companuy's present cost accounting system: (1) its adequacy for purposes of cost control, (2) its accuracy in arriving at the true cost of products, and (3) its usefulness in providing data to judge the supervisor's performance.

The CEO of a retail distributor is trying to decide whether to keep or discontinue a product line. Students must undertake a tricky differential cost analysis

The CEO of a multi-media company is trying to determine the cost of each of the company's products to as to improve pricing

The CEO of a manufacturing company is assessing the value of variable costing as opposed to full-absorption costing. The teaching note contains a simple exercise to assist students to understand the differences.

The CEO of a retail distributor is trying to decide whether to keep or discontinue a product line. Students must undertake a tricky differential cost analysis