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Compania Cervecerias Unidas S.A. (CCU), the leading player in the beer and beverage business in Chile ,is evaluating the feasibility of entering the Pisco (hard liquor from special grapes) business in Chile. The market is very competitive and divided between two very large traditional cooperatives. These two companies, with their broad brand portfolios, control over 90% of the market. In recent years, the Chilean market has started to change. Consumers are becoming more sophisticated and are opening up to new lifestyle beverages. The retail industry is going through a process of fast transformation with the appearance of new formats (e.g., Internet, kiosks, and hypermarkets) and consolidation through mergers and acquisitions. CCU is a powerful player in the beverage industry. It has strong brands, channel access, and merchandising power.

Discusses the structure of the Seven-Eleven Japan supply chain in terms of its facilities network, inventory management, distribution, and information.

Intellectual property rights are a major source of wealth creation in our modern global economy and continue to grow in strategic significance. For managers and entrepreneurs to take advantage of the strategic options that IPs offer, it is helpful to be conversant in the unique aspects of these legal rights regimes. Provides a comprehensive and easy-to-understand overview of the IP rights regimes, consisting of trade secrets, patents, copyrights, trade dress, and trademarks.

Studies the U.S. credit card industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After an industry background review, a discussion of generic strategies follows in which strategies, like product proliferation and cost improvements, are achieved through superior IT. These strategies are exemplified using the leading players in the industry. On the other hand, these strategies are easily imitable, the basic product is standardized, and the industry is highly fragmented. What accounts then for the exceptional level of profitability enjoyed by this industry?

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Uses two different studies--a survey of CIOs at 256 enterprises in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia/Pacific region and a set of 40 interview-based case studies at large companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Carlson Companies, UPS, Delta Air Lines, and ING DIRECT--to conclude that when senior managers take the time to design, implement, and communicate IT governance processes, companies get more value from IT. Toward that end, they offer a single-page framework for designing effective IT: a matrix that juxtaposes the five decision areas (principles, architecture, infrastructure, business application needs, and prioritization and investment decisions) against six archetypal approaches (business monarchy, IT monarchy, federal, duopoly, feudal, and anarchy). Illustrates how successful companies use different approaches for different decisions to maximize efficiency and value for both IT and the overall enterprise. Offers recommendations to guide effective IT governance design.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How do managers and companies quickly transform new hires into productive employees, a process called "rapid on-boarding"? Contends that companies that are more successful at rapid on-boarding tend to use a relational approach, helping newcomers to establish rapidly a broad network of relationships with coworkers that they can tap into to obtain the information they need to become productive. Most organizations realize the importance of integrating new employees, but many fail in this regard, often because of pervasive myths about the process. Because of those misconceptions, managers frequently rely on practices that can actually hinder new employees from becoming productive.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Most start-up companies today consider overseas expansion from their inception. Yet, says the author, entrepreneurs and their managers often underestimate the cost of expansion and lack a clear conceptual framework for it. On the basis of studying 50 entrepreneurial ventures in more than 20 countries, the author concludes that such ventures follow a variety of different expansion paths. The most successful are those that best manage the constant tensions between resources and opportunities, each of which run the gamut from purely local to worldwide. Offers a framework that defines the choices a venture has at its inception and throughout its life and shows how to use the framework to assess and direct a venture and mitigate developing tensions by anticipating a variety of strategic, financial, organizational, and regulatory factors. Uses case examples of a software company that took a balanced or "diagonal" path (the most common), an air-freight delivery service that progressed from pursuing local opportunities with local resources to pursuing cross-border opportunities with local resources, and a consumer-loan provider that began by pursuing a local opportunity with local resources, then added cross-border resources.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Corporate boards in the United States have recently been on the hot seat. Stimulated by high-profile scandals, investor dissatisfaction with board performance and questions about the level of executive compensation, regulators have introduced significant reforms in the rules that govern boards. But will such reforms actually contribute to the effectiveness of boards? A real danger exists that the mandated changes not only will fail to enhance how companies are governed but also could possibly lead to a number of negative unintended consequences. To investigate such issues, the authors conducted a study that compared the board practices and effectiveness of Fortune 1000 companies in 1998 vs. 2003. They looked specifically at three areas: board leadership, the conditions governing board membership, and the performance evaluations of boards, individual board members, and CEOs. The results have helped to determine which practices in those three areas are actually related to overall board performance.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. To optimize a portfolio of brands, companies can use a step-by-step approach: decide on the brands to review; analyze each brand with respect to its contribution to the company; assess the brands according to current market performance (traction) and future prospects (momentum); and classify the brands along those three dimensions (contribution, traction, and momentum), allowing managers to identify both challenges and opportunities. The process enables companies to sort their brands into different categories: power (a brand that needs to be defended ferociously and deployed judiciously), sleeper (a brand that with a little fast tracking can build into a power brand), slider (a valuable brand that has lost momentum, is slipping backwards, and needs immediate intervention to prevent meltdown), soldier (a solid brand that contributes quietly without the need for much management attention), black hole (a brand that sucks up resources and may or may not ever pay out), rocket (a brand that is on its way to power-brand status), wallflower (a small, underappreciated brand with very loyal customers, often underpriced and undermarketed), and discard (a brand that should have been mothballed years ago). Companies can then tie together the objectives for each brand into an overall plan, which will include brand architecture and resource allocation.

