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Zimmer Holdings, an orthopedic devices company in the United States, is suddenly faced with the prospect of its British competitor acquiring one of the Swiss companies, which would have been an ideal target for its own acquisition. With the announcement of the merger already in the news, Zimmer Holdings has a narrow time window to decide its response. Students are asked to take the position of an advisor to senior management and provide a recommendation to management on actions to pursue. The case provides an ideal platform to discuss global competition and the imperatives of a global marketplace, evaluation of a target and assessing the uncertainties in the process, discussing negotiating strategies and post-acquisition processes.

When John Seybold and his partners founded Guidewire (originally Centrica Software) in 2001, he knew little more about the insurance industry than an informed consumer. But as chief architect of the startup company, he also knew he and the team had to learn quickly if they were going to convince mainstream insurers to scrap their expensive aging mainframes and adopt Java-based solutions from an unknown and unproven provider. Seybold felt the flexibility and speed they needed might be realized through current thinking on agile project management and a process called "Scrum." An outcome of the Agile Manifesto, Scrum defined a new way of organization: One that focused on creating products with the customer; that cut out middle management; where projects ran on a monthly cycle; and that enabled the team to rethink priorities and processes at the conclusion of each monthly cycle. Seybold and his partners imagined that this process would help them quickly create an opportunity in insurance software. However, the direction brought risk. Scrum had been used on a project basis, but as far as Seybold and his partners knew, never before to organize a whole company. Would it scale as the organization grew? Might clients reject a startup company with both radical new products and a radical new organization? And would building a new company, a new product and a new organizational form be more than Seybold and his partners could manage? In the hostile post-internet bubble environment where funding was limited and interest in new software from startup companies was even more limited - they would have to be right fast.

Supplement for IMD453 In addition to using Scrum and Sprint Teams internally, Guidewire has been successful at teaching their clients how to use the process as well. In these larger organization, the process has enabled: a) rapid customer feedback; b) flexible product implementations; c) fast development. If a large mainstream insurance company can derive these benefits from the process, where else might it apply?

Westin Hotels and Resorts adopted a new "lifestyle" brand strategy which provided guests with a new service experience. The dilemma Westin faced was how to operationally build a brand that delivered consistent service on intangible values.

Describes the joint efforts of the German health plan KKH and Essen University Hospital to develop an integrated practice unit (IPU), and the West German Headache Center's efforts to improve the quality of migraine care. Provides an overview of the German health care system detailing its provider, health plan, and reimbursement structure. Following new legislation in 2004, which allowed health plans and selected providers to contract outside of the regular group purchasing scheme, KKH and Dr. Deiner of Essen University Hospital developed a novel delivery structure for migraine care. Challenges and hurdles to implementation are described for both the health plan and the IPU. Provides detailed data to allow students to evaluate success, identify current challenges, and recommend improvements to the integrated care system.

Provides an overview of the retail sector within the United States as online shopping captures an increased percentage of consumer spending. The role of enabling technologies and applications, including comparison shopping sites and recommendation systems, are covered. Additionally, the strategies, specifically the evolution of multi-channeling retail, are discussed.

Describes how Bankinter, a mid-sized Spanish bank, altered the information set available to its customer-facing employees. In the spring of 2003, Bankinter introduced an Excel-based program called the mortgage simulator that helped branch managers calculate the price of a mortgage and estimate the customer lifetime value (CLV). Facilitates a discussion of the impact of such a change in the information set for employees when the incentives and decision rights remain unchanged. Also examines the tradeoffs front-line employees face as they divide their efforts between reaching new customers and increasing the amount of cross-selling to existing customers.

In April 2001, Japan curbed imports on three Chinese farm products--fresh shiitake mushrooms, rushes for grass mats, and Chinese onions. In retaliation, in June 2001 China imposed a 100% punitive tariff on imports of three Japanese export products--motor vehicles, mobile phones, and air conditioners. Japan was accused of violating WTO rules. The dispute was subsequently resolved, but given that China was not a WTO member at the time of the dispute, the dispute generated a lot of controversy regarding trade safeguard measures. Introduces students to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism and compares it to the old GATT system, and highlights the role of political interest groups in trade policy. Questions whether Japan had a case for citing their safeguard measures or was it just protecting its powerful shiitake mushroom farmers. In addition, questions whether WTO membership would in turn protect China from trade disputes such as this one.

The CFO of JetBlue is trying to decide which of two financing proposals to pursue. A straight equity issue will dilute his principal shareholders' ownership, but seems like the safer alternative in an industry that is notorious for its high failure rate. On the other hand, a convertible debt alternative seems less dilutive, and cheaper, but brings with it an increased risk of default and financial problems. Which option should John Owen pursue?

