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The Siemens Kalwa factory in Mumbai, also referred to as Kalwa Works (KW), started in 1973 with the production of motors and later diversified to produce switchgears and switchboards. By 2009, 40 per cent of all Siemens India employees were working in Kalwa and contributing 45 per cent of the total Siemens India production. Kalwa had become the most important business centre for Siemens India.<br><br>In October 2006, Siemens AG decided to implement lean manufacturing in the Kalwa factory as part of a worldwide rollout of the Siemens Production System in all its medium-voltage facilities. The implementations were expected to bring drastic improvements in labour productivity, lower inventory levels, and higher throughput to improve the factories’ financial performance. The lean program promised that the factory’s current realized capacity of 4,000 panels per year could be increased by approximately 50 per cent to 6,000 panels per year in the medium term within two years, and to about 12,000 panels within the next four to five years.<br><br>While the benefits of successful implementation were attractive, the company faced several challenges, including restructuring the organization, getting staff on board to accept and facilitate the change, and handling resistance from internal and external stakeholders. This case provides an opportunity to analyze and discuss lean implementation issues for a global multinational firm in the Indian context.

Smart grid companies such as Viridity Energy are finding profitable opportunities to help their customers cut energy bills and simultaneously get credit for greater environmental responsibility. But will consuming fewer dirty watts from fuel sources such as coal and natural gas be a sufficient objective for customers in the future? What will rising societal expectations, tougher environment regulations, and new distributed clean energy technologies mean for the ability of smart grid companies to engage new customers and differentiate themselves in an increasingly crowded field?

This case presents a means by which students can explore how government policy is influenced by the actions of stakeholders in an economy: firms, taxpayers, voters, unions, and other organizations. It highlights how policy-making can be a process endogenous to the interests and influence of the private sector, and not an exogenous one, even in domains that are the power reserve of public policy makers. <br><br>In 2010, the ruling party in Australia has devised a new tax, the Resource Super Profit Tax (RSPT). This tax has been devised to enable national and state governments to benefit from the boom in the mining industry by expropriating a greater portion of the industry’s earnings. The RSPT has been prepared without any input from major mining companies in Australia, and if implemented would represent a substantial increase in their tax payable. The case is presented from the perspective of the CEO of BHP Billiton, one of the largest mining companies in Australia. The situation considers what, if any, action can be taken to combat a tax that has already been devised by the government and is about to be implemented. Successful analysis of the case involves an evaluation of all stakeholders in the Australian economy that will be influenced by the imposition of the RSPT. After this is done, a strategy needs to be devised that will influence the government to withdraw a tax to which it has already demonstrated a firm commitment.

Olympic Group (OG) was an Egyptian white goods giant that made products such as water heaters, fans, and cookers. In 1997, OG decided to buy IDEAL, a large state-owned white goods firm. Being a monopoly in its markets, IDEAL had a strong brand name and market share, which made it very attractive for OG. Also, the products that IDEAL produced — refrigerators and washing machines — complemented OG’s products. A year after the acquisition, OG had to deal with several issues such as integrating the employees of the two companies, boosting employees’ productivity, changing IDEAL’s brand image, and improving IDEAL’s products. Accordingly, within the next month, the CEO had to decide whether to start by changing IDEAL’s brand image or integrating the employees of the two companies. He also had to consider how and when to integrate the employees of the two companies without affecting overall performance. What methods should he use to boost the employees’ productivity, especially at IDEAL? What areas needed to be worked on in order to improve the IDEAL brand image without affecting its market share? What changes in IDEAL’s products were required to sustain its competitiveness and market share?

The El Coyote Mexican Café, more commonly known as El Coyote, is a family-owned restaurant located in Los Angeles, California. The restaurant faced criticism from pro-gay rights activists after the manager (the daughter of the owner) made a personal donation to support California Ballot Proposition 8, which activists associated with the restaurant rather than the individual. The case transpires over an eight-day period from November 4, 2008, which was the election day when the ballot proposition passed, to November 12, 2008, which was when the manager held an open breakfast at El Coyote to publicly discuss the issue. The central tension in the case revolves around how the manager’s donation to support a measure that legally defines marriage as “between a man and a woman” has gained the restaurant unwanted attention despite being a personal contribution separate from and not endorsed by the business. The goal of the case is to challenge students to think about tensions firms face in managing the external environment of their businesses in the face of both: 1) campaign finance and election issues; and (2) activists who may not understand all of the underlying facts.

A few decades ago, Prada believed that its future depended on gaining market share through acquisitions in Western Europe and the United States. Today, however, it remains mostly focused on its core brands--Prada and Miu Miu--and the emerging markets. China alone now accounts for 22% of company revenue. Meanwhile, Prada has prospered, retaining its independence in an industry increasingly dominated by luxury conglomerates. According to Bertelli, what makes the difference is Prada's organizational culture. Despite all the changes and challenges the company has faced, the essential principles and values that guide managers' decisions and inform their communications with one another and with stakeholders have remained remarkably constant. The author illuminates the six Prada principles: control through transparency; go where the risk is; give respect to get performance; sell only your own designs; obsess over details; and give young managers real responsibilities. Bertelli describes himself as "a great fan of young people," especially those who experience the world. Right now that means Africa, which he believes will be a huge market in 10 or 15 years.

