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On Tuesday, August 23, 2005, meteorologists in the US National Weather Service spotted a tropical depression in the southeastern Bahamas. As it strengthened into a tropical storm, weather officials gave it a name, Katrina, and closely tracked it as it turned into a hurricane, crossing south Florida and then moving into the Gulf of Mexico. There, fed by the gulf's warm waters, Katrina turned into a monster: a "Category five" hurricane, with winds gusting past 170 miles per hour and an unusually wide span of over 100 miles. Katrina initially appeared to be heading next for the Florida Panhandle, but on Friday it made a dramatic shift; it turned westward and appeared to take dead aim at one of the most storied and fragile cities in the US: New Orleans. With landfall expected on Monday morning, state, local, and federal emergency response officials sprang into action, following the roadmaps laid out in their emergency plans. This case tells the story of the lead-up to the storm, detailing the plans that officials would draw on to prepare for the hurricane's onslaught, the steps that were taken to evacuate and shelter hundreds of thousands of residents in metropolitan New Orleans, and the communications among different agencies and levels of government as the storm drew near; it shows officials concerned about the effects of the hurricane, but confident that their preparations were commensurate with the challenges that Katrina would pose. The case asks readers to consider why local, state, and federal governments all proved unready to respond effectively to a catastrophic event which had been long predicted. Part A can be taught alone or in tandem with Part B of the case, which describes the post-landfall response to the devastating impact of the hurricane; it would be useful in classes on emergency or strategic management as well as on intergovernmental relations. HKS Case Number 1916.3

While it is relatively easy to identify why strategies fail, it is much harder to explain how to fix a failing strategy or build an organization that can continuously renew its strategy. This note identifies some patterns that distinguish companies whose renewal efforts made headway from firms whose efforts fell flat.

This note first documents the facts around the sustainability of competitive advantage. It then observes that the demise of a previously successful strategy, in the first instance, often comes from some change in the external environment. It, therefore, characterizes the types of change that can lead to strategic decline. But external change alone should not mean the end of superior performance since the skilled strategist ought to be able to adapt to such changes. The final part of the note looks inside the firm to examine why managers often fail to respond adequately to external threats and explains why it is valuable to study the causes of strategic decline.     

Can you summarize your company's strategy in 35 words or less? Would your colleagues express it the same way? Very few executives can honestly say yes to these simple questions. The thing is, companies with a clear, concise strategy statement - one that employees can easily internalize and use as a guiding light - often turn out to be industry stars. In this article, Harvard Business School's Collis and Rukstad provide a practical guide for crafting an effective strategy statement and include an in-depth example of how the St. Louis-based brokerage firm Edward Jones developed one that has generated success. Any strategy statement must begin with a definition of the objective, or the goal that the strategy is designed to achieve. Since most firms compete in a more or less unbounded landscape, it is also crucial to define the scope, or domain, of the business. Perhaps most important, companies need to have a clear sense of advantage - that is, the means by which the business will achieve its stated objective. Defining the objective, scope, and advantage requires trade-offs. If a firm pursues growth or size, profitability will take a backseat. If it chooses to serve institutional clients, it might ignore retail customers. If it derives its competitive advantage from scale economies, it will not be able to accommodate idiosyncratic customer needs. Before developing your strategy and crafting your statement, you'll want to carefully evaluate the industry landscape. This includes segmenting customers and identifying unique ways of delivering value to the ones the firm targets. It also calls for an analysis of competitors' current strategies and a prediction of how they might change. The key is to find the sweet spot where the firm's capabilities and customers' needs align in a way that competitors cannot match.

