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Despite all the uncertainty mergers and acquisitions create for buyers and sellers, a solid, well-planned post acquisition integration strategy can create opportunity. During the fall of 2001, following a lengthy U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust review, General Mills Inc. acquired the Pillsbury subsidiary from Diageo PLC with an eye towards enhancing their revenue. Although General Mills financial advisors seemed to think that the balance sheets and products of the two corporations complimented 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 post acquisition integration go smoothly. While spending most of the summer working on the acquisition planning stage, Wilde and the team tried to envision what employees' fundamental concerns would be and how the team could help ease anxieties in both organizations. How should the Pillsbury integration process proceed? Despite the extensive planning process, were there any surprises that would affect integration efforts? Could General Mills and Pillsbury be integrated in a way that would generate more value than the companies were generating separately? And which changes should be the team's top priorities? 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.

In 2003, 3M initiated contact with Yunnan Baiyao Group Co., Ltd. to discuss potential cooperation opportunities in the area of transdermal pharmaceutical products. Yunnan Baiyao (YB), was a household brand in China for its unique traditional herbal medicines. In recent years, the company had been engaged in a series of corporate reforms and product/market diversification strategies to respond to the change in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry and competition at a global level. By 2003, YB was already a vertically integrated, product-diversified group company with an ambition to become an international player. The proposed cooperation with 3M was attractive to YB, not only as an opportunity for domestic product diversification, but also for international diversification. YB had been attempting to internationalize its products and an overseas department had been established in 2002 specifically for this purpose. On the other hand, YB had also been considering another option namely, whether to extend its brand to toothpaste and other healthcare products. YB had to make decisions about which of the two options to pursue and whether it was feasible to pursue both.

The owners of Black Fly Beverage Company consider the viability of expanding their product-line after less than a year in operation. Since its start-up earlier the same year, sales of the company's original cranberry-blueberry vodka cooler had climbed steadily. Impressed with their early success, the owners wonder whether they should take advantage of their new brand's momentum and invest in the production of a second product.

Farmacias Similares, serving Mexico's low-income sector, grew to $600 million sales and 3,400 drugstores while deep reforms to help the poor swept the public health system. Adjacent to each store, for $2 per visit, medical clinics provided access to doctors for 2.3 million people a month. Narrates the growth of the chain, examines the reasons for its success, and projects a pro forma of the company's financial returns. Places Farmacias Similares in the context of Mexico's public health system and the pharmaceutical industry.

A strategic planner for an international oil and gas firm, Ed Chen was tasked with reviewing China's petroleum refining industry to seek out potential investment opportunities. Globally, demand for transportation fuel was on the rise and government clean fuel standards were becoming strict. As refineries struggled to adapt to tightening product quality requirements, those able to efficiently produce a high proportion of light products from heavy and sulfurous crude oil prospered the most. World refining capacity was expected to substantially increase over the next few years, with China contributing much of the growth. Building a refinery was an expensive task anywhere, though construction cost estimates were much lower for Asia. Ed questioned whether there was room for foreign competition or if it was a locals-only game.

On February 19, 2005, British Airways flight 268, a 747, took off from Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) headed for London's Heathrow Airport. It would be an 11-hour, 5,000-plus-mile flight. Shortly after takeoff, only 296 feet in the air, one of the jet's four engines exploded. The pilots had to determine what course of action to take: return immediately to LAX or continue the flight. This case outlines the various options and the potential consequences of each. See also the B case (UV0774).

The case examines how market trends and competition in the global airline industry have driven recent developments in the commercial aircraft industry. Continued growth of low-cost carriers and industry downturn since September 11 have created a demand for smaller, more efficient regional jets and a gap between capacity and demand for planes in the 70- to 120-seat range. As a primary player in the regional jet segment, Embraer has developed a new aircraft family to serve the 70- to 120-seat market more efficiently and fill in the gap. Meanwhile, Bombardier, its major competitor in the regional jet market, announced it would develop a CSeries of aircrafts with unmatched operating efficiency to outperform Embraer's jets. Students must decide how Embraer should respond to Bombardier's CSeries challenge and whether Airbus and Boeing, the two largest aircraft makers in the world, would be likely to respond and, if so, how.

If organizational structure follows form, the organization that learns well functions well. More precisely, the organization that enables knowledge to flow and be shared at all levels is the organization that performs best. This author describes why learning organizations have the capability to read the market and innovate in ways that lead to success.

Most organizations spend vast sums on information technology to gather, manipulate, store, and use the information and data they gather. Yet, as these authors point out, managing this resource entails protecting it and complying with all laws and regulations. The authors prescribe ten best practices that should allow an organization to protect its data and comply with the law.

