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In 2006, Ruth's Chris Steak House was fresh off of a sizzling initial public offering and was now interested in growing their business internationally. With restaurants in just four countries outside the United States, a model to identify and rank new international markets was needed. This case provides a practical example for students to take quantitative and non-quantitative variables to create a short list of potential new markets.

A recent MBA graduate was about to return to the family business, Biomed Co., Ltd. as its general manager. Biomed's parent company, Thai Drugs Co., Ltd. has just revised Biomed's market strategy, a change that created the need to align the sales compensation system to fit with the new strategy. The new general manager was charged with this responsibility. Students will work through the path from strategy to a powerful sales compensation plan that will support the strategy and encourage to execute the role of the salesforce within this strategy.

The commercial eProducts Manager at Shell Canada has to determine how to improve the adoption and utilization of their eCommerce channel. eStore had been developed for the fuel and lubricants market as a pilot test of how Shell might communicate with its customers electronically, thus reducing costs. While eStore had been in place for a year, and many customers had signed up, utilization was low. A consulting firm has made recommendations about the technical issues that might be driving low utilization; the commercial eProducts Manager has to consider whether the problems are purely technical, and make a recommendation on how to proceed.

The new chief executive officer (CEO) of ING Insurance Asia/Pacific wants to improve the regional operation of the company. ING Group was a global financial services company of Dutch origin with more than 150 years of experience. As part of ING International, ING Insurance Asia/Pacific was responsible for life insurance and asset/wealth management activities throughout the region. The company was doing well, but the new CEO believed that there were still important strategic and operational improvements possible. This case can be used to discuss the local versus regional or global management issue and will yield best results if the class has already been introduced to different strategic and organizational alternatives in the international business context.

Over the past two years, ING Insurance Asia/Pacific had successfully implemented a new organizational and operational framework called Towards Performance Excellence (TPE), which was developed with inputs from functional heads, senior management and staff at the business unit level. TPE detailed and organized everything ING Asia/Pacific needed to execute its strategy effectively. TPE divided ING's business processes into six core categories: portfolio, marketing, organizational, operational, reputation and financial. Each category included aspects of execution known as drivers, which required managers to identify specific objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each driver or sub-driver. The case includes many original exhibits and is ideally taught as the follow up case of the ING Insurance Asia/Pacific, Ivey product #9B06M083 or as a standalone case, which illustrates a real example of regional versus local organizational management.

In 2006 Wal-Mart, the second largest firm in the world by sales, was looking to improve its already efficient supply chain. The company's supply chain was closely integrated with its retail and information systems strategies and has been developed incrementally over the past 40 years. However, rivals are copying every aspect, from the way Wal-Mart cross-docks product in warehouses, to Wal-Mart's use of a sophisticated database to capture, store and disseminate store-level information to suppliers. Wal-Mart's new executive vice-president, logistics was overseeing a handful of initiatives designed to improve the firm's supply chain. However, it was not certain that these initiatives were going to have a significant impact on Wal-Mart costs, and he needed to consider what the company should do to stay ahead of the competition.

Faced with capacity constraints at the company's river fed facilities, the president and general manager of Piscifactorias de los Andes (Piscis), the largest trout farming company in Peru, is considering an option to create a trout farm on Lake Titicaca. Although Titicaca was the largest lake in South America and was in many ways ideally suited to trout farming, all previous attempts to commercialize the lake's fishery had failed. In addition, Piscis faced potential opposition from local fishers and environmentalists. Titicaca was also too distant from the company's existing fish plants. Therefore, if it were to establish operations on the lake, Piscis would need to build a processing plant at a cost of several million dollars. However, because of the region's history of political instability and violence, financial institutions were reluctant to offer loans.

A student project team must recommend to a firm whether or not it should acquire its largest competitor in the salmon farming industry, and if so, at what maximum price. The case does not provide enough information for students to solve the case, instead, students must think about the data and analysis they would need in order to answer their client's question. This case highlights framing a strategic problem for analysis and decision making as well as the preliminary analysis and planning required for efficient and effective data gathering. The case provides an opportunity to focus on secondary sources of data and introduces students to the resources available through the university library.

The corporate manager of vehicle planning at Nissan Canada Inc. had been asked by the director of vehicle ordering for Nissan North America (NNA), to review the proposed vehicle ordering process as part of the new Integrated Customer Order Network (ICON). The ICON project would change Nissan's North American vehicle ordering process from a 'make-to-stock' into a 'make-to-order' environment which called for a significant process transformation for Nissan's operations in North America and Japan. The corporate manager of vehicle planning was hoping that the new process would be exactly what the dealers were seeking in an effort to closer align production with customer demand. However, he needed to evaluate the new process from the perspective of all stakeholders to ensure that Nissan's business objectives could be met.

