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Throughout 2008 and into early 2009, the executive team of World Communications Corporation (WCC) became deeply involved in the examination of whether it should invest in a large production and distribution operation into Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian economy has grown dramatically, thanks to rising oil prices and export revenues during 2008. In early 2009, Seth Thomas, the CEO of WCC, was faced with three potential alternatives. The first one was to risk building a manufacturing plant and distribution center in Saudi Arabia, and strengthen the company's competitive position abroad. The second alternative was to expand plant capacity at home and continue to export, as the company had done so successfully for years. The third alternative was to wait and delay both decisions because of the uncertainties caused by the global financial and economic crises in 2008. Whether Saudi Arabia could manage its economy to avoid the worldwide recession was an open debate, but preliminary data were encouraging. The case examines government regulations and treatment of foreign investment and the level of education of the labor force and educational system to support the growth of local executives and managers.

Suntech, a Chinese manufacturer of photovoltaic cells and solar panels, is the third largest solar company in the world. About 90 percent of its sales have been in Europe-especially Germany and Spain. But with its new "pluto" technology, and with new governmental subsidies in China, Japan and the USA, Suntech is shifting its focus-first to the USA, and then to China and Japan. And it has recently moved down-stream in the USA, into systems integration and independent power. The case reviews the structure of competition in solar power, and evaluates Suntech's new strategy.

For decades, General Electric and other industrial-goods manufacturers based in rich countries grew by developing high-end products at home and distributing them globally, with some adaptations to local conditions - an approach known as glocalization. Now they must do an about-face and learn to bring low-end products created specifically for emerging markets into wealthy markets. That process, called reverse innovation, isn't easy to master. It requires a decentralized, local-market focus that clashes with the centralized, product-focused structure that multinationals have evolved for glocalization. In this article, Immelt, GE's CEO, and Govindarajan and Trimble, of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, describe how GE has dealt with that challenge. An anomaly within the ultrasound unit of GE Healthcare provided the blueprint. Because China's poorly funded rural clinics couldn't afford the company's sophisticated ultrasound machines, a local team built a cheap, portable ultrasound out of a laptop equipped with special peripherals and software. It not only became a hit in China but jump-started growth in the developed world by pioneering applications for situations where portability is critical, such as at accident sites. The team succeeded because a top executive championed it and gave it unprecedented autonomy. GE has since set up more than a dozen similar operations in an effort to expand beyond the premium segments in developing countries - and to preempt emerging giants from disrupting GE's sales at home.

The owner of Arrow Printing and Publishing, and his accountant were reviewing the company's fiscal performance. After nearly 45 years in the printing industry and with an increasing interest in other fields, such as municipal politics, the owner was considering if the time had come to leave printing and move on to new challenges. The options included keeping Arrow Printing and expanding into a potentially lucrative market or selling the business and move on.

As director of the California HealthCare Foundation's (CHCF) Innovations for the Underserved program, Margaret Laws' goal was "to reduce barriers to efficient, affordable healthcare services for the underserved." The path to achieving this goal took multiple forms, including improving the availability of specialty care for low-income, uninsured, non-English speaking and rural Californians. Specialty care was an incredibly constrained resource within the healthcare system, even for insured patients. In order to improve access, increasing specialist throughput became paramount; and this could often be achieved through process improvements. But in conversations with faculty from Stanford University's Program in Biodesign (henceforth referred to as Biodesign), Laws became intrigued by the potential of new device technologies to improve throughput and increase capacity. The question was whether the biodesign innovation process taught at Stanford to develop devices for commercially attractive markets could be adapted to focus on the needs of the underserved, and particularly needs related to limited access to specialists. In order to answer that, the faculty from the Biodesign program and CHCF launched a pilot program that would undertake a condensed version of the identification phase of the biodesign innovation process, which included needs finding and needs filtering. This paper explores that project and what was learned.

Intellectual Ventures creates and acquires intellectual property, which it then seeks to monetize through non-exclusive licensing. In early 2009, as an increasing number of companies were trying to position themselves as leading intermediaries in the market for intellectual property, IV was looking for the best business model to become such a leading intermediary. Its model was predicated on making it easy for small inventors to monetize their inventions and IP (by selling it to IV) and then using its scale and aggregate IP portfolio to extract revenues from potential licensees (usually technology companies).

William Wang, CEO of VIZIO, Inc., was proud of his company's success in providing affordable flat screen TVs. Since its founding in 2002, VIZIO had grown to over $2 billion in revenue and was one of the top three flat panel TV brands, along with Samsung and Sony. Faced with intensifying price pressure from the industry leaders and an unprecedented economic recession, Wang wondered how VIZIO could best sustain its growth and finance its business.

