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IMAX was involved in several aspects of the large-format film business: production, distribution, theatre operations, system development and leasing. The case illustrates IMAX's use of its unique capabilities to pursue a focused differentiation strategy. IMAX was initially focused on large format films that were educational yet entertaining, and the theatres were located in institutions such as museums, aquariums and national parks. However, IMAX found that its growth and profitability were constrained by its niche strategy. In response, IMAX sought to grow by expanding into multiplexes. Additionally, IMAX expanded its film portfolio by converting Hollywood movies, such as Harry Potter and Superman, into the large film format. This shift in strategy was supported by the development of two technological capabilities - DMR for conversion of standard 35 mm film into large format, and DMX to convert standard multiplexes to IMAX systems. The shift in strategy was partially successful, but carried the risk of IMAX losing its unique reputation.

Ho Tak Kee was originally a professional publisher and printer that started in the 1950s in Hong Kong. Having faced static performance for decades, the founder and grandfather of the family decided to close the printing department. This pushed his youngest son, On-ping, to a critical decision: whether and how to continue the family business. Under pressure, On-ping turned to his son John for support but the request put John in a difficult position of choosing between a professional career and the family business. As a young man without much life and work experience, John had to go through a personal development process to shape up as a leader in order to make the family business thrive again and keep the family together. Case (A) is from John's point of view as he is making his decision and is intended to stimulate students to look at a family business from a third generation's perspective. Case (B) starts with John's decision to join Ho Tak Kee.

Ho Tak Kee, originally a professional publisher and printer that started back in the 1950s in Hong Kong, faced static performance for decades. This forced the founder and grandfather of the family to decide to close down the printing department. This decision pushed his youngest son, On-ping, to a critical point resolving whether and how to continue the family business. Under pressure, On-ping turned to his son John for support but the request put John in a difficult position of choosing between a professional career and the family business. As a young man without much life and work experience, John had to go through a personal development process to shape up as a leader to be able to make the family business thrive again and keep the family together, while formulating his entrepreneurial vision for the future of the business and family. Case (A) runs from John's point of view as his is making his decison and is intended to stimulate students to look at a family business from a third generation's perspective. Case (B) starts with John's decision to join Ho Tak Kee.

The case describes existing performance management systems at a leading business school in India, the National Institute of Management (Central India campus) (NIM (CI campus)). The institution, which ranked among the top 20 business schools in India, is facing critical issues of attracting and retaining faculty members. The director of NIM (CI campus) has implemented a unit based performance measurement and incentive system that has worked favourably and enabled the institute to recruit top academicians. However, the management committee believes that the system has outlived its utility and desires to replace it with more robust systems that are less vulnerable to misuse. The faculty members, however, support retention of the existing system. The key teaching objective of this case is to understand performance management systems from perspectives of different stakeholders and develop a framework that meets all objectives of performance management. The case enables users to understand all steps in performance management and examine shortcomings at each stage. The role of incentive systems both as a tool to enhance individual performance and as a management control mechanism is also discussed. The case provides users an opportunity to evaluate the strategic significance of performance management. The case is to be used along with Performance Management at the National Institute of Management (Central India Campus) (A) No. 9B08C020.

In 2008, the acquisition of the General Healthcare Group (GHG) in the United Kingdom had propelled Netcare Limited (Netcare) from a predominantly South African operation into one of the largest private hospital groups in the world. One of Netcare's key long-term goals was to deliver innovative, quality health-care solutions to patients in every continent. Recent South African parliamentary legislation had introduced the potential for regulated pricing and collective bargaining in medical centres, which could change the industry structure and possibly affect Netcare's strategy. As acquisition at home would be increasingly subject to stringent scrutiny from competition regulators, Netcare wondered what the impact of global acquisition would have on executing its strategy. What lessons could be learned from the GHG acquisition, how could those lessons be leveraged for further international growth, and what continent would be best suited to expansion? The case illustrates the international expansion strategies of Netcare, and illustrates the challenges of operating in an emerging market. The ability to overcome these challenges is the basis of a competitive advantage when entering developed markets.

