個案總覽

In early 2016, Stanley Litow, IBM's Vice President of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President of the IBM International Foundation, made his travel arrangements for still another flight from New York to discuss possibilities for application of a new model for high school called P-TECH, for Pathways in Technology Early College High School, the name of the first school in Brooklyn. In the past month alone, he had flown to Little Rock, Arkansas, to meet with Republican governor Asa Hutchinson and to Providence, Rhode Island, to meet with Democratic governor Gina Raimondo to discuss bringing a P-TECH model to their states.

The Charles Lake Mill had experienced more than 200 days of strike in the previous 10 years, and its employees were accustomed to returning to the mill the morning after a settlement was reached and going directly back to their jobs. But this time the mill management team is determined that things at the mill would change. This case follows the Charles Lake Mill as it goes from being one of the most unsafe mills with a terrible production record to one of the safest mills with solid production gains each year.

This technical note provides an overview of capital structure policy. Through a series of hypothetical situations and real-world examples, students will gain an understanding of the benefits and costs of debt and equity financing. This note explores the value and cost of capital implications of capital structure policy with the intent to explain why businesses such as Hilton Worldwide and Computer Sciences differ so dramatically in their capital structure policy

The chief executive officer of Les Moulins de la Brague (LMB), a seven-generation French olive oil miller, was worried about the future of the business. LMB was trying to find a profitable niche in a market that was filled with multinational companies, whose products came in a variety of quality and price ranges, and filled the shelves of French grocery stores. Although LMB had achieved critical acclaim for its blended olive oils made with spices and flavours, the business was unstable for a number of reasons. First, weather conditions had caused a decrease in the number of olives harvested. Second, on the consumer front, shoppers' interest in the health benefits of olive oil, promoted by the popularity of the "Mediterranean diet" seemed to have peaked. Finally, the market was flooded with various levels of quality: low-quality brands with low prices; medium-quality brands that dominated consumer markets; and many high-end premium brands that were produced by olive mills just like LMB. With a market environment pressured in so many ways, how could LMB keep its 200-year-old millstones turning?

Lieshout (NL), October 2015. Bavaria N.V., founded well before 1680 and based in Lieshout (Netherlands), was the second largest brewery in the Netherlands. It symbolized fierce independence and a high degree of entrepreneurship, always balancing legacy with innovation. Five cousins from the Swinkels family were at the helm of the operative business; the company's shared leadership model was one of its many ingredients for success, as was the family's unquenchable ambition for the company. But the path to global enjoyment was anything but smooth. Western beer markets had been stagnating for years, some even declining, and competition was fierce. To generate growth, brewers had to rely mostly on acquisitions. The challenge for the seventh generation of Swinkels' family owners had clearly been to leverage the company's exceptional brewing skills. To stay relevant and continue to thrive for the next generations, Bavaria needed to identify new growth niches and maintain excellence in product quality while optimizing its manufacturing and entire value chain. Should it continue to rely on technology to create new products and brands addressing ever finer niche markets? Should it reach out for new frontier markets where beer consumption was still on the uptrend? Could it really do both effectively with its original governance and management structure, keeping the family connection and values? Learning objectives: Family governance, culture, growth management, expansion strategy, sustainability, Ethiopia, affinity financing, emerging markets, product portfolio management, venturing, entrepreneurship.

CFX Inc, an e-commerce start-up based out of India, has built a large e-marketplace that allows sellers and buyers to transact online. The firm currently has 30,000 sellers and aims to have around 50,000 sellers by FY 2015-16. The company has around 6Mn customers today and anticipates their growth to triple in the next 2 years. In order to provide best shopping experience to their growing customer base, the firm needs to collect, store and analyze different kinds of data (transactional, behavioural, syndicated, and demographic) and improve their customer shopping experience. The company is in the process of identifying and designing suitable data management systems to sustain and manage their business growth. As part of this initiative, they hire a consultant to study their data management requirements, design a data model and offer implementation related recommendations. The management expects the consultant to come out with a concrete set of recommendations in terms of the nature of solution, choice of the database, a data model that suits CFX's requirements, cost-benefit trade-offs involved and implementation considerations.

NoSQL refers to a new class of database systems used in big data environments. These database systems aim to address some of the limitations of traditional database management systems. This technical note describes the key challenges in traditional database systems and introduces the concept of NoSQL databases. The design for NoSQL databases are also explained with illustrative examples.

