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Clearwater Seafoods (Clearwater) is a seafood company located on the east coast of Canada. It is an income trust with operations around the world. As a result of the increasing value of the Canadian dollar relative to other currencies around the world, Clearwater has recently ceased paying its distributions. The case considers the decision faced by the chief financial officer to determine the strategy the firm should take to enable it to reinstate its distributions. This involves the choice between different financial and operational means to hedge the foreign exchange risk which brought the firm into its current situation.

Excel spreadsheet for product 9B07E011.

Excel spreadsheet for product 9B07E011.

Splash Corporation has been dubbed the next Unilever - not bad for a consumer packaged goods company that was started in a garage in the Philippines no more than 20 years ago. As one of the largest consumer packaged goods companies in the Philippines, it is now considering international expansion options. Should the company tackle the nearby markets of Indonesia and Malaysia, or should it look farther afield at the lucrative markets of Europe and North America? The company is not short of ambition but resources are scarce.

At this point, the Oracle acquisition of PeopleSoft in 2005 seems like ancient history (at least in technology years). In fact, the PeopleSoft acquisition is not even Oracle's latest major acquisition (Siebel was acquired in September 2005). One of the primary reasons that Oracle acquired PeopleSoft was to gain access to the 10,000+ customer base of PeopleSoft (and JD Edwards), which provides more than $1 billion in annual revenue. This customer base is a gift that keeps on giving in the form of a lucrative maintenance stream. This case study discusses options that PeopleSoft customers and, by extension, other enterprise software owners pursue to minimize enterprise resource planning (ERP) ongoing costs of ownership. The case encourages students to evaluate several criteria that can be used to lower ERP costs. There are no material requirements to run the case (other than Internet access).

A young entrepreneur with a family background in the Thai restaurant business considers whether to open his own Thai restaurant. Students are asked to assess his capabilities as a restaurant manager/owner. Students must perform a qualitative size-up of the market and examine whether the chosen location is a good fit. A seating plan is to be designed as well. Students are to project an income statement and balance sheet and determine the impact on financial statements if sales increase or decrease 20 per cent from the original forecast. Based on their analysis, students are asked to determine if the restaurant should be opened.

The director of operations for Millway Fabrics Canada walked into her office and one of the customer service agents was waiting for her in tears. The customer service agent (agent) needed a week off to take care of her son who was about to have surgery to have his tonsils removed. The agent had already taken all her vacation and sick time due to her son's illness. The agent was a strong performer and was well-liked by her co-workers. The director of operations had to make a decision.

Linlin Chen, a sales manager at Allnation Import and Export Co. Ltd. is in her office looking at the revenue reports for her sales in the past three months. Her numbers are very good, and she knows she is about to be rewarded with a promotion and the opportunity to become a shareholder in the company. Chen has been thinking about becoming an entrepreneur for some time. As she weighs in the risks and the opportunities, she realizes that she needs to make a decision within nine days when she will be asked to become a shareholder in the company.

Hudson Nuptials is a Toronto-based company created to take advantage of Canada's exclusive worldwide status as a provider of marriages to non-resident, same-sex couples. The company's president is struggling with whether to provide standardized wedding packages or to provide customized experiences to each client.

The company's co-founders reflect on the potential for the company, which was created to take advantage of Canada's exclusive worldwide status as a provider of marriages to non-resident, same-sex couples; to expand into other lines of business, such as research and consulting. They must decide whether to expand into other opportunities, refocus the company entirely on other opportunities or maintain a focus on providing weddings. This is a supplement to Hudson Nuptials (A), product #9B07M001.

As of late 2004, the chief executive officer (CEO) of New York-based wine distributor Monarchia Matt International (MMI) is looking at his portfolio of wines and wondering what advantage Hungarian wine could provide in becoming a powerful niche player in the highly fragmented and complicated U.S. wine industry. The CEO is cognizant of Hungarian wine's reputation in the United States as an inexpensive, mass-quantity produced and low quality drink. At the same time, the CEO is aware of Hungary's rich wine making tradition and is confident that the country's wine varieties could prove to be a key differentiator and help him grow revenues from $6 million in 2004 to $50 million by 2010. This case serves as an introduction to many of the core course frameworks in strategy, and can be used to cover the following topics: PEST (political, economic, social and technological factors); Porter's five forces; resource-based view of the firm using VRIO framework; value proposition; SWOT; and value frontier.