This case looks at an in-house experiment conducted by a plant manager to determine whether his quality control machines are functioning properly. The case can be used to help students understand the concept of variation and sources of variation. It is also useful for illustrating the effective use of descriptive statistics, single sample tests, paired tests and their non-parametric equivalents.

This case examines the interpretation of political polls. It discusses margin of error, confidence intervals and the relationship between sample size and margin of error. An Excel spreadsheet is included, Ivey product # 7B07E016, to help students understand the concepts.

In late November 2002, halfway through the vital Christmas selling season, William E. Aziz, hired to turn around White Rose Crafts and Nursery Sales Limited (White Rose), has to decide what to do. White Rose is under Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) protection, having breached its debt covenants. The company's upper and middle management is frustrated that their efforts since 1999 have not turned the firm around. The remaining employees blame the firms' situation on the change in strategy that occurred in 1999. The changes led many of White Rose's original employees to leave. At least partly due to an attempt to compete head-on with new U.S. entrants into the garden and crafts industry, the company endured three straight years of losses. In November 2002, White Rose launched a strategic review of its operations and asked its chief executive officer of three years, Dave Symons, to resign.

The founder and executive director of E+Co faces the challenge of ten-fold growth and reviews the core parts of the company's innovative business model, the changes in the energy markets around the world, and the rationale for local solutions to energy scarcity and inefficiency. Also presented is a set of entrepreneurial growth strategies that preserve the core of the model - i.e., simultaneously tackling energy poverty and energy waste, and bringing people up the energy ladder with locally suitable and affordable solutions. These strategies help consolidate and leverage E+Co's 12 years of experience and strong local presence through an innovative combination of complementary wedges.

The director and co-founder of Honey Care Africa (Honey Care) looks back over the six years of operations and describes the original business model and several sequential changes based on feedback from rural communities, partner organizations, and learning by doing through field operations. Increasing international recognition highlights the potential impact of the model on inspiring sustainable grassroots ventures in the agriculture sector in Kenya. For Tanzania and other developing countries, he ponders the potential opportunities and challenges in replicating the Honey Care model elsewhere. The case also tackles alternative routes for scaling up the model in East Africa. Students are presented with several specific challenges which illustrate the growing tension between Honey Care's original commitment to the farmers and its prospects for international take-off, and are asked to propose alternative model reconfigurations to resolve this tension.

The president and founder of the non-profit organization, Let's Talk Science, needs to ensure that the marketing plan provided by her staff for a new training package would meet the sales goal of 100 units each year. The package, called Science with Impact is intended to train scientists and engineers on educational techniques to use for delivering effective and age-appropriate presentations to children and the non-scientific community. This marketing case focuses on the development of a pricing and promotion strategy for a product in a non-profit environment.

Excel spreadsheet for students.

Shopster.com is a Calgary-based e-business company whose business is to assist other individuals or companies in setting up their own retail transactional websites. Shopster differs significantly from ordinary website developers in that retailers are able to select from a huge inventory of saleable products, through Shopster's network of goods providers. Shopster also provides software tools, and expertise, to allow anyone wishing to create an online retail store to do so quickly and easily. Shopster's business has done well to date, but there are plenty of operational challenges ahead. As well, the principals would like to raise the bar substantially, to something they refer to as Shopster 2.0, the specifics of which are still at a formative stage. The Shopster case provides an interesting example of a small but rapidly growing Canadian company with an innovative business model and big dreams for the future.

The majority partner in the Hooplah Media Group (Hooplah) of Toronto, Ontario, was trying to decide what to do about one of Hooplah's website design contractors (contractor). The contractor had taken on a project directly with a key contact at JewelWorks Inc., one of Hooplah's largest clients, without going through Hooplah. As an independent contractor, he offered to design a website for JewelWorks Inc. for a lower price than Hooplah's rate. Apparently, the project was not going smoothly, and there was significant tension between the contractor and the contact at JewelWorks Inc. The majority partner at Hooplah was unsure how he should react to the contractors' involvement with JewelWorks Inc. and whether he should assist in the completion of the website.

Wayne Eisener has received two job offers. The first offer is an executive vice-president position at Richmond Hill Mortgages (RHM). The second offer is a junior lawyer position at Weiler and Simons LLP, Barristers and Solicitors. The mortgage company offers a small base salary but potentially large commissions in the long run. The law firm offers a higher base salary and the opportunity to be promoted to partner within five years. However, Eisener would need to update his knowledge of law substantially. As he reflects on the advantages and disadvantages of each job, Eisener must consider his past and how each job will help him accomplish the goals of providing for his family and creating a resurgence in his career.

This technical note focuses on risk management in a project-based organization. Risk management is discussed at the organizational and project levels. Three components of risk management are mentioned: risk assessment, risk management plan, and risk monitoring. Recent thinking in risk management has gone beyond financial risk management and incorporates enterprise risk management (ERM). Finally, the technical note links risk management to strategy, and notes the importance that the implementation of both has on the performance of the firm.