個案總覽

It was early 2010, and the Twitter Trio, the founders of Twitter, were faced with a changing market situation and a pressure to make money. Twitter was a free service that had been operating without a viable business plan since 2006. In early 2010, Twitter was still not making enough money and it was time Twitter showed real return on investment. The trio had to decide on a business model that was competitive. There was a data mining project that could bring all the funds Twitter needed to stay in business, make profit and compete with others. However, the founders were concerned that this project might be perceived to intrude on users' privacy, even in a company that was founded on the basis of sharing information publicly.

The founder of Lakkard Leather Company has headed the company for 24 years. He is proud of his business, and attributes much of its success to his own leadership style, which did not allow for anyone else's participation in decisions of substance. When he was badly injured in a car accident, his son stepped in and kept the business going. Without any intention to take over, the son altered the leadership and operations of the company in the space of a few months, so that by the time the founder returned, the company had changed and his role was significantly reduced. The son, in the meantime, grew to like his interim position and believed he did a better job than his father. Both men become locked in a power struggle; yet the company faced several key decisions that had to be taken in terms of expansion, product offering and sale opportunities.

After three years of rapid growth in a relatively young industry, the affiliate and payment processing company RevenueWire.com found itself operating in a very different environment. Sales growth in the company's affiliate network service had leveled off, and orders for Q1 2010 looked just like those for Q1 2009. New competitors, low entry barriers, and a plateau in the affiliate market meant few opportunities for growth across the industry. Despite those conditions, the company's owners had set aggressive revenue targets for 2010 to 2012. The general manager must evaluate options for growth, including new markets and new products, to determine how to meet her targets. Because RevenueWire.com's competitors are privately held, there is little public data on the state of their finances or the size of various markets. The general manager has learned how to use surrogate data to gauge the market and make strategic decisions, and the students must do the same to develop an effective three-year plan that will meet or exceed the owners' expectations. The case exposes students to decision making in a global industry dominated by privately held companies. It also exposes students to the affiliate marketing industry from the viewpoint of an entrepreneurial company that serves as an intermediary between merchants and affiliates. It describes many of the challenges facing an intermediary in an industry that includes not only legitimate merchants but also a vast array of scam artists and phony products.

Candace Leak is a young female college graduate who quit her successful job to start a luxury pet shampoo company, Cain & Able Collections (named after her two dogs). With no encouragement from her family, Leak bootstrapped the venture and turned her idea into a million dollar enterprise. The case follows Leak as she wins contracts with Petco and Whole Foods and is featured in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. This success however extracts a personal and emotional toll. Eight years later, after getting married and having a son, Leak encounters a critical crossroads. She is still passionate about her company, but wants to focus on her family. Leak must decide whether to hire a CEO, sell the company, merge with her competitor, or raise venture capital.

This is a graphic novel version of Ivey case Binnj on the Apple iPad (#9B10E024).<br><br><br><br>In this dialogue-styled case, Binnj’s CEO has assembled a team of people for a 100-day science experiment to determine whether a new high-tech business venture is worth pursuing. He is focused on an untapped market — a new kind of restaurant menu service built on the Apple iPad platform. Members of the team are excited and have been working furiously on the project while retaining their full-time jobs. They have developed a prototype of the technology and business offering, pitched the idea to several clients, and generated significant interest. The case is set at the end of the first 100 days, when the CEO must decide on the next steps.

The managing director of a steel plant faces the decision of how much of each raw material to order for the plant for the following month. Due to lower and upper bounds on the amounts of each raw material in a batch and varying amounts of electricity and time consumed for different raw materials, one can't simply use the cheapest raw material. A linear program and the solver optimization function of Excel will provide the optimal amounts that meet the constraints. Interestingly, the best mixture for a batch is not the best mixture for a monthly plan. Shadow prices indicate the value of relaxing constraints. The typical monthly model from a student will be nonlinear, although it can be written as a linear model. This case provides the basis for an introductory class on linear programming and linear versus nonlinear models.

Spreadsheet for case UV6307

Kiai Marketing Group is a start-up advertising company providing innovative marketing solutions to businesses in London, Ontario. The company’s first undertaking is aimed at reaching the post-secondary student demographic by attaching a business’s advertising to laptop computers by means of a laptop skin. The proprietor needs an overall strategic marketing plan to secure his first client. The proprietor must decide what clients to target, how to reach the student market, what to charge clients, and what to pay the team of students displaying the laptop skins.

Company founders have to be optimistic and resilient. But new research shows that serial entrepreneurs-those who involve themselves in only one project at a time-tend to be so overoptimistic that they don't learn from failure. Some venture capitalists factor this in when making investment decisions, and they tend to have better results than those who don't. Other potential investors should perform this due diligence, interviewing candidates about the causes of their past successes and mistakes.

