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Zimmer Holdings, an orthopedic devices company in the United States, is suddenly faced with the prospect of its British competitor acquiring one of the Swiss companies, which would have been an ideal target for its own acquisition. With the announcement of the merger already in the news, Zimmer Holdings has a narrow time window to decide its response. Students are asked to take the position of an advisor to senior management and provide a recommendation to management on actions to pursue. The case provides an ideal platform to discuss global competition and the imperatives of a global marketplace, evaluation of a target and assessing the uncertainties in the process, discussing negotiating strategies and post-acquisition processes.

The founding executive director of the African Institute for Corporate Citizenship (AICC), felt very tense as he typed the last revisions to the speech he would be giving to a Llongwe merchants' association later in the week. He really enjoyed proudly describing his initiative, "Business Action Against Corruption", and the Business Code of Conduct for Combating Corruption in Malawi, to potential new partners. However, the founding executive director was beginning to feel concerned about its slow pace of adoption. He was particularly worried about how to manage the delicate relationship with the government.

An entrepreneur and chief executive officer (CEO) of Sensible Life Products has developed a revolutionary botanical disinfectant called Benefect, the flagship product of his company. This new product is unique among disinfectant products in that it is non-toxic, unlike the majority of conventional disinfectants containing harmful chemicals, such as ammonia, alcohol and chlorine. As a result of the unique properties of the product, the CEO has received numerous offers to purchase or license the technology and is faced with the decision regarding which offer, if any, he should accept. The purpose of this case is to expose students to entrepreneurial exit situations as well as social entrepreneurship issues associated with disruptive technologies. A follow-up supplemental case, Sensible Life Products (B), product #9B07M058, introduces a fifth opportunity to the students in the form of a joint venture with a major product development firm. The deal involves Sensible Life Products cooperating in further developing the Benefect product into a consumer focused hand sanitizer product.

This supplement to Sensible Life Products (A), product #9B07M057, introduces a fifth opportunity in the form of a joint venture with a major product development firm. The deal involves Sensible Life Products cooperating in further developing the Benefect product into a consumer focused hand sanitizer product.

Undergroundhiphop.com (UGHH) was the leading source of independent hip-hop on the Internet. Although company revenues remained small compared to major online music retailers, the opening of a storefront in 2005 helped create new opportunities within the music industry, but also proved to be a drain on company resources. As the founder tried to expand the company, he faced a number of choices. However, his conservative financial strategy was limiting the company's potential. UGHH desperately needed to hire programmers, designers and managers to keep up with new technological developments and social trends, such as music downloads, blogs and online social networking. Yet the cost of running a bricks and mortar retail store left little to invest in other areas of the business. The case provides a classic example of entrepreneurship that can be used in introductory and intermediate level entrepreneurship classes. It can be used as a platform to illustrate an entrepreneur who fails to make the transition to a manager. The discussion will provide an opportunity to introduce or review the concept of franchising.

The founding entrepreneur of Honey Care Africa (Honey Care) revitalized Kenya's national honey industry by focusing on small-holder farmers across the country. Central to the success was an innovative business model: a synergistic partnership between the development sector, the private sector, and rural communities that drew on the core competencies of each party as well as their complementary roles. This tripartite model was combined with local manufacturing of beehives, effective beekeeping training and community-based extension service provision, and the provision of a guaranteed market to small-holder farmers through forward contracts as well as prompt payments. Four years later, Honey Care has achieved 68% market share in Kenya, distributes several brands of organic, fair-trade honey internationally, and is a lead distributor of beeswax. The business model has been successfully replicated in neighboring Tanzania, with expansion plans to Uganda and Sudan.

An abstract is not available for this product.

An abstract is not available for this product.

