個案總覽

Crowdfunding is attractive to startups as an alternative funding source and offers nonmonetary resources through organizational learning. It encompasses the outsourcing of an organizational function, through IT, to a strategically defined network of actors (i.e., the crowd) in the form of an open call-specifically, requesting monetary contributions toward a commercial or social business goal. Nonetheless, many startups are hesitant to consider crowdfunding because little guidance exists on how the various types of crowdfunding add value in different life cycle stages and which type is best suited for which stage. In response to this gap, this article introduces a typology of crowdfunding, the benefits it offers, and how specific benefits relate to the identified crowdfunding types. On this basis, we present a framework for choosing the right crowdfunding type for each stage in the startup life cycle, in addition to providing practical advice on crowdfunding best practices. The best practices outlined have shown demonstrable contributions toward achieving funding goals and are likely to prove valuable for startups.

Websites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter have attracted much attention for their ability to enable organizations and individuals to raise funds from ordinary people, who contribute for a number of reasons. This phenomenon is called crowdfunding. Crowdfunding permits organizations and individuals to obtain investments they otherwise might not receive from more traditional sources such as banks, angel investors, and stock markets. A number of now well-known startups had their origins in crowdfunding. More recently, established organizations have begun to use crowdfunding websites not only as a source of finance, but also as marketing platforms. In this way, they have been able to ensure a ready market for their new offerings, with full sales pipelines, and to use the platforms as vehicles to boost brand image and gain support for brand-related causes. This adaptation of crowdfunding for marketing purposes is not without its problems, however, and organizations would be well advised to consider not only the opportunities these platforms provide, but also their limitations and risks.

The benefits provided by employment and identified with a specific employing company are referred to as employer branding. We argue that when employees use IT to transmit employer branding-sharing and accessing work-related experiences openly across organizations-their expectations and assessments of workplaces change. We collected 38,000 reviews of the highest and lowest ranked employers on Glassdoor, an online crowdsourced employer branding platform. Using IBM Watson to analyze the data, we identify seven employer branding value propositions that current, former, and potential employees care about when they collectively evaluate employers. These propositions include (1) social elements of work, (2) interest and challenge raised by work tasks, (3) the extent to which skills can be applied in meaningful ways, (4) opportunities for professional development, (5) economic issues tied to compensation, (6) the role of management, and (7) work/life balance. We clarify that these value propositions do not all matter to the same extent, and demonstrate how their relative valences and weights differ across organizations, especially if institutions are considered particularly good or bad places to work. Based on these findings, we show how employers can use crowdsourced employer branding intelligence to become exceptional workplaces that attract highly qualified employees.

Tapping into the creativity of a crowd can provide a highly efficient and effective means of acquiring ideas, work, and content to solve problems. But crowdsourcing solutions can also come with risks, including the legal risks associated with intellectual property. Therefore, we raise and address a two-part question: Why-and how-should organizations deal with intellectual property issues when engaging in the crowdsourcing of solutions? The answers lie in understanding the approaches for acquiring sufficient intellectual property from a crowd and limiting the risks of using that intellectual property. Herein, we discuss the hazards of not considering these legal issues and explain how managers can use appropriate terms and conditions to balance and mitigate the risks associated with soliciting solutions from a crowd. Based on differences in how organizations acquire intellectual property and limit associated risks, we identify and illustrate with examples four approaches for managing intellectual property (passive, possessive, persuasive, and prudent) when crowdsourcing solutions. We conclude with recommendations for how organizations should use and tailor the approaches in our framework to source intellectual property from a crowd.

Crowdsourcing is the deliberate use of crowds to solve problems, create new products, and improve consumer experiences. When used by brands, crowdsourcing engages consumers by asking them to be part of a deliberate call to action. Crowdsourcing provides interesting and dynamic marketing opportunities for brands, given the consumer engagement it entails. This conceptual study examines the literature on crowdsourcing and brand community, and makes a series of propositions regarding this rich marketing arena. Herein, we discuss managerial implications of the relationship between crowdsourcing and brand community dynamics and propose a typology for brands to better assess customer bases and market realities.