Orix Investment Bank Pakistan Limited (OIBPL) was a non-bank financial institution (NBFI) providing corporate finance, brokerage and other services to large enterprises and was listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange. The annual financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2008 revealed that, as a result of default by one customer, the bank had incurred an enormous loss of over half a billion rupees, which had seriously eroded the bank's capital base. As a consequence, the bank had to seek new capital through a rights issue and this had required support of the Japanese sponsor, Orix Japan, to underwrite the issue. The customer in default was Callmate Telips Telecom Limited (CTTL); details are in Callmate Telips (A) - Choice of Accounting Policy case, No. 9B08N028. The case includes the instance of share price volatility that had been faced by the stock market in Pakistan. Two investigations had been done into the abnormal rise of the market. One of these investigation reports had identified OIBPL as a key player in the speculative dealings that were financed through the overnight financing system known as badla. Another investigation by the NBFI regulator, Securities Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP), had examined the abnormally large volume of CTTL share trades on the KSE and found the directors of Callmate involved in manipulating the company share price. The directors were prosecuted and the judge had issued warrants for their arrests. The directors, faced with a difficult situation of a very large loss, decided to delay disclosing the loss by six months. There was circumstantial evidence in the case that would suggest that the directors should have known about the conviction of the directors of Callmate and that this would have an adverse affect on the share price of the company. The auditor's report also was the standard clean report, in spite of the seriousness of the court decision, as it made the shares of Callmate worthless. The case can be used to examine corporate governance by analyzing a) the decisions of the directors b) the report of the external auditor c) the composition of the board of directors. If Case A is also being used, the dealings of CTTL with the regulator of publicly listed companies can also be included. There is an ethical dimension of governance and this viewpoint can also be discussed especially where both cases are being used.

Dr. Michael Lehman was the newly appointed external chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology (the department) at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry. He had been brought in specifically to address the consistent underperformance of the department. Department members had divided into two camps - clinical teaching and research - and open conflict existed between members with the result that the clinical anatomy division was considering leaving the faculty. Another area of concern involved the declining research output by the cell biology division; many research programs had stalled, resulting in the loss of external funding. Lehman wondered how to balance competing interests and incentives with his five-year plan. His overall strategy was three-fold: keep the department together; enable faculty to generate scholarly research; and rejuvenate research activities. From a change-management perspective, Lehman wanted to identify his key challenges and develop a plan of action for each issue. He thought about how to implement change in his new department.

Dexter Nelson recently accepted a summer analyst position at PPC Consulting (PPC) in Toronto, and was excited to take on the challenge in a high-performance organization. It had only been a few days since he had started his internship when the rest of Dexter Nelson's team left to conduct primary research at a client site. Left alone to work on his first real project, he began to feel overwhelmed. Having recognized the project as a new product launch, Nelson wanted to identify key elements to address in the financial model. He also wanted to identify a series of actions to make a significant contribution not only to the client, but his team. He began to approach his task by identifying his problem and decision to be made, using an importance-urgency matrix and developing and analyzing appropriate alternatives.

In April 2007, the senior vice-president and chief financial officer (CEO) of Crown Investments Corporation of Saskatchewan (CIC) was faced with a challenging decision. CIC was contemplating the sale of 50 per cent interest in a heavy oil upgrader and wanted an assessment of the worth of the company. To obtain a reasonable estimate, the CEO had instructed an independent advisor with industry experience to provide input. In addition to receiving an estimate of value (based on the methods of free cash flow, comparables and precedent transactions), the CEO also had to formulate a strategy for selling off the company.