Making employees prove their ideas' worth results in better concepts and more motivated workers. Executives must give people the tools to stand behind their ideas and must follow up with strong rewards.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. What is the optimum growth rate to maximize total return to shareholders? This is a critical question facing both managers and investors. An answer is found in the concept of a company's growth corridor, which is set by the upper bounds of a financially sustainable growth rate and the lower bounds of the competitive growth rate. Using data from Fortune Global 500 companies, the authors find that those companies that grow within their respective growth corridor create above average total shareholder returns. Drawing examples from companies such as AES, BMW, Marks & Spencer, Ao, and Wal-Mart, they show how managers can identify their growth corridors, and how they can restore healthy and smart growth.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Faster time to market and shorter product life cycles are pushing companies to introduce new products more frequently. While new products can offer tremendous value, product introductions and transitions pose enormous challenges to managers. In studying product introductions, the authors found that a common handicap was the lack of a formal process to guide managerial decisions. Drawing from research at Intel and examples from General Motors and Cisco Systems, the article develops a process to facilitate decision making during new product transitions. The proposed process analyzes the risks impacting a transition, identifies a set of factors across departments tracking those risks, monitors the evolution of these factors over time, and develops playbook mapping scenarios of risks and responses. The process helps level expectations across the organization, lessens the chance and impact of unanticipated outcomes, and helps synchronize responses among different departments. It assists managers in designing and implementing appropriate policies to ramp up sales for new products and ramp down sales for existing products, balancing the supply and the demand for both so that combined sales can grow smoothly.

Shortly after Jim Hackett became CEO of Steelcase in 1994, the office furniture manufacturer introduced two products. The Leap chair was a great success. But the Pathways office cubicle system ran into trouble from the start, plagued by R&D disputes, distribution misunderstandings, and product recalls. How could a company fail as well as succeed? Hackett traced the root of the matter to something many organizations would see as a virtue: the company's "can do" attitude. People at Steelcase were not spending enough time thinking things through before they jumped to execute. Hackett set out to transform Steelcase's "doing" culture into a "thinking before doing" culture. After much research, he developed a four-part process to give development teams at Steelcase the mental tools, intellectual resources, and time they needed to think a project through to completion. In the think phase, the team finds out as much about a potential project as possible. Team members ask questions, contact experts, do research, and come up with a range of options. In the point-of-view phase, they select the option they will pursue. Once the point of view is formed and cleared with the company, all second-guessing comes to an end and, in the plan-to-implement phase, the group determines the process by which the project will be completed. Only after full-scale practice runs with everyone involved does the project actually go forward in the implementation stage. It takes a great deal of courage and confidence for people anxious to storm the world to slow down and explore all their options first, Hackett acknowledges. But by bringing thinking and doing into the proper balance, everyone is much better prepared to meet the future.

Why do so many corporate initiatives, such as mergers and acquisitions, downsizings, or re-engineerings, look good on paper and turn out so poorly? This case offers the beginnings of one example of a corporate initiative: General Mills' acquisition of the Pillsbury subsidiary from Diageo PLC. Although General Mills financial advisors seemed to think that the balance sheets and products of the two corporations complemented each other and made a perfect match, the organizations were very different. Any shift in corporate control meant things were going to change. Kevin Wilde, the vice president and chief learning officer for General Mills, was part of the transition team responsible for helping the postacquisition integration go smoothly. The B case identifies several issues relevant to managing the integration and includes human resource and organizational information, marketing initiatives, strategy statements, plant closings, and operational changes. Together these cases were meant to motivate students with regard to the importance of understanding human systems and developing people management skills. As an introductory case to Leadership and Organizational Behavior courses, these cases encourage students to think about the skills required of them to be effective in human systems.

Will Harvey hopped onto his road bike and began pedaling up Old La Honda Road, the famously steep and windy street in Portola Valley, California. As the climb became more arduous, Harvey, the co-founder and CEO of IMVU, a company that developed 3D avatar-based instant messaging, began thinking through the three term sheets that were lying on his desk at the office. He and co-founder Eric Ries had to make a decision within a week about who to partner with on IMVU's current round of financing. Harvey and Ries had adopted an unconventional approach to growth for their startup. While the typical early-stage technology company delayed entering the market until its product had been perfected, IMVU sold its chat service to customers right away, even when it was incomplete, bug-ridden, and carried a beta label. The IMVU development team then made continual modifications to the application based on consumer feedback captured through emails, surveys, and online chat forums. Within eight months of launching the beta product, Harvey and Ries believed that they clearly understood many of the features desired by their "earlyvangelists." IMVU's strategy produced rapid enough revenue growth (on a small scale) to attract offers from several Sand Hill Road venture capital firms, as well as a large strategic acquirer. However, each potential partner had a different perspective on how to ramp the company going forward. Harvey and Ries weighed whether they should continue adhering to the methodology that enabled them to get IMVU off the ground or to shift gears in pursuit of a more aggressive expansion. That decision was the first step in choosing the source of capital best aligned with the company's strategy and goals.

