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In March 2011, Troy Carter, manager of pop star Lady Gaga, reflects on decisions made regarding his artist's concert tour and faces a new set of challenges regarding the launch of Lady Gaga's new album, Born This Way. Is a huge, expensive launch akin to that of a "tent-pole" movie the best way to capitalize on Gaga's popularity, or is a more moderate approach that relies on word-of-mouth the right way to proceed? Designed to help students understand the decisions that helped propel Lady Gaga into one of the entertainment world's biggest names. Written from the perspective of her manager, the case provides rich insights into the artist's touring, recorded-music, and social-media activities, as well as supporting economic data.

The founder of a U.S. provider of geographic information system services focused on sustainability must decide whether to open a Canadian facility. The facility would be in operation for five years and enough information is provided for a detailed cross-border capital budgeting analysis. In addition to introducing foreign currency issues, the case provides exposure to subscription-based revenue streams and discussion of relevant costs.

This note introduces search engine marketing as presented by Google's popular AdWords advertising program and as monitored by Google Analytics.

The managing director at a major investment bank is preparing his team for a visit to Lululemon Athletica. The investment bank has been following Lululemon's development over the past few years and has dealt with the company. It believes that there is a window of opportunity for Lululemon's founder and private equity investors to either undertake an IPO or raise debt to fund Lululemon's U.S. expansion.

By 2011, many nations had experienced an escalation in deficits and debt. It appeared that some might not be able to service their debt, and might have to default. The United States a budget crisis in which "left-wing liberal" Democrats wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy while "right-winged conservative" Republicans wanted to cut expenditures. A philosophical divide existed over the role of personal responsibility versus the role of government. In the European Union, the "PIIGS" - Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain - seemed on the verge of default, and other members of the euro zone created new loan programs to assist them in their budget crisis. However, these loans included a requirement to move towards balanced budgets. Citizens in the borrowing nations objected to the severe tax increases and expenditure cuts, while citizens of the successful nations asked why they should have to pay. It was not clear who would bear the burden of reducing the deficits and debt.

Ten years after having launched a chain of non-profit health clinics, its founder is now debating the merits of scaling the operation by converting to a for-profit enterprise.

Suitable for MBA, EMBA, GEMBA, and executive education programs, this note sets the stage to unfold an analysis of popular notions about how the world works. On one hand, some believe that global competition has created a flattened world and that globalization has leveled the playing field. Yet a zest to view the world as flat, others have said, results in an underestimation of the differences between countries-standardization, exact replication, and scale expansion on a global basis could be problematic. In this note, we acknowledge that the flat world has some lumps, but regardless of whether the world is considered to be flat or round, there are certain implications on both sides that business leaders need to be aware of in order to create global efficiency. The note offers three practical examples that students can work through and apply their learning.

The vice president of business development for the Better Living Spaces company is excited about the prospects of his first acquisition, Juno Manufacturing, Inc., (JMI). He decides it would be prudent to verify that the reported assets on JMI's balance sheets are legitimate. Students will learn the paths he decides to pursue to gain firsthand knowledge of JMI's assets.

This survey of Google's rise to prominence as the de facto search engine of choice focuses on the theme of relevance as a guiding principle. As Google has diversified its offering through both organic growth and acquisition, the potential manifestations of relevance have multiplied, to the point where the nature of its market may need to be reassessed.

In 1994, US-based building-control systems specialist ECG US created a joint venture with China-based CIG Ltd, Realton JV, in order to manufacture and sell building-control system products, such as air-conditioning valves and fire safety equipment, on the mainland. The joint venture was out of control from the beginning. Sales were weak and, unbeknown to ECG US, the joint venture used complex maneuvers in order to gain contracts. With Realton unable to generate a profit, ECG US decided to dissolve the venture altogether by 2001. Nonetheless, the Chinese partner was adamant about continuing its operation, maintaining that Realton was profitable by Chinese accounting standards. As the two parties enter negotiation, how can they find a solution to this quagmire and protect their interests at the same time?

More than ever, commercializing new patent-based products requires drawing on multiple inventions typically spread among a variety of organizations. Success requires overcoming the organizational barriers and transaction costs involved with accessing intellectual property. Innovators must also evaluate how best to appropriate value from the unique combinations that they create. This article presents a framework that provides ways of approaching both these challenges. These include a set of guidelines to assist managers in choosing from among three types of commercialization arrangements: licensing, componentization, and integration. This article then explores three strategies for appropriating the value of the innovator's own patent(s): proprietary, defensive, and leveraging. The choice of a strategy determines the scope of the intellectual property portfolio that needs to be assembled to best capture value. Four case studies demonstrate the application of the key theoretical concepts in real-world situations.

