個案總覽

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How are companies approaching intellectual property (IP) strategy, and what are successful strategies for managing IP? To explore such questions, the author and his research team conducted a detailed survey of senior IP executives at 34 companies. The survey findings indicate that IP has become an area of focus for the executive committee and the board at many companies. What's more, the study found that top executives' involvement in IP strategy was correlated with better IP performance. Analysis of the survey data suggests another intriguing point: Some companies are now using an approach to IP strategy that the author calls "full-fledged IP protection." This "full-fledged IP protection" strategy includes seeking technical and nontechnical IP protection for even minor inventions, in an attempt to "pack" technology spaces with IP claims. This practice differs from a classic IP strategy of using IP to support core research and development. At least in some industries, this change in IP use may, the author suggests, be causing the nature of IP competition to shift from the world of "real" products to that of "potential" products. The study also found that, in the companies surveyed, IP-related tasks often entail cooperation among staff from different functional areas within a company, such as product designers and patent and trademark attorneys. Having clear-cut rules about IP at the functional level was associated with better IP performance in the companies surveyed, as was having corporate management devote time to listening to the company's most senior IP officers. On the other hand, failure to sell or license out IP when circumstances facilitated or necessitated such a trade was associated with significantly lower IP performance.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How can companies design products and product lines to maximize profits? Out of all the potential configurations available to them, how should they decide which ones to offer? The authors have developed a framework for balancing the costs of developing and offering a rich line of products and services against customer demand for additional choice. Their methodology helps managers make informed decisions about which features to include in the product; which variations to include in a product line; and how the offerings should evolve with technology and competition. Using examples from the music, software, and media industries, and citing companies including Apple, Dell, Microsoft, The New York Times, and ESPN, the authors describe five basic types of product offerings: the a la carte offering, the specialization offering, the all-in-one offering, the basic/premium offering, and the have-it-your-way offering. By highlighting how costs influence product design, they depart from the standard product-success metrics, such as revenue and market share, which are the main focus of most of the work on product bundling. The authors note that the decision to offer a product and how it is designed generally affects both the fixed costs and the marginal costs. They argue that product architects need to expand their definition of fixed and marginal costs beyond those that they typically track and account for to cover costs across the entire supply chain. Although some of these costs may be hard to quantify, they are often too significant to ignore.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. To measure brand health (and, contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors contend, it can be measured) is to obtain a 360-degree view of a brand in its marketplace--a wide-angle view of consumers and competitors. What is required, they say, is isolating underlying elements that matter, measuring them, and linking them to business performance. Based upon quantitative survey data collected in 2007 from consumers in large sectors of the U.S. economy--food and grocery, wireless services, and banking--drawn from major geographic markets nationwide, the authors offer a statistically reliable set of brand-health elements for companies to measure and use as leading indicators of sales risk and potential: brand leadership, attractiveness, distinctiveness, satisfaction, and liabilities. They then map those elements to four revenue-related expressions of customer commitment: current customer spending, risk of sales loss, revenue momentum, and likelihood of referrals. The resulting framework allows marketers and investors to "connect the dots" between key elements of brand health and business performance and to reconcile previously separate notions: brand and operations, the short term and the long term, investment and return. In the research, the number of companies consumers named as having strong brands was surprisingly small. Fifteen companies accounted for fully 50% of the mentions and only three companies--Apple, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft--accounted for 25% of mentions. The authors conclude with a set of best practices that are implied by the brand-health framework and also characterize companies that are perceived as having the strongest brands.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The largely erroneous perception that breakthroughs are impossible to predict arises from the tendency to focus on just the breakthroughs while ignoring the iterative process of invention and its distribution of outcomes. When all inventions are considered, they demonstrate a highly skewed distribution in which almost all inventions are useless, a few are of moderate value, and only a very, very few are breakthroughs. Those breakthroughs constitute the "long tail" of innovation. If managers wish to understand how those breakthroughs arise, they cannot ignore the process that generates the entire distribution. In particular, they need to keep in mind the following three measures of inventive success: shots on goal (the total number of inventions a company generates), average score (the mean value of those inventions), and maximum scores (the breakthrough inventions). Various factors can affect a company's inventive output, including the presence of inventors who work alone, the type of collaboration among those inventors who work in teams, the amount of team diversity, and the degree to which inventors apply science in the innovation process. Greater team diversity, for instance, will help generate more shots on goal although, on average, those shots will be less successful. But diversity also will increase the variance of the outcome, so that failures as well as breakthroughs are more likely. Thus companies first need to identify how they want to improve their innovation process and then take the appropriate measures to address any deficiencies. Only then can they improve their capacity to innovate in ways that make the best sense for the organization as a whole.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How can established organizations build successful new businesses on an ongoing basis? In their study of nearly 30 corporations as diverse as Google, DuPont, and Cargill, the authors identified two dimensions under the direct control of management that consistently differentiated how companies approach corporate entrepreneurship. The first is organizational ownership: Will the primary ownership for the creation of new businesses be focused in a designated group, or will it be diffused across the organization? The second is resource authority: Will projects be funded from a dedicated corporate pool of money or in an ad hoc manner, perhaps through business-unit budgets? Together the two dimensions generate a matrix with four basic models of corporate entrepreneurship: the opportunist, the enabler, the advocate, and the producer. In the opportunist model (example: Zimmer Holdings), the company has no deliberate approach to corporate entrepreneurship, and new businesses are built mainly from the grassroots efforts of a few "project champions." Enabler companies (example: Google), provide funding and senior executive attention to prospective projects. In the advocate model (example: DuPont), the company strongly evangelizes for corporate entrepreneurship, but business units provide the primary funding. Lastly, producer companies (example: Cargill), establish and support a full-service group with a mandate for corporate entrepreneurship. Each of the four models has a different objective, function, and set of challenges. Whichever model is chosen, the crucial thing to remember is that corporate entrepreneurship needs to be nurtured and managed as a strategic, deliberate act.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Brazil's poorest households have an annual total income of around $73 billion per annum; China's have an annual income of about $691 billion; and India's have an income of about $378 billion. However, even though there has been a burst of interest in recent years in how economic growth is unfolding in the developing world, most of the research is still focused on how growth occurs in developed markets. Strategic innovation in developing markets is fundamentally different from what occurs in developed economies, the authors argue. It is not about locating "new whos" (assuming the products and services are affordable, there are plenty of under- and nonconsuming customers to tap), more often it involves adapting existing products to customers with fewer resources or different cultural backgrounds and creating basic market ingredients such as distribution channels and customer demand from the ground up. Using examples from mobile telephony in the Philippines; consumer goods, power equipment, and auto industries in India; the personal care market in Brazil; and the appliance industry in China, the authors discuss cases from companies including Smart Communications, Hindustan Unilever, Tata Motors, Eveready, and Haier. They present a framework for strategic innovation based on four factors (affordability, acceptability, availability, and awareness) and show how companies can create value.