Steve Jones, senior investment analyst at Stonehill Capital, among other responsibilities, had to ensure that his team prepared a pitch book which presented all the numbers and graphs necessary to acquire a client's business. Jones was already overworked so he enlisted his intern, Joe Livingston, to help with the task. As the deadline approached, Jones and Livingston worked 18-hour days preparing the pitch book and were very tired and sleep deprived. The morning after the day of the pitch, Jones received an email from the vice-president of Investment Banking telling him that the bank's deal team had been embarrassed by having to explain an error in the pitch book during their meeting to try to secure the deal. Jones is now being asked to explain what happened.

Hudson Nuptials is a Toronto-based company created to take advantage of Canada's exclusive worldwide status as a provider of marriages to non-resident, same-sex couples. The company's president is struggling with whether to provide standardized wedding packages or to provide customized experiences to each client.

The company's co-founders reflect on the potential for the company, which was created to take advantage of Canada's exclusive worldwide status as a provider of marriages to non-resident, same-sex couples; to expand into other lines of business, such as research and consulting. They must decide whether to expand into other opportunities, refocus the company entirely on other opportunities or maintain a focus on providing weddings. This is a supplement to Hudson Nuptials (A), product #9B07M001.

As of late 2004, the chief executive officer (CEO) of New York-based wine distributor Monarchia Matt International (MMI) is looking at his portfolio of wines and wondering what advantage Hungarian wine could provide in becoming a powerful niche player in the highly fragmented and complicated U.S. wine industry. The CEO is cognizant of Hungarian wine's reputation in the United States as an inexpensive, mass-quantity produced and low quality drink. At the same time, the CEO is aware of Hungary's rich wine making tradition and is confident that the country's wine varieties could prove to be a key differentiator and help him grow revenues from $6 million in 2004 to $50 million by 2010. This case serves as an introduction to many of the core course frameworks in strategy, and can be used to cover the following topics: PEST (political, economic, social and technological factors); Porter's five forces; resource-based view of the firm using VRIO framework; value proposition; SWOT; and value frontier.

Farm Equipment Services (FES), the tractor manufacturing division of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M), is considering entering the Chinese tractor industry through a joint venture with Jiangling Tractor Company (JTC), a state-owned automotive enterprise. M&M had seeded the Chinese tractor market with exports and had concluded that the most efficient and prudent way to serve the Chinese tractor market was through a joint venture with a local partner. JTC had good brand recognition and strong position in the small tractor market. However, due to the lack of interest from the parent company, Jiangling Motor Company Group, JTC was facing severe operational challenges: was over staffed, had high overhead, owed significant amounts to suppliers and dealers were fleeing the company. M&M saw an opportunity to work with a management team they were comfortable with and to leverage JTC's potential to grow in China and to export tractors as well as components. The challenge was to determine how management should proceed to restructure and integrate the joint ventures assets.

Farm Equipment Services (FES), the tractor manufacturing division of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. (M&M), is considering entering the Chinese tractor industry through a joint venture with Jiangling Tractor Company (JTC), a state-owned automotive enterprise. M&M had seeded the Chinese tractor market with exports and had concluded that the most efficient and prudent way to serve the Chinese tractor market was through a joint venture with a local partner. JTC had good brand recognition and strong position in the small tractor market. However, due to the lack of interest from the parent company, Jiangling Motor Company Group, JTC faced severe operational challenges, was over-staffed, had high overhead, owed significant amounts to suppliers, and dealers were fleeing the company. M&M saw an opportunity to work with a management team they were comfortable with and to leverage JTC's potential to grow in China and to export tractors as well as components. The challenge was to determine how management should proceed to restructure and integrate the joint venture assets.