This note was prepared to aid students in the EC course "Competing through Business Models."

As a market, women represent an opportunity bigger than China and India combined. They control $20 trillion in consumer spending, and that figure could reach $28 trillion in the next five years. Women drive the world economy, in fact. Yet most companies do a remarkably poor job of serving them, a new study by the Boston Consulting Group reveals. BCG surveyed more than 12,000 women from a variety of geographies, income levels, and walks of life about their education, finances, homes, jobs, activities, interests, relationships, hopes, and fears, as well as their shopping behaviors and spending patterns. In this article, Silverstein and Sayre, two of the firm's partners, review highlights of the findings and explain the biggest opportunities. While any business would be wise to target female consumers, they say, the greatest potential lies in six industries: food, fitness, beauty, apparel, health care, and financial services. Address women's concerns effectively, and your company could see the kind of rapid growth that fitness chain Curves enjoyed. Most health clubs are expensive and designed for men, with lots of complicated body-building equipment. Curves, however, understood that time-pressed women needed quick, affordable workouts, and came up with the concept of simple, 30-minute exercise routines geared to women and offered in no-frills spaces. Companies that likewise successfully tailor their offerings to women will be positioned to win when the economy begins to recover.

When executives develop corporate strategy, they nearly always begin by analyzing the industry or environmental conditions in which they operate and the strengths and weaknesses of the players they are up against. They then set out to carve a distinctive strategic position from which they can outperform their rivals by building a competitive advantage. The underlying logic here is that a company's strategic options are bounded by the environment. In this structuralist approach, structure shapes strategy. But as Kim and Mauborgne, the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, point out, history reveals plenty of situations in which firms' strategies shaped structure - from Ford's Model T to Nintendo's Wii. For the past 15 years, the authors have been developing this reconstructionist approach into the blue ocean strategy, which reflects the fact that a company's performance is not necessarily determined by an industry's competitive environment. In this article they explain the key differences between the two approaches, identify the circumstances under which each one is appropriate, and discuss cases of blue ocean strategies. The authors conclude by observing that most large and diversified businesses operating in multiple industries will need to learn to apply both approaches, depending on the strategic needs of their various units.

The case opens in March 2008 with Andrés González, the entrepreneurial mind behind Empleados Ya (EY), concerned about the financial situation of his new venture. González and Salvador Sáez, both faculty members at one of Chile's most distinguished business schools, had formed EY with startup capital of just US$ 10,000. In a nation were unemployment was historically high the partners aimed to achieve a dual purpose, namely to make a profit (i.e. create economic value) while making a contribution to solve a pervasive social problem (i.e. create social value). Chile had a longstanding headhunting industry geared towards highly qualified professionals, but labor brokerage for the low-skilled employment sector had been managed by the government through a network of municipal employment offices (Municipal Labor Intermediation Offices, henceforth OMIL). These offices, however, were inefficient in brokering employment and companies did not use them to fill vacancies. González felt that the lack of information available about the job market was one of the causes of unemployment in low-skilled sectors: Job seekers did not know where to find work, and large companies did not trust the OMIL offices to find good workers. This left a niche open for a trustworthy intermediary service to match companies with potential candidates from the low-skills sector. The case outlines the challenges facing EY to stay afloat after three years of operation. Its leaders had formed a partnership with an international labor brokerage organization that had not produced the desired results. While Sáez is willing to cut his losses and close up shop, Gonzalez is not. Still, given EY's unsatisfactory financial results, González has to make some important decisions in order to make the business profitable.

INACAP was the largest tertiary education institute in Chile, with little more than 54,000 students and with coverage throughout the country. Since 1966 the organization had delivered technical and professional formation for work through its technical training center (TTC) and its vocational center (VC). In 2007, given the growing competition of many new private TTCs, VCs and universities offering education for work, INACAP decided to broaden its technical program mix and become a university: Universidad Tecnológica de Chile. The decision entailed venturing into the provision of university education, an area where INACAP had no previous experience. One of its competitors was the DUOC, with a long-standing presence in the market. It offered high quality technical and professional education under the wing of one of the most prestigious universities in the marketplace, Universidad Católica (UC). The other competitor was Universidad Santo Tomás (UST), a university that did not enjoy the high reputation of UC, but nevertheless granted academic degrees to its graduates. This meant that, even if its programs did not measure up to those of INACAP, graduates from Santo Tomás possessed a university degree, a valued asset, in a country that overrated academic degrees. In this scenario, when INACAP's leaders saw the chance of purchasing Universidad Vicente Pérez Rosales, they made a decision to go ahead and buy it. However, the decision entailed changing INACAP's strategic position. Few months into the purchase, the incumbent Rector resigned and the new Rector, Gonzalo Vargas, was confronted with the need to evaluate the cogency of the business model INACAP had been operating and decide its competitive strategy.

