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Globalization and new technologies have sharply reduced the efficacy of command-and-control management and its accompanying forms of corporate communication. In the course of a recent research project, the authors concluded that by talking with employees, rather than simply issuing orders, leaders can promote operational flexibility, employee engagement, and tight strategic alignment. Groysberg and Slind have identified four elements of organizational conversation that reflect the essential attributes of interpersonal conversation: intimacy, interactivity, inclusion, and intentionality. Intimacy shifts the focus from a top-down distribution of information to a bottom-up exchange of ideas. Organizational conversation is less corporate in tone and more casual. And it's less about issuing and taking orders than about asking and answering questions. Interactivity entails shunning the simplicity of monologue and embracing the unpredictable vitality of dialogue. Traditional one-way media--print and broadcast, in particular--give way to social media buttressed by social thinking. Inclusion turns employees into full-fledged conversation partners, entitling them to provide their own ideas, often on company channels. They can create content and act as brand ambassadors, thought leaders, and storytellers. Intentionality enables leaders and employees to derive strategically relevant action from the push and pull of discussion and debate.

Hindustan Petroleum (HPCL), confronted in 2003 with an urgent need to change how it operated externally, adopted a highly innovative approach to communicating internally. This case, set in 2010, presents an overview of the new, more interactive model of employee communication that HPCL introduced as part of its effort to adapt to increased market competition during the early 21st century. (HPCL, previously a wholly state-owned company within a state-controlled industry, had begun to operate in an increasingly privatized environment.) At the center of the new model was a series of "vision workshops"--structured conversations in which employees at all levels of the company took part in developing strategic and organizational visions for their regional offices, for their business units, and for the company as a whole. The case also discusses HPCL's use of digital technology to enhance employee communication; its leaders' increased emphasis on direct, "one-to-one" interaction with employees; and some of the consequences (both external and internal) of this more conversational model of organizational communication. As of 2010, HPCL was a Fortune Global 500 company, with more than 11,000 employees and with annual revenues of more than $23 billion. The question that company leaders now faced was whether HPCL's novel approaches to communicating with employees were appropriate to its next stage of internal development and external growth.

Big Spaceship, a digital marketing agency, faced a rather big challenge: How to scale the distinctive culture that was essential to its competitive strategy? Renowned for the cutting-edge web sites that it developed to market major Hollywood movies and leading consumer brands, the firm had won numerous awards and garnered considerable attention within the advertising industry. In mid-2008, Big Spaceship remained small (it had fewer than 50 employees) but was poised for significant growth. For founder and CEO Michael Lebowitz, the central challenge was to figure out whether and how the agency could retain its boutique culture while transcending its boutique size. The case begins by briefly outlining Lebowitz's background, along with the history of Big Spaceship since its founding in 2000. Then the case shifts to a discussion of external dynamics: the firm's value proposition, which focused on providing start-to-finish, strategy-driven digital marketing solutions; its interaction with clients; and its relationship with established players in the advertising industry. Next, the case examines the firm's internal dynamics. Here, in addition to describing the culture of Big Spaceship, the case puts special emphasis on the firm's recent shift from a functional structure to a team-based structure. Finally, the case provides an overview of key issues that Lebowitz and his team must consider as they plan for the firm's growth--how to raise capital, how to gauge the optimal size for the company, how to manage an expanding staff. A major highlight of the case is the inclusion of more than a dozen graphically compelling exhibits, which help to illustrate the firm's value proposition, its innovation-oriented culture, and its evolving organizational design.

Paul Maritz took the helm of VMware in July 2008, just as the company confronted a radically new competitive environment. Since its founding in 1998, VMware had been the leading provider of virtualization software. Now it faced the kind of threat that every software company dreaded most: Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, was taking direct aim at its core market. As of June 2008, buyers of Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 operating system received a free, bundled version of Hyper-V, an advanced virtualization platform product. Looming over the impending competition between these two companies was the story of the "browser wars," in which Microsoft overwhelmed browser maker Netscape Communications by bundling the Internet Explorer browser with the Windows operating system. Did a similar fate await VMware? Maritz moved quickly and boldly to respond to the Microsoft threat--by deciding to offer a version of VMware's own virtualization platform product for free. But he still had to determine whether VMware's overall strategy was the right one. The case offers an overview of virtualization technology, a brief history of VMware, including descriptions of its acquisition by computer storage giant EMC, its August 2007 IPO, and Maritz's arrival as CEO; a summary of its product lines; a discussion of the ecosystem in which the company operates; and a survey of key competitors, including not only Microsoft, but also Citrix Systems and other providers that use the Xen virtualization platform. Finally, the case offers a description and analysis of several strategic options available to VMware.

