This case is a follow up to HR-29A, and explains the actions taken by Keller Williams in response to the residential real estate market downturn in 2008 and 2009. The case explains the programs and initiatives put in place by the company to boost agent count, increase productivity, and reduce expenses throughout the organization. It also explains how the company relied on these initiatives to not only survive the market downturn but to thrive, achieving success by leveraging the strengths of the company's operating model, core principles, and values.

Describes the economic and cultural models that have led to the success of Keller Williams Realty. By 2006, Keller Williams was one of the most profitable real estate companies in the United States (if not the most profitable); in addition, it was on its way to becoming one of the largest in terms of number of agents (over 70,000). Describes the factors that led to this company's success--including its operational model, compensation model, profit sharing model, and culture. Readers are asked to evaluate how these factors contribute to the company's success and whether they will continue to enhance the company's growth going forward. In addition, explores the critical role that culture and organizational practices can have on a company's operating performance.

Over the last seven years, the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies has tracked a large sample of high-technology start-ups in California's Silicon Valley. The project has examined how the founders of those enterprises approached key organizational and human resources challenges in the early days of building their companies and how it affected the evolution and performance of their ventures. This article summarizes the main findings of this research program. It describes five distinctive HR "blueprints" that high-tech founders embraced in launching their new firms. Those initial blueprints have had important impacts on a wide range of organizational outcomes, including growth in administrative overhead, labor turnover, and bottom-line performance. Moreover, companies that changed their HR blueprints have paid a heavy price in terms of higher turnover and diminished organizational performance. The results suggest that organization-building and high-commitment HR management "pay" and that changes in HR models are extremely destabilizing, even in the turbulent "built to flip" environment of Silicon Valley.