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Grand & Toy is one of Canada's largest commercial suppliers of office stationery. The president of Grand & Toy is wary of the competitive threat posed by Staples, a well-known U.S. office supply company, and is reviewing his company's budget forecast to plan for a meeting with senior managers. He wants to use this opportunity to rethink the company's strategy and ensure all competitive threats and opportunities have been considered.

Enables a thorough analysis of Submarino.com, a B2C e-commerce company with a presence in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and Portugal. Examines the company's global operations as well as its organizational design and operating and management capabilities. Considers the company's challenge of determining its strategic and financial priorities as it launches a rapid growth plan with limited resources in 2001.

Velsicol Chemical Corporation, a global company focused on producing specialty chemicals, has formed a joint venture with the Estonian government called Velsicol Eesti AS that would produce benzoic acid. The plant that will produce this chemical was previously part of a conglomerate owned and controlled by the Russian government. When Estonia became an independent state this plant was passed on to the country which then privatized and sold a percentage of it to Velsicol. The newly appointed plant manager came from a benzoic plant outside the country and was responsible for government relations, cost management, liaison with the board of directors, performance standards and staffing. He must quickly put together a management team that would be familiar with the current operations and capable of working together to achieve the company's goals. In order to do this, he needed to better understand the employees with whom he was working. A follow-up case, Velsicol Eesti AS (B), is available, (product 9B00M008), as well as a cultural note on Estonia, (product number 9B00M014).

A summary of Estonia's history, economics, industry and culture is provided in this note as a supplement to be used with the Velsicol Eesti AS (A) and (B) cases, products 9B00M007 and 9B00M008.

<p style="color: rgb(197, 183, 131);"><strong> AWARD WINNER - AIB Case Competition, Academy of International Business, and Indiana University Center for International Business Education and Research (IUCIBER) International Case Competition</strong></p><br>Meridco Magnesium is an international automotive parts supplier of magnesium die-cast components with manufacturing plants in Canada, the United States and France. The company has a strong market position in North America; however, two out of the three plants are not performing well. The vice-president of the company's Global Technologies Organization division believes the weaker performance in the two plants is due to resistance to technological innovations. He must determine the reasons for this resistance and develop a plan to resolve the weak performance in the plants before the upcoming annual board meeting. Three supplements further discuss the issues each of the plants have with new technology. Meridco Magnesium: The French Perspective, product 9B01M007; Meridco Magnesium: The Canadian Perspective, product 9B01M008, and Meridco Magnesium: The American Perspective, product 9B01M009.

The president and general plant manager of the French plant of a major magnesium die-cast auto parts manufacturer discusses with the company's vice-president their concerns with the policy on implementing new technology in the plant. This is a supplement to Meridco Magnesium: International Technology Transfer, product 9B01M006.

The vice-president of a major magnesium die-cast auto parts manufacturer is determining why two of the three company plants are not performing well. He meets with the head of each plant to discuss their views on technology innovations in the company. This is a supplement to Meridco Magnesium: International Technology Transfer, product 9B01M006.

The American plant manager of a large magnesium die-cast auto parts manufacturer has a conversation with the company's vice-president about the technology innovations within the company. This is a supplement to Meridco Magnesium: International Technology Transfer, product 9B01M006.

Strategic Intelligence Pte. Limited is a Singapore-based research and media company. The newly appointed director of advisory services is considering the challenges in building the company's latest service offering. The company's strong emphasis on this new service is a departure from their previous strategy of attempting to develop its existing events, custom research and online information services in a relatively even manner. He needs to formulate a plan that will ensure the new service contributes about half of the company's revenue within the next year. This case may be used with Strategic Intelligence Pte. Limited (A), 9B01M032.

The music industry has changed dramatically as a result of technological and business innovations that have transformed how music is acquired, and how value is created and distributed. Napster Inc. operated one of several Web sites that allowed Internet users free access to MP3 music files -- which eventually led to lawsuits around issues of the protection of intellectual capital. These issues lead to the examination of the forces at play in the transformation of the music industry, the strategic alternatives for players in the industry and the legal context underpinning the strategic alternatives, with a particular focus on the protection of intellectual capital.

The owner of a shop specializing in the creation and sale of Celtic art was faced with the challenge of finding a way to rejuvenate sales; customer traffic was declining due to the closing of a local market. He was determined to develop a strategy that would better insulate his business in the future. Limited resources meant that maximizing the returns on his efforts would be critical to the survival of the business. He had to examine his marketing strategy and product mix, consider his options and generate solutions to improve and secure his short-term and long-term profitability.

In this article, Bain consultants Orit Gadiesh and James Gilbert explore the concept of the strategic principle--a memorable and actionable phrase that distills a company's corporate strategy into its unique essence and communicates it across an organization. If it's devised and disseminated properly, a strategic principle can empower employees to seize business opportunities but also focus everyone in an organization--executives and line managers alike--on the same strategic objectives. The authors outline the three defining characteristics of a good strategic principle--it should force trade-offs between competing resource demands, it should serve as a test for the strategic soundness of a particular action, and it should set clear boundaries for employees to operate within even as it grants them freedom to experiment. They explain how managers can create a strategic principle, how they should test it, and when they should revisit it. The authors present real-world examples of how companies use their strategic principles. For instance, they describe how Southwest Airlines stopped flying to Denver after it measured the high costs of providing flight service in that part of the country against its strategic principle of offering customers short-haul air travel at fares competitive with the cost of automobile travel. This tool is increasingly useful in today's rapidly changing business environment, the authors conclude, and it is likely to become even more crucial to corporate success.

