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The president and chief operating officer of Cadim, the real estate arm of the Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, Canada's largest pension fund management firm, had recently been approached with several interesting multimillion-dollar investment opportunities in India and China. Although Cadim was still deciding whether to invest in either country (see Cadim: The China and India Real Estate Market Entry Decisions case), if the company chose to do so, it wanted suitable partners and deals lined up. Each deal had its pros and cons, but the president knew all too well that the wrong combination of partner and deal could have dire consequences for Cadim's profits and the team's reputation. The case analysis involves risk assessment, partner assessment, cash flow analysis and portfolio fit analysis.

A college student, Sarah James, attends a Mexican university (INI) for the summer to develop her language and cross-cultural capabilities. At the end of a successful semester, she e-mails the director of international recruitment for the Mexican University - with a copy to her major professor back in the United States - complaining about the treatment she received from her host family. She appears to have alienated all parties involved as she makes her exodus. The reader must decide how Professor McGill should respond. McGill had been attempting to build a relationship with the administration at INI in hopes of sending more students there for cross-cultural and language training. The reader must also evaluate Sarah's complaints to determine if they are a result of her own inflexibility or whether the host family was inappropriately screened or prepared. Will the remedy be found in having better policies governing host families or in having more culturally-attuned students?

The purpose of this note is to provide a brief non-technical introduction to the field of patents and their commercial implications. The note takes the perspective of the investor (entrepreneur) by describing the process of registering patents, the potential pitfalls and the possible economic benefits of having a patent.

The Dell story is well-known in the business world: a young Michael Dell, while attending the University of Texas in Austin, founds a computer sales company that eventually revolutionizes the industry. The case puts students in the position of a senior executive at Dell who is preparing for an investor relations meeting. As the senior executive reviews information on his company, he wonders how best to convey to skeptical investors that Dell's strategy will return the company to growth. In examining the Dell story, students learn about how Dell built up a set of competitive advantages that seemed unassailable until the early 2000s. The second part of the case illustrates the impermanence of competitive advantages - it describes how Dell is attempting to remake itself after falling behind its competitors.

In 2007, an analyst in the derivatives group of investment bank Grenfeld & Co. was asked to devise a hedging strategy for Providence Equity Partners (Providence) in Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE Inc.). Providence was based in the United States and any strategy would involve significant foreign exchange rate risk due to the conversion of returns into U.S. dollars. The analyst needed to consider several long-term hedging strategies that Grenfeld & Co. could recommend to Providence. Her vice-president had asked that she create a hedging strategy by initially assuming a 25 per cent IRR for the investment and its performance, based on two outcomes at the end of the investment (investment horizon = five years): a zero per cent IRR and a 25 per cent IRR.

The QiLing Research Hospital (QiLing), located in Beijing, China, headed by Dr. Tien Tzu, CEO, is in a partnership with the China Research Network (CRN). This partnership was formed in an effort to mutually benefit both parties in terms of becoming a leader in health-care quality standards and creating more effective health-care techniques. Due to the intertwined nature of this relationship, the acquisition of human capital for specific positions within the hospital requires CRN to provide the candidates. Dr. Tien Tzu is increasingly concerned that CRN's hiring conditions are hindering QiLing's potential - specifically referencing the latest batch of candidates CRN has provided to fill a key spot in the neurology department. She is aware that the right people are the key to maintaining QiLing's growth and loyalty and has analyzed how the candidate selection process, overall compensation, and job retention efforts affect the quality of the human capital pool. She is entertaining thoughts about overhauling the process for the benefit of QiLing, and is unsure how CRN will respond to any proposals she might make.

In April, 2008, the president of Tiburon, a manufacturer of camouflage components based in the Dominican Republic, met with Tiburon's parent company and sole customer, GMA. GMA, based in Guelph, Ontario, was an equipment supplier to the United States Army. Tiburon had only been in business one month, and the president was analyzing the current production process in each of the Dominican and Guelph plants. There were noted differences between the two plants' production methods, which could affect Tiburon's ability to meet monthly capacity demands of GMA. The president wanted to present and implement her own ideas to improve the efficiency, quality and cost effectiveness of the production line in the Dominican Republic. In doing so, she had to balance the high expectations of GMA and Tiburon's investors with the plant managers' cultural observations about employees and their work.

RSSWorks Inc. represents a very early stage funding opportunity - the business model has not been decided. The case provides an introduction to the thinking behind seeking first external funding for an early stage founder-funded company. Students will gain an overview of how a very early stage company gets going and begins to operate by exploring the funding options open to a company at this early stage, considering the needs and wants of the founders and the potential funders, and assessing a company at this early stage. The case also introduces the notion of an ecosystem for technology companies and its role in the success or failure of early stage companies, and the idea of launching on the cheap.

The president of Vancouver-based CFM Attachments Ltd. (CFM) is putting together a management buyout of his company. The president, who has had experience creating and selling a company in a related industry, is trying to determine how to value a potential purchase of CFM from the company's founder. As CFM is a privately-owned company, the president is trying to place a value on the company based on historical financials, a group of comparative firms, and a profit and cash flow forecast by the management team.

