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In 2016 Andrew Rose, CEO of Compare.com, an online price comparison website for car insurance shoppers, faced a troubling problem. Completion rates for the site's detailed online questionnaire were at an alarming low. Site visitors, increasingly accessing the site on mobile devices, were proving they did not have the time or incentive to answer the site's requisite questions and thus were dropping off the site before purchasing policies from the site's partner insurance carriers. As Rose and his management team struggled to lift the completion rates, they narrowed their options to three potential solutions. A task for Kyle Brodie, a summer intern, was to design and run an experiment that could yield valuable insights from an estimates display, including which customer groups, if any, responded best to the estimates, and where the estimates should be included in the questionnaire. In the A case of the series, readers are faced with selecting the best solution for lifting Compare.com's completion rate. In the B case, readers must design an experiment to test the selected option, and decide on the location and content of an estimate display test. In the C case, readers are presented with the design implemented by Brodie and a summary of the results of that experiment. They must then figure out the implications of those results for Compare.com. This case was originally written for an MBA marketing class examining Marketing Analytics. It would also be suitable for similar classes in undergraduate, Executive MBA, and Executive Education programs.

Supplement to case UV7459. In 2016 Andrew Rose, CEO of Compare.com, an online price comparison website for car insurance shoppers, faced a troubling problem. Completion rates for the site's detailed online questionnaire were at an alarming low. Site visitors, increasingly accessing the site on mobile devices, were proving they did not have the time or incentive to answer the site's requisite questions and thus were dropping off the site before purchasing policies from the site's partner insurance carriers. As Rose and his management team struggled to lift the completion rates, they narrowed their options to three potential solutions. A task for Kyle Brodie, a summer intern, was to design and run an experiment that could yield valuable insights from an estimates display, including which customer groups, if any, responded best to the estimates, and where the estimates should be included in the questionnaire. In the A case of the series, readers are faced with selecting the best solution for lifting Compare.com's completion rate. In the B case, readers must design an experiment to test the selected option, and decide on the location and content of an estimate display test. In the C case, readers are presented with the design implemented by Brodie and a summary of the results of that experiment. They must then figure out the implications of those results for Compare.com. This case was originally written for an MBA marketing class examining Marketing Analytics. It would also be suitable for similar classes in undergraduate, Executive MBA, and Executive Education programs.

Supplement to case UV7459. In 2016 Andrew Rose, CEO of Compare.com, an online price comparison website for car insurance shoppers, faced a troubling problem. Completion rates for the site's detailed online questionnaire were at an alarming low. Site visitors, increasingly accessing the site on mobile devices, were proving they did not have the time or incentive to answer the site's requisite questions and thus were dropping off the site before purchasing policies from the site's partner insurance carriers. As Rose and his management team struggled to lift the completion rates, they narrowed their options to three potential solutions. A task for Kyle Brodie, a summer intern, was to design and run an experiment that could yield valuable insights from an estimates display, including which customer groups, if any, responded best to the estimates, and where the estimates should be included in the questionnaire. In the A case of the series, readers are faced with selecting the best solution for lifting Compare.com's completion rate. In the B case, readers must design an experiment to test the selected option, and decide on the location and content of an estimate display test. In the C case, readers are presented with the design implemented by Brodie and a summary of the results of that experiment. They must then figure out the implications of those results for Compare.com. This case was originally written for an MBA marketing class examining Marketing Analytics. It would also be suitable for similar classes in undergraduate, Executive MBA, and Executive Education programs.

In early 2012, the chair of the board of directors of Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) had to determine how to respond to demands made by the company's largest shareholder, Pershing Square Capital Management (Pershing), an activist hedge fund. Pershing's chief executive officer (CEO) claimed that CP was underperforming, and expressed his desire to replace two board members and appoint a new CEO. The chair of the board of directors had to determine the best means to fight the proxy battle and serve the interests of shareholders. Pershing was not likely to back down easily. With a shareholders' meeting expected to occur in the next few months, the chair had to resolve the matter quickly. Because shareholder activism was relatively new in Canada, the outcome of this conflict would send a message to other activists interested in Canadian organizations.

Supplement to case W17568.

Supplement to case W17568.

In late 2015, Crystal Call Maggelet, president and CEO of FJ Management, is working with her investment committee to help set the company's strategic direction. Maggelet, daughter of the company's founder, has led FJ Management since 2009 when she stepped in as CEO following an unexpected bankruptcy. At that time, FJ Management was known as Flying J. Flying J owned and operated hundreds of truck stops-which it called Travel Plazas-nationwide and was a growing multi-billion dollar business, but broader problems in the oil and credit markets in late 2008 forced it to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Maggelet, who had been serving on Flying J's board, became its new CEO and was able to successfully manage competing stakeholder demands, keep the business running, and ultimately paid back every dollar it owed to its creditors by selling the company's core assets-its travel plazas-to its main competitor in 2010. Since that time, the company had returned to a healthy financial position, diversified its holdings, and made investments in diverse industries to determine how to grow the company, since renamed FJ Management. In 2015, Maggelet now wants to set a clear path forward for the company.

