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In late May 2009, Albert Bohemier, CEO of Survival Systems Limited (SSL), located in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, paced the deck of the training pool at Survival Training Simulation Theatre wondering how best to transition the company to new leadership. During the past five years, attempts at succession planning had been unsuccessful. As the leader of the company for over 25 years, Bohemier was ready to retire, but there were many aspects of succession planning to consider. Bohemier's personal criteria for incoming leadership were threefold: it had to be good for SSL's existing clients, a positive move for the company as a whole and good for the current team.

Outsourcing the purchase of components or "hard goods" is not a new phenomenon: it is known as the "buy" portion of a company's common make-or-buy decisions. In the current service-oriented economy, however, make-or-buy decisions are now often do-or-buy decisions that reflect the strategic question of whether outside entities should be hired to perform significant support service activities. Support functions such as information technology and customer service can be outsourced to provide many organizational benefits. Companies frequently point to the cost savings for labor and training, but also cite the benefits of releasing corporate resources for alternative uses and allowing the business to focus on its core competencies. Outsourcing support functions is not simple, though, and companies must manage the related strategic, quantitative, and qualitative risk factors. This article discusses some of the potential risks that must be faced when a company outsources internal support functions, and describes how the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission's Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) model can assist in managing and controlling these risks.

This case examines the causes and consequences of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy during one of the most fascinating weekends in financial history. It's about the commercial paper market, a major funding market served by Lehman Brothers, and the events that led to "breaking the buck" on money market funds. It also examines the CDS market where Lehman was such a big player, the potential impact that CDSs had on the crisis, and the notion and validity of the too-big-to-fail hypothesis.

The case describes the situation facing the vice-president of A-CAT Corp. (A-CAT), Vidarbha Region, Maharashtra. A-CAT manufactured a wide range of electrical appliances for household use. Typical products included TV signal boosters, transformers, FM radio kits, electronic ballasts, battery chargers and voltage regulators. The voltage regulators manufactured by A-CAT were used for many different purposes; however, the focus was on its flag-ship product, VR500 - a voltage regulator. Over the last few months, this model had faced stiff competition and was not able to meet the rising expectations of the market. Management was concerned that a significant number of A-CAT's customers were opting for competitors' products. The case intends to 1) make students aware of the relationship between customer requirements and the technical characteristics of a product 2 ) help students grasp the basics of value analysis 3) teach students to use value analysis in assessing the scope for cost reduction.

Samsung Tesco Homeplus (STH), one of Korea's large hypermarkets, increased its investment in social contribution activities and systemized the organization in charge in the aftermath. It especially focused on education and cultural services, saving the environment and sharing with others. As a consequence, by December 2008, STH was considered one of the most innovative companies and one that realized true customer value. It had won a variety of awards, such as the Green Management award, Social Contribution Company award and the Eco-friendly Management award. After creating a corporate social responsibility (CSR) team in 2005, it won the CSR award given by the British Chamber of Commerce in Korea and was selected as one of Korea's Most Admired Companies. While much progress had been made, company executives wondered what factors would be the keys to their continuing CSR activities. This case presents points of contention and issues in the practice of corporate social responsibility by STH. Social contribution activities and STH were aligned with both sustainable management and customer value-oriented management. Various activities in extended education, environment and charity ultimately led customers to view STH as not just a discount store that simply sold products, but a value store. STH conducted systematic programs and activities in the areas of extended education environment and charity after having declared itself a social contribution company. This case illustrates how a company can develop its social contribution activities. In addition, discussion will centre on the long-term impacts that social contribution activities have on enterprises.

In 1998, the Travelers Group and Citicorp merged to create Citigroup Inc., considered the first true global "financial supermarket," and a business model to be envied, feared and emulated. By year-end 2006 the firm had a market capitalization of $274 billion, with $1.9 trillion in assets and $24.6 billion in earnings. But ten years after the merger it ended in tears. In July of 2009, the firm was effectively nationalized, with billions of dollars in bailout money converted into a 34% ownership stake for the U.S. government. Citigroup was worth less than $16 billion, having lost more than $250 billion in value from its peak. This case examines Citi's business model, challenges it faced, its leadership and key decisions to better understand what contributed to the failure of one of the most powerful financial firms in the world.