Almost faster than you can say mark-to-market accounting, management controls disappeared once Jeff Skilling became CEO of Enron. The rest is sad history and a shareholder's worst nightmare come true. These authors document the subversion of Enron's management controls and suggest the lessons managers can learn from the worst financial collapse in U.S. corporate history.

The spring of 2002 had been grueling for the owner of Pet Care Veterinary Services, a small-animal veterinary practice with two clinics in Southwestern Ontario. Everything seemed to be going wrong at Pet Care's Avery, Ontario location. Profitability was disappointing, medication had disappeared, and the owner had serious concerns about her associate veterinarian's quality of animal care. The owner wondered what would be her best course of action. She could afford to keep the clinic open for another year and try to either fix the operational issues or leave things as they were and see if the problems resolved themselves. The owner wondered whether it would be best to sell and avoid future problems. What price would she ask for the clinic if she chose to sell? Whatever her choice, she knew she had to make a decision quickly, because the uncertainty and stress of running two clinics were beginning to take their toll.

What makes a leader the most is a certain solidity at the core, a solidity founded on principles that are, essentially, points on a moral compass. Those principles are visible in the actions of some leaders, while other leaders act according to convenience. These authors lay down a blueprint that will allow a leader to be guided by principles.

Look into the soul of any great leader and you will find a good leader. But, if only that were the case. Some leaders, those who crave and bathe in the spotlight, are in fact not so great. Others, who are highly effective (and modest) and possess the five key characteristics this author describes, are good leaders first and foremost. Which is what, in the end, makes them great.

Scratch the surface of a true leader, or look beneath his or her personality, and you'll find character. The traits and values that make up the character of a good business leader are, for the most part, similar to those that make up the character of an outstanding citizen. These authors describe the traits and values that make up the character of leadership.

Three business partners had finally secured the $15-million purchase of the Meadowlark Shopping Centre, a struggling mall located a few minutes away from West Edmonton Mall. The 60-day due diligence period, during which the partners had to decide whether to go through with the deal, was about to commence. If they were to go forward with the purchase, the partners had to consider changing the concept of the mall, demolishing a portion of the mall, demolishing a portion and changing the mall's concept or keeping the mall's current strategy.

Geotech Telecom (Geotech) is a small but successful 14-year old company that provides telecom consulting to two main clients, Rogers Telecom and Bell Canada. The company is facing the upcoming transfer of a large multimillion-dollar telecom contract from one of its largest clients, Bell Canada, to another provider. Geotech's president doubts whether Geotech will be able to compete for the project and, hence, a potentially disastrous future lies ahead for the company. At the same time, the widow of the company's founder wants to sell the company, and Geotech has received acquisition offers from larger telecom consulting companies. The president needs to decide what steps to take next.

Sarbanes-Oxley may be onerous, tedious and expensive. But it is also - and arguably the most important overlooked thing - a virtual and heretofore never-considered ally of corporate managers. In fact, as this author argues, learning to live with Sarbanes-Oxley can yield unanticipated dividends and make a manager's life a lot easier.

Most managers would admit that the COO plays a critical role in an organization and is highly visible within it. These coauthors have identified four conditions or rights that boards and organizations must satisfy to make the COO's role work and add value. They describe these rights in this article and what to do and not to do to make them work.

It is not a crisis - at least not yet - but numerous Canadian SMEs need to get with the lean program before it's too late. The authors visited 18 firms and though they found that lean practices were wanting, they were able to turn their findings into recommendations that manufacturing managers everywhere can implement to make their operations lean.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Because of two trends--rising R&D costs and decreased product revenues (due to shorter product life cycles)--companies are finding it increasingly difficult to justify investments in innovation. Business models that embrace open innovation address both issues. The development costs of innovation are reduced by the greater use of external technology in a firm's own R&D process. This saves time as well as money, and the firm no longer restricts itself to the markets it serves directly. Now it participates in other segments through licensing fees, joint ventures, and spin-offs, among others. These different streams of income create more overall revenue from the innovation. To partake more fully in the benefits of open innovation, companies need to develop the ability to experiment with their business models, finding ways to open them up. Building that capability requires the creation of processes for conducting experiments and assessing their results. Although that might seem obvious, many companies simply do not have such processes in place. In most organizations, no single person short of the CEO bears responsibility for the business model. Instead, business unit managers (who are usually posted to their jobs for just two to three years) tend to take the business model for granted. To understand how an organization can open its business model, the author provides case examples of IBM, P&G, and Air Products, three companies that operate in different industries with vastly different technologies and products. Each used to function with a very internally focused, closed business model, and each has since migrated to a business model that is substantially more open.