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In 2011 Khalil and Adil Sattar are considering growth opportunities for K&N's, their family business that is the market leader for processed chicken and value-added chicken products in Pakistan. This position has been built through a strategy of vertical integration, product innovation, and branding. K&N's has also developed its own chain of retail "Chicken Stores" to promote their products. Growth opportunities include contained expansion in Pakistan, exporting to nearby markets, and/or developing a global Halal food brand.

Marine Harvest has the leading position in salmon aquaculture. Aquaculture is very much a growth business, many believing it could play a major role in solving the world's growing need for protein. The CEO is considering three alternatives for taking advantage of his firm's dominant position. Expand production in Chile, produce value-added salmon products, or backward-integrate into the salmon feed business.

In this case series Robert Harvey, a business professor at a small university in Iowa, United States, had arranged for Hopwood Manufacturing Company to come to the campus to interview his students for internship and management-in-training positions, only to learn that the recruiters appeared to be more interested in the ethnicities of the candidates than their qualifications. Harvey must now decide what action to take in response to the recruiters’ discriminatory statements.

This is a supplement to Hopwood Manufacturing: Seeking to Hire the Best and the Brightest, or Not (A).

This is a supplement to Hopwood Manufacturing: Seeking to Hire the Best and the Brightest, or Not (A).

It was mid-January 2011 and Elmer Enns, sole owner of Double E Grain Corporation, a 6600-acre farm in Saskatchewan, Canada, was reflecting on the past year, during which he had completed the canola harvest ahead of schedule. Helped by strong commodity prices, Double E had experienced successive years of prosperity (as shown by the financial statements in the case). Elmer, in his mid-50s, was optimistic about the industry and content with the current state of his operation. Despite being the sole owner of Double E, Elmer understood that he was not the only stakeholder to consider in planning for the future. His five-year plan was made more complex by his joint-venture partner, Jim Flath; Chad, a farmer with whom Elmer worked closely; and Elmer’s son Matt. Elmer also had to consider changing industry dynamics, including global food demand, and what resources he had available if the circumstances at Double E were to change. He had been in the business of farming long enough to know that lengthy periods without change were fortunate and rare. External changes (such as volatile commodity prices or the elimination of the wheat board) or internal changes (such as Jim or Matt’s evolving interests or Chad’s growing business) could have a drastic impact on Double E. In the face of many potential and unknown challenges, Elmer sat down to begin the complex task of envisioning where his farm would be in five years, both operationally and financially.

The CEO of a private and growing national network of specialty care hospitals focusing on advanced-stage and complex cancer treatments reflects on the firm's past phase of growth before meeting with the company's Chairman and founder to discuss how to further scale what they call the Mother Standard of Care and, in the process, change the face of cancer care.

Founder Group's Chairman of the Board, Wei Xin, made adjustments to the company portfolio in 2010. Established in the mid-1980s, Founder is the industry leader for Chinese laser typesetting systems and was once the second largest PC manufacturer in China. It is also the largest university-based enterprise in China. After twenty years of development, Founder has achieved annual revenue of 47.5 billion RMB, with business in IT hardware and software, pharmaceuticals, medical care, finance, real estate, steel, trade, education, mining, fine chemicals, storage, etc. It has undergone highly unrelated diversification. Chair of the Board, Wei Xin, wants to ensure Founder's sustained growth. To this end, he must consider Founder's portfolio structure for the future.

The features of zero emissions, light weight, high efficiency, low energy cost, and almost zero pollution contribute to the increasing popularity of electric motorcycles and a substantial growth potential for the worldwide electric motorcycle industry. However, Zero was facing competition from Brammo, which although positioning its products differently from Zero, adopted a similar international growth strategy. How could the chief executive officer of Zero position its products so that Zero would be able to offer a unique value proposition and establish clear dominance in the electric motorcycle industry?

A new CEO steps into the shoes of his long-serving predecessor who had created the U.S. telecommunications giant via a series of acquisitions and, before departing, had initiated the company's strategic repositioning. The new CEO reflects on Verizon's recent successes, some of which he led, and considered how to ensure the team would continue to rise to new challenges. He knew change was both energizing and difficult and that every victory had to be followed by the next play. He paused in his New York City office to think about how his team handled recent challenges and whether the culture was in place to continue Verizon's transformation from a traditional telecommunications provider to a global services and technology firm.

Recorded Future was a software company that aimed to aggregate the information on the Internet in a way that offered new and valuable insights. Funded by Google and In-Q-Tel, the venture-capital wing of the Central Intelligence Agency, Recorded Future gave people tools to not only extract meaning from the web, but also to make predictions about future events ranging from terrorist attacks to corporate product releases. The case presents the investment decision of a portfolio manager, Andrew Fisher of LXE Capital, who is considering investing based on insights drawn from Recorded Future's software interface. The case asks students to grapple with a new source of investment data, to evaluate the reliability of back-tested portfolio strategies, and to ponder how best to utilize data for the purposes of generating "alpha" (positive risk-adjusted returns) in investing.