This note was created to supplement classroom discussion in the EC course "Managing the Financial Firm" and provides background for exploring issues general managers in financial firms face in considering appropriate capital levels.

James Musyoki, Lemmy Mutahi, and Ken Kariuki, all from East African Breweries Limited (EABL), a subsidiary of London-based Diageo, heard the disheartening news in the first week of December 2008. For the second time in six months, the Kenyan Finance Ministry had raised excise taxes on alcoholic beverages in an effort to plug the country's budget deficit; the bill was awaiting the President's signature. The price increase would put EABL's Allsops, Citizen, and President Beers out of the reach of their target markets, and Musyoki, Kariuki, and Mutahi hoped that the increase would not affect the excise-exempt Senator Keg lager - a lower-income brew which had created significant social and economic gains in Kenya since its launch in 2004. What would it take to save Senator Beer?

Jessica Pierce and Ashley Mound have developed an innovative product for an entrepreneurship class assignment to be presented to potential investors. They now need to determine 1) which target markets have the most potential, 2) which distribution channels to use and 3) a sales volume estimate. The purpose of the case is to teach students how to use secondary research resources from a typical library to research the nature of the market for a new product. This case is appropriate for introductory business, entrepreneurship, business planning, introductory marketing or marketing research courses. It may also be used as an assessment tool.

New Life Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association has been pursuing its social enterprise initiative since 1994 to create employment and training opportunities for former mental patients in Hong Kong. As of mid-2008, 18 social enterprises have been launched, including a supply chain of organic foods with a farm, two restaurants and five retail shops. Despite success in its social mission, the social enterprises are only partially self-sustaining. The management also faces the challenges of increasing business complexities, keen market competition and more stringent government regulations on food safety. The ability of New Life to tackle these issues is constrained by the fact that the majority of its management staff come from social work or other non-business backgrounds. To scale up its business and to achieve self-sustainability, it is imperative for the organization to revisit its management and human resources strategies, and find ways to improve the financial performance of its social enterprises.

This note emphasizes the idea that managers will often want to ask experts to express their opinions about important business risks using the precise language of probability. Examples are drawn from the 2008 financial crisis and involve value-at-risk financial reporting. The second half of this note explains how a manager might use a scoring rule to evaluate the quality of experts' probability forecasts. This note is intended to accompany an instructor's own real-time forecasting exercise where students forecast, at the beginning of a week, quantities and events that will be realized by the end of the week. The quantities and events may include stock prices, commodity prices, interest rates, exchange rates, bond ratings, political votes, movie box-office revenues, Nielsen television ratings, weather events, athletic event attendance, and so on.

A survey of more than a thousand HBR readers showed people and businesses bracing themselves for the worst for at least another year. Asked to describe the effects of the economy on their companies and their professional lives, readers painted a fairly grim picture, though they also reported several opportunities to improve how they innovate and operate.

The business model of utilities is essentially broken. The solution? Start charging customers for energy services, not energy output.

The case entitled 'Lessons from Breakthrough Strategic Moves Over the Last Century' illustrates how businesses over the last 100 years have periodically broken away from the competition to create and capture new market space - often giving rise to entirely new industries. Yet, to date, there is very little understanding of the underlying strategic logic behind these breakthrough strategic moves. This case and its accompanying video examines whether there is a shared pattern across these strategic moves by examining three representative industries that touch peoples' everyday lives: autos - how people get to work; computers - what people use at work; and movie theaters - where people go after work for entertainment.

The case entitled 'How a US Consumer Products Company Unlocked the Three Tiers of Noncustomers' illustrates how new demand is created by looking to noncustomers instead of just competing for a share of the existing customers of an industry. The case prompts the students to consider how new demand was created in the cell phone, computer and air travel industries by unlocking the three tiers of noncustomers.

