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Grolsch reassesses its international strategy in light of the company's recent acquisition by SABMiller, the world's second-largest brewer. Grolsch was the 21st-largest global beer brand, sold 51.5 percent of its volume in international markets, and exported to 70 countries. However, its poor profitability in international markets--four countries alone accounting for two-thirds of foreign sales--and churn of markets and distribution partners raised concerns about the company's international strategy and execution. Grolsch's 60 years of history in foreign markets provide a rich backdrop to introduce a range of international strategy topics, including performance assessment, rationale for expansion, market selection, and choice of entry mode.

Mittal Steel's remarkable rise to the top of the steel industry spearheaded a wave of cross-border consolidation that aimed to fundamentally change the industry's competitive and geographic structure. This case provides the opportunity to examine how Lakshmi Mittal built his company's position via international acquisitions, to assess the logic of global integration in the steel industry, and to think through how Mittal can continue adding value to its acquired operations on an ongoing basis (i.e., post-turnaround) as a global steel company.

The Indian IT Services sector's rapid, profitable growth has transformed the geography and economics of IT while simultaneously spearheading India's broader economic resurgence. Discussion focuses on what many regard as the iconic Indian sector and illustrates the globalization that is under way in parts of the service sector. The case offers students the opportunity to analyze this industry's rise and prospects at a period when many observers were questioning whether its growth could be sustained.

This case provides an opportunity to examine the growth of offshore services from the perspective of India's oldest and largest IT services firm. Focusing on Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) at this stage of its development offers a window into the process of upgrading within a sector that historically competed based on low prices, as TCS aspires to compete also on a promise of superior quality. The case also provides an opportunity to discuss the international expansion of emerging market-based companies and the shifting geography of the IT services industry in the context of TCS's expansion in Latin America and Western IT services firms' expansion in India.

A manufacturer of spiral freezers, which allow food manufacturers to replace a batch freezing process with single piece flow in a fraction of the space, reviews the economics of replacing a batch freezing process with a spiral freezer for a customer. The case enables students to demonstrate an understanding of process analysis, bottlenecks, and Little's Law in the context of an economic cost/benefit analysis.

CEO Kelly Browne wrestles with the design of a new compensation system to promote the collaboration and cross-selling necessary for supporting her firm's new strategy. Marshall Gordon International, a global public relations (PR) firm, has recently expanded its service offering to include Executive Positioning, which requires significantly more teamwork, higher-level client interaction and more strategically-minded consultants than their traditional PR work. The CEO is pressured to find a compensation system that helps retain and motivate the firm's valued PR consultants, attract new talent, and get all professionals aligned behind the new strategy.

This case is an addendum that updates HBS Case No. 502-025, "The Future of Hybrid Electric Cars." It covers the 10 years, 2001 to 2011.

This two-party negotiation exercise features a real-life dispute between Merck and Johnson & Johnson regarding European distribution rights to two highly lucrative drugs.

This two-party negotiation exercise features a real-life dispute between Merck and Johnson & Johnson regarding European distribution rights to two highly lucrative drugs.

Supplements Remicade/Simponi: Confidential Instructions for Johnson & Johnson and Remicade/Simponi: Confidential Instructions for Merck.

The case provides an opportunity for students to develop practical knowledge of the role of operations management in a product recall situation, particularly in an emerging market context. Product recalls are an integral part of supply chain management (SCM). Companies inevitably face a question of when, not if, a recall will be necessary. These situations combine the complexity of operations with the time-urgency of a mission-critical task. The case also provides a rich context to learn about the interaction of SCM, information systems and reverse logistics, and to understand the marketing, logistics and communication challenges faced by a multinational company operating in an emerging market such as India.<br><br>The case presents the challenge faced by Nokia India in 2007. Nokia had built a strong brand reputation over a ten-year period and was a market leader in the Indian mobile devices. India, incidentally, was also Nokia's second largest market, next only to China. Suddenly, what corporate headquarters considered a routine product advisory for a defective battery, resulted in panic in customers after the Indian media widely publicized the potential dangers that defective batteries could pose.<br><br>Over a three-month period, Nokia India had to recall a few million batteries and replace them with new ones.<br><br>The objectives of the case include 1) developing an effective product recall / reverse logistics plan that would ensure preparedness for the challenges and urgent circumstances that might surface in a recall situation, 2) understanding the key criteria for success of product recall systems and 3) understanding the interface of management action and the logistics system under a crisis situation.

