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The price of pharmaceuticals in the Philippines is second only to Japan in Asia and one of the highest in the world despite the Philippines being a less developed country and nearly half of its population living on US$2 a day. The case illustrates how The Generics Pharmacy a local pharmaceutical company challenged the existing industry business model and became the largest pharmaceutical retailer in the country within a period of only three years. Under the strategic leadership of CEO Benjamin Liuson, The Generics Pharmacy succeeded in formulating a superior value proposal by focusing on the supply and demand side constructs at the bottom of the pyramid and bringing affordable high quality medicines within reach of low income individuals. Superior leadership, management and strategic initiative succeeded in integrating and balancing tenets of corporate social responsibility, entrepreneurial foresight and resource based strategy to catapult the company into a leadership position.

Candace Leak is a young female college graduate who quit her successful job to start a luxury pet shampoo company, Cain & Able Collections (named after her two dogs). With no encouragement from her family, Leak bootstrapped the venture and turned her idea into a million dollar enterprise. The case follows Leak as she wins contracts with Petco and Whole Foods and is featured in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. This success however extracts a personal and emotional toll. Eight years later, after getting married and having a son, Leak encounters a critical crossroads. She is still passionate about her company, but wants to focus on her family. Leak must decide whether to hire a CEO, sell the company, merge with her competitor, or raise venture capital.

"Market Design in Online Businesses" characterizes the challenges entrepreneurs may face in creating a well-functioning ecosystem of users, and helps equip entrepreneurs with tools to overcome these obstacles. Key principles include ensuring thickness, alleviating congestion stemming from overuse, addressing asymmetric information, ensuring that it is safe and straightforward for users to participate, and designing monetization strategies that do not disrupt, but instead contribute to the well-being of the ecosystem.

This note provides an overview of the Harvard Business School course "The Online Economy: Strategy and Entrepreneurship." It covers the framework for the course, key principles within each course module, and a synopsis of each case, along with the lessons the case is meant to convey.

ASAHI Net developed a cloud-based platform for higher education institutions to use in Japan and was wondering if that platform could be accepted in the U.S. as well.

Samarco produced iron ore pellets used for making steel. In 2003, the company had a 17% share of the global market of the product. At the time it had 1,286 employees, split between its units in Germano, in the State of Minas Gerais, and Ponta de Ubu, in the State of Espírito Santo.The two units were linked by an ore conveyor 396 km long, with a maximum carrying capacity of 15.5 million tons a year. The company's mission was "to be a Brazilian supplier of high quality iron for the global steel industry, creating value for all its stakeholders". In line with this guideline, between 1997 and 2003, Samarco coordinated and financed the Bento Rodrigues Popular Environmental Education program. The aim was to contribute to the development of the community living in the Bento Rodrigues district, by gaining the commitment of the residents for identifying community problems and seeking solutions that might increase local development. In spite of the reach of concrete results, after the end of the direct intervention undertaken by the company, a decline in the participation of the community was perceived, along with the discontinuity of the actions begun. In 2003, the need to build a second ore conveyor provided Samarco with a new opportunity for interacting with the communities. Its prior experience with the Bento Rodrigues Popular Environmental Education Program caused the Environment Manager to propose a new social project concept for the company, called the Social Responsibility Education and Communication Program - PROECOS. This program, to be implemented in partnership with GAIA (Group for Interdisciplinary Application to Learning) had broad objectives: to improve the company's image; to involve the communities in the preparation of sustainable social-environmental projects and to build a network of partners for meeting local demands and proceeding with development actions after the end of the company's involvement in the Program.

The case examines the issues faced by a hotel management and development company as it tries to increase the return to its shareholders. The firm's major shareholders have commented that they believe the firm is currently under-valued, so management is considering several means of unlocking extra value. Due to difficult economic conditions resulting from the Global Economic Crisis, there are both many opportunities as well as many risks to the alternatives they are considering. The case provides both the opportunity to use several different valuation methods to determine if the company is, in fact, undervalued, as well as a discussion of several alternatives for unlocking value ranging from starting an active acquisition strategy, to re-organizing its corporate structure with either an updated capital structure or converting to a real estate income trust.

This case profiles the evolution of General Electric's African American Form (AAF), an employee affinity group, and its efforts to increase the company's involvement in Africa. The AAF formed in 1991 to help advance GE's recruitment, retention and development of black employees. By 1995, members of the AAF started asking Jack Welch whether the company was planning to develop business in Africa. After Welch invited the group to conduct due diligence, it was concluded that the timing was not right for GE to make a significant investment in Africa. Yet, when Jeffrey Immelt began attending the AAF Symposia in 2001, the question about GE's involvement in Africa resurfaced. In 2004, Immelt pledged $20 million to fund, "The Africa Project" (later renamed, "Developing Health Globally")-a GE philanthropic effort sponsored by the GE Foundation and the AAF to improve healthcare outcomes in Africa.

Students are required to develop a persuasion strategy for Universita' Bocconi, which is in the midst of a profound strategic redirection. Such redirection is resisted by a large number of vocal faculty members. The focus of the exercise is on framing and categorization.

This group exercise induces students to: a) recollect and share personal experiences with cognitive biases; b) reflect on how such biases can be countered. The exercise assumes that students are familiar with mental biases, especially those that might affect strategic decisions such as anchoring, confirmatory traps, overconfidence, et cetera.

Talismark, which helped its customers manage their waste, was considering re-engineering its business fundamentals to dramatically increase profitability by changing its sales and information processes. Implementing the changes would be expensive and would interrupt its new customer acquisition efforts, and it would be 18 months until the company could begin to acquire new business. The case explores the rationale and consequences of re-engineering a business.