Conventional wisdom holds that a company's divisions should be given almost total autonomy--especially under conditions of uncertainty--because they are closer to emerging technologies, customers, and competitors than corporate headquarters could ever be. But research from Michael Raynor and Joseph Bower suggests that the corporate office should be more, not less, directive in turbulent markets. Rapid changes in an industry make it difficult to predict where and when synergies among divisions might emerge. With so many possibilities and such uncertainty, companies can't afford to sacrifice their ability to flexibly execute business strategy. Corporate headquarters must play an active role in defining the scope of division-level strategy, the authors say, so that divisions do not act in ways that undermine opportunities to collaborate in the future. Through an examination of four corporations--Sprint, WPP, Teradyne, and Viacom--the authors challenge traditional approaches to diversification in which a company's divisions are either related (they share resources and collaborate) or unrelated (they compete for resources and operate as stand-alone businesses). They argue that companies should adopt a dynamic approach to cooperation among divisions, enabling varying degrees of relatedness between divisions depending on strategic circumstances. The authors offer four tactics to help executives manage divisions dynamically.

Few large companies have soared as high, sunk as low, and struggled as long as the 18-year-old networking software maker Novell. For years, the company dominated the market for local area networks, but by 1997, it had faltered due to misguided acquisitions, product missteps, and large unsold inventories. That's when Eric Schmidt arrived from Sun Microsystems to take over as Novell's third CEO. He turned the company around with a deft combination of cost reductions, divestitures, and new product rollouts, and by 1998, it was back in the black. Unfortunately, the good times didn't last, and like most technology companies, Novell is once again struggling with a slowdown in demand. But Schmidt is optimistic about returning Novell to good health, and his strategies suggest ways for other organizations to handle themselves during downturns. He counsels against being overly cautious during such times. His advice: keep new products coming out to sustain the interest of customers and the press, pay attention to your cash position, stay focused on your desired outcomes, and take heart from other industry leaders.

The case analyses the failed introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMO) in Europe by Monsanto. Showing how a favourable context (the legacy of mad-cow disease) made it relatively easy for consumer groups and environmentalists to wage successful anti-GMO campaigns in Europe, the case examines how Monsanto attempted to deal with its image problem and how the company¿s efforts backfired. The case then moves on to show how the industry's public-relations crisis grew into a transatlantic trade dispute pitching the U.S. administration against the E.U. Commission, analyzing the legal, economic and political issues raised by the dispute.

In February 2000, Triangle Community Foundation (TCF) director of Philanthropic Services Tony Pipa presented the foundation's new mission statement and its internal ramifications to the staff. It had been over two years since TCF's board had mandated that donors, not nonprofit organizations, were the foundation's primary customers. Executive Director Shannon St. John, Pipa, and other members of the management team had met for months and wrestled with fundamental questions around the definition of philanthropy, how to achieve meaningful, long-term impact, and the foundation's role in the communities it served. They were excited about the progress they had made but knew that many questions still remained, and they expected some resistance to their proposals. Much of the staff had come to TCF from nonprofit, community-based organizations and spent much of their time working with the nonprofit sector. They were not sure what this new focus on donors as customers meant for their work, nor were they comfortable with not considering the nonprofit community their customers.

Quest Foods International is one of the world's largest manufacturers of fragrances, flavors and textures for the food, beverage and consumer products industries. Quest Foods' regional vice-president is in the process of implementing a business process re-engineering project for the company. His current efforts focus on developing an information technology-based customer relationship management (CRM) system that he believes could give the company a sustainable competitive advantage with customers in the region and throughout the world. His ultimate goal is to bring Quest to the next phase of e-business. Despite high ambitions, his initiatives are making little headway. Internal opposition to change is significant and some key customers are growing concerned that Quest's CRM plans might miss the mark. Faced with considerable time and resource pressures, he is wondering how to set priorities and where to focus his energies.

Canadel is Canada's leading manufacturer of casual dining room furniture. Following Canadel's entry into the U.S. market in 1992, sales had multiplied eight-fold and were expected to reach $125 million in 2000. The three brothers that made up the company's top management team were discussing recent sales results and future orientation of the firm. Questions that surfaced included growth in existing and new markets, and competition from established industry giants and new upstarts. The brothers were determined to assess these opportunities and threats in the upcoming weeks.

A new country manager builds the Shanghai office of Liz Claiborne into a powerful sourcing organization using local talent. She explains the nuts and bolts of transforming the office.

Describes the firm's strategic planning activities and focuses on the challenge of developing processes that enable the firm to improve the core business as well as processes that foster the creation of promising new business opportunities.