This case unfolds the financial undertakings of Lehman Brothers Inc., which was once the fourth largest investment bank in the world. On September 15, 2008, less than a year after the bank presented its largest profit ever, the world saw it descending. In terms of size of assets, Lehman is considered the largest bankruptcy in history, with assets summing up to US$639 billion and liabilities of US$613 billion. The U.S. credit crisis uprooted the strength of Wall Street, with Lehman announcing a petition it filed under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code. The bankruptcy raised some interesting questions. The biggest among them being: How could a large-sized company such as Lehman with a track record of reporting huge profits, become so helpless that it had to file for bankruptcy?Undoubtedly, the financial scenario in the United States had become bad, especially for those companies that were into mortgage banking. Lehman had some additional drawbacks. This case tries to deal with a couple of such problems, one of them being the accountancy of its Repo 105 transactions. The modus operandi of the company has been unveiled to show how it managed to hide its true financial state by using gaps in the financial reporting system across the borders and remain clean handed for years.

The director of operations at Avalanche Corporation was faced with some major decisions. The firm was experiencing considerable difficulties in matching supply with demand. As a result, the company was overproducing and had to sell the excess at a loss. At a recent board meeting, the vice-president of marketing reported on a new snowboard product, the Avalanche Racer. She presented her rationale for introducing a new ski product at this time by highlighting the growth of the ski equipment sales over the past five years. The board meeting concluded with the general manager tasking the director of operations with developing an analysis and reporting back his findings to the board the following week.

The managing director of Apollo Health Street (AHS), a healthcare business process outsourcing (BPO) company headquartered in Pennsylvania, United States, was pondering two dilemmas: securing short term growth for his company, and finding new ways to compete in a changing industry. AHS was itself a subsidiary of Apollo Health Enterprises Ltd. (AHEL), an integrated healthcare company located in Hyderabad in southern India. AHS had been growing at 80 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) since 2005, aiming to reach $100 million in sales by March 2010. Its target was to increase annual sales to $500 million within three years in a highly competitive space, which if successful would move AHS into the top three BPO companies in the healthcare sector. How should it secure short term growth? The second dilemma was how to plan for the future. Industry analysts had predicted that over the next five to 10 years, healthcare BPO would become unrecognizable from its current form. The managing director believed that although scaling up would strengthen the company's position for the short term, the company should also be looking for solutions to stay relevant to the customer. How should AHS influence the shape of healthcare BPO in the future? What new ways of competing could the company pursue?

This note provides an overview of private equity in Europe as of mid-2010.

The 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic posed enormous challenges for state health departments across the U.S. This case focuses on the experience of Tennessee - which endured an intense resurgence of the disease in late summer and early fall 2009 - and explores, in particular, how state health officials, working with their partners from local government and the private sector, mobilized in advance of this second wave of the disease. An array of preparedness efforts, such as the development of mechanisms for distributing vaccine, ultimately put the state in a strong position to deal with H1N1 come fall, but health officials still experienced considerable difficulty in several areas, including vaccine delivery, communicating with an anxious public, and managing a surge of patients seeking care.

This exercise reviews depreciaton of fixed assets. It covers double-declining balance method, units-of-output, straight-line depreciation, trade-ins and depreciating pooled assets, and it emphasizes the principle of depreciating assets according to their use.

This note provides an overview of private equity in emerging markets as of late 2009.

Overview on the state of Nokia since the "Emerging Nokia?" case was written.

Ruth Ann Norton, executive director of the National Coalition to End Childhood Lead Poisoning (CECLP), founded the Green & Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) in order to leverage newly available federal funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) for weatherizing low-income housing. Unfortunately, by June 2011, the ARRA funding was winding down, and Norton was looking for other, sustainable sources of financing to keep the GHHI program alive.