Airtel, the leading mobile operator in India was going to launch the "Airtel Zero" platform that would charge service providers and OTT providers on the internet for mobile data traffic but would allow end consumers free access to the web sites that were signed up for the platform. The case revolves around the questions of pricing these data services to the service providers in a market where the price to one set of customers (the end consumer) was not independent of the price to another set of customers (the OTT service providers) - typical of two sided markets. Issues of net neutrality and competition have been considered alongside.

Written to accompany the Airtel Zero: Data Pricing Case (A00118), this note is intended to provide supporting information, models and frameworks on the issues of net neutrality in two two sided markets and how these influence the range of options available to price data services in the context of the online data services in the Indian market.

In June 2009, the online gaming company Zynga launched the free social game Farmville on Facebook, which set a new record by reaching one million Daily Active Users four days after launch, skyrocketing to 30 million in six months. The case takes an inside look at how Zynga created FarmVille in just six weeks, including the important strategic and technical decisions Zynga made, the sometimes tense team dynamics, and the challenges Zynga's founder and CEO Mark Pincus faced within Zynga. The company's experienced game developers had strongly resisted his idea to develop a farm game because farm games performed poorly on traditional game consoles and were considered an inferior gaming category. But Pincus believed they afforded access to new audiences and wanted to seize the strategic opportunity offered by the convergence of advances in technology and the meteoric rise of Facebook. These combined well with Zynga's advanced data analytics capabilities, which allowed the company to aggressively advance a new business model "Games as a Service," in which developers continuously added features to make a social game consistently compelling. Post launch, FarmVille was continually evolving and adding new features. But after a few months, the quality of the code and the ideas for new features were getting worse, more bugs and quality assurance problems arose, and users were complaining that new features were late and the game was getting rote. This case is set in late December 2009 as user numbers started to drop, and Pincus and the FarmVille team tried to figure out how to turn this trend around. Zynga's leadership team had to figure out how to reinvigorate FarmVille so that it would continue to be the goose that laid the golden eggs.

In 2016, Santa Clara County was launching a six-year project aimed at reducing the enormous costs of treating its most acute mental health care patients − $45 million a year − while improving their treatment and quality of life. For the project, the county chose a new model called "Pay for Success" (PFS), in which governments only pay service providers if their efforts are successful. By contrast, in the traditional payment model, providers bill the government on a regular basis for activities and outputs, such as the number of hours spent counseling clients. To provide service providers with working capital during multi-year projects, Pay for Success programs may be paired with Social Innovation Financing, under which commercial investors, foundations and high net worth philanthropists fund the organization's ongoing operations. They are then repaid to the extent that service providers meet their promised outcomes. The PFS model was growing, with $200 million in play in 45 projects around the world. But its detractors raised questions about issues such as 1) using private funds for services for vulnerable people being served, 2) the high government transaction costs of the projects, and 3) potential incentives for service providers to game the system by cherry picking clients or providing inferior services to reduce government costs. Santa Clara County was doing the first PFS project in the mental healthcare space, and had chosen the for-profit service provider Telecare. Butmany decisions still had to be made: How could the county attract Social Innovation Financing partners and negotiate a repayment structure that worked for all parties − while making sure that incentives and motivations were aligned? How should the county measure the success of this project? Which were the right metrics to assess - and which should be linked to payment?

Residency Select, LLC provides psychometric assessments for matching medical students to residency programs. After a series of successful pilots, founder Alan Friedman is considering whether to continue developing his offerings in this area, or whether to expand into new areas in the healthcare field, including offering assessments for administrative or executive positions. The case provides a walkthrough of the decision-making process of a young firm making a strategic leap, and how Friedman weighs many factors, including his own personal mission and desires. Friedman is also an alumnus of HBS's "Launching New Ventures" Executive Education program, and the case discusses how he makes use of the lessons from that course.

UFO Moviez is an Indian technology services provider that enables low-cost, digital delivery of films to cinemas. UFO's satellite-based technology enables a significantly wider release of films compared to traditional analog prints and standard, higher-resolution digital prints that must be transported physically. By 2015, 54% of all cinemas in India were using UFO's digital cinema system. UFO has achieved this without upsetting the industry's value chain of producer-traditional distributor-cinema-owner. The company earns revenue through three main streams: fees charged to the producer/distributor for converting films to digital format and distributing them over satellite, fees charged to the cinema owner for leasing the projection systems, and advertising revenue from ads shown during the screening of films. With cinemas in India mostly digitized, however, UFO faces challenges to continual growth. Should UFO focus on increasing its advertising revenue, leveraging UFO's core technology in other areas, or entering the business of film distribution?