A young and upcoming French executive in a global technology company is sent to Moscow as deputy managing director to turn around the Russia subsidiary. He must report to the subsidiary's managing director (a large reason for the organization's underperformance) and to corporate. In his first three months, he took steps to prepare the organization for change. Yet the lack of more tangible actions and results leaves him open to criticism from subsidiary employees and pressure from corporate executives. How can the young executive unfreeze the situation and get movement?

After several months into his turnaround of a global technology company's Russia subsidiary, a young and upcoming French executive reflected on how to institutionalize the subsidiary's transformation by further driving cultural change and breaking down internal silos. He realized that to complete the change he may need to continue into a second year. Yet the physical separation from his family had begun to take a toll. Had the executive done enough to institutionalize change or was it still too dependent on his personal relationships and the ability to build an internal coalition and exchange favors?

After 18 months as the deputy managing director of a global technology company's Russia subsidiary, a young and upcoming French executive prepared to hand over leadership. The executive reflected on what he had achieved and how as he considered next steps. He wanted to return to his native France, but the company requested that he go turn around another emerging market subsidiary. Should he go to India, ask for another assignment, or look at other opportunities outside the company?

In 2010, PepsiCo India's management is working to translate PepsiCo's new mission, "Performance with Purpose," into practice in the India market. The mission calls for continued financial performance and market leadership, as well as greater emphasis on healthy products, natural resource management, and employee empowerment. PepsiCo India and other regional PepsiCo business units have significant discretion over how to implement Performance with Purpose in their local markets. PepsiCo India has made progress under the mission but continues to be challenged by the inherent tension between short-term financial performance and long-term investments in socially responsible initiatives.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) had been in existence for 35 years and up until recently had grown organically by taking on new projects as they arose. While this had had the advantage of the EWT maintaining its relevance, the EWT had lost focus as a result. A new fundraising strategy was developed in 2008 before the impact of the financial credit crisis and the resulting economic downturn. The downturn affected the amount of funds the EWT received and as such, it was struggling to continue with all its initiatives and projects. Fortunately, the pressure on companies to invest in social responsibility initiatives continued to grow. The CEO of the EWT was contemplating whether or not to change the EWT’s fundraising strategy by making it more liberal in its policy of accepting corporate donations in light of the economic downturn caused by the international credit crisis.

Quick-and-dirty prototypes can help move projects forward. But many companies rapidly follow them with polished prototypes--and everyone focuses on the prototype, not on the remaining ambiguities about the problem the product is meant to solve or the obstacles in the way. This "innovation blindness" can delay a project or sink it altogether.

What's needed today is courage from business leaders and employees alike.

The social sector could learn a lot from the "just do it" approach of design firms. When designers want to explore a new strategy, product, or service, they don't waste time describing it to dozens of groups and trying to get them to adopt it wholesale. They build prototypes, test them with small sets of users, and then roll out what works.

Executives don't realize it, but a hierarchy of managers exacts a hefty tax on any organization: Managers are expensive, increase the risk of bad decisions, disenfranchise employees, and slow progress. In fact, management may be the least efficient activity in any company. Yet it's clear that market mechanisms alone can't provide the degree of coordination and control that many companies require. Is there any way to get the flexibility of a market system and the discipline of a tightly knit hierarchy--without a management superstructure? Morning Star, the global market leader in tomato processing, proves there is. Morning Star, which has seen double-digit growth for the past 20 years, has no managers. That's right--no bosses, no titles, no promotions. Its employees essentially manage themselves. Workers negotiate responsibilities with peers, anyone can issue a purchase order, and each person is responsible for acquiring the tools needed to do his or her work. Compensation decisions are handled by local committees elected by the employees, and pay reflects the contributions that people make--not their status. And if staffers find themselves overloaded or spot a new role that needs filling, they simply go ahead and initiate the hiring process. Morning Star's self-management model has two cornerstones: the personal mission statement, and the Colleague Letter of Understanding, or CLOU. In a personal mission statement, each employee outlines how he or she will help the company achieve its goals. The CLOU, which must be hammered out every year with colleagues, is an operating plan for fulfilling it. A CLOU covers as many as 30 activity areas and spells out relevant performance metrics. The system isn't without its challenges, and it isn't for everyone. But it has produced a dedicated workforce with exceptional initiative and expertise. And its success shows that it's possible for organizations to transcend the seemingly intractable trade-off of freedom versus control.