個案總覽

On September 9, 2015, Apple Inc. announced the "iPhone Upgrade Program," a new way to purchase iPhone models 6s and 6s Plus in Apple's retail stores throughout the U.S. Next to the strategic implications of the Upgrade Program, financial analysts tried to understand the accounting implications, especially the recognition of revenue, which the Upgrade Program could have on Apple's financials. Analysts' reactions to the disclosure were mixed. Was Apple's accounting system "right" for the iPhone Upgrade Program introduced in 2015?

This module reading describes the basics of building a successful strategy. Topics in this module include a discussion of the distinction between corporate and business strategy; how to conduct a SWOT analysis of market dynamics and internal capabilities; the use of the five forces analysis to understand customers, suppliers, products, and competitors; how to use this analysis to identify unique opportunities to create value for customers; and an overview of the four Ps of strategy implementation (strategy as perspective, position, plans, and patterns of action). The concepts introduced in this module provide the foundation for executing strategy effectively. While this module is designed to be used alone, it is part of the Strategy Execution series. Taken together, the series forms a complete course that teaches the latest techniques for using performance measurement and control systems to implement strategy. Modules 1 - 4 set out the foundations for strategy implementation. Modules 5 - 10 teach quantitative tools for performance measurement and control. Modules 11 - 15 illustrate the use of these techniques by managers to achieve profit goals and strategies. View the full Strategy Execution series at: hbsp.harvard.edu/strategy-execution.

This special issue draws on a range of intellectual roots-ranging from financial economics to organization theory, to design theory, and to human cognition. The goal of this special issue is to bring scholars from different disciplines together with practitioners who have had success applying the framework so as to help other managers lead their organizations to higher levels of performance.

"Organizational agility" is often treated as an immutable quality, implying that firms need to be in a constant state of transformation. However, this ignores that such transformations, while often essential, come at a cost. They are not always necessary, and may not even be possible. This article explores agility at a more fundamental level and relates it more specifically to dynamic capabilities. It demonstrates that it is first essential to understand deep uncertainty, which is ubiquitous in the innovation economy. Uncertainty is very different from risk, which can be managed using traditional tools and approaches. Strong dynamic capabilities are necessary for fostering the organizational agility necessary to address deep uncertainty, such as that generated by innovation and the associated dynamic competition. This article explores the mechanisms by which managers may calibrate the required level of organizational agility, deliver it cost effectively, and relate it to strategy.

This article develops a conceptual integration of the dynamic capabilities and ambidexterity perspectives in order to understand how firms adapt to discontinuous change. Based on three illustrative case studies, it demonstrates that it is not possible to identify a universal set of dynamic capabilities. Rather, the distinct set of capabilities required depends on which of three modes of adaptation (structural separation, behavioral integration, or sequential alternation) has been prioritized. This article contributes a contingency perspective to dynamic capability research and offers guidance to managers about the alternative approaches they could take when seeking to adapt to environmental discontinuities.

The dynamic capabilities framework identifies three components as critical for successful organizational adaptation: sensing, seizing and transforming. By contrasting two distinct business cases, a long-term biofuel investment by DuPont and Novartis's rapid deployment of digital technologies in marketing, this article assesses the managerial implications of each of these components. It develops an embryonic contingency model that illustrates why the relative importance of dynamic capabilities varies across firms. The article also highlights the critical role played by strategic leaders, who must selectively adapt and refine dynamic capabilities and also serve as a last line of defense in times of rapid change.

How can organizations put dynamic capabilities into practice? This article focuses on the power of organizational design, showing how managers can harness new organizational forms to build a capacity for sensing, shaping and seizing opportunities. Fast-moving environments favor open organization and self-organizing processes that quickly convert individual capabilities into actionable collective intellect. However, such self-organizing processes require managers to design and execute them. Using Valve Corporation as a case example, this article shows how new design principles-such as polyarchy, social proofs, and new forms of open organization-allow organizations to build dynamic capabilities for sustained innovation in dynamic environments.

The ability to sense valuable strategic options and then to organize effectively and efficiently to embrace them is at the core of a company's dynamic capabilities. This article identifies and discusses a specific type of sensing that we call "generative sensing." Companies and executives that display generative sensing capabilities proactively generate hypotheses about observed events and then test these hypotheses to generate new data in a recursive process. Borrowing from design cognition research, we discuss the two microfoundations of these capabilities- framing and abduction - and provide examples of how they are embedded in companies to enhance option generation.