When managers are unable to use quantifiable time series data to make forecasts or decide on uncertainties, they can either rely on their own intuition and judgment or resort to the insights of others. The Delphi technique is a well-known forecasting technique that relies on the pooled perspectives of experts to predict uncertain quantities or the outcomes of events. This relies on polling the opinions of experts, aggregating these opinions, feeding them back to the responding experts along with their own estimates, and having them repeat their judgment calls until some level of consensus is reached. More recently, however, the opinions of many others who are not experts have been sought on a range of topics in a loose assembly of similar techniques bundled under the title of crowdsourcing. This article compares Delphi and crowdsourcing as prediction and estimation tools for managers. It notes their differences and similarities, and provides a simple tool for executives to use in deciding whether or not to use these tools, and if so, which tool or combination of them will work best in a given situation.

Advances in digital technologies have increased the possibilities for outsourcing business activities to crowds of independent contributors. Using the collective intelligence of a crowd opens a new range of business opportunities. In fact, crowdsourcing has led to the emergence of entirely new business models. Such crowd-based business models (CBBMs) can lead to an important competitive advantage while simultaneously presenting new challenges to entrepreneurs and executives. The author identifies and discusses three key challenges in designing and managing CBBMs: determining (1) the crowd's value to the firm, (2) how to create superior value for the crowd, and (3) how to capture value from the crowd effectively. Building on the crowd capital perspective and an analysis of the tactics and practices of successful CBBMs, this article offers propositions on how to overcome these challenges and manage such business models effectively. The identified practices can inspire decision makers when designing innovative CBBMs for their industries. Finally, the article concludes with a framework with the key decisions and tactics for effectively managing CBBMs.

Crowdsourcing can test a company's willingness to relinquish control to key stakeholders. Using past examples of four failed crowdsourcing initiatives, we explore the negative and unintended consequences of crowdsourcing in an age when stakeholders are empowered to speak their minds, make a mockery of organizational initiatives, and direct initiatives as it suits their own agenda. The concepts of crowdthink and crowd hijacking are introduced, and advice is given on how managers can avoid or anticipate some of the potential issues that arise during crowdsourcing endeavors. With these considerations, managers can harness the power of crowds effectively to achieve organizational goals with limited negative consequences.

The case deals with the value chain of soya and red gram, from the farm to the market. The activities are conducted through the system of cooperatives focused around the Adilabad district in Andhra Pradesh, India. The organization providing the necessary support and training to the cooperatives is Centre for Collective Development (CCD) which was set up in 2004. The case specifically deals with operations in Adilabad where CCD has helped 765 farmers trade 535.6 tons of soybean (2013-14) through the ''pool, store and sell'' business model. This number has reduced, though to 520 farmers trading 314.7 tons in 2014-2015. The case describes the circumstances leading to the same. The key decisions to be made are whether the said co-operative should proceed to invest in forward integration (processing and/or branding) in soybean processing. This becomes particularly important in Adilabad region because, while global soy meal demand appears to be on the surge, soy meal (derived from soybean agricultural output) production and hence exports seem to be decreasing, after a peak.

Set in early 2009, Part (A) of the case describes the operational challenges faced by a growing subsidiary firm of a global auto major, in an emerging economy. The case illustrates how India emerges as a key market and the Indian subsidiary evolves into a material management and logistics (MM&L) hub for its Asia Pacific and Africa (APA) region. As the volumes of APA region begin to increase, the parent company realizes the need to automate material planning and scheduling-related processes across the plants in the APA region, which were being managed manually. The company takes this opportunity to virtually integrate the entire supply chain across all the plants in the APA region, by linking sales planning, material planning, procurement, production scheduling, and delivery activities, through a common order-to-delivery (OTD) system for the APA region. The Indian subsidiary in the meantime decides to introduce a small car, specifically engineered to meet the requirements of a high-volume, but price-sensitive Indian market. The case then focuses on the challenges the APA MM&L team faces in implementing the OTD system, for the first time in India plant (to be followed by plants in Australia, South Africa, China, and Thailand), replacing the existing built-to-stock (BTS) model. Part (A) of the case ends by unfolding the age-old tension between the upstream material planning and scheduling activities and the downstream marketing and distribution networks. The various stakeholders in the system are left to grapple with these challenges before they can arrive at a consensus regarding "if and how to implement" the OTD system in order to enjoy the benefits of automation and virtual integration. Case (B) describes the outcomes of the actual implementation and provides scope for investigating the impact of OTD on the success of the small car introduced in the Indian market.