Newspaper headlines and editorials revealed the intense attention the euro zone had received in the last few months. The current crisis occurred shortly after Greece announced that its 2009 budget deficit was 13% of GDP-twice as high as previously predicted. For some, this was the beginning of the end for the euro zone. Could it lead to the demise of the euro altogether? Others insisted that expelling Greece might be necessary. In tune with headlines at the time, the exchange markets did not display much confidence in the euro. By summer 2010, the euro had lost at least 10% of its value against the dollar since the beginning of 2010. Financial markets were nervous. What should EU leaders do help stave off a major crisis?

The managing director of a steel plant faces the decision of how much of each raw material to order for the plant for the following month. Due to lower and upper bounds on the amounts of each raw material in a batch and varying amounts of electricity and time consumed for different raw materials, one can't simply use the cheapest raw material. A linear program and the solver optimization function of Excel will provide the optimal amounts that meet the constraints. Interestingly, the best mixture for a batch is not the best mixture for a monthly plan. Shadow prices indicate the value of relaxing constraints. The typical monthly model from a student will be nonlinear, although it can be written as a linear model. This case provides the basis for an introductory class on linear programming and linear versus nonlinear models.

Spreadsheet for case UV6307

The case explores the use and importance of corporate sponsorships, specifically how these relationships are formed with the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. The associate director of National Corporate Programs at the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation (the Foundation) needs to determine the Foundation's direction regarding its corporate sponsorship program. Due to the slowdown in the economic environment, a major sponsor of the Foundation, who has contributed more than $1 million to the charity over the past five years, decided to pull two products from the shelf. The associate director needs to find a way to replace that support. Fortunately, the Foundation was approached by three corporations who were interested in becoming corporate sponsors. The associate director and her team now need to evaluate the three corporate sponsorship proposals to determine whether they fit with the Foundation's values and goals.

In winter 2010 Bob Stetzel, the new Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Vermont Teddy Bear (VTB), hopes to replace or modernize many of the company's existing systems and invest in some new applications. This catalog marketer (via online and print catalogs) offers three separately managed brands: Vermont Teddy Bear (VTB), PajamaGrams, and Calyx Flowers. Sales are highly seasonal, with peak volumes at Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Stetzel has spent his first few months on the job cataloging systems and databases, learning about the 'spider web' of middleware connecting various applications and platforms, and locating employees with expertise to fix them. The company has survived an economic downturn and several costly strategic missteps. The CEO is seeking new sources of revenue and ways to leverage their well-known brand, while the CIO needs to set Information Technology (IT) priorities: should they invest in a full-featured Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) package or take other steps that would more quickly yield tangible results? Whatever choice he makes, Stetzel will have to convince the CEO and the Board of Directors to provide the necessary resources. This case provides students with an opportunity to place themselves in the shoes of a CIO wrestling with strategic IT alignment challenges at a time when resources are severely constrained and competitive rivalry is fierce.

This case traces the history and evolution of Knowledge Management at the World Bank. While primarily a financial institution offering customized loans and grants across a wide range of sectors in some 100 countries, the World Bank has increasingly become involved in developing, storing, and transferring knowledge requested by its clients for project and other development. Currently there is a growing interest and demand for the sharing of Bank knowledge and its more formal knowledge-based advisory services. Many of the more advanced middle-income countries have graduated from the Bank's development assistance programs, but still want to have access to the Bank's knowledge capital, whether this is in the form of cross-country evidence, informal policy notes, or specialized advisory services. In this case, it is against this background that the Bank and its shareholders are grappling with the question of how best to combine and leverage its knowledge capabilities along with its financial resources. HKS Case Number 1936.0

After its 2009-2010 fiscal crisis shook the euro, could the Greek government stabilize debt, avoid default, and stay on the euro? This case looks at the Greek social and political road to fiscal crisis; the economics of that crisis and efforts to recover from it; the danger the crisis posed to the euro; cooperation and conflict among European states, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund to try to help Greece emerge from crisis; and the role financial markets played in these events.

Charles "Charlie" E. Merrill was a visionary who opened the door to investing for the masses in America. The "financial supermarket" strategy, which Merrill conceived in the late thirties, revolutionized the brokerage and financial services of his time and is widely recognized as one of the most important strategic innovations in the history of the financial sector. This case opens a window on the genesis of Merrill's strategic insight. It focuses especially on how Merrill came to identify the analogy (banking as supermarkets) that led him to see his industry through a very different lens than most of strategic leaders at competing firms.

Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), confronted in 2003 with an urgent need to change how it operated externally, adopted a highly innovative approach to communicating internally. This case, set in 2010, presents an overview of the new, more interactive model of employee communication that HPCL introduced as part of its effort to adapt to increased market competition during the early 21st century. (HPCL, previously a wholly state-owned company within a state-controlled industry, had begun to operate in an increasingly privatized environment.) At the center of the new model was a series of "vision workshops"--structured conversations in which employees at all levels of the company took part in developing strategic and organizational visions for their regional offices, for their business units, and for the company as a whole. The case also discusses HPCL's use of digital technology to enhance employee communication; its leaders' increased emphasis on direct, "one-to-one" interaction with employees; and some of the consequences (both external and internal) of this more conversational model of organizational communication. As of 2010, HPCL was a Fortune Global 500 company, with more than 11,000 employees and with annual revenues of more than $23 billion. The question that company leaders now faced was whether HPCL's novel approaches to communicating with employees were appropriate to its next stage of internal development and external growth.