Getting customers engaged is one of the most significant challenges for firm-sponsored virtual communities. This article describes the efforts that managers can undertake to foster and sustain customer engagement through a firm-sponsored virtual community. A sponsor must understand consumer needs and motivations, promote member participation, and motivate members to cooperate by making them feel embedded and empowered. In assessing and communicating the benefits of engagement, managers should consider three interlocking sources of engagement value, namely, participatory value, relational value, and financial value.

This article describes the leadership style of Coach Jack Clark, under whose leadership Cal Rugby has won 21 national championships during the last 25 years. The article examines his leadership philosophy and strategies to create a high performance team culture. It discusses how his experiences as an athlete and businessman helped shape his approach to leading and developing teams. He cites the importance of good recruitment practices, setting expectations, constant performance feedback, managing conflict, and having a shared definition of leadership as keys factors to a successful team. In 2010, Clark faced a series of unprecedented challenges, including having his team downgraded from varsity to club status because of budget cuts. This article describes how he addressed these challenges.

Dynamic capabilities have been proposed as a useful way to understand how organizations are able to adapt to changes in technology and markets. Organizational ambidexterity, the ability of senior managers to seize opportunities through the orchestration and integration of existing assets to overcome inertia and path dependence, is a core dynamic capability. While promising, research on dynamic capabilities and ambidexterity has not yet been able to specify the specific mechanisms through which senior managers are actually able to reallocate resources and reconfigure assets to simultaneously explore and exploit. Using interviews and qualitative case studies from thirteen organizations, this article explores the actions senior managers took to implement ambidextrous designs and identify which ones helped or hindered them in their attempts. A set of interrelated choices of organization design and senior team process determine which attempts to build ambidextrous organizations are successful.

Companies operating in multiple countries face different and often changing regimes of environmental regulation. This regulatory turbulence raises the question of what environmental strategies multinational enterprises with a portfolio of divergent regulatory regimes should develop in relation to their international business expansion strategies. Forward-looking multinationals seeking to develop an effective environmental strategy should integrate relative regulatory stringency and international market interdependence. There are four environmental strategies that match different regulatory/market configurations for multinationals from both developed and emerging markets, and which identify the factors that drive strategic changes. The article presents a "regulatory turbulence tool" that describes relevant regulatory/market configurations and prescribes contingently effective, dynamic environmental strategies.

This case focuses on a significant problem faced by county-owned Prairie Health Service's administrators: What could be done to reduce multiple billings and other redundancies among the four divisions of the organization? The administrators' goal was to implement an integrated records management system that would streamline the registration and billing processes for patients thereby increasing efficiency and timeliness, as well as reducing financial losses. While this was a fiscally responsible goal for the organization, the records management software package selected by the CEO was inadequate for the task. Rather than listen to the recommendations of his division administrators who had spent considerable time researching potential software, the CEO seemed to be basing his selection decision on the personal relationship he had developed with sales representatives from one of the software firms.

Describes the issues facing a founder-ceo regarding building a board, assembling an executive team, managing tension between co-founders, and outsourcing development work.

Describes the issues facing a founder-ceo regarding building a board, assembling an executive team, managing tension between co-founders, and outsourcing development work.

The Oasis of the Seas is the largest cruise ship ever built and was launched in 2009 in the midst of the financial crisis. Two analysts from ELP Equities, a Florida-based research firm, are trying to determine which cruise customer segments the Oasis is targeted at. The information they have gathered allows them to conduct a customer segmentation analysis is preparation for a hypothetical meeting with the marketing director of Royal Caribbean International, the corporation that commissioned the Oasis.

In January 2011, the group medical director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd (AHEL), India's largest integrated healthcare provider in the private sector, is weighing his options in driving clinical excellence among group hospitals. AHEL has been using a Clinical Score Card, called ACE@25, as a tool to measure and monitor clinical excellence which is becoming a source of differentiation in Indian healthcare industry. ACE@25measures 25 clinical parameters, benchmarked with the best globally, every month. The group medical director is wondering whether his role should be limited to monitoring clinical outcomes or whether, in order to drive clinical excellence, he should also prescribe the steps that the medical supreintendents of individual hospitals should take in improving outcomes in their watch.