個案總覽

This case asks students to consider how to prioritize goals when placed in a new leadership role. In August 2014, Meredith "Max" Hodges became the youngest Executive Director (ED) in the Boston Ballet's 51-year history. In her first year, she was able to claim several early wins, including key adjustments to ticket pricing, new hires, and updated marketing and box office data analysis. But at beginning of her second year, Hodges received disheartening news-a developer had purchased one of Boston Ballet's school locations and was planning to terminate Boston Ballet's lease. Hodges already had several major projects planned, including a major website overhaul and a revamped performance schedule. However, without a new school location, Boston Ballet's revenue would take a hit. Given Boston Ballet's limited resources and the urgency of the terminated school lease, how should Hodges reprioritize her plans for the upcoming year?

Founded in 2017, Choosy is a data-driven fashion startup that uses algorithms to identify styles trending on social media. After manufacturing similar items using a China-based supply chain, Choosy sells them to consumers through its website and social media pages. Since its official launch in July 2018, Choosy has been fine-tuning its business model. Now, in September 2018, founder and CEO Jessie Zeng must decide what the startup's next steps should be. Should Choosy switch to a low-cost drop shipment model, even though it might negatively impact Choosy's brand and customer experience? Additionally, should Choosy shift its product mix to appeal to a wider customer demographic or stick to its original value proposition of offering trendy, celebrity-inspired styles?

Founded in 2012, DraftKings helped change the fantasy sports landscape by popularizing daily fantasy sports (DFS), or short-term fantasy sports tournaments that offered big cash prizes to winners. The company's valuation exceeded $1 billion by 2015, but DraftKings soon faced intense scrutiny from government agencies about whether its business model violated federal laws preventing sports betting and online gambling. Then, in May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal law that had prohibited states from legalizing sports betting. Now that states could legalize sports betting, what should DraftKings' next steps be?

By the time Dan Doctoroff, CEO of Sidewalk Labs, began hosting a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session in January 2018, he had only nine months remaining to convince the people of Toronto, their government representatives, and presumably his parent company Alphabet, Inc., that Sidewalk Labs' plan to construct "the first truly 21st-century city" on the Canadian city's waterfront was a sound one. Along with much excitement and optimism, strains of concern had emerged since Doctoroff and partners first announced their intentions for a city "built from the internet up" in Toronto's Quayside district. As Doctoroff prepared for yet another milestone in a year of planning and community engagement, it was almost certain that of the many questions headed his way, digital privacy would be among them.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 417072.

As of early 2018, five U.S. technology companies-Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft-were among the largest companies in the world. Similarly, three Chinese technology firms-Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, or BAT-had emerged as global players due in part to the protection of China's "Great Firewall," which made it more difficult for foreign companies to compete in Chinese markets. As these companies continued to scale by branching into new businesses, such as voice AI and self-driving vehicles, they also faced new and challenging questions about user privacy. The European Union had recently passed the General Data Protection Regulation, a comprehensive set of consumer data protection laws that would require technology companies to make significant changes to their operating model. Meanwhile, social media giant Facebook was facing allegations that Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm, had accessed information on tens of millions of Facebook users without their consent, prompting calls for big technology firms to be more strictly regulated. How would the five U.S. companies and BAT respond to these concerns? And looking forward, in what ways would these big companies compete with one another, and which would come out ahead?

As of mid-2016, national nonprofit Teach For America (TFA) had struggled with three consecutive years of declining application totals, and senior management was re-examining the organization's strategy, including recruitment and selection. A few months earlier, former TFA corps member Michael Metzger had spearheaded the launch of a predictive analytics team responsible for integrating strategy across TFA's recruitment and admissions continuum. Metzger believed that predictive analytics could help address TFA's recruitment and admissions challenges. Now, TFA's senior management wanted Metzger and his team to put their data models to the test. From a data modeling standpoint, what variables and models should TFA consider as it began a new recruitment season, and more generally, how heavily should TFA rely on predictive models to reverse the negative trends?

Redfin, a technology-powered residential real estate brokerage, was founded in 2002 with the intention of using technology to disrupt the real estate industry. Over the next 15 years, Redfin made several changes to its business model. Initially, the company provided less support than a traditional real estate brokerage but helped home buyers and sellers save more money. Over time, in response to customer feedback, Redfin increased the level of customer service it provided while decreasing the amount customers saved, instead relying on its unique online tools to differentiate itself from other real estate brokerages. In July 2017, Redfin went public at a $1.73 billion valuation. Now, in late 2017, CEO Glenn Kelman had to decide what Redfin's top strategic priority should be. Redfin could try to increase its market share, which was currently less than 2% even in the company's top markets, or it could focus on balancing costs and improving its bottom line.

In late 2016, Paris Wallace, the CEO of Ovia Health, and the rest of the company's co-founders faced a difficult decision about the best way to grow Ovia Health's revenue. Founded in 2012, Ovia Health specialized in mobile and web applications in the women's health space. After building a strong user base with its original app, Ovia Fertility (which helped women conceive by tracking ovulation and other factors), the young company launched a second app, Ovia Pregnancy (which helped women have a healthy pregnancy by tracking various health metrics). Ovia Health's apps were free to use, and most of the company's revenue came from charging advertisers to host ads on its native advertising platform. Wallace believed that the family benefits market was a promising growth area, but he was not sure of the best way to enter the market. Recently, a top health benefits provider had offered Ovia Health a multi-million-dollar contract, but Wallace wondered whether Ovia Health could create a better family benefits solution by turning down the contract and selling directly to employers' HR departments. Participants will need to examine how Ovia Health evolved its strategy over time and decide which growth opportunity was the better choice.