Supplement to case IMB615. Set in early 2009, Part (A) of the case describes the operational challenges faced by a growing subsidiary firm of a global auto major, in an emerging economy. The case illustrates how India emerges as a key market and the Indian subsidiary evolves into a material management and logistics (MM&L) hub for its Asia Pacific and Africa (APA) region. As the volumes of APA region begin to increase, the parent company realizes the need to automate material planning and scheduling-related processes across the plants in the APA region, which were being managed manually. The company takes this opportunity to virtually integrate the entire supply chain across all the plants in the APA region, by linking sales planning, material planning, procurement, production scheduling, and delivery activities, through a common order-to-delivery (OTD) system for the APA region. The Indian subsidiary in the meantime decides to introduce a small car, specifically engineered to meet the requirements of a high-volume, but price-sensitive Indian market. The case then focuses on the challenges the APA MM&L team faces in implementing the OTD system, for the first time in India plant (to be followed by plants in Australia, South Africa, China, and Thailand), replacing the existing built-to-stock (BTS) model. Part (A) of the case ends by unfolding the age-old tension between the upstream material planning and scheduling activities and the downstream marketing and distribution networks. The various stakeholders in the system are left to grapple with these challenges before they can arrive at a consensus regarding "if and how to implement" the OTD system in order to enjoy the benefits of automation and virtual integration. Case (B) describes the outcomes of the actual implementation and provides scope for investigating the impact of OTD on the success of the small car introduced in the Indian market.

The case provides a setting in which students can understand the relationship between inventory valuation, cost of goods sold and the gross margin. The inventory accounting policy choice that a company makes would have a direct impact on the company's profitability and its balance sheet. Changes in accounting policy will impact the current performance as well as the future performance. The company in this case changed its valuation of gold from weighted average method to first-in first-out (FIFO) method. Additionally, the case also analyses the relation between hedge accounting and inventory.

VMW is a leader in software virtualization with approximately USD 6.5 billion annual revenue. VMW sells Workstation that can be bought online (store.vmware.com) and is used for running Mac on Windows. Workstation forms a significant portion of store revenues and most of it is bought online. There is rich digital/clickstream data for the visitors which can be combined with their past purchase history and other offline features as well. The business would like to increase sales of the product by targeting the right customers and needs a propensity model to be built using machine learning that can target the right set of customers. Michael Butler, the WW head of the store wants to leverage Parag's data sciences team to help him target the right workstation prospects that visit the store. A business conversation between Michael and Parag is followed by a technical discussion between Ravi, the data scientist and Parag. The following are the key questions that Ravi seeks to answer: -Cross-validation and evaluation in the context of huge imbalance in the data -Feature selection techniques -Communicating internal results such as lift curves back to the business -Different modeling approaches that can be followed -Interpreting the results for business decision making

VMware (VMW) is a listed software company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California selling products in the Software Defined Data Center that supports multiple devices, apps, and cloud to create an enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure. The company exclusively caters to business customers, that is, in the B2B environment. The company is characterized by 100% digital supply chain which implies that all products are downloadable from the website (www.vmware.com). The company also promotes these products online. Varied individuals across companies worldwide visit the site to familiarize themselves with the products and their features before making a decisive purchase. Along with the overview and use of the product, there are various customer-interaction triggers or ''digital assets'' that are shown to the VMW audience. These include triggers such as hands-on-learning, seminar/webinar registration, downloads, etc. Kiran R, the Director of the Data Science & Analytics team at VMW wants to know the optimal order of digital actions to be pushed towards customers to engage them effectively. Kiran's team has a rich source of online and offline available to model user's response to each of these digital assets. Kiran realized that the data is highly imbalanced and hence should be handled carefully. They wish to come up with a multinomial classification model for this purpose. Kiran decided that the model should fulfil the following objectives: 1. Determine the right order of digital assets to display to an individual e-mail id. 2. Since the website would like to target groups of e-mail ids, come up with a set of segment rules to identify top individuals for a digital asset and to target them with personalization on the website. 3. Have substantiated marketing and sales implications.