Dr. C.V. Chen received news that one of Lee and Li's senior assistants had found a loophole in a power of attorney from one of the firm's clients, SanDisk Corporation (SanDisk), that had allowed him to illegally sell the client's shares in a Taiwanese company and to sneak out of Taiwan with over NT$3 billion. Unfortunately, Lee and Li had no insurance to cover this embezzlement. Chen knew that the three senior partners needed to develop a plan of action to save the law firm, take care of the lawyers and other employees, maintain the reputation of the firm within Taiwan and abroad intact, do what was best for SanDisk and Lee and Li, and keep the more than 12,000 clients from deserting the firm.

Dr. C.V. Chen learned that one of Lee and Li's senior legal assistants had illegally sold a client's shares in a Taiwanese company and sneaked out of Taiwan with over NT$3 billion. Lee and Li took several actions to minimize the impact of the situation on the firm, its clients and its employees. Now Chen began to review the events and the actions taken. Although he knew that the worst was behind, he also knew that a great deal of work needed to be done in order to ensure the reputation of the firm would remain intact in the future.

Do subliminal cues have an effect on behaviour? This question is at the heart of many debates in advertising. In this exercise, students can determine, through their own experience, the impact of subconscious cues on their decisions. In this simulation, the instructor places a number of specific cues throughout the building. Students, in turn, are tasked with creating an advertising poster for a chain of children's play centres. Inevitably, their posters incorporate some, and sometimes all, of the cues. The exercise can lead to a deep and constructive discussion on the effect of subconscious cues on consumers.

If at first you don't succeed, give up, is the road less travelled for leaders who continue to spend money on an acquisition they made -even though the acquisition is clearly not working out. But why, as this author asks, don't we actually strive to create an organizational climate that makes admitting and learning from mistakes as valued as persistence and perseverance? Below, he describes four steps that can make it easy for leaders to cut their losses and save face.

With the elimination of many repetitive jobs due to increased automation and off-shoring, workplace motivation has changed significantly and more employees consider their work to be meaningful. Extrinsic rewards, usually financial, played a dominant role in the past, when jobs were more routine. Yet intrinsic or psychological rewards have gained importance, including an employee’s sense of meaningfulness, choice, competence, and progress. Intrinsic rewards benefit employee self-management by increasing concentration and motivation, and predicting retention. Yet older motivational models, which stress financial rewards, continue to influence many managers. After describing his research on motivation and the new importance of intrinsic rewards, the author outlines seven steps for building a high-engagement culture: 1. Begin with a meaningful purpose. 2. Build intrinsic motivation and engagement into management training and executive coaching. 3. Focus conversations on meaningfulness, choice, competence, and progress. 4. Engage “the middle.” 5. Measure intrinsic reward levels. 6. Provide missing building blocks for intrinsic rewards that you need to bolster. 7. Adopt a change and implementation process that is itself engaging.

Leaders are increasingly finding themselves in situations where they need help from subordinates, and in which subordinates are asking for help in areas where leaders are not experts. To manage either situation effectively, a leader will have to develop a degree of humility and specific process skills. Readers will learn how to achieve those difficult goals in this article by the dean of organizational behaviour.

Rare is the business leader who can articulate and instill a long-term vision and manage the day-to-day operations with the requisite obsession for detail. A leader who combines both styles is what these authors call a strategic leader, someone who, more than any other type of leader is best equipped to increase shareholder value. Leaders and potential leaders will find out what it takes when they read this article.

WestJet Airlines had achieved a lot. The airline had taken to the skies only 13 years earlier, with three airplanes flying to five destinations. Now, with a market value at more than $2 billion, the carrier had more than 70 Boeing Next Generation 737s, employed 7,000 people and had played host to more than 12 million guests. WestJet's ambition was to become the dominant airline in Canada by 2013 and one of the five most successful international airlines in the world by 2016. Achieving these goals would mean continued expansion in the WestJet organization. How could WestJet continue to build a high engagement culture as it experienced high rates of growth? In April 2009, in light of the company's rosy predictions of further growth and success, WestJet's pilots seemed dissatisfied with elements of the new contract offer. The leadership team had met a crossroad.

Transkin Income Fund provided freight transportation services in Canada and the United States. In mid February 2009, in response to a sharp fall in demand for transportation services due to the economic crisis, the chief operation officer had suggested that each of his six freight divisions and six support divisions and the corporate division should all implement a salary rollback. The chief operating officer (COO) believed that a strong message needed to be sent to customers, shareholders, banks, owner-operators, drivers and suppliers that Transkin was being proactive by taking action internally to ride out the crisis. Two of the 13 general managers resented the COO's plan. The two dissenters were from Transkin's two most profitable divisions; they were also the most senior executives. Both had their own reasons to resist the COO's idea. The COO wondered how he should respond to both dissenters - he wanted the support of every general manager for the salary rollback.

From Built to Last to Good to Great and now to Why the Mighty Fall (HarperCollins), Jim Collins has established himself as the leading management thinker of our time. The former Stanford University Business School professor turned mega-selling author and avid rock climber is the driven researcher and thinker whom many leading companies look to for advice on how to grow, how to improve their performance and how to go from merely good to great. He spoke to Ivey Business Journal from his research laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

If the participation of labour in management decisions leads to a more responsive, better-run GM and Chrysler, then this economic recession will have yielded a proud legacy, proof that management-labour cooperation really does work. This author believes that the time has come for such cooperation to roll down the assembly line. He also suggests tried and true work practices that will create efficiencies, and in the end, build an enduring trust.