In December 2017, Marc Freed-Finnegan and Jonathan Wall, the co-founders of retail technology company Index, had to discuss the company's direction as they entered 2018. Five years earlier, Freed-Finnegan and Wall had founded Index after observing the technological advantages that Amazon and other online retailers had over brick-and-mortar retailers. Index's first product was a customer database tool that allowed brick-and-mortar retailers to collect customer contact information (e.g., email addresses) at the time of checkout. Index soon added automated marketing tools and payment/security tools (e.g., encryption) to its product portfolio. However, selling to large retail chains had proved challenging-many stakeholders were involved in the buying decision, creating a long sales process, and some retailers did not understand why they should trust a small, young company with their payment security. By late 2017, Index had made some changes to reduce the average sales cycle, but there was still room for improvement. Now, Index was preparing to launch a new product, Index Connect, that would essentially allow retailers to pool customer contact data and be more competitive with Amazon. Participants must evaluate whether Index was taking the right approach to sales and marketing and consider how the company could position Index Connect to be a success.

In 2017, Jay Desai, the CEO of Boston-based health care technology company PatientPing, had to consider a number of interrelated pricing challenges. Founded in late 2013, PatientPing sold a software platform that allowed health care providers to receive real-time notifications ("Pings") when one of their patients was admitted to or discharged from a health care facility. Pings allowed providers to coordinate with one another to reduce costs and ensure that patients were receiving the highest quality of care. PatientPing sold its platform to a range of customers, from small skilled nursing facilities to large health systems, and management had to figure out how to optimally price the platform for the company's various customer segments. Students must consider whether PatientPing's pricing, sales team, and sales process are optimal based on the unique challenges of the health care industry. Additionally, students are asked to respond to three specific sales and marketing scenarios faced by Desai in mid-2017.

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Intermountain Healthcare operates 23 hospitals and hundreds of clinics in Utah and Idaho and provides insurance to approximately 850,000 patients through its insurance arm, SelectHealth. In 2013, Intermountain, known for its commitment to improving health care outcomes and lowering costs by reducing treatment variation, made the surprising decision to invest significant resources in an innovative precision medicine unit, which would provide life-extending, genetically-targeted therapies to late-stage cancer patients. Precision medicine was associated with treatment variation and high costs, the latter of which was of particular concern given that Intermountain often served as both payer and provider for its patients. But Intermountain's management was convinced by Lincoln Nadauld, MD, PhD, who joined Intermountain's oncology team in 2013 and spearheaded the creation of Intermountain Precision Genomics (IPG). By 2016, IPG had a cutting-edge genomic sequencing laboratory that provided sequencing services to Intermountain and non-Intermountain physicians, and IPG's team had conducted research indicating that targeted therapies administered through IPG extended patient lifespans but increased overall costs. Now, in mid-2017, IPG is undergoing a major transition as it prepares to outsource the bulk of its genomic testing volume to Navican Genomics, a for-profit, Intermountain-owned spinoff. As Nadauld contemplates the future of IPG, he must evaluate two exciting opportunities, and students are asked to consider where Nadauld should focus IPG's resources: should IPG partner with Intermountain's behavioral health team to conduct joint research on the relationship between genetic markers and antidepressant effectiveness, or should IPG push for the testing of a large biorepository, which will cost $12 million but could lead to the identification of new precision medicine applications?

Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll) is a Lowell, Massachusetts-based nonprofit that hosts business accelerators for entrepreneurs in underserved communities. By mid-2017, EforAll has five office locations in Massachusetts, and its leadership and the Board of Directors must decide whether EforAll is ready to open its first out-of-state office. Students are asked to consider a variety of factors - including funding, hiring, population demographics, and distance from Massachusetts - to determine whether EforAll has the capacity to expand, and if so, which new city it should expand to first.

Supplement to case 617001.

This case introduces CEO activism, a phenomenon in which business leaders engage in political or social issues that do not relate directly to their companies. The case uses several examples to describe why business leaders are engaging in CEO activism, and the potential benefits and drawbacks: (1) how Angie's List's CEO responded to the state of Indiana passing a controversial religious freedom law; (2) how Duke Energy's CEO supported pending U.S. legislation addressing climate change, and (3) how Chobani Yogurt's CEO publicly supported refugees. Students are then provided with the situation faced by PayPal CEO Dan Schulman after North Carolina passed House Bill 2, which Schulman perceived as discriminatory against LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) individuals. Students are asked to consider whether Schulman should engage in CEO activism, and if so, how best to approach the situation. The (B) case provides an update on Schulman's decision.

In 2017, Sarah Powers, VP of Sales at an automation hardware firm, is trying to understand why some members of her sales team have been underperforming. She is tasked with analyzing her firm's email and calendar data to try to find relationships between communications and sales performance.

This note introduces key managerial issues in new product development. It describes the product development funnel and alternative approaches to structuring product development teams including functional, lightweight, heavyweight, and autonomous/dedicated teams, which vary in their capacity to manage integration. More formal product development approaches including the stage-gate process and critical-path method are described, as are agile methods and principles-and related tools such as scrum, extreme programming, feature-driven development. Product development metrics including lead time, capacity, and productivity are defined and discussed.