This technical note illustrates the fundamentals of lease vs. buy decisions in technology and how they differ from the typical capital equipment lease vs. buy decision. This note is designed for instructors, and provides them with a background for an introductory lecture on information technology (IT) leasing. It can also function as a companion to the Kellogg cases "AMG, Inc. & Forsythe Solutions: Lease vs. Buy Decisions" and "Shilling & Smith Acquisition of Xteria Inc.: Data Center Technology Leasing."

The case is set in June 1999 as Marcel Telles, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Companhia Cervejaria Brahma (Brahma) - the largest brewer in Brazil - considers a possible merger with the Antarctica Group (Antarctica), the second-largest Brazilian brewer. If the merger were to be completed, the combined firm would control 75% of Brazil's beer market and forecast pro forma revenues of over $US2.8 billion. The case provides a concise overview of the Brazilian beer market and Brazil's volatile macroeconomic and regulatory context, and summarises the century-long rivalry between Brahma and Antarctica. For a century after their founding, Antarctica led Brahma in terms of market share, profitability, new product introductions and management innovations, although the two brewers were roughly comparable in size. Under Telles' leadership, however, Brahma pulled ahead of its rival in the span of a decade. The case explores the reasons for this dramatic reversal of fortune and describes in detail the actions Telles and his top management team took to change Brahma's culture, set and execute operational improvements, and create real options for future revenue streams

Richard Townsend has recently been elected CEO of Liberty Medical Foundation (LMF), a nonprofit HMO. Due in part to a rapidly changing competitive environment, LMF has faced serious financial problems over the past two years. Confounding the problem are low morale among physicians and staff and declining patient satisfaction. Townsend will present to the board of directors the two strategic choices that he sees for keeping LMF alive. One choice involves LMF regaining its low-cost position that originally attracted so many of its members. LMF's low-cost, high-efficiency positioning has historically been its competitive advantage. Regaining the low-cost position would mean implementing prior authorization requirements, drastically cutting the number of physicians and staff, and copying other cost savings measures that for-profit HMOs use. The other option is to change radically LMF's positioning so that it is the quality and service leader. This option assumes that customers will be willing to pay a premium for excellent service. Either option will require drastic changes to LMF's culture.

In December 2003, the management teams at the automotive and steel businesses of The Timken Corp., headquartered in Canton, Ohio, were principally in agreement that market price was the appropriate instrument for valuing internal steel transfers. At the same time, both management teams had reservations about details of the implementation of market-based transfer pricing as it stood. Asks students to assess whether the transfer pricing policy for steel transfers inhibited the automotive division from exercising its market power as a purchaser of bearings quality steel. Also asks students to comment on the usefulness of the Minimum Rule, assess Timken's policy of market-based transfer pricing rules for steel, and compare cost-based transfer prices to market-based prices.

Provides basic economic and social indicators for 145 countries, drawn from the World Bank's World Development Indicators (2004). The data include: population, land area, GNP per capita, real GDP growth, life expectancy, adult illiteracy, fertility rate, access to sanitation, and income inequality. Reports data from 2000 whenever possible and is largely based on Basic Statistics from World Bank's World Development Report 2002 (9-703-030).

Describes the evolution of General Motors' strategy, organizational structure, and management processes from its founding to the present day. Focuses on the role of GM's management committee--the senior-decision-making body at the company, now called the Automotive Strategy Board (ASB)--and how it operates under Rick Wagoner, its current CEO. In October 2004, Wagoner and the ASB are wrestling with recent changes in GM's planning and budgeting processes and how they will affect the balance between global and local needs.

Mo Ibrahim, chairman of Celtel International, the largest provider of cellular services in sub-Saharan Africa, must decide on his company's future. After an amazing six years that took it from minority positions in three countries to nearly $1 billion in revenues and 14 operations in 13 countries, the company has three options: to attempt an IPO, to find a merger partner, or to continue as an independent entity. Ibrahim must consider the company's track record, its current situation, and the implications of each option.

Explores the role of the U.S. military in facilitating the establishment of a spectacularly successful free trade area in one of the most devastated areas of Bosnia. NATO's imposition of law and order, plus protection from local political protection rackets, led to spontaneous growth of a market with over $100 million in annual sales.

This case is a sequel to "WLR Foods and Tyson Foods" (UV2529), which presents the attempted acquisition of WLR by Tyson Foods in 1994. Over the ensuing six years, WLR's stock price slides consistently downhill until 2000, when it is trading at a fraction of its 1994 value. When WLR's share price hits $4.59, Pilgrim's Pride Corporation (PPC) views the company as an attractive acquisition. This case asks the student to determine how much of a premium PPC should offer and whether WLR management will resist a takeover in 2000 as it did in 1994. Financial information is provided to allow students to compute both stand-alone and with-synergies valuations. The case is best taught immediately following UVA-F-1465. It is designed to be taught as a firm-valuation exercise in a first-year or second-year MBA finance course. It is also suitable for executive and undergraduate audiences. Student (F-1466 WLR-Pilgrims Pride.xls) and instructor (F-1466 TN.xls) spreadsheets are available.

Hasbro's newest toy is so unique it requires a unique launch strategy. Comparing traditional media (TV, print) with a non-traditional viral campaign, Matt Collins must weigh the risks and benefits of doing things the way they've always been done or blazing a new path in the marketing of toys.