LAB International (LAB) has two divisions that have vastly different strategies. The research and development division has a continuing need for funding and a high degree of risk, while the contract research division is a cash generator and is less risky. LAB is attempting to raise additional capital but believes that the shares of the company are undervalued in the market. It is contemplating a spinoff of one of the divisions to raise the funds and to make each company more of a pure play and therefore to achieve a more appropriate market valuation. Students must assess the merits of this strategy and place a value on the spinoff.

An analyst at IGM Financial (IGM) is asked to make a presentation outlining the final details of the proposed acquisition of Saxon Financial (Saxon). The analysis was to include the strategic rationale for the acquisition, an estimate of the proposed offering price for Saxon and whether or not the acquisition would be accretive to earnings per share of IGM. To complete the assignment the analyst had to calculate a preliminary valuation range based on several different valuation methodologies.

The case deals with how Shoppers Stop, a home-grown Indian retailer of branded apparel and accessories closely identified with the adult segment of customers for a decade and a half since inception, looked at the growing segment of the youth population. Against the backdrop of an aging demographic, particularly among countries in North America and Europe, India had an advantage of a largely young population. Thirty-five per cent of Indian were under 15 years of age and 70 per cent under 35 years of age - a profile likely to remain so for the next two decades. Topics of discussion include: Is there a risk for an adult company in targeting the young? Is there a risk in not targeting the young? Is there a business opportunity in the youth segment? What should Shoppers Stop do if it were to seize the opportunity? What is the addressable segment? Is a change in strategy required now or will tweaking the current strategy do? An interview with the Shoppers Stop chief executive officer is available on DVD.

In June 2008, the president and owner of Canada Goose Inc. (Canada Goose), a producer of luxury sport jackets, was contemplating the future of his company. Despite recent years' steady growth in both his company and the industry in general, the president believed that a significant opportunity existed for Canada Goose to further cement itself as a market leader for this industry. The president was intrigued by two separate offers from national retailers in Canada. Both were in the form of long-term contracts; in the past Canada Goose had used such contracts to maintain successful relationships with its many distributors. The offers were lucrative; however, the president needed to consider whether the offers aligned with the company's current marketing strategy. Agreeing to stock its product through a national chain would be a departure from its current method of distribution through independently-owned regional retailers. Accepting either of the offers would not only potentially price these retailers out of the market but could also lead to the devaluation of the brand.

Alara Agri, based in Bursa, Turkey, is one of the world's foremost cherry and fig producers. The president and chief executive officer (CEO) was concerned about a recurring capacity problem at the end of the process where cherries were packed. On some of the plant's conveyor belts, piles of cherries of one size waited to be packed while other belts had too few cherries to keep workers busy, and thus delayed order fulfillment. Diverting excess cherries from a busy line to an underutilized line was not an option as cherries were sorted by size. One solution the CEO had considered was to build another processing line at a cost of US$2 million, although he thought a better solution may be achieved by changing the process or reconfiguring the flow of the machine. The CEO wondered how best to improve capacity with the equipment they already had. To aid in his decision, he examined corporate data with regards to revenues and production figures, incoming cherries received in tonnes, expected size distribution of cherries, and the plant layout and packaging options.

The founder and president of Nuway Software (Nuway) must determine the pricing strategy for their new internally-developed mobile software product, Nulogic. Nuway develops custom mobile software applications that provide great competitive advantage to each of their customers; no two software modules it develops are similar. Nuway is now ready to market Nulogic as a stand-alone product and has identified three unique customer segments: Corporate in-house developers, competitors and independent software developers. The company has historically followed a cost-plus pricing model and has maintained positive profit margins. The software industry as a whole is moving towards value-based pricing, where cost is based on perceived value to the customer. The president does not favour value-based pricing and views it as price-gouging; however, he is aware that cost-plus pricing has limitations with regards to cost accuracy. By considering the entire software industry, Nuway's capabilities and his own preferences, the president must determine how to price the new software.