When a market or an industry goes into hypergrowth - that steep part of the S-curve where market share is usually determined - established companies may be at a disadvantage. Often they labor under organizational legacies that hamper their ability to respond to lightning-quick opportunities to increase their share. Izosimov, the CEO of VimpelCom, rode the hypergrowth wave in Russia's cell phone market and came out ahead. He offers five rules to help other companies survive a similar ride. Sell first and ask questions later. This is the time to capture as many new customers as possible - while making sure that you can actually deliver the promised products and services. Your business model doesn't have to be perfect at the outset, though; you can refine it as you go along. Don't try too hard to innovate. Of course you must understand the technological trends in your business, but your focus should be on the systems and solutions critical to your growing customer base, not on the strategic implications of future killer apps. Organize like McDonald's. Standardized organizational structures, technologies, and business processes allow your people to hit the ground running in new markets. In VimpelCom's case it would have been cheaper to start by piggybacking on local systems - but customer satisfaction would have suffered. Push decisions out to the front line. You simply can't afford decision paralysis during hypergrowth. Ceding operational decisions to those who have to deliver the performance saves time, triggers entrepreneurial behavior, and may even raise the quality of job candidates. Foster a can-do culture. Action-oriented companies - where people move on quickly from solutions that aren't working, communicate freely, and don't fear failure - will do best during hypergrowth. To foster such a culture, reward people for their successes and for implementing new ideas.

Since the mid-1980s, Sona Steering Systems (later renamed as Sona Koyo Steering Systems Ltd) has been a competitive player in the Indian auto component industry. The firm has made remarkable progress in competitiveness through numerous initiatives over the past two decades. Starting as a single-source supplier of simple mechanical steering systems, the firm has systematically improved competitiveness, evolving into a capable Deming Prize-winning firm with capabilities across the industry value system. By November 2005, the firm had many customers and, for some of them, had designed entire systems to their specifications. This case provides a context for identifying Sona Koyo's sources of competitiveness through two important concepts. The versatile yet simple assets-processes-performance (APP) framework is used to identify relevant factors of competitiveness, while the concept of the "competitiveness journey" is introduced to examine different contexts, scenarios, strategies and initiatives as well as company performance. The case builds on analysis of data and insights culled from professionals at different levels of the company, up to the chairman.

The case, set in late 2007, examines what MySpace-the largest online social network-should do to respond to its agile competitor, Facebook. Since its inception MySpace had experienced phenomenal growth, acquiring 20 million members in its first 20 months of operation, and another 70 million a year later, to become the most visited website in the United States. Its growth stalled around mid-2007, just a few months after Facebook had released its programming platform which allowed outside programmers to build applications using its social network data. The wealth of new applications on Facebook allowed the company to increase its membership by more than 15 per cent in one month. To remain competitive MySpace had to release its own platform, and now it needs to decide whether to build its own proprietary application platform or join OpenSocial, a Google-sponsored open source platform.

This is the story of MTC, a Kuwaiti telecom company that has grown from a sleepy, state monopoly to become one of the fastest growing telecom companies in the world, with the largest regional footprint across the Middle East and Africa. The CEO of the company, Dr. Saad Al Barrak had been successful in executing an aggressive growth plan that found its crown jewel in the acquisition of Celtel, one of the largest telecom companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this acquisition threw MTC into a dynamic new context and marked the beginning of a very different phase. If Dr. Saad was going to lead MTC into the topmost ranks of global telecom, his team would have to successfully grapple with all the growing pains of managing across borders, brand names and cultures. All against the backdrop of an unpredictable African market with huge growth potential and rapidly increasing competition.

In 2003, the Hong Kong government opened the market for electronic trading services. It awarded a license, the second of two, to GO-Business to design, implement, operate and maintain the front-end system of the Government Electronic Trading Service (GETS). The first license had gone to Tradelink, which had enjoyed a monopoly in the market for six years. GETS was a system that enabled traders to submit and apply for trade documents electronically. As a latecomer in the market for a compulsory government service that had been monopolized, GO-Business faced formidable barriers in competing with Tradelink. How could GO-Business position itself and what could it do to compete with Tradelink and gained market share?

Supplements "Monitor's Opportunities in India (A)" [708-482].

In late 2002, global confectionery and beverage maker Cadbury Schweppes needed to decide whether or not to make an acquisition bid for Adams, an underperforming gum company which had been put up for sale by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Examining the decision from a strategic perspective, the (A) case provides brief histories of the two companies; traces the global confectionery industry, focusing especially on chocolate and gum; and details the analysis of the merger decision. The (B) case explores the specific identified synergies in-depth and provides an opportunity to judge their viability. The (C) and (D) cases conclude the story and update the case with issues facing the global confectionery leader in 2008.