Sometimes the good old tried and true American business team building exercises just don't work. Although frequently successful with teams made up of employees from different sections of an organization, what happens when teams consist of employees from different geographical areas like the United States and Asia-which has a whole set of unique differences. This case follows the experiences of an executive sent to Bangkok Thailand with two other managers from corporate headquarters to clean up and team build following the discovery of fiscal mismanagement and a popular senior executive's high profile firing. This three part case series puts students in the shoes of a financial auditor sent to try and strengthen weakened relationships and performance at Fasco Motors in Thailand. The material describes his efforts to rebuild trust on the Bangkok management team and the difficulties he encounters working as an outsider in every way.

Sometimes the good old tried and true American business team building exercises just don't work. Although frequently successful with teams made up of employees from different sections of an organization, what happens when teams consist of employees from different geographical areas like the United States and Asia-which has a whole set of unique differences. This case follows the experiences of an executive sent to Bangkok Thailand with two other managers from corporate headquarters to clean up and team build following the discovery of fiscal mismanagement and a popular senior executive's high profile firing. This three part case series puts students in the shoes of a financial auditor sent to try and strengthen weakened relationships and performance at Fasco Motors in Thailand. The material describes his efforts to rebuild trust on the Bangkok management team and the difficulties he encounters working as an outsider in every way.

While preparing a financial forecast, the newly promoted CFO of a small and profitable, but financially constrained, ready-mix concrete company must choose between renegotiating debt obligations, postponing long overdue capital improvements that will prevent more costly future repairs, or reducing the dividend payment to a parent company that just recently purchased the firm. A potential slowdown in the business due to a slowing economy and pressure from the new parent company add additional layers of complexity.

Sometimes the good old tried and true American business team building exercises just don't work. Although frequently successful with teams made up of employees from different sections of an organization, what happens when teams consist of employees from different geographical areas like the United States and Asia-which has a whole set of unique differences. This case follows the experiences of an executive sent to Bangkok Thailand with two other managers from corporate headquarters to clean up and team build following the discovery of fiscal mismanagement and a popular senior executive's high profile firing. This three part case series puts students in the shoes of a financial auditor sent to try and strengthen weakened relationships and performance at Fasco Motors in Thailand. The material describes his efforts to rebuild trust on the Bangkok management team and the difficulties he encounters working as an outsider in every way.

Canadian firms are profoundly influenced by the Canadian capital markets' narrow definition of what constitutes 'risky behavior,' and the unfortunate result, says the author, is a dearth of globally-competitive Canadian companies. It is exceedingly unhelpful to Canadian firms for the capital markets to fixate on the risks of globalizing while largely ignoring the risks of staying at home, he says. In doing so, they avoid the consequences of failed efforts to globalize, while at the same time eliminating much of the upside that they could also enjoy through the successful globalization of Canadian firms. In discouraging such globalization, the capital markets are inadvertently threatening Canada's long-term prosperity in an increasingly-interconnected world.

In this interview, the director of Wharton's Center for Risk and Decision Sciences explains why the private sector must take a leadership role in assuring a safer environment, and how our increasing interconnectedness breeds risk. The interview touches on 'extreme-event preparedness' and how security will soon become a marketing argument. The time has come to get creative, says Kerjan, and a first step is to acknowledge that the challenges of large-scale risks have become vital strategy and policy issues for major stakeholders - firms, governments, non-governmental organizations and the media. The key, he says, might lie in the ability to imagine and act more collaboratively, as the 9/11 Commission report made very clear.

When it comes time to generating business growth by bringing new products and services into the world, the stakes are high, and risk is everywhere. Risk, in the traditional business sense, is an assessment of the downside that might result from taking a particular action. If the perceived level of risk is too high, people working within a business-as-usual paradigm look for a less-risky alternative, or even forego action altogether. This negative definition of risk simply doesn't exist in the lexicon of most designers. The authors, from leading design firm IDEO, show that for designers, risk isn't a measure of 'the downside', but instead, it is a measure of upside and opportunity. If the risk isn't great enough, they might well ask themselves, "why bother?" The authors provide seven initial steps that managers can take to embrace the designer's approach to risk.

Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon introduced the concept of 'bounded rationality' as "a behavioral model in which human rationality is very much bounded by the situation and by human computational powers. In this article, the authors propose that awareness can also be bounded, and that this occurs when people fail to see, seek, use or share highly relevant and readily-perceivable information during the decision-making process. They describe three types of bounded awareness: inattentional blindness, change blindness and focalism. As the authors show, the failure to recognize these psychological limitations poses an even greater danger than the limitations themselves.