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In this note, the author discusses how research shows that consistent growth companies engage in growth experiments or tests to gather better data to be used in determining which growth ideas are worth investing in. A Learning Launch is described as a process that can be used to do those growth experiments. Students will be shown that by doing Learning Launches, a business can evaluate many growth ideas quickly and cheaply, allowing it to gain better evidence to winnow down a multitude of ideas into a smaller group of ideas that appear to be more viable based on information learned.

This technical note is the fourth in a series focusing on business growth. It addresses how to create a diversified Growth Portfolio based on the Learning Launch experiments. The note covers how growth requires several key elements-the right individuals and organizational mindsets, the right internal enabling system, and the right processes, which include experimental learning and creating and managing Growth Portfolios.

The cases describe the demise of Arthur Andersen, a firm that had long set the industry standard for professionalism in accounting and auditing. Once an example of strong corporate culture with a commitment to public service and independent integrity, Andersen saw its culture and standards weaken as it grew explosively and changed its mode of governance. The (A) case describes a crisis precipitated by the admission of Waste Management, a major Andersen client, that it overstated its pretax earnings by $1.43 billion from 1992 to 1996. The resulting Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation ended with Andersen paying a $7 million fine, the largest ever levied against an accounting firm, and agreeing to an injunction that effectively placed the accounting giant on probation. Students analyze the causes of Andersen's problems and advise Andersen leadership. The (B) case covers Arthur Andersen's relationship with Enron, one of the great success stories of the "new economy" boom. When Enron's aggressive use of off-balance sheet partnerships became impossible to hide in autumn 2001, news reports stated that Andersen auditors had engaged in extensive shredding of draft documents and associated communications with Enron. Students are asked to act as crisis management consultants to Andersen CEO Joe Berardino. The (C) case details Andersen's collapse following its indictment and conviction on criminal charges of obstructing justice in the Enron case. Its conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on narrow technical grounds, but by then Andersen had ceased to exist, eighty-nine years after Arthur E. Andersen had taken over a small accounting firm in Chicago. Students can focus on the impact of media on a reputational crisis.

The cases describe the demise of Arthur Andersen, a firm that had long set the industry standard for professionalism in accounting and auditing. Once an example of strong corporate culture with a commitment to public service and independent integrity, Andersen saw its culture and standards weaken as it grew explosively and changed its mode of governance. The (A) case describes a crisis precipitated by the admission of Waste Management, a major Andersen client, that it overstated its pretax earnings by $1.43 billion from 1992 to 1996. The resulting Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation ended with Andersen paying a $7 million fine, the largest ever levied against an accounting firm, and agreeing to an injunction that effectively placed the accounting giant on probation. Students analyze the causes of Andersen's problems and advise Andersen leadership. The (B) case covers Arthur Andersen's relationship with Enron, one of the great success stories of the "new economy" boom. When Enron's aggressive use of off-balance sheet partnerships became impossible to hide in autumn 2001, news reports stated that Andersen auditors had engaged in extensive shredding of draft documents and associated communications with Enron. Students are asked to act as crisis management consultants to Andersen CEO Joe Berardino. The (C) case details Andersen's collapse following its indictment and conviction on criminal charges of obstructing justice in the Enron case. Its conviction was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on narrow technical grounds, but by then Andersen had ceased to exist, eighty-nine years after Arthur E. Andersen had taken over a small accounting firm in Chicago. Students can focus on the impact of media on a reputational crisis.

