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Describes the cost structure and spending policies of U.S. public school districts.

A particularly incendiary example of the law of unintended consequences.

Rigorous research shows a correlation between stock market performance and the phases of the moon.

Alison Barnard, 27, knows shopping, retail, and fashion. As an MBA, working part time in retail, she devises a business plan for a premium denim and tops boutique based on her view that "women are not brand loyal, they are fit loyal." In-Jean-ius, her six-month-old corner shop in Boston's lovely North End, has been exceeding her revenue estimates since day one-largely because Alison has skill and passion to help her upscale clients find just the 'right' pair of jeans. As it has from the very beginning, running this hit venture consumes nearly every waking hour. Still, the creative, high-energy founder is far less concerned with burning out than with having her retail store duties usurp her ability to plan and manage for growth. While her plan is to roll out In-Jean-ius stores in major cities like New York, Chicago, LA, that will be critically dependent on her ability to attract and develop management talent with a similarly keen eye for fit. Her latest hire with management potential has just decided to quit, leaving Alison to wonder; if it's such a challenge to replicate myself at this one location, how am I supposed to scale?

One of the biggest management challenges anywhere is how to improve student performance in urban public schools in the United States. There has been no shortage of proposed solutions: Find great principals and give them power; create competitive markets with charters, vouchers, and choice; establish small schools to ensure that students receive sufficient attention--the list goes on. Although these approaches have created positive changes in individual schools, they have failed to produce a single high-performing urban school system. In this article, the authors, who are members of Harvard University's Public Education Leadership Project (PELP), explain why. One reason, they say, is that educators, researchers, and policy makers see the district office, which oversees all the schools in a district, as part of the problem rather than a crucial part of the solution--and this is a mistake. The district office plays an important role in developing strategies, identifying and spreading best practices, developing leadership capabilities at all levels, building information systems to monitor student improvement, and holding people accountable for results. The authors propose a holistic framework that district leaders can use to develop an improvement strategy and build coherent organizations to implement it. The framework is based on three beliefs. First, school systems need their own management models; they cannot simply import them from the business world. Second, "the customer" is the student; therefore, urban districts need to focus on improving teaching and learning in every classroom at every school. Third, district leaders must design their organizations so that all the components--culture, systems and structures, resources, and mechanisms for managing stakeholders and the external environment--reinforce one another and support the implementation of the strategy across schools.

Never a fad, but always in or out of fashion, innovation gets rediscovered as a growth enabler every half dozen years. Too often, grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in cost-cutting drives. Each managerial generation embarks on the same enthusiastic quest for the next new thing. And each generation faces the same vexing challenges--most stemming from the tensions between protecting existing revenue streams critical to current success and supporting new concepts that may be crucial to future success. In this article, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter reflects on four major waves of innovation enthusiasm she's observed over the past 25 years. She describes the classic mistakes companies make in innovation strategy, process, structure, and skills assessment, illustrating her points with a plethora of real-world examples--including AT&T Worldnet, Timberland, and Ocean Spray. A typical strategic blunder is when managers set their hurdles too high or limit the scope of their innovation efforts. Quaker Oats, for instance, was so busy in the 1990s making minor tweaks to its product formulas that it missed larger opportunities in distribution. A common process mistake is when managers strangle innovation efforts with the same rigid planning, budgeting, and reviewing approaches they use in their existing businesses--thereby discouraging people from adapting as circumstances warrant. Companies must be careful how they structure fledgling entities alongside existing ones, Kanter says, to avoid a clash of cultures and agendas--which Arrow Electronics experienced in its attempts to create an online venture. Finally, companies commonly undervalue and underinvest in the human side of innovation--for instance, promoting individuals out of innovation teams long before their efforts can pay off. Kanter offers practical advice for avoiding these traps.

In mid-2006, Google is the number one search engine in America with 99% of its revenues deriving from its simple, text-only advertising services. It is on track to bring in roughly $9.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2006, which would place it fourth among American media companies in total ad sales, ahead of giants such as NBC Universal and Time Warner. However, it has also begun to explore new ways to expand its online advertising model, experimenting with more elaborate forms of advertising (involving graphics, animation, and video). Google has also begun exploring the radio/television advertising space. Each of these forays is raising a number of key questions for Google, including whether it is possible to reconcile these advertising formats with its current business philosophy.