This article presents a clinical study, based on a decade of ongoing research at Samsung Group, that describes how the Samsung Group and its mobile phone division competed successfully in smartphones. The ability to manage co-opetition-simultaneous forces of competition and cooperation within the business group-is a particular dimension of dynamic capability that has stood Samsung in excellent stead. Relying on internal exhortations to cooperate often leads to a lack of dynamism, whereas untrammeled competition leaves proverbial synergies entirely untapped and spawns duplicative investments. Samsung, however, has succeeded by its ability to strike a balance between the two.

This article describes how hospitals can use the dynamic capabilities framework to achieve competitive advantage in today's difficult healthcare environment.

Jaime Giancola, an MBA student, has recently completed an operations management course in which aggregate production planning (APP) was one of the topics. She believes that that her family's business, Cataumet Boats, which her grandparents started and which her mother and uncle now own, might benefit from applying APP concepts to identify the different ways they might schedule workers, which could be especially valuable during the peak demand seasons of fall and spring. The goal of using APP is to reduce labor costs without sacrificing the high level of customer service that Cataumet Boats is known for providing.

Yosef Akhtman, CEO and cofounder of Gamaya, and Igor Ivanov, Gamaya's business development manager were elated at the latest news coming from Brazil. After a year of field tests, things were finally falling into place and Gamaya was now able to demonstrate credibly the contributions its drone-born miniaturized hyperspectral cameras could bring to local sugar cane farmers. It was not only the hardware that made Gamaya so special, but also the data analytics that converted the rich data images into valuable crop management information that could immediately be converted into field actions. The client in this case was also an investor in the venture and, as one of the most visible and acclaimed Swiss entrepreneurs, his validation was worth a lot to the company, and that could be a turning point for the company. Even though it had won prizes in venture competitions and research grants from the University lab, this was the first significant investment from a professional investor, and Yosef knew it would open doors for further funding rounds. Questions abounded though: Should they continue to focus on sugar cane farmers or should they move to other crops and geographies? Was the business model appropriate for their activities? How long would it take for the delivery medium, various drones at this point, to be replaced by mini-satellites offering almost real-time monitoring on a larger scale?

In 2012, the French government was faced with the challenge of setting the standards for socially responsible investment funds. A broader issue was the set of roles and responsibilities that regulators needed to take to ensure the best interest of society and the retail market. Retail consumers were different from institutional clients because they were numerous, they may not have had access to the same information available to more sophisticated investors, and because their thoughts on the financial markets were most likely to be based on what they had read and heard in the news. The government had to decide how to go about creating standards that could be applied to socially responsible investment funds. Also see supplement.

It is 2014 and AnswerDash, a startup backed by venture capital, has not seen the widespread adoption of their online self-service customer support solution that they were expecting based on early success in helping clients save and generate substantial amounts of money. Dr. Jacob O. Wobbrock and Dr. Andrew J. Ko are revisiting their go to market strategy to determine how to build a viable business out of their groundbreaking technology. The case raises issues in entrepreneurship and B2B marketing such as analyzing economic value to the customer, designing optimal price metrics, aligning pricing with marketing strategy, customer life-time value, organizational selling, and influencing innovation adoption.

At the end of 2013, the leadership of Opec Plastics was pleased with their young company's growth to nearly $200 million in revenues. They had goals to double that in two more years, but were uncertain on how to accomplish this. They had technical expertise in manufacturing plastic bags and related products and trading the raw materials (resins) from which the products were made. Yet, they regarded their core competencies in a more general way: strong relations with people who mattered, in the supply chain, in the regulatory environment, and in financing. The growth options included: • Expansion within existing business lines through scale increases. • Scope expansion to products and services near to their existing activities. • More distant scope expansion to products and services that were not near to their existing activities but still presented opportunities. • Expansion along the vertical value chain. Layered on these issues was the external environment. The prospects for Southeast Asian trade agreements and the Trans Pacific Partnership created new opportunities along the value chain. However, the vagaries of oil prices (the basis for plastics prices), threatened additional uncertainties.