This note states that growth research demonstrates that growth is much more than a strategy and it happens when the right kind of leadership, internal environment and processes come together to create a small-company-entrepreneurial soul in a large-company body. The Growth System Assessment Tool that illuminates the presence of growth inhibitors, nonalignment, and bad growth behaviors is discussed, and students are provided with a mini-assessment model of this tool to use to start thinking about how to create their own System for enabling and promoting growth mindsets and behaviors.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. A globally integrated strategy isn't right for every company. One important factor to consider is the combined market share of the largest companies in your industry -and how that's changing.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. It has long been assumed that companies develop new products for consumers, while consumers are passive recipients -buying and consuming what producers create. However, this paradigm is fundamentally flawed, because consumers themselves are a major source of product innovations. The authors have framed a new innovation paradigm, in which consumers and users play a central and active role in developing products on their own. In this article, they summarize key findings from studies on consumer product innovation conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. The authors describe three phases in the new innovation paradigm. Initially, markets for products and services with novel functionality are both small and uncertain, with consumers pioneering really new products (for example, the skateboard) for themselves. In the second phase, other consumers become interested in the new products. In the third phase, producer companies decide if the information on the design and function of the new product, and the projected market, are consistent with their risk profiles. The implications are significant for both consumers and producers, the authors note. Consumer innovators should realize that they play important roles in developing novel products and services. Businesses, for their part, need to think about how they can reorganize their product development systems to take advantage of prototypes developed by users. By focusing on product concepts that consumers have already prototyped and tested, companies can save money and improve their success ratios.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Markets are changing, competition is shifting, and businesses may be suffering or perhaps thriving. Whatever the immediate circumstances, corporate managers ask the same questions: where do we go from here, and which strategy will get us there? To understand how to choose the right strategy at the right time, the authors analyzed the logic of the leading strategic frameworks used in business and engineering schools around the world. They matched those frameworks with the key strategic choices faced by dozens of industry leaders at different times, during periods of stability and of change. Two insights emerged from their analysis. First, the frameworks divided into three archetypes: strategies of position, strategies of leverage, and strategies of opportunity. What's right for a company depends on its circumstances, its available resources, and how management combines those resources. Second, many of the assumptions about competitive advantage didn't hold. For example, although strategy gurus talk about strategically valuable resources, sometimes competitive advantage came from very ordinary resources assembled well. To figure out when it makes sense to pursue strategies of position, leverage, or opportunity, the authors advise managers to understand their company's immediate circumstances, take stock of their current resources, and determine the relationships among the various resources. Understanding these factors, they argue, will help managers select the right strategic framework.

In October 2003, leading Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn slashed prices up to 30 on more than 1,000 items to counter a loss in market share caused by consumer perception of high prices. AH continued the strategy for the ensuing three years, forcing competing supermarkets to match the markdowns or risk customer defections. Game theory adherents and analysts questioned the strategy, noting price wars often jeopardize profits of both individual companies and their industries. In this two-part case students analyze the risks and benefits of pursing a price-cutting strategy, considering profit margins, market-share data, and select financial information for AH and its competitors.

B case to CU268 In October 2003, leading Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn slashed prices up to 30 on more than 1,000 items to counter a loss in market share caused by consumer perception of high prices. AH continued the strategy for the ensuing three years, forcing competing supermarkets to match the markdowns or risk customer defections. Game theory adherents and analysts questioned the strategy, noting price wars often jeopardize profits of both individual companies and their industries. In this two-part case students analyze the risks and benefits of pursing a price-cutting strategy, considering profit margins, market-share data, and select financial information for AH and its competitors.

BP CEO Tony Hayward (UK) faced intense public scrutiny from many different constituencies in the US in the wake of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The case focuses on how his words and actions were perceived by the US media and government, and how these perceptions had critical business and personal outcomes.

This case describes IKEA's strategy, aiming to show how the Swedish company has developed and maintained its competitive advantage over decades while expanding its business worldwide.

Brightcove, a technology and services provider to content owners in the Internet television field, aimed to become a media distribution company in its own right. On October 30, 2006, it relaunched its Website-and, in effect, its business. With its new, consumer-facing home page, and with new offerings for advertisers and affiliates as well as video publishers, Brightcove sought to build a four-sided business (or "platform") around the rapidly expanding online video industry. Simultaneously, CEO Jeremy Allaire was completing a major funding round that would enable the company to make strategic investments in some or all of several categories: technology, media distribution infrastructure, international expansion, and acquisitions. As Allaire and his fellow executives weighed those options, they confronted competitive threats in multiple quarters, but particularly from YouTube, a hugely popular video-sharing site that online search giant Google had recently acquired. Covers Brightcove's vision for its multi-sided business, its technology offering and early business model, its efforts to shift to a new model based on media distribution, and its chief competitors in that market space.

CARD (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development) is a Philippines-based microfinance organization that began as an NGO and has since expanded into eight related entities providing services to the poor. Under Founding Director Dr. Aristotle Alip's leadership, CARD has become one of the top microfinance institutions in the world. More recently, larger commercial and financial institutions are seeking a slice of the microfinance market. The main dilemma Dr. Alip faces is: Should he partner with commercial institutions to reap benefits from their larger sources of capital and technology expertise? Would that mean compromising his original mission of elevating people from the base of the pyramid?