Corporate leaders need to realize that unlimited GDP growth is untenable. Soon, developed countries will focus less on consumerism and more on communities, the environment, and quality of life.

In May 2008, the executive team of MLC Corporation (MLC) became deeply involved in the examination of whether it should expand its production and distribution operations into Russia. The Russian economy had grown dramatically, mainly thanks to rising natural gas exports to Europe. A sharp rise in energy prices had further accelerated the growth of the energy sector, as well as supported the expansion of the economy. Thus, in early January 2009, Mark Olexi, the CEO of MLC, was faced with three potential alternatives. The first one was to expand plant capacity at home and continue to export, as the company had done so successfully for years. The second alternative was to risk building a manufacturing plant and distribution center in Russia, and strengthen the company's competitive position abroad. The third alternative was to await and delay both decisions because of the uncertainties caused by the global financial and economic crises. Whether Russia could manage its economy to avoid the worldwide recession and an internal financial and economic crisis was an open debate. In addition, Russia had just experienced a leadership change, energy prices had collapsed, and the Russian-U.S. relationship had deteriorated.

In 2006, Samsung Electronics semiconductor business was the world's largest supplier of flash memory components. The company, however, did not originally invent flash technology and entered the market in the early 1990s behind technology leader Toshiba Corporation of Japan. This case explains how Samsung became a leader in the global market for flash memory over the following fifteen years. Readers are asked how they would make investment decisions to maintain this leadership position going forward.

By 2009, just 30 years after they had been commercially introduced cellular phones were used by billions of people worldwide. This note reviews the development of the cellular telecommunications industry, with particular emphasis on the role of intellectual property and technical standards. Throughout the industry's history, companies owning intellectual property (IP) actively advocated for standards to be adopted that incorporated their IP. Once standards were adopted, companies with strong IP positions were positioned to reap substantial financial rewards. This has led to intense competition over the standards process. This note covers developments to 2009, including work on standards for fourth generation (4G) cellular systems. However, its primary focus is on the earlier struggles between TDMA and CDMA technologies, and the role of Qualcomm in influencing the standards-setting process.

To aid students in the EC course, "Competing Through Business Models."

MAN B&W Diesel (MBD), a subsidiary of MAN AG, had become very successful by having its large two-stroke diesel engines produced under licence in Asia. The success had led it to a position as world leader in ship engines, with world market shares oscillating between 70 and 80 per cent. The relationship between MBD and the licensees was characterized by both parties leveraging each other's competencies. It was critical for MBD to access new knowledge in order to optimize products from the producing licensees. Similarly, the licensees leveraged the access to the design specifications of the engines as well as expert knowledge and service offerings from MBD. Despite MBD's success with the licence business model during the last years, recent developments had sparked some concerns of the model's long-term sustainability and feasibility. Hence, the main challenge facing MBD was how to future-proof and perhaps adjust its business model to secure more control of critical knowledge and the licensees without jeopardizing the productive and lucrative licensee relationships.

The fine art auction business has remained a duopoly over its 250 year history. The industry is dominated by Sotheby's and Christie's Inc. Curiously, neither competitor has been able to overtake the other by a notable margin despite the clear network effects of this platform business. As we enter unprecedented economic times, as technology pushes forward infiltrating almost all areas of business, and as new competitors fight to enter the fine art sales space, these two auction houses explore modifications to their business model. Some efforts by the two organizations have already begun but are in the infantile stage and thus the success of these initiatives is entirely unproven. Sotheby's and Christie's must decide how to respond to this economic and cultural turning point and whether to keep investing in these ancillary aspects of their operations.

Argentine confectionery manufacturer, Arcor Group, seeks to implement an international strategy but in 2003, while recovering from the Argentine financial crisis, globalization plans are thwarted. Already Latin America's leading candy producer and an exporter to over 100 countries, Arcor analyzes how it can become truly global with production facilities and distribution networks in various regions, such as North America, Europe, and Asia. First, however, Arcor must stabilize its operations at home, where a devalued peso, economic uncertainty, and political instability still linger from the devastating financial crisis.