The innovation revolution spurred by venture capitalists decades ago has created the conditions in which scale enables big companies to shift from shackling innovation to unleashing it. Three trends are behind this shift: (1) The ease of innovation and its decreasing cost mean that start-ups now face the same short-term pressures that have constrained innovation at large companies. (2) Taking a page from start-up strategy, large companies are embracing open innovation and integrating entrepreneurial behaviors with their existing capabilities. (3) Innovation increasingly involves creating business models that tap big companies' unique strengths. In this context, entrepreneurial individuals, whom the author calls "catalysts," are working with corporations' resources, scale, and growing agility to develop solutions to global challenges. Here are the stories of four corporate catalysts: Keyne Monson, at Medtronic, spurred the creation of a program called Healthy Heart for All, which seeks to bring pacemaker technology to hundreds of thousands of Indians who desperately need it. Yuri Jain, at Unilever, sought and found a scalable solution to purifying drinking water--Pureit, a portable system that provides safe water at just half a cent per liter. Nick Musyoka, at Syngenta, devised a program called Uwezo (Swahili for "capability"), which uses the sachet distribution model to provide smallholding farmers with affordable, premeasured packages of crop protection chemicals. Colin Harrison, at IBM, was instrumental in developing the company's Smarter Cities program, which offers bundled technological infrastructure and related services to help cities save money and improve lives.

The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems and identifying which ones are crucial to their strategies. They may even be trying to solve the wrong problems--missing opportunities and wasting resources in the process. The key is to ask the right questions. The author describes a process that his firm, InnoCentive, has used to help clients define and articulate business, technical, social, and policy challenges and then present them to an online community of more than 250,000 solvers. The four-step process consists of asking a series of questions and using the answers to create a problem statement that will elicit novel ideas from an array of experts: 1) Establish the need for a solution. What is the basic need? Who will benefit from a solution? 2) Justify the need. Why should your organization attempt to solve this problem? Is it aligned with your strategy? If a solution is found, who will implement it? 3) Contextualize the problem. What have you and others already tried? Are there internal and external constraints to implementing a solution? 4) Write the problem statement. What requirements must a solution meet? What language should you use to describe the problem? How will you evaluate solutions and measure success? EnterpriseWorks/VITA, a nonprofit organization, used this process to find a low-cost, lightweight, and convenient product that expands access to clean drinking water in the developing world.

The process of becoming self-aware has traditionally been based on intuition and anecdotal feedback. But that reality is changing, thanks to the growing discipline of auto-analytics--the practice of voluntarily collecting and analyzing data about oneself in order to improve. H. James Wilson, a senior researcher at Babson Executive Education, introduces some of the auto-analytics tools that are increasingly being used by employees at all levels and across many industries. Citing tools in three domains--the physical self, the thinking self, and the emotional self--he describes the practical results that specific people have achieved after taking power in their own hands to gather and interpret data about the nuances of how they work and feel every day. The best outcomes are realized when, Wilson argues, the enterprise of self-measurement is undertaken with a plan in mind. It's still the early days for auto-analytics, but two trends are emerging: The tools are becoming more precise, and the analysis they offer is becoming more holistic. Applied the right way, auto-analytics is beginning to provide the hard evidence that people need and want to make their work and personal lives more productive and satisfying.

The first American woman astronaut in space and the founder of Sally Ride Science on becoming an astronaut and role model, collaborating in tight quarters, remembering the lessons of the Challenger disaster, and driving innovation in K-12 education. She died shortly after this interview took place, at age 61.

Feeling strapped for time? Try giving a few hours away by helping someone else. Surprising new research shows that doing so makes people feel that they have more time, not less.

This follow-up to Chauvco Resources Ltd.: The Argentina Decisions (A) and (B) encourages students to analyze Argentina’s macroeconomic policies in 2012. Of particular interest are the lessons for Greece if it exits from the Eurozone, with the perhaps inevitable pursuit of the Argentine paradigm.

Supplement for case A

This case asks students to price a new drug that is in Stage II of its clinical trials. It contains detailed estimates of the time required and costs for all the steps needed to commercialize a drug in the U.S. Students will learn virtually all the steps required to bring a drug from an idea to commercialization, and the time and resources these steps require.

Dave Williams has taken over as CEO for MBC Corporation and wants to change the mission statement of the company. However, he needs to get approval from four shareholders: a former board chairman, his father and current board chairman, and two members of his own executive team. Williams must navigate the varying dynamics and opinions of the shareholders to gain their buy-in and create a new mission statement that will take MBC on a new path for the future.

The international joint venture that successfully bid for $6 billion in contracts to build LNG trains on Nigeria's Bonny Island became entangled in a widening bribery and corruption probe triggered by an unrelated accusation against an employee of one of the JV partners. The (A) case discusses the JV's "business as usual" approach to doing business in the context of Nigeria's political culture and the involvement of Albert "Jack" Stanley, the JV's alleged manager, in structuring and implementing an elaborate bribery scheme. The (B) case relates Stanley's actions after he became the subject of multiple investigations and was terminated by Halliburton, parent of the U.S. JV partner, for taking kickbacks. The (C) case details the resolution of bribery and corruption allegations against Stanley, several of his associates and the JV partners.