As of November 2001, NTT DoCoMo is the only company that has been able to make money out of the mobile Internet. This case study describes how, in a very competitive industry engaged in a technology race and strong price erosion, NTT DoCoMo has been able to achieve superior performance, with its novel i-mode services. Launched in February 1999, its i-mode service was an immediate and explosive success. DoCoMo came to exceed its parent company in terms of market capitalization as well as potential for profitable growth as we enter the age of mobile Internet. This case offers a value innovation perspective to analyze the success of i-mode with a particular emphasis on the business model used to exploit the i-mode innovation of DoCoMo.

This is the first of a two-case series. Cirque du Soleil very successfully entered a structurally unattractive circus industry. It was able to reinvent the industry and created a new market space by challenging the conventional assumptions about how to compete. It value innovated by shifting the buyer group from children (end-users of the traditional circus) to adults (purchasers of the traditional circus), drawing upon the distinctive strengths of other alternative industries, such as the theatre, Broadway shows and the opera, to offer a totally new set of utilities to more mature and higher spending customers. **ecch European Case Awards Category Winner 2006 and ecch European Case Awards Overall Winner 2009.

This is the second of a two-case series. Cirque du Soleil very successfully entered a structurally unattractive circus industry. It was able to reinvent the industry and created a new market space by challenging the conventional assumptions about how to compete. It value innovated by shifting the buyer group from children (end-users of the traditional circus) to adults (purchasers of the traditional circus), drawing upon the distinctive strengths of other alternative industries, such as the theatre, Broadway shows and the opera, to offer a totally new set of utilities to more mature and higher spending customers. **ecch European Case Awards Category Winner 2008**

In a comparative study, authors M. Bensaou from INSEAD and Michael Earl from the London Business School found fundamental differences in how Japanese and Western managers think about technology. Too many managers in the West are intimidated by the task of managing technology. They tiptoe around it, supposing that it needs special tools, special strategies, and a special mind-set. Well, it doesn't, the authors say. Technology should be managed--controlled, even--like any other competitive weapon in a manager's arsenal. The authors came to this conclusion in a surprising way. Having set out to compare Western and Japanese IT-management practices, they were startled to discover that Japanese companies rarely experience the IT problems so common in the United States and Europe. In fact, their senior executives didn't even recognize the problems that the authors described. When they dug deeper into 20 leading companies that the Japanese themselves consider exemplary IT users, they found that the Japanese see IT as just one competitive lever among many. Its purpose, very simply, is to help the organization achieve its operational goals. The authors found five principles of IT management in Japan that, they believe, are not only powerful but also universal. They contrast these principles against the practices commonly found in Western companies. While acknowledging that Japan has its own weaknesses with technology, particularly in white-collar office settings, they nevertheless urge senior managers in the West to consider the solid foundation on which Japanese IT management rests.