Daniel Isenberg on why "embracing failure" to encourage entrepreneurship is bad policy.

Aid in understanding of financing entrepreneurship.

For some time, 1366's co-founders, Frank van Mierlo and Ely Sachs, had faced a choice, which was now made all the more stark: 1366 could expand to produce silicon wafers itself, raising the required capital from "friendly" investors and building shipment volume slowly, or 1366 could accelerate its market entry dramatically by partnering with the Asian manufacturers that had begun to dominate the world-wide solar industry. While accelerated growth was attractive to 1366 and its current investors, the company believed that it would face considerable risks if it were to expose its intellectual property to the "wrong" partners. 1366 had no intention of losing control of its technology, but given the pace of innovation and the active role of governments in the solar industry, van Mierlo and Sachs feared this might not be a race that could be won by the cautious.

The Liang family, experienced family hoteliers in China, had to leave the mainland under the pressure of the forces of Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China in 1949. They resettled in Taiwan, resumed their hospitality business and now, two generations later, have returned to Nanjing to find that their family’s old guest house has been allowed to run down and deteriorate as a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SoE). They repurchase the old guest house with the intention to redevelop it. How will they deal with this privatization and the inevitable bureaucracy of purchasing, demolishing, and rebuilding the old guest house? How will they convert the existing SoE human resources (trained under planned-economy conditions) into dynamic employees operating in the market economy, while being sensitive to the cultural characteristics and challenges of this mainland Chinese workplace? With more than 6,000 Chinese SoEs still being targeted for privatization, this case is very relevant and provides a real-world opportunity for students to exercise their research, analytical, international management, entrepreneurial, and cross-cultural management skills.

AWARD-WINNING CASE: Adjudged third-best case at the ISB Case Competition 2010 held in partnership with the Richard Ivey School of Business and the Association of Indian Management Schools and sponsored by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.<br><br>ABC Energy Limited (ABCEL) was created in March 2007 by ABC Infra Private Limited and XYG Private Limited. In September 2007, MNP Finance Limited joined ABCEL as an equity partner. In 2010, ABCEL operated in power generation and had plans to diversify into transmission and distribution. It aspired to be a world-class energy company with operations in India and neighbouring countries. ABCEL had grown by investing in greenfield projects and acquiring existing operations. The promoters of ABCEL had set a target of achieving a project portfolio of 30,000 megawatts by 2015, up from the current portfolio of 8,655 megawatts. The chief executive officer of ABCEL wanted to discuss the following issues at the board meeting on July 31, 2010, with regard to the opportunities and challenges in the growing market: 1) the key organizational needs that ABCEL might have in achieving its target by 2015, 2) the present culture of ABCEL, 3) the relationship between the culture and extent of formalization and hence the ramp-up of formalization that ABCEL might require, and 4) the method of introducing this formalization.

This case and its companion, "The Coronet-Leslie Forsyte" (UVA-QA-0764), are intended for undergraduate, executive education, and MBA audiences. They were written for a "Bargaining and Negotiating" elective. This case is from the perspective of Cameron Baker, who owns a 1970 Dodge Coronet and needs to sell the car. Baker has a prospective buyer who has come to look at the car.

The case deals with an IT company born in Argentina in 2003 to provide software services to established companies in the developed world. After reaching sales of $57 million in 2010, the company ponders its next steps to achieve $500 million in revenues by 2015.

Next Street Financial, LLC was a modern merchant bank that provided high quality advisory services and capital to small- and mid-sized inner city businesses. Next Street was a for-profit business that aimed to increase the growth, profitability and success of its client companies, thereby enhancing economic development, wealth and job creation in the inner city. The advisory component of its mission seemed well underway but raising a fund to directly finance client companies had proved challenging. As Next Street considered expanding its capacity to help clients achieve their growth potential, the firm was deciding between raising a fund or focusing its resources on expanding its abilities to more effectively help its clients obtain financing from other institutions.

A critical question for entrepreneurs starting a business, particularly in a foreign country, is choosing whether or not franchising is the appropriate mode of entry. Franchising offers the entrepreneur instant brand recognition, established business processes and supply chains, regulatory and tax guidance, and a ready supply of assistance in the early months. However, it deprives the entrepreneur of what many of them crave - the ability to create and grow a business from one’s imagination. The two entrepreneurs in this case had regular salaries, but wanted to try opening a coffee shop - or a chain of coffee shops - in South Korea, which already had many brands with multiple outlets.

In April 2010, the eruption of a volcano wreaked havoc in the airline industry and placed Aer Arann on the brink of liquidation. For founder, sole owner and chairman Padraig O'Ceidigh, the airline has been a personal as well as business passion. The case provides a number of options for addressing the crisis. It also places the story in the context of Padraig's life journey and search for multi-dimensional success.

Provides an epilogue to the problem posed in the companion case: what to do in the face of potential liquidation?