In June 2008, the online professional networking service LinkedIn became a $1 billion company. But CEO Dan Nye understood that LinkedIn faced several strategic dilemmas. Founded in 2002, LinkedIn by 2008 had become the world's leading professional networking service (PNS), with more than 23 million members. Aiming to "dominate the business of business networking," in Nye's words, LinkedIn allowed individual members to post a profile on the LinkedIn site and then to use the site's tools to search for job opportunities; to recruit job candidates; to find suppliers, partners, and customers; and to seek out expert advice. The company was also expanding into corporate services that would enable companies to build and manage their own online networks. With revenue sources that included advertising, premium subscriptions, job posting services, and business solutions, LinkedIn was on track to bring in revenues in 2008 of up to $100 million. A new funding round in mid-2008 yielded a $1 billion valuation for the company. Three key dilemmas confronted LinkedIn, however. First, at a time when the "walled garden" model of online community building was under siege, it had to decide how far it should open its platform to users. Second, in light of competition from highly popular social network services such as Facebook and MySpace, LinkedIn had to decide whether to incorporate social networking into its value proposition. Third, in an increasingly global business environment, it had to weigh the option of merging with its leading international competitor, XING.com.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 708-480.

In January 2007, three decades after its incorporation, Apple Computer shed the second word in its name and became Apple Inc. With that move, the company signaled a fundamental shift away from its historic status as a vendor of the Macintosh personal computer (PC) line. Mac sales remained vital to Apple's future, but they now accounted for less than half of its total revenue. The company's line of iPod media players, its iTunes online content store and its newly launched iPhone mobile handset business made up increasingly large shares of its operations. In early 2008, on the strength of sky-rocketing sales in those areas and by resurgent sales of Macintosh products, Apple's revenues and its stock price reached record levels. The case explores the sustainability of Apple's current business model, one that positioned the company simultaneously in the PC industry and the consumer electronics industry. While Apple enjoyed a high market share in digital media players and in online music sales, it remained a niche player in the worldwide PC industry. The case examines the history of Apple's strategic moves under the leadership of CEOs Jobs, Sculley, Spindler, Amelio, and (again) Jobs; places those moves in the context of structural features of the evolving PC industry; and covers the iPod and iPhone businesses at considerable length.

Tom Rogers, CEO of TiVo, had placed multiple strategic bets on his company. In September 2007, that strategy was due for a major test. TiVo was a maker of digital video recorder (DVR) products and a distributor of DVR technology. Rogers believed that macro-trends in the home entertainment industry--the convergence of standard television with the delivery of video content via broadband Internet, and the related crisis faced by companies whose business models relied on TV advertising--played to TiVo's unique strengths. Leadership in DVR technology and a TV-centric user interface arguably positioned TiVo to become something more than a consumer electronics company. That was Roger's big bet. Implementing it required making six other bets: continuing to sell stand-alone DVRs in the retail market, despite rapidly eroding market share; distributing TiVo service in partnership with cable and satellite TV providers (which also functioned as TiVo's chief competitors in the DVR market); developing a platform for DVR-based advertising; entering the audience research business; leveraging TiVo's intellectual property both through litigation and in the marketplace; and expanding into non-U.S. markets. In late 2007, a pivotal new product, a major distribution deal with cable operator Comcast, and a key intellectual property lawsuit were all reaching points of critical impact.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 708-401.

The launch of Apple's iPhone marked a pivotal new chapter in the story of mobile music (the uniting of digital music players with mobile phones). The iPhone combined an iPod music player, a cell phone, and a mobile Internet device, along with a camera and other features. By September 2007, just 74 days after the June launch of the iPhone, Apple and its mobile carrier partner AT&T Mobility had sold one million units. When Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the product in January 2007, he said that the goal behind it was to "reinvent the phone." Yet both the device and the mobile service provided by AT&T involved limitations that could hinder the long-term prospects for the iPhone. At the same time, handset makers and other mobile carriers had brought, or would soon bring, various "iPhone killers" to the market.

In 2007, Wal-Mart faced challenges to its historically high growth rate. Lagging same-store sales and setbacks overseas led the company to consider strategic shifts. Wal-Mart was the world's largest retailer, but competition had become particularly acute as the company expanded from rural markets, which it had long dominated, into urban and suburban areas. Covers developments in Wal-Mart's merchandising strategy and its approach to store formats; its sometimes controversial human resources practices; its efforts to improve its image through a public relations campaign; its aggressive, though occasionally problematic, move into international markets; and its leading competitors, especially Target. Exhibits provide data (current as of February 2007) on Wal-Mart's financial performance, its stock-price performance, its international operations, and its store formats, as well as on Target's financial performance.