SATTVA eTECH is an electronics company involved in design and development of embedded new products. The senior manager of the company is working on the planning and execution of a defense project. Further, the manager is also evaluating the various alternative strategies to tackle uncertainties in the project network.

Managed word-of-mouth and viral marketing have emerged as one of the biggest trends of the decade. Every brand, big or small, wants its content to go viral. The backbone of successful campaigns is not limited to content or influencers who can make the message go viral. Marketers need to think of value creation at every stage. Jiten Gajaria, the convener of the social media cell of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Maharashtra, implemented a marketing transformation program for his political party while campaigning for the 13th Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Election. He gained consumer insights, calibrated market segments, devised communication strategy, recruited and managed human resources, designed campaign implementation process and developed capabilities to execute it. The case details how Gajaria rolled out a successful influencer marketing program to create WOM communication on WhatsApp. It can serve as a classic example of devising a cost-effective customer outreach program where total marketing expense was reduced by about 199%.

Money and Banking: An Intermediate Market-Based Approach is a six-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2017 and written by William D. Gerdes, Professor of Economics at Clarke University. This book is intended to give students a broad understanding of money and how the money we use today differs from money used in the past and money discovered in isolated subcultures. It examines money as a medium of exchange, a fundamental ingredient in credit markets, and an instrument of monetary policy. In Chapter 1, the author discusses exchanges and the transaction costs associated with them. He states the definition of money as a medium of exchange but adds that it also serves as a store of value, unit of account, and standard of deferred payment. Gerdes describe money as portable, divisible, durable, and made from objects that are relatively scarce. He also discusses the three types of monetary systems: commodity, fiduciary, and fiat. He then provides ways to calculate the value of money.

Money and Banking: An Intermediate Market-Based Approach is a six-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2017 and written by William D. Gerdes, Professor of Economics at Clarke University. This book is intended to give students a broad understanding of money and how the money we use today differs from money used in the past and money discovered in isolated subcultures. It examines money as a medium of exchange, a fundamental ingredient in credit markets, and an instrument of monetary policy. In Chapter 2, Gerdes discuss ways to determine the relationship between money and economic activity. He highlights Fisher's equation, MV=Py, to show that the money supply and the price of goods are directly related and that the production of goods and services and price of goods are indirectly related. He also uses this equation of exchange to analyze the relationship between money and the economy, highlighting what this relationship can tell us about inflation, real GDP, and the long-run purchasing power of money. He then discusses a version of the equation that expresses the same relationships between variables but in terms of growth rates: dM/M + dV/V = dP/P + dy/y

Money and Banking: An Intermediate Market-Based Approach is a six-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2017 and written by William D. Gerdes, Professor of Economics at Clarke University. This book is intended to give students a broad understanding of money and how the money we use today differs from money used in the past and money discovered in isolated subcultures. It examines money as a medium of exchange, a fundamental ingredient in credit markets, and an instrument of monetary policy. In Chapter 3, Gerdes discusses the relationship between the interest rate and three intertemporal economic relationships: the marginal productivity of capital, the price of credit, and the marginal rate of time preference. He provides graphs to show how shifts in the supply and demand of loanable funds affect the interest rate and differentiate between real and nominal interest rates, providing thorough definitions of each.

Money and Banking: An Intermediate Market-Based Approach is a six-chapter book published by Business Expert Press in 2017 and written by William D. Gerdes, Professor of Economics at Clarke University. This book is intended to give students a broad understanding of money and how the money we use today differs from money used in the past and money discovered in isolated subcultures. It examines money as a medium of exchange, a fundamental ingredient in credit markets, and an instrument of monetary policy. In Chapter 4, the author discusses the role of banks as both depository institutions and conduits for the implementation of monetary policy. He outlines the money supply model (M = B (m)), which is used to examine factors that determine the total quantity of money in an economy. Gerdes then discusses four general instruments of monetary policy: open market operations, discount window/discount rate, reserve ratio requirements, and interest payments on bank reserves. He also discusses systems in which a central bank directs credit to specific markets using selective credit controls.