The case entitled 'Crafting Winning Strategies in a Mature Market: The US Wine Industry in 2001' examines the competitive environment of the US wine industry in 2001, prior to [yellow tail]'s launch. The case demonstrates how the industry was overcrowded, highly competitive, and increasingly squeezed at the distribution and retail stages of the supply chain. Even though the industry was intensely competitive, wine manufacturers have systematically competed along the same set of factors that have hardly changed over the last few centuries. In July 2001, Australia's Casella Winery introduced [yellow tail] into this highly competitive US market. Small and unknown, they had expected to sell 25,000 cases in their first year. In fact, they had sold nine times that amount. By the end of 2005, [yellow tail]'s cumulative sales were tracking at 25 million cases. [yellow tail] soon emerged as the overall best selling 750ml red wine, outstripping Californian, French and Italian brands. This case examines the strategic move executed by [yellow tail] that made it the number one imported wine and the fastest growing brand in the history of the US and Australian wine industries.

Mexico had a history of repeated financial crises, with high inflation leading to current account deficits with volatile capital inflows, culminating in significant devaluations. Concerns persisted that this pattern might repeat itself in the future. In the years prior to 1980, the government of Mexico had put in place a command and control economy with an extensive array of regulations through which it intervened in the economy on an ongoing basis and with discretionary powers. Governments created barriers to entry for foreign investment and imports and put in place price controls that protected existing Mexican firms. After 1980, a series of trade and investment reforms opened the economy. Nevertheless, many expressed the view that Mexico's reform movement stalled under President Fox (2000-2006) and that extensive government intervention continued to stifle competition. Exhibits present macroeconomic data as well as World Bank Investment Climate Indicators. A series of challenges now confronted Mexico, including the U.S. financial crisis and recession, competition with China, appropriate monetary policy, opening oil production to foreign companies and a rise in corruption and violent crime.

The Turkish financial sector has been developing rapidly and often unpredictably, offering an ideal backdrop to carry out an industry analysis in the dynamic environment of an emerging market. Akbank, one of the leading private Turkish banks, has been successful in taking advantage of the new opportunities that appeared in the credit card sector as a result of post-crisis restructuring of the financial services industry in the early 2000s. Launched in late 2001, Akbank's Axess credit card quickly gained a significant market share of 15 per cent and was popular with both customers and merchants. At the same time, the attractive margins in this sector have sparked many local and foreign competitor entries. Setting a sustainable strategy for the next few years is complicated by the change in the political, macro-economic and competitive environment. The new government leading the country since 2002 has improved overall stability in Turkey, which created both opportunities and threats for Akbank's business. The opportunities included an improved banking system and increasing customer disposable income, while the market for credit cards was not yet saturated. However, threats may come from unpredictable actions that banking authorities could implement and increasing competition from both local and international players. The dynamic nature of the banking industry in an emerging market provides a comprehensive case to anchor a discussion about developing flexible strategy in a changing environment. The purpose of the Akbank case is to help students develop environmental analysis skills. It is designed to be used in a strategy course (e.g. to accompany Chapters 4 and 5 of Crossan, Fry and Killing (2006) Strategic Analysis and Action) at an undergraduate or graduate level. Additionally, it may be used in a marketing course to illustrate issues related to loyalty programs or in an international business course to illustrate the impact of environmental uncertainty on managerial decision-making.

This case provides an introduction to the concept of a search fund. A search fund is an investment vehicle through which a group of investors provide financial support to an entrepreneur or a small team of entrepreneurs for the purpose of finding and acquiring a privately held company in which the entrepreneurs would ultimately perform senior management roles. This case deals with the process of setting up the fund, defining its terms and examining the economics. Search funds are new to the Canadian market.

This case points to the challenges that Canada faces in regards to its ongoing productivity gap with the United States and its ongoing failure in regard to international competitiveness. This case also discusses the regional differences within Canada in regard to international competitiveness. This case also discusses the regional differences within Canada in regard to economic structure and public policy issues. Finally, the case indicates a series of strategies that Canadian businesses and governments might pursue in order to deal more effectively with Canada's economic challenge.