CyberArk was the recognized leader in the Privileged Account Management (PAM) space, a cybersecurity subsegment it had essentially created to secure organizations' IT systems and sensitive data. Over 17 years, the Israeli company had grown to a market capitalization of over $1.6 billion, with sales exceeding $217 million and 900 global employees with a strong corporate culture. In May 2017, Udi Mokady, founder, chairman, and CEO, debated how best to drive growth. He mulled over whether he should stay the course and remain focused on providing best-of-breed PAM for enterprises, both on-premise and in the cloud, or expand into new markets. Cyber threats were on the rise, which afforded numerous growth opportunities such as entering the broader identity management space, creating new products to protect critical infrastructure, and securing the burgeoning world of the Internet of Things (IoT). This case explores the company's competitive position, the challenges of sustaining its advantages in a highly competitive and consolidating industry, and whether it should pursue organic or inorganic growth, while maintaining company culture.

This case follows John Fernandez, CEO of Massachusetts Eye and Ear, as he evaluates whether or not his organization should join Partners HealthCare, the state's largest healthcare provider. Starting in the mid-2000s, there was a growing trend towards provider consolidation in health care. Many physician practices joined larger groups or hospitals, while independent hospitals integrated into larger health systems. The case explores the causes and consequences of health care consolidation, including the impact of policy reform. It then identifies key costs and benefits for an independent hospital considering an acquisition offer from a major health system. In doing so, it highlights the challenges and opportunities that managers of small providers face in a changing regulatory environment.

CEO Hubert Joly has successfully tackled BBY's two main problems - declining comps and margins - and engineered a financial turnaround within his first five years on the job. Now Joly must develop and implement a strategic plan to create a sustainable competitive advantage for Best Buy in the highly competitive, electronic retail industry. With less than 20 percent of revenues coming from online sales, Best Buy is still predominantly a bricks-and-mortar store with an online presence and has not yet transformed into a "bona fide, multi-channel retailer." The case provides an overview of Best Buy's main competitors: Circuit City (now defunct), Walmart, Target, Apple, and Amazon.com. It further highlights the threat emanating from the continuous shift to online retailing.

BY-HEALTH Co., Ltd. (BY-HEALTH), a Chinese dietary supplement company founded in 1995, had a first-mover advantage as a contemporary health supplement provider in Mainland China. It had successfully utilized this advantage to conquer a significant portion of the market. However, by early 2017, maintaining this leadership position in the market had become increasingly difficult, largely due to deteriorating public perception of consumables originating in China. BY-HEALTH had sought to differentiate itself by actively making its sourcing and production processes fully transparent to stakeholders, most notably by opening a transparent factory in Guangdong Province. While BY-HEALTH's transparent factory and corporate social responsibility activities developed consumer trust and positively contributed to the environment within which the company operated, they were also prohibitively expensive to maintain. It was also difficult to determine how they affected the company's bottom line. As he prepared for a company shareholders' meeting in January 2017, the company's chief operating officer was faced with difficult questions. What programs should the company continue to invest in for the future? Should some of these initiatives have an end date? If they were ended, what effect would this have on the community? How could he communicate the value of the transparent factory to consumers and shareholders?

In late 2016, the executive director of Free Geek Toronto faced a challenge. Free Geek Toronto was a social enterprise based in Toronto, Ontario. It focused on recycling electronics waste and aimed to use its business profits to expand its scope of operations and deliver on its social mission of both reducing electronics waste going to landfill and employing at-risk and marginalized individuals. As a result, the executive director purposely hired individuals who had severe physical or mental disabilities, or both, and who had recently received, or were currently receiving, disability benefits, had poor health, or experienced general struggles with regular employment. The executive director's challenges included juggling the financial and social goals of running a work integration social enterprise. In view of the constraints he faced, the executive director began considering whether to call on the assistance of volunteers-people who, despite their well-meaning intentions, might unwittingly disrupt the operation of the enterprise. Should he move forward with recruiting volunteers? If so, how could he ensure that doing so would not adversely affect the organization's current culture or demoralize the current employees?