The case describes how the Pro-invest Group - a boutique investment firm specialising in private equity real estate and real estate asset management - built its business and raised a first-time private equity fund. The Pro-invest founders had boot-strapped the business since its inception in 2013, but in-house funds were running out by mid-2014 and they needed third-party capital to take the venture to the next level. After deciding on a suitable fund structure, the Pro-invest team hits the fundraising trail. Turmoil erupts when a potential investor pulls out at the last minute, leaving the team in shock to re-evaluate its fundraising options. The case explores the pros and cons of each option in detail. Please visit the dedicated case website http://cases.insead.edu/pro-invest to access supplementary material.

Drybar was launched in 2010 with the tagline "No cuts. No color. Just Blowouts!" by hair stylist Alli Webb and her brother Michael Landau. Blow-drying had long been provided in most hair salons, but was considered an add-on or infrequent stand-alone service that did not incur a significant and consistent revenue stream. Alli recognized an untapped business opportunity in blowout services and turned it into a US$70 million business with 55 locations across the United States in just five years. The case looks at how Drybar changed the concept of professional blow-drying and made it compelling to women regardless of age or background. The case is presented in two parts. Part A describes the industry landscape of the American beauty salon industry in 2008, before Drybar entered the scene. It reviews the nature of the industry throughout history, and the structure and competitive forces that shaped conventional practices. Part B illustrates how Drybar was conceived with a different strategic approach and what made Drybar stand out from conventional hair salons while achieving lower costs. Part B is presented in an innovative cartoon storybook format to help enhance participants' understanding of Drybar's offering through an entertaining experience that is both informative and emotionally engaging. Supplementary Video and Lecture Slides can be obtained at https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/teaching-materials/drybar/

Drybar (B) is presented in an innovative cartoon storybook format to help enhance participants' understanding of Drybar's offering through an entertaining experience that is both informative and emotionally engaging. Supplementary Video and Lecture Slides can be obtained at https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/teaching-materials/drybar/

After 18 months of attempting to transition the company to holacracy, Tony Hsieh, Zappos' celebrity CEO, decided it was time to make the change happen. In March 2015, he sent an email to all Zappos employees offering them 3 months' severance pay if they felt that self-management was not for them. One month later, 14% of the workforce had quit, including 20% of the tech department, potentially putting at risk a complex transition to a new online platform mandated by parent company Amazon. The case recounts how Tony Hsieh financed, championed, and ultimately became CEO of online shoe retailer Zappos. A passionate entrepreneur who made millions at a young age, Hsieh was known for his penthouse parties, for what he referred to as his "tribe". He brought the same sense of community to Zappos, which he moved from San Francisco to Las Vegas where employees could "be like family". Despite the company's unabashedly weird culture, it had the lowest employee turnover rate in the industry. Widely admired for its outstanding customer service, Zappos was repeatedly listed among Fortune's "Best Places To Work." When in 2009 Amazon acquired Zappos for $1.2 billion, it promised to preserve its management and culture. But Hsieh's decision to implement holacracy - a form of organizational self-management that replaces job titles and hierarchy with "circles" that employees step in and out of according to their preferences and skills - was less popular than hoped. Hence his "rip the Band-Aid" approach, to ensure that only employees committed to the change remained at the company.

The case focuses on AccorHotels' ambitious digital transformation, aiming to put the customer back at the center of its strategy and operations. Responding to a powerful wave of digital disruptions in the hospitality ecosystem, from the emergence of review websites, online travel agents and active forums to the rise of new competitors such as Airbnb, the transformation entailed: (1) designing and implementing an innovative content marketing strategy (including online content creation or co-creation, curation and dissemination) (2) incorporating e-reputation as a core business objective, and (3) creating and/or adapting organizational structures - from management to operations - to support this new dynamic and maximize value creation. The case starts in Fall 2015, when Olivier Arnoux, SVP Customer Satisfaction at AccorHotels, and his team, are asked to devise an ambitious plan to address the new challenges facing major players in the hotel industry brought about by digital disruptions. It follows the decision-making process step by step, from (1) understanding the nature and impact of online content in the customer journey, to (2) building a strategic plan to integrate online insights into AccorHotels' core business objectives (in particular the importance of e-reputation), (3) redefining where and how value is created, and creating incentive structures aligned with the new objectives. Participants have multiple opportunities to put themselves in the shoes of the protagonists so as to understand the logic behind the decisions taken. What is novel is the systematic articulation of how digital and social media impact the customer journey, as well as the integration of online content into marketing strategy (i.e., content marketing) and organizational design (i.e., team structure, incentive system), underlining how embracing the digital revolution entails breaking traditional silos between functions such as marketing, strategy, finance and human resources.