個案總覽

Appropriate for courses in operations management and process improvement. This technical note explains how to utilize process maps as tools to show workflow steps, clarify process expectations and responsibilities, and see possibilities for eliminating waste and redundancy. The note details when to use basic process mapping tools, why they work, and how to apply them. The note presents four types: Process Flowchart Map, Swim Lane Flowchart Map, Suppliers-Inputs-Process-Outputs-Customers (SIPOC) Tool, and Value Stream Map.

This note presents a simple way to estimate time equations using regression analysis in Excel. The note quickly outlines regression analysis, then presents a real-life case example from the natural gas industry that students can use to gain experience developing and interpreting the results of time equations.

Hugo Moreno, CEO of Salud Digna, was considering his growth options for the next three years. Would becoming a for-profit with access to greater capital be the best strategy or would this cause the organization to lose its social mission? Salud Digna provided diagnostic medical tests to the poor, had experienced rapid growth and was financially self-sufficient. Moreno was determined that the organization be as well managed as any company in Mexico

The learning objective of this case is to help students to recognize the interplay between intellectual property (IP) rights and corporate strategy. We do this by examining what is a fairly atypical circumstance today in which a single firm is able to secure what it perceives to be a frontier IP "estate" that blocks competitors from "practicing" in a significant part of the field. Those who elect to sign a license agreement must pay a high license fee and therefore help to fund the company's R&D. The company, meanwhile, must balance the immediate benefit of non-dilutive financing obtainable from the license fees vs. enabling a potential future competitor. The case setting is a lawsuit over a seemingly arcane issue: whether one of the co-owners of a key patent application is properly prosecuting the application. Understanding the issue requires students to progressively build up an understanding of some key aspects of U.S. patent law. Then by piecing together the strategy of the company and how it is driven by its IP position, students can understand why the litigation represents such a high stakes gamble.

A student is trying to incorporate various analytical tools to assist in selecting National Hockey League (NHL) players to a fantasy hockey pool, using individual player data from the NHL seasons 2006 to 2009. The student must come up with a strategy in which 16 players are selected for the 2010 season.

Economist Andrew Zimbalist explores the disconnect between colleges in fiscal crisis and the ballooning salaries of those college's football coaches. Many argue that market forces dictate the steep salaries in college athletics, but Zimbalist's research finds that the high pay does not correlate to performance and in fact it makes no economic sense. Colleges should rethink how much they're willing to give these CEOs with headsets.

Fresh research shows that people who've lived abroad are more creative problem solvers and effectively better managers.

Many organizations have anger-management programs for their most egregious bullies, but the reality is that the vast majority of employees will experience anger triggered by anything from a family quarrel to a lost parking space-and their work will suffer for it. Here's some fresh research on how anger affects cognitive function.

Research using fMRI brain scans by a team of neurologists shows an intriguing connection between high-level strategic and tactical thinking.

Contrary to what most people think, gossip is actually good for organizations. It can spread valuable information to employees and helps networks establish norms and censure those who don't adhere to them. So why do managers dislike it? Because it threatens their control. Research shows that the more you gossip, the higher your peers rate your informal influence.

One surefire way to avoid failure is to narrowly define it. If you care about your company and your customers, entrepreneur Seth Godin argues, you'll take a much more inclusive view.

Dan Ariely on the rationality of the Chilean savings plan.

Why large companies are hiring artists to draw their meetings.

Spreadsheet Supplement for KEL484.

As CEO of not-for-profit adoption agency The Cradle, Julie Tye had taken the organization from the brink of dissolution in 1992 to a position of financial stability and health by 2007. One of the innovative steps Tye took in 2002 was to introduce an online learning venture that provided education for families preparing to adopt. The Cradle launched Adoption Learning Partners (ALP), using donated funds and government grants when possible and subsidizing the rest. The income generated by ALP grew from zero in 2002 to approximately $50,000 per month in 2007. But ALP's major market (parents preparing to adopt internationally) was forecasted to decline 50% over the next three years; the Web site was outdated; and new competitors were entering the market. ALP had built a reputation as a pioneer in adoption e-learning by providing high-quality, effective online courses. But without the infusion of at least $400,000, ALP risked losing its leadership position and, possibly, its viability. ALP needed a significant investment of time, talent, and funding. Tye had an MBA, a keen business sense, and fourteen years of experience in healthcare administration and the social services field. Even with her leadership, did The Cradle have the appetite to take on such a demanding strategy? In the end, would it be worth the investment?

The Namaste case is a story of how Kellogg alumni couple Gary and Denise Gardner grow their Namaste-branded hair care line from production at the family's kitchen table into a formidable $80 million empire within a 14-year period. The Gardners come from a longtime hair care business lineage, the Soft Sheen dynasty, started by Gary's father decades earlier. Soft Sheen was ultimately sold to hair care giant L'Oreal for over $100 million. The Gardners claim Namaste's growth occurred through listening to the needs and desires of customers for healing hair care products that reminded them of nourishing household remedies. The hair care line became a leader in its industry but faced the dilemma of how to expand sales in new markets, especially international markets such as South Africa and Nigeria.

In today's complex environment, the most successful thinkers are able to quickly and effectively abstract the best qualities of radically different 'ways of seeing' and apply them to the situation at hand. The authors describe how the minds of these 'integrative thinkers' are dialectical - 'diaminds' for short - in that they can holds at least two contradictory ways of seeing in any critical situation, give each its full due, and instead of fleeing from the resulting tension, embrace it and come up with a third and better way. 'Stretching' the mind to achieve this, they argue, is a cornerstone of the diamind's way of being in the world; they describe how this is accomplished and how we can willfully augment our mind's faculties of real-time thinking to achieve creative solutions.

Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences Elinor Ostrom discusses the challenges posed by the world's common-pool resources (CPRs) and how to approach collective-action dilemmas. She presents seven 'design principles' for well-managed CPRs and talks about some of the key challenges to implementing them, explains what 'nested attributes' are and describing the benefits of collective management and 'polycentric' systems.

The term 'complexity' can be summed up by the phrase, 'Two's company, three's a crowd'. Complexity Science can be seen as the study of the phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects -- and a crowd is a perfect example of such an 'emergent phenomenon'. Everyday examples of crowds include collections of commuters, financial-market traders, human cells or insurgents -- and the associated crowd-like phenomena that emerge are traffic jams, market crashes, cancerous tumors and extreme weather. In each example, the precise nature of the crowd-like phenomena that emerges will depend on how the individual objects interact and how interconnected they are. In the end, the author shows that Complexity's role in making connections between previously-unrelated phenomena taken from distinct disciplines is a very important one.

In this interview from Rotman Magazine, the Wharton risk expert states that the hallmarks of the 21st century will likely be more and more unthinkable events, previously-unseen contexts, and pressure to react extremely quickly - even when we cannot predict the cascading impact of our actions. He explains the important role of 'creeping risks' and describes the three top risks for 2010, as outlined in his report for the World Economic Forum: underinvestment in infrastructure; fiscal crises; and chronic disease. In the end, he explains one of the key ironies of living in an interconnected world: that being selfish today means taking care of others.