This case is set on the verge of Microsoft initiating a TV white-space pilot in the Philippines in the summer of 2013; the uncertainty surrounding the new technology's performance in the region provides a view of the risks organizations face early on in the innovation process, particularly when decisions are decentralized and overseen at a local level. MS and its public partners in the Philippines were excited about the possibility of setting up the country's first TV white space-enabled broadband network in a remote area that required the connectivity for fisher registrations and government biodiversity initiatives. The technology had proven its success in a few other pilots in Singapore and the UK. In the Philippines, however, risks loomed. Unprecedented complications from an untested hardware supplier and a lack of an essential database arose as the launch date approached. A key decision MS had to make was whether to proceed with the pilot or focus on TV white space pilots elsewhere. The case introduces students to methods through which they can identify the sources and types of uncertainty associated with a project. Through this they can better evaluate the tradeoff between undertaking a project with a high risk of failure and the benefits that could be obtained through learning about unknown unknowns within such a setting despite the outcome. Moreover, students uncover the necessary conditions for projects to achieve their objectives within this setting. The public-private partnership setting allows students to analyze the type of uncertainty associated with a project; the project, product, and organizational complexity; stakeholder objectives; and discuss the role escalation of commitment could play when an organization seeks to pilot a new technology.

Supplement to case UV7317

Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) was a medical technology firm headquartered in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, with 43,000 employees and 2016 revenues of $12.5 billion. For several years, the company had pursued development of products that created shared value, defined as those that both generated profits and created positive social impact. One of the primary ways the company advanced such products was through establishing and maintaining public-private partnerships (PPPs) with governmental or non-governmental organizations. In June 2017, Gary Cohen, an Executive Vice President of BD, and Renuka Gadde, Vice President of BD's Global Health function, were deeply engaged in a six-year PPP to bring a new low-cost labor and delivery tool called the Odon Device to market. This device had the potential to avert hundreds of thousands of maternal and newborn deaths, primarily in low-resource settings. Although they had faced many challenges in bringing together multiple organizations to develop and launch the device, Cohen and Gadde were convinced that BD's ability to collaborate with governments and international agencies to address urgent global health needs was a source of competitive advantage for the company. Through these collaborations, BD had strengthened important external relationships and developed a distinctive corporate strategy for its expansion in emerging markets. Cohen, Gadde, and the BD Global Health team were also working to construct a framework for measuring both the social and financial impact of the company's shared value initiatives, starting with the BD Odon Device. Cohen believed that creating shared value was "fundamentally a better way to do business," but he wanted hard data to demonstrate the full economic and social benefit of BD's shared value initiatives. The competition for internal capital and the challenges of taking on new types of products meant that any shared value initiative required a rigorous business case and clear indicators

This case explores the long-term relationship between Tempur Sealy (TPX, a mattress manufacturer) and Mattress Firm (MFRM, a bedding retailer and TPX's largest customer). For almost 20 years, the firms enjoyed a mutually beneficial and commercially prosperous relationship. Yet in August 2016, Steinhoff (a large, South African retailer) made an offer to acquire MFRM. Whether this acquisition will affect the symbiotic relationship that had existed between TPX and MFRM was the subject of intense speculation. While some industry observers believed it would increase MFRM's bargaining power vis-à-vis TPX, others argued it would not alter the balance of power, and that the incentives to collaborate would remain intact.

Analyzes the commercial relationship between Tempur Sealy and Mattress Firm following the events discussed in the (A) case.

Analyzes the commercial relationship between Tempur Sealy and Mattress Firm following the events discussed in the B case.

For the first time since the 2008 financial crisis, Lenovo, the world's largest PC maker, not only fails to increase its revenues and profits, but it has a net loss. Lenovo's market share is still growing, but the PC market itself is shrinking about 5% annually. Lenovo had hoped that the US$2.91 billion acquisition of the Motorola Mobility handset business in 2014 would prove as fruitful as the company's acquisition of IBM's Personal Computing Division a decade earlier. Such hopes proved to be too optimistic, however, as Lenovo faces strong competition in local and international markets. Its position in the Chinese smartphone market dropped from 2nd to 11th between 2014 and 2016, while its worldwide market share shrank from 13% to 4.6%. In 2016, its smartphones group showed an operational loss of US$469 million. At the same time, the global smartphone market quickly lost steam. In response, Lenovo devised a two-pronged strategy of consolidating its core PC business while broadening its product portfolio. The PC group, which focused on desktops, laptops and tablets, aims for improved profitability through market consolidation and product innovation. The smartphones group focuses on positioning the brand, improving margins, streamlining distribution channels and expanding geographical reach. It is not clear, however, how the company could thrive with PCs in decline. Nor is it obvious how it could compete in a tough smartphone market dominated by the international juggernauts Apple and Samsung, and strong local players such as Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi. How could Lenovo best deploy its vast resources?