Farm Equipment Services (FES), the tractor manufacturing division of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M), is considering entering the Chinese tractor industry through a joint venture with Jiangling Tractor Company (JTC), a state-owned automotive enterprise. M&M had seeded the Chinese tractor market with exports and had concluded that the most efficient and prudent way to serve the Chinese tractor market was through a joint venture with a local partner. JTC had good brand recognition and strong position in the small tractor market. However, due to the lack of interest from the parent company, Jiangling Motor Company Group, JTC was facing severe operational challenges: was over staffed, had high overhead, owed significant amounts to suppliers and dealers were fleeing the company. M&M saw an opportunity to work with a management team they were comfortable with and to leverage JTC's potential to grow in China and to export tractors as well as components. The challenge was to determine how management should proceed to restructure and integrate the joint ventures assets.

Two MTR Corporation (MTRC) managers are participating in a week-long program in financial management. For their next class, they need to calculate the cost of capital for MTRC. First, they will review the concepts of investor expectations and cost of capital. Then, they must calculate the cost of capital by using the financial statements provided to them by the instructor. The two managers discuss their understanding of these concepts as they prepare their assignment, which is due in two hours.

An upscale ecolodge in southern Nicaragua hopes to achieve a 53 per cent occupancy rate within three years of opening, and has hired a management company to prepare a marketing strategy. Despite its proximity to Costa Rica and its focus on providing a unique luxury vacation retreat for one of the fastest growing segments in the travel industry - the ecotourist - the hotel faces numerous hurdles. The greatest challenge is to overcome Nicaragua's negative reputation, based on its recent history of political and social unrest, still fresh in the minds of tourists. The hotel must also operate within the country's rural infrastructure, characterized by interruptions in the power supply, poorly maintained roads and below-standard sanitation. Additionally, Nicaragua does not have a pool of skilled employees to work in the high-end service industry. The effects of these factors on the hotel's market positioning and market penetration rate are addressed in the preparation of the marketing strategy.

The customer care team lead at Hospital Software Solutions was becoming increasingly distressed in her workplace. Her supervisors were not managing her or the department effectively; her responsibilities did not align with her job description; she was being blamed for computer system failures; and she felt she was being viewed as the office slacker. The case provides for the application of theoretical concepts surrounding leadership, power/influence, motivation, corporate culture and conflict. The supplement case, Hospital Software Solutions (B), product # 9B07C019, follows the events after the customer care team lead attends a town hall meeting to air her concerns about computer systems problems.

The customer care team lead (team lead) decides to attend a town hall meeting with the company's president and publicly air her concerns about computer system problems. This action appears to help resolve the system's problems but her supervisor rates her poorly on a performance review, possibly motivated by the team lead's actions at the town hall meeting. She must find a way to resolve her issues at Hospital Software Solutions without ruining her career. This is a supplement case to Hospital Software Solutions (A), product # 9B07C018.

The production manager at Lake Erie Paper (LEP) was considering installing a moisture meter to test the water content of the wood chips used to make corrugated paper. Use of a moisture meter would speed up the testing process and could reduce costs and/or improve paper quality, but the manager wanted to be sure that the meter provided a consistent and reliable measure of the water content of the arriving woodchips.

This case considers how one project-based organization overcame deterrents to strategic risk management and enabled an effective risk management process to be diffused through its projects, without significantly upsetting the autonomy of its projects. Students will explore both the deterrents to strategic risk management and the components of effective risk management.

This case describes E+Co's approach to promoting clean energy entrepreneurship in developing countries and its current strategic challenge; how to scale up its business model to reach 100 million unserved or underserved people in the developing world by 2020. In the last 12 years E+Co was successful at demonstrating and validating an "enterprise centered model" which offered reliable access and improved energy efficiency to the poor in emerging economies. Its approach to bringing the poor up the modern energy ladder, one step at a time, was initiated in response to a challenging project for the Rockerfeller Foundation, marked by a radical departure from the top-down, large scale infrastructure projects sponsored by international institutions. So far, these models had left 2.5 million people trapped into the double bind of energy poverty and energy waste. E+Co's approach was working well; by September 2006 it had invested in 138 enterprises in 30 countries. These local entrepreneurs currently provided clean energy to more than three million people. The next issue was scaling it all up; however, this risked straining the resources of E+Co's global team of 38 employees and could change the services the company provided to local entrepreneurs. Tenfold expansion within these constraints required an innovative growth strategy. Supplemental case, E+Co: The Path to Scale (B), product 9B07M055, presents a set of entrepreneurial growth strategies that preserve the core of the model.

This B case presents a conversation between E+Co's co-founders and an employee in Latin America who had raised the tough question of scale at E+Co's 2006 annual retreat. One of the co-founders' response for getting E+Co 10 times more impactful in emerging economies was to adopt what he called a strategy of wedges. Also presented is a set of complementary strategies that together could help achieve steady local impact and rapid growth. The conversation also exposes some of the strategic experiments attempted by E+Co during the past 12 years that did not achieve the expected goals yet inspired new paths to scale. This is a supplement to E+Co: A Tipping Point for Clean Energy Entrepreneurship (A), product # 9B07M054.