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In July 1991, Microsoft has achieved record growth and profitability in the PC software industry. The case focuses on Microsoft's founder and CEO, Bill Gates, and his top management team, as they seek to retain the innovation and spirit of a small company in a rapidly growing and changing environment. Specific issues include the management of organizational complexity, cultural change, CEO and COO interaction, compensation, and leadership.

Supplement to case UV6118. This case complements the A case by providing the decision-maker's view on the key sources of risk and his probability assessment of the uncertainties that give rise to them. The case can be used as an introduction to simulation modeling.

B Case to UV0725

When GE's retiring Reginald Jones turned the job of CEO over to Jack Welch on April 1, 1981, the Wall Street Journal reported that GE had "decided to replace a legend with a live wire." Some wondered if the young dynamo could fill the elder statesman's very large shoes. But Welch had a very powerful and well-articulated vision of where he wanted his company to go. By 1984, he had regrouped GE's sectors, redefined its core businesses, made massive investment and disinvestment decisions, changed the company's approach to planning, and drastically cut personnel. Despite a major recession in the world economy and flat sales, profits rose from $1.5 billion in 1980 to $2.3 billion in 1984. This case chronicles the evolution of GE through the 1970s and early 1980s, focusing particularly on the changes wrought by Reg Jones and the way in which Jack Welch took that heritage and reshaped it to fit the demands of a new decade.

By the mid 1980's Jack Welch had completely transformed General Electric with more than 300 divestitures and acquisitions since the beginning of the decade. Welch insisted that his business units be number one or number two in their markets, and have the strength of large companies and the leanness and agility of small ones. Yet, although Welch had succeeded restructuring GE the way he wanted, employee morale was low. The case focuses on Welch raising employee productivity by continuing to remove layers of management and by allowing employees to have a greater voice in their own affairs.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 291002

Describes the strategic and organizational changes introduced by Cor Van Der Klugt as he becomes CEO.

Describes the history of Nike, its strategy, and the industry in which it competes. The teaching objective is to ask the student to identify and evaluate Nike's economic/technical strategy.

Vermillion Paper Co. saw a proposed eucalyptus plantation in the tropical country of Equitania as an opportunity to do right by the environment after years of insensitivity. Vermillion spent almost two years obtaining the support of national and local government officials and environmentalists. But soon a renegade group broke with the Equitanian environmentalists and joined a militant U.S. group in publicly condemning the project. Four experts on environmental strategy discuss Vermillion's option.

This note serves as an introduction to the topic of inventory management. It covers ways to categorize inventories in measuring inventory performance, the financial implications of inventory, inventory-management systems, economic order quantities, decision rules for determining safety stocks, and the effect of multiple stocking points on average inventory.

This note reports the results of a study of 10 U.S. and Japanese companies with regard to their purchasing practices and vendor/buyer relationships. Particular attention is given to just-in-time practices in the purchasing area.

This reporting form accompanies the Sorensen Chevrolet (Harvard Case No. 9-175-258) and captures the student's assessments of the outcomes of the court case and the settlement reached (if any).

Galaxy Micro Systems is negotiating with a vendor about the cost of service support for the warranty on Galaxy's new workstation. The vendor has offered Galaxy a choice between a fixed-price, lump-sum contract or a deferred-payment scheme based on the number of units installed. Uncertainty in the sales forecast complicates the choice. All uncertainties are expressed in terms of discrete probabilities.

This technical note considers how one makes choices in situations where there are multiple objectives and attributes that measure performance against these objectives. In some instances, given attributes may be important because they measure impacts of a choice on specific stakeholders. The note considers elimination of alternatives by aspects, dominance, and some decision rules that do not require compensatory tradeoffs (lexicographic, satisficing). Methods for "rate and weight" (linear additive scoring rules) are described and illustrated.

This note teaches the student how to account for seasonality in time-series data. All the necessary steps to (1) deseasonalize, (2) forecast with deseasonalized data, and then (3) re-seasonalize the forecast are illustrated with examples from the coal industry.

The president of a large and established manufacturer of laboratory equipment has to decide whether to invest $1 million for 30% equity in a start-up company in the field of lab robotics. The agreement would also allow his company the right to market the product. He already has a spreadsheet that projects the best guess of the future scenario and calculates several measures of performance (ROS, ROE, ROI, NPV, and IRR). He must decide which of the criteria are most useful. A relevant-cost issue that is introduced must be resolved, because it makes a big difference in the NPV. In the supplement, some background material is provided for a forecasting/judgmental assessment exercise based on this decision. The supplement could, assuming students have already been introduced to this topic, form the basis for a short workshop (an hour or less) on judgmental probability, or it could be used with a note on cumulative probability distributions for an introductory class on the topic. (The B case number is UVA-QA-0383, and a supplement to the A case is UVA-QA-0384.)

This case discusses the so-called sophomore jinx: professional athletes who perform superbly as rookies never seem to do as well in their second--sophomore--season. The case gives performance data for Rookie of the Year award winners in major-league baseball through 2003 (29 pitchers and 83 nonpitchers). Data cover both the first and second years. Students must decide for themselves, based on the data, whether the sophomore jinx is real or imagined.

Supplement for case UV6133

At the core of this case is a distribution, or sourcing, problem that can be modeled and solved using linear programming (LP). There are also issues of whether to build (a) new plant(s)--and if so, what the capacity should be--and whether to expand or close one or more of the existing plants. These latter issues can be analyzed using a 0/1 LP facility-location model. Alternatively, because the number of options is limited, they can be analyzed using the straight LP model of the distribution problem as a tool to facilitate analysis.

Peter Gordon, manager of a $1.6 billion investment in municipal securities at Price, has just received phone calls from the sales representatives of two investment banks, each offering attractive opportunities for the reinvestment of $50 million that will shortly become available. He may choose either but not both of the offers. The case can be used to review the contents of a "tombstone," to reinforce NPV and IRR concepts, to witness the inappropriateness of using IRR as a selection criterion among mutually exclusive projects, and to emphasize the reinvestment assumption of IRR.