In 2006, a nascent market for music-enabled mobile phones was emerging to challenge Apple Computer's dominant position in the digital music industry. Through its iPod line of portable digital music devices and its iTunes Music Store, Apple controlled more than half of the market for both music player hardware and online music sales. But the evolving ability to merge those devices with mobile phones, and to deliver music to mobile handsets (via streaming, side-loading content from a PC or downloading it wirelessly over the air), created a potentially market-changing opportunity for players in several industries. Examines the key players, including Apple; the major wireless service carriers, such as Cingular, Sprint-Nextel, and Verizon Wireless; technology and service vendors, such as RealNetworks and Microsoft; and mobile virtual network operators, such as Virgin Mobile. Covers the origins of the mobile music business, projections on its potential size, its technological building blocks (such as file formats, digital rights management systems, wireless network infrastructure, and handset capacity), and the key dynamics--music delivery method, pricing, mobile-PC integration--that characterize mobile music business models.

In 2006, the DVD was the most popular storage medium in the entertainment and computer industries. The development of high-definition (HD) technology created a need for a format with greater storage capacity. Instead of agreeing on a single standard for a new HD disc, however, key players had formed two rival camps. The Blu-ray and HD-DVD formats each had distinct technical advantages and enjoyed the support of different groups in the consumer electronics, personal computer, and entertainment industries. Set at a time when companies were starting to release products for each format, this case includes a brief history of the format war along with information on the rival camps and their product offerings. Also, covers factors that might affect the future course of this battle, such as the role of copy protection features in HD devices, the bundling of each format with video game consoles, and competing modes of delivering video content.

Examines the industry structure and competitive strategy of Coca-Cola and Pepsi over 100 years of rivalry. New challenges in 2006 include boosting flagging carbonated soft drink (CSD) sales and finding new revenue streams. Both firms also began to modify their bottling, pricing, and brand strategies. They looked to emerging international markets to fuel growth and broaden their portfolios of alternate beverages like tea, juice, sports drinks, energy drinks, and bottled water. Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola had vied for the "throat share" of the world's beverage market. The most intense battles of the cola wars were fought over the $66 billion CSD industry in the United States, where the average American consumes 52 gallons of CSD per year. In a "carefully waged competitive struggle," from 1975 to 1995, both Coke and Pepsi had achieved average annual growth of around 10%, as both U.S. and worldwide CSD consumption consistently rose. This cozy situation was threatened in the late 1990s, however, when U.S. CSD consumption declined slightly before reaching what appeared to be a plateau. Considers whether Coke's and Pepsi's era of sustained growth and profitability was coming to a close or whether this apparent slowdown was just another blip in the course of a century of enviable performance.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 706-447.

In 2004, following an investigation that began in 1998, the European Commission (EC) issued an antitrust judgment against Microsoft Corp., levying a record fine of 497 million euros ($613 million) and mandating changes of commercial behavior and bundling of Windows Media Player with Microsoft's Windows operating system. Summarizes the EC's ruling and Microsoft's response to it, places that ruling in the context of U.S. Government antitrust action against Microsoft, and describes Microsoft's efforts to comply with the ruling. Also covers Microsoft's appeal of the ruling, which was heard in a European court in April 2006, and outlines further EC scrutiny of Microsoft.

Apple has reaped the benefits of its innovative music player, the iPod. However, its PC and server business continue to hold small market share relative to the worldwide computer over the past few years. Will the iPod lure new users to the Mac? Will Apple be able to produce another cutting-edge device quickly?

Spreadsheet supplement for case 706-496.

Buoyed by strong recent sales growth but humbled by failed strategic bets and other missteps, Intel in 2005 initiated a major reorganization. Under its new CEO, Paul Otellini, the company shifted toward a "platform" model, inspired by the success of its Centrino mobile-computing product. That model led Intel toward development of not just faster computer chips--the historic source of its dominance of the microprocessor industry--but also of products that bundled ingredients in ways that served specific usability needs. To support such products, Intel continued to invest heavily both in manufacturing capacity and new chip technologies. Meanwhile, the company faced strong challenges from competing chip makers, particularly Advanced Micro Devices. Outlines Intel's strategic reorientation, its competitive environment, and several of its key new initiatives. Covers Intel's Itanium server product, its new Viiv platform, its investment in WiMax, and its recent deal with Apple Computer.