Focuses on DLA Piper, a global law firm resulting from the merger of the combined U.S. firm Piper Rudnick Gray Cary and the British firm DLA. At the time of the merger, the firms had similar strategies for the future and approaches to clients. While figuring out some of the details in order to successfully merge, the firm leadership has many questions about how to further align the merged firms in terms of strategy, people and systems, structure, culture, and leadership. Examines some of the steps the firm plans to take in the future to achieve greater alignment in order to move from being several local and regional entities to becoming one global firm.

The chairman and chief product designer of lululemon athletica is preparing to address an audience at an investor's conference. He describes lululemon's great success from 1998 to 2006 and analyses the growth opportunities it faces. This case helps students understand the concept of competitive advantage in relation to the functional and emotion marketing drivers. In addition, it underlines the importance of preserving brand equity and prioritizing strategic growth options.

The chairman and chief product designer of lululemon athletica is preparing to address an audience at an investor's conference. He describes lululemon's great success from 1998 to 2006 and analyses the growth opportunities it faces. This case helps students understand the concept of competitive advantage in relation to the functional and emotion marketing drivers. In addition, it underlines the importance of preserving brand equity and prioritizing strategic growth options.

This introduction to the Design industry includes definitions, and industry statistics, as well as descriptions of geographic clustering, design education, organizational roles of designers, how designers work and get paid, and the growing role of design in management.

Ayala Corporation is the oldest conglomerate in the Philippines and has been controlled by the Zobel de Ayala family for seven generations. Over the past 25 years, Ayala has evolved from a real estate family business into a highly diversified and professionally managed business group, with a significant number of non-family shareholders. Between the holding company and its four largest subsidiaries, the Ayala group accounts for a quarter of the market capitalization of the Philippines Stock Exchange. Provides data to assess the value created for Ayala's stockholders in the ten years leading up to 2006, when the transition to the seventh generation of the Zobel de Ayala family culminated.

Surveys educational outcomes among public school students in the United States. Educational outcomes are categorized as achievement outcomes (measured primarily by students' performance on standardized test results) and attainment outcomes (measured primarily by students' completion rates at various grade levels). Deals with outcome trends within the general U.S. school-aged population and covers educational outcomes in various subpopulations of students, including ones defined by race, income, family background, and gender. Describes student outcomes in U.S. public education; it does not explain them. For example, the first half of the note presents data on stagnating achievement levels in the general U.S. population over the last 30 years, but it does not cover in any detail the debate that surrounds the causes of this trend. Similarly, the second half of the note summarizes, but does not interpret explicitly, certain stark correlations between students' educational prospects and their race and socioeconomic status.

Describes the revenue structure of U.S. public education. Covers funding by federal, state, and local governments. Examines in detail two federal education laws: the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Although these laws account for less than 7% of U.S. public funding for education, their mandates strongly influence the activities of schools and school districts. Includes a bibliography. A rewritten version of an earlier note.

Wipro Technologies, a rapidly growing software services firm based in India, decided to use principles from the Toyota Production System (also known as lean) to fundamentally change their operating model. Looks at why Wipro chose to use lean and how they went about implementing it in a novel context such as this. Provides detail of Wipro's internal and external environment, which was necessitating the change (shift from delivering a low-cost product to providing a business solution). Also, explores whether this new approach can lead to a substantial competitive advantage.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 607032.

Ben Walter is thinking of purchasing Butler Lumber and needs to decide how he would run the business and how much to pay for it.

As a child, Al Fuller had seen his working-class, African-American neighborhood disintegrate as factory jobs moved away. He resolved to help inner-city communities do better when he grew up. Some years later, as an accomplished university graduate with several years manufacturing experience, he embarked on a scheme to take over and revitalize first one, then another, corrugated box plant. These plants were plagued by inefficiency, poor quality control, and tense labor relations. Using his understanding of inner-city life, Fuller employed discipline-based strategies to empower his employees and turn the failing plants into engines of community revitalization.

Supplements the (A) case.