Thomson, a French multinational, went through a decade of dramatic change in the early years of the 21st century. From a state-owned enterprise earning 97% of its revenue from television sets and other analog consumer electronics, Thomson had become a publicly traded company providing digital video services and equipment to major movie studios, broadcast networks, and retailers, as well as satellite, cable, and telecom operators. The Group had just met its financial targets for 2006 and had achieved organic growth of 6% in the first half of 2007. Yet even as he reflected on these successes, CEO Frank Dangeard knew that much remained to be done to secure the company's leadership position against aggressive competition in a rapidly shifting and uncertain technological environment. Traces the evolution and transformation of the company and highlights the difficult choices Thomson faces in an ever evolving high-tech industry.

Climate change will affect everything businesses do, as government efforts to mitigate carbon emissions cause their prices to rise steeply. This special edition of Forethought takes a hard-nosed look at the risks and opportunities of climate change. Michael E. Porter and Forest L. Reinhardt argue that the effects of climate change on companies' operations are now so tangible and certain that the issue is best addressed with the tools of the strategist, not the philanthropist. Reinhardt also posits, in another article, that success in a carbon-constrained world will be determined by innovation and acumen, requiring companies to make bold moves. Peter Schwartz explains that firms that do business in vulnerable regions can advance their interests if they help those areas adapt to global warming. Daniel C. Esty notes increasing pressure on corporations to reduce emissions, predicting that companies that fail to do so will face grave consequences. Andrew J. Hoffman says that corporations need to know what regulatory issues are at stake--and where. Alyson Slater of Global Reporting Initiative discusses the challenges and benefits of voluntary disclosure. Auden Schendler cautions companies buying up renewable energy certificates that they could end up tarnishing their green credentials. Theodore Roosevelt IV and John Llewellyn explain that virtually any firm in any sector can reap the benefits of investors' surging demand for green business ideas. Vicki Bakhshi and Alexis Krajeski show how climate change will affect businesses in the midterm. Maria Emilia Correa describes a key plank of the strategy at Masisa, a company in Chile, that is engaging B2B customers in efforts to become greener. Mark Way and Britta Rendlen explain why insurer Swiss Re is persuading employees to reduce their carbon footprints. HBR also provides a forecast of the extreme climate phenomena likely to occur in the future, and their expected repercussions on industry, agriculture, and settlements.

Anduro Marketing is a Canadian company that sells technical services to companies wanting to improve their search engine website rankings. Though small, Anduro has attracted several major clients in both Canada and the United States, and expects steady profitability and growth. Anduro believes it can generate substantial additional profit by developing and selling a suite of software products that automate its technical service offerings. Anduro's managers must decide whether Anduro is better off staying with its current safe and profitable strategy or if Anduro should instead pursue a riskier but potentially more profitable software sales model. Several tough questions must be answered to determine whether the risk is worth the reward. The Anduro case provides an interesting description of an Internet technical/marketing services business and contrasts this with software sales.