The US organic cereal business is fascinating: while most brands of organic breakfast cereals were founded by hippies who wanted to make a difference in the world in the 70s and 80s, many have been taken over by large "traditional' food companies. Attune Foods and its brands Uncle Sam and Erewohn is an exception: it is a small, independent player. Its ambition is to become a leading digestive health brand in the country: not exactly a popular conversation topic at most family dinner tables. Attune faced two challenges: - Develop a way to communicate about digestive health in a consumer-friendly way. - Communicate its differentiation with food giants like General Mills and Kellogg in a compelling way, with way less financial resources. Attune decided to base its strategy on authenticity: a less costly strategy that the company believed would allow it to clearly communicate its message and to differentiate it from the big boys. It applied the concept of authenticity in all aspects of its business (e.g., product definition, production and sourcing, communication). The case describes the company and its competition. The challenge facing Attune at the time of the case was to double the size of the company within four years.

Recent economic, social-political, and natural disasters have all served to highlight the fragility of the global marketplace. As such, it is no longer questioned as to whether or not companies should be good corporate citizens; that is a given. Rather, concern in the 21st century centers on how businesses can become better global corporate citizens. Unfortunately, without clear guidance regarding how this may be accomplished, global corporate citizenship will remain a fringe activity and not become a critical component of an organization's core business strategy. The integrated framework presented herein identifies key elements and tips for implementing a business-based approach to global corporate citizenship.

An industry adage held that "there are two types of rental car companies: those that lose money and Enterprise." The company that would become Enterprise Rent-A-Car was started in 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri, by Jack Taylor. Taylor set up Enterprise offices in neighborhoods rather than at airports because he believed that Americans would welcome a local option for renting cars when their own vehicles were being repaired. In 2010 Enterprise had more than 6,000 rental locations in the United States and a fleet of 850,000 cars in service. Its parent, Enterprise Holdings (comprising Enterprise, National, and Alamo brands) accounted for nearly half of the car rental market and was more than twice the size of Hertz, the number two competitor. Enterprise's competitive advantage was the result of the combination of its practices in hiring, training, compensation, organization, customer service, IT, and fleet management, among others.

This is part of a case series. This case describes the strategic transformation of DESSO, a Dutch manufacturer of carpet tiles and flooring solutions. The first part of the case describes the difficult situation in which the company found itself in the early 2000s, following a series of changes in ownership. It focuses on the strategic vision developed by Stef Kranendijk, the company's new CEO, as he takes over the company in 2007. An important element of this vision is to make sustainability a key driver of DESSO's innovation strategy. The case highlights the process that led DESSO to consider a Cradle to Cradle(R) approach as well as the potential issues this new orientation raised for important stakeholders, including employees, board members, customers and suppliers. The second part of the case provides some updates as to DESSO's situation in 2010. It describes the short-term results of Kranendijk's strategic vision and how it transformed DESSO's business model. It also gives details on the implementation of the new strategy and the challenges still ahead.

Supplement to case LBS138

The case describes Nokia's spectacular rise and fall, shedding light on the combination of external factors and internal decisions that resulted in the company's handset business being sold to Microsoft in 2010. During the successful period of growth (roughly 1990 through to 2006), Nokia's focus on design and functionality gained it a worldwide reputation. It was acknowledged as the first smartphone manufacturer. Through the early-mid 2000s it was the undisputed leader in the global mobile phone business. The case traces the first signs of trouble and the company's subsequent decline over the period 2005 to 2010. Pressure in the early 2000s from low-end competitors led to early signs of problems. Then of course the game changed in 2007 with Apple's iPhone and a year later with phones powered by Google's Android operating system from HTC, Samsung and others. Nokia was initially dismissive of these new offerings but its proprietary OS, Symbian, was ageing badly and its App store (Ovi) was no match for Apple's. In September 2010 it was announced that American Stephen Elop, formerly of Microsoft, would become CEO. Not long afterwards a partnership with Microsoft was signed which subsequently led to Nokia's handset business being sold to Microsoft.