This case analysis traces the establishment and subsequent operation of FIJI Water LLC and its bottling subsidiary, Natural Waters of Viti Limited, the first company in Fiji extracting, bottling and marketing, both domestically and internationally, artesian water coming from a virgin ecosystem found on Fiji's main island of Viti Levu. The case reviews the growth and market expansion of this highly successful company with the brand name FIJI Natural Artesian Water (FIJI Water). The company has grown rapidly over the past decade and a half, and now exports bottled water into many countries in the world from its production plant located in the Fiji Islands. In 2008, FIJI Water was the leading imported bottled water brand in the United States. In the context of great marketing success of the FIJI brand, particularly in the U.S. market, the case focuses on how the company has responded to a number of corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues, including measuring and reducing its carbon footprint, responsibilities to key stakeholders, and concerns of the Fiji government with regard to taxation and transfer pricing issues. The case provides a compelling illustration of how CSR challenges may jeopardize the sustainability of a clever marketing strategy.

In June 2008, the chief executive officer of Talisman Energy Inc. (Talisman) and his senior executive team met with the company's board of directors. The purpose of this meeting was to debate Talisman's proposed entry into the oil-rich Kurdistan region of Iraq. This move was potentially very lucrative for Talisman but was fraught with risks. These risks were exacerbated by Talisman's previous foray into Sudan; during that expansion Talisman had been accused of complicity in human-rights abuses, stemming from industry-accepted royalties and fees it had paid to the government. This payment of fees was held as an example by public interest groups to allege that Talisman was indirectly funding the Sudanese civil war. Talisman's reputation had suffered to the point where the ire of investors and U.S. and Canadian governments was sufficient for Talisman to exit Sudan in 2003. There were many questions about the proposed move to Iraq, including the political situation, the views of the U.S. and Canadian government, and especially the US$220 million fee payable to the Kurdistan Regional Government. Should Talisman enter Iraq, and if so, could they avoid experiencing the same outcome as Sudan?

Instructor spreadsheet for product 8B09E06.

A German expatriate had moved to China in 2005 to take up a merchandizing position at the Wal-Mart China headquarters in Shenzen. By 2008 he had been promoted to the new position of senior director for sustainability for Wal-Mart China (retail) and Global Procurement. His new position required that he lead the rapidly-approaching inaugural Wal-Mart Sustainability Summit. The senior director must ensure that Wal-Mart China's five Strategic Value Networks (SVNs), which were tasked with leading sustainability change within the organization, continued to engage stakeholders by implementing innovative solutions that not only cut costs but also lead to more sustainable operations. The case describes Wal-Mart China's operations (including purchasing, distribution and retail) in the context of the company's desire to improve sustainability in a manner appropriate to China. The immediate issue is to identify opportunities to improve the sustainability of Wal-Mart China's distribution systems and retail operations.

The multi-million dollar technology licensing agreement was in danger of falling apart. It was late September 2001; some months previously, The University of Western Ontario's (UWO's) Industry Liaison Office had signed a conditional agreement with a major pharmaceutical company operating throughout the People's Republic of China (PRC). The agreement permitted the company to utilize specific technology developed at UWO in health products to be marketed throughout the PRC. The agreement was conditional upon ratification being signed not later than October 31, 2001 - but, within that period, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the months immediately following September 11, 2001, the appetite of the PRC for buying Western technology had greatly diminished, and the PRC Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Development continued to delay ratification of the agreement. UWO's legal counsel, Peter Ross, was asked by his university to lay out the framework and possible alternative courses of action within which a decision could be made as to what the university could do in this situation. The learning objectives of the case are: 1) to become aware of the forms of intellectual property (IP) that can be involved in international cooperation, the potential difficulties and risks involved in sharing IP, the types of agreements that can be drawn up to minimize the risks, and the legal frameworks within which disagreements can be resolved 2) to become aware of how different partner countries respect or allegedly disregard rights to IP and commercial transactions generally 3) to develop strategies for coping in this environment.