This case study chronicles the creation and transformation of a Singaporean joint venture, Eagle Services Asia (ESA). The case describes some early start-up problems, including a forced shutdown by the Civilian Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). The resulting shakeup of the ESA management team provides a fresh start and an opportunity to reinvigorate the company using lean management principles. Managerial decisions play a key role in ESA's success, together with the discipline and training of the workforce. Students will gain an understanding of cultural difficulties associated with international joint ventures, and learn fundamental aspects of lean management including how to create and sustain a lean culture. The case also provides insight into the worldwide aircraft engine business, the engine overhaul process and cultural barriers that may arise when managing operations in foreign countries.

Helps students develop an elevator pitch for their most important asset--themselves. Before class students are asked to interview a potential employer and to develop preliminary elevator pitches. Once in class, students work through an exercise that helps them refine their elevator pitches and better understand several key marketing principles. Leads to an engaging and thought-provoking discussion.

The challenges and best strategies for the commercialization of university technologies are illustrated in this case which documents an MRI breakthrough that arose from the Charles Marcus laboratory at Harvard. Students discuss the interdependencies of intellectual property protection, strategy choices for science based breakthroughs, and business models for university technology.

Partners in Health is a Boston-based, not-for-profit that provides health care to people in some of the poorest regions of the world, including Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda, and Peru. In 1998, PIH established a program (PACT) in Boston to bring care to AIDS and TB patients who were not well served by existing care delivery systems. Describes PIH's programs in the developing world and the way in which lessons learned in these countries informed the design and management of PACT. Examines the balance between customized and standardized approaches to care and challenges students to examine their preconceived notions of the social role of a health care delivery organization. Dr. Heidi Behforouz, PACT's director, must decide whether a service design honed in developing countries can be rolled out more broadly in one the world's richest nations.

An intern at SC Johnson requested a meeting to discuss a new initiative he wanted to pursue after analyzing coupons for SC Johnson's Glade brand. The intern had identified a large variance in coupon redemption rates and coupon return metrics, and wanted to discuss the possibility of developing a better way to plan coupon promotions.

Prashant Lakhera, senior analyst at Credit Rating Agency Limited (CRA), has been working with Deepak Ghosh, project manager of the Construction Development Board, on a report that needs to be submitted within the next few days. Because Ghosh had been acting inappropriately in front of clients, Lakhera and Gagan Vedi, the other analyst working on the report, were concerned about how this might damage the image of CRA. Shortly before the report was due, Lakhera asked Ghosh for his contribution to the report. Ghosh indicated that he did not care and he walked away from the team. Now Lakhera had to decide what to do about the urgent deadline for the report.

Anupam Majumdar, relationship manager, and Aditya Mehta, regional head of Hindustan Neon General Insurance Limited, India, were meeting an important client. Mehta asked Majumdar to serve them tea. This really embarrassed and infuriated Majumdar. It was not the first time that Mehta, Majumdar's boss, had treated him like a peon. Majumdar was about to take a three-week leave of absence to attend his brother's wedding in New York so he was not sure if this was the right time, if ever, to do anything about the situation.

"We don't need more production capability. What we need is a higher design level and a bigger sales network", said the CEO of Haier, China's largest white goods manufacturer and one of the world's fastest growing white goods companies. Haier began its efforts to go global in 1999 by tapping into the US market with niche products. In 2006, Haier announced that it planned to launch a new global development strategy to bolster its global brand awareness. It hoped to sell bigger and technologically-rich white goods in the overseas markets and differentiate itself from other Chinese commodity players. This case study explores Haier's roadmap in transforming itself from a Chinese household name to a global brand, and examines the effectiveness of its product diversification and design strategy in its global expansion.

This award-winning case series examines how optimization-based decision-making leads to a new business design for a timeshare exchange: an exchange fair. Students model a complex managerial problem as a linear program, identify the types of data needed, and use models to provide decision support. The series covers linear and integer programming, multiple-criteria decision-making, network flow problems, local search heuristics, and Pareto-optimality. The series demonstrates the advantages and difficulties involved in applying management science techniques to a real-life business environment. It teaches standard techniques of extracting relevant data from a mass of more- and less-relevant information and forces students to confront issues consultants face: How do you motivate management to even consider a management science approach? How do you build a "business case" demonstrating the shortcomings of the methodology already in place? The case provides background on the timeshare industry, exchanges, and the exchange fair, in which owners submit their existing intervals to a centralized pool, together with requests for the intervals they want to exchange; the exchange determines who gets which interval. Various aspects of a functioning exchange fair are presented, and, starting from a heuristic, the series effectively guides students toward the "better" optimization-based way of executing the exchange. This case series is a winner of the 2005 INFORMS case competition and received an honorable mention at the 2005 DSI case competition. Suitable for both general MBA and executive education programs and as a basis for an exam or assignment, this series is also appropriate for specialized undergraduate and graduate programs in services management (e.g., tourism and hotel administration), logistics, and industrial and systems engineering.

This case provides an extension of the A case (UVA-QA-0709) by including two types of owners' requests that were omitted in the A case for simplicity. Solving it requires knowledge of integer programming and how it can be used to reinforce logical conditions. Could be used as an assignment or part of an exam. A supplemental Excel spreadsheet is available.