Etsy was an online craft bazaar founded in 2005 in a loft in Brooklyn, New York. The company was known for its emphasis on social responsibility, transparency, authenticity, and its somewhat nontraditional approach to business. In January 2015, Etsy converted its Irish subsidiary to an unlimited liability company, a move it described as implementation of an "updated global corporate structure." In a subsequent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, it stated that this changed structure might "result in a reduction in our overall effective tax rate." In August 2015, the company came under fire for this move. Bloomberg ran an article headlined "Etsy Taps Secret Irish Tax Haven and Brags About Transparency at Home." Americans for Tax Fairness charged that Etsy had "changed its behavior and [was] now using unethical business practices." John Montgomery of Startworks declared, "Etsy sold its soul for a lower corporate tax rate." The Wall Street Journal summarized the reaction with the headline "Etsy Faces Pressure to Abandon Irish Tax Strategy." This case explores Etsy's initial decision, the critical public response to it, and Etsy' choice to ignore the fallout and stay the course.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 916038.

Founded in 1983, China Nonferrous Metal Mining (Group) Co., Ltd. ("CNMC") is one of the earliest and largest global Chinese nonferrous metal industrial enterprises. It has investments and projects in 27 countries and trade networks in nearly 100 countries with a particular focus in Africa. CNMC has been exploiting mineral resources in Zambia since 1998, becoming one of the most important copper industry enterprises in the country. In 2013, CNMC was included in the Fortune Global 500 for the first time, ranking 482nd with operating revenues of 24 billion USD. In 2015, CNMC ranked 390th among the Fortune Global 500. CNMC has been actively committed to becoming a bellwether of "going global" among Chinese enterprises, making great contribution to Africa by promoting mutually beneficial cooperation. Confronted with intensifying competition in China and overseas, CNMC leaders look to the future and endeavor to further develop African businesses, to strengthen CNMC's overall competitiveness, and to fulfill sustainable development, on the basis of its international expansion strategy.

The military general is the newly appointed prime minister of Thailand as of May 2014. The country is developing and needs support from its government in making it more efficient. The former prime minister was ousted, after less than three years in office, under the assumption that their government was spending itself into a hole and that the rice subsidy program was inept and hurting the country. The former prime minister was accused of launching the program in large part to win over the farming community and party votes for the August 2011 election. It is now the decision of the new prime minister whether he will continue on with the government purchase of rice, above market price, or should he break the promise made by the former government and stop the subsidy program from continuing.

Dr. Jonathan Strauss, Accounting Professor was contacted by a group of attorneys and asked to be an expert witness in the Jefferson County Bankruptcy Filing case. The situation had been in the news for over two years. Corruption of every kind had led to several Commissioners, contractors and others being fined and/or sent to jail for their part in the corruption. JPMC was sanctioned by the SEC and fined for their involvement in the case. Strauss discovered there was more than one interpretation of how GASB 34 and GASB 58 could be applied to issues that were integral to the Jefferson County bankruptcy trial. Strauss was being asked to testify as an expert witness on those very issues. While Strauss found the issues being evaluated interesting and the work financially rewarding, he had to decide whether he could support the particular position on those issues that the attorney's representing Jefferson County wanted him to take. He knew if he did decide to testify, his testimony would be subjected to detailed scrutiny by highly skilled professionals representing the counter parties in the litigation. He also knew that if he made a mistake in developing the support for his position, it was very likely that his errors would be highly publicized in the national financial press because of the significance of the case. Users of this case will be asked to put themselves in Strauss's shoes and determine whether a particular position can be sufficiently supported to justify the risk of testifying in bankruptcy court in such a high profile litigation.

greeNEWit is an energy audit company in Columbia, Maryland. The firm's three founders financed their start-up through loans from friends and family and an aggressive use of credit cards. Now the business is established, showing an exponential growth in revenues in a short time. Founder Josh Notes believes there is a billion dollar market available for the tak-ing in the area of smart grid integration. greeNEWit has been able to obtain limited bank financing but may need more to move into nationwide smart grid integration. Possibilities include additional bank loans, angel investors or venture capital, an equity partner, or perhaps generating additional revenues. A good estimate of firm value is needed in order to correctly price the share value. Josh needs to investigate all sources of financing before choosing the right next step for the firm.