In late 2002, global confectionery and beverage maker Cadbury Schweppes needed to decide whether or not to make an acquisition bid for Adams, an underperforming gum company which had been put up for sale by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Examining the decision from a strategic perspective, the (A) case provides brief histories of the two companies; traces the global confectionery industry, focusing especially on chocolate and gum; and details the analysis of the merger decision. The (B) case explores the specific identified synergies in-depth and provides an opportunity to judge their viability. The (C) and (D) cases conclude the story and update the case with issues facing the global confectionery leader in 2008.

In late 2002, global confectionery and beverage maker Cadbury Schweppes needed to decide whether or not to make an acquisition bid for Adams, an underperforming gum company which had been put up for sale by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Examining the decision from a strategic perspective, the (A) case provides brief histories of the two companies; traces the global confectionery industry, focusing especially on chocolate and gum; and details the analysis of the merger decision. The (B) case explores the specific identified synergies in-depth and provides an opportunity to judge their viability. The (C) and (D) cases conclude the story and update the case with issues facing the global confectionery leader in 2008.

In late 2002, global confectionery and beverage maker Cadbury Schweppes needed to decide whether or not to make an acquisition bid for Adams, an underperforming gum company which had been put up for sale by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Examining the decision from a strategic perspective, the (A) case provides brief histories of the two companies; traces the global confectionery industry, focusing especially on chocolate and gum; and details the analysis of the merger decision. The (B) case explores the specific identified synergies in-depth and provides an opportunity to judge their viability. The (C) and (D) cases conclude the story and update the case with issues facing the global confectionery leader in 2008.

In mid-2006, Overstock.com faced a daunting set of business challenges. Founded in 1999 as an online "closeout" retailer, the $800 million company had more than 15 million unique visitors a month, 10 million life-to-date customers, and greater than 500,000 active SKUs in roughly 20 product categories. However, while it had come within one half of a percent, the firm had yet to realize an annual profit. Moreover, the tremendous growth that had enabled the company to become on online shopping giant appeared to be slowing at an alarming rate. At least partly as a result of the challenges facing the core business, Worldstockthe company's socially responsible initiativewas also in jeopardy. Started by CEO Patrick Byrne in 2001, the division leveraged the firm's infrastructure to market handicrafts produced by third world artisans to the mainstream U.S. retail market via a designated portal on the Overstock.com website. However, working with third world artisans turned out to be significantly more expensive than originally anticipated. By mid-2006, Worldstock's "self-sustaining" model for economic development was projected to contribute nearly $1 million to the company's losses that year. Although most managers were cautious about criticizing the CEO's "pet project," a few felt the company had to address (what they saw as) the negative the impact that Worldstock was having on Overstock's financial performance. As a result, all those committed to the Worldstock model, from CEO Byrne to Division Manager Angela Ramirez, faced the thorny questions about how to balance these new fiscal imperatives with the group's philanthropic and social objectives. While no one wanted to openly acknowledge it, some stakeholders wondered if Worldstock might eventually be shut down or spun off if the situation did not improve.

This case tackles issues of regional strategy and strategic institutional arbitrage. Databank is a financial services firm designing its regional strategy for Africa and seeking to benefit from institutional arbitrage.

The world isn't just flat. Alongside the dispersing centrifugal forces of globalization there are equally powerful centripetal forces that trigger economic concentration in a few dozen megaregions--areas like the Boston-New York-Washington corridor and the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou triangle--which account for the bulk of the globe's economic activity and innovation.

Jennifer Daley agreed to take on a dramatic overhaul of Tenet Healthcare's clinical quality under two conditions: She would work only on behalf of the patients, and she would consider every day to be her last.

An abrupt and lasting drop in revenue growth is a crisis that can strike even the most exemplary organization. The authors' comprehensive analysis of growth in Fortune 100-size companies over the past half century revealed, in fact, that 87% of them had stalled out at least once. The record shows that if management cannot turn a company around within a few years, the odds are that it will never again see healthy top-line growth. Fortunately, the authors (of the Corporate Executive Board) have uncovered and categorized the most common causes of growth stalls. The majority of these standstills are preventable because, according to the authors, they arise from management choices about strategy or organizational design; external factors (e.g., regulatory actions) account for only 13%. Four categories predominate: Premium-position captivity. When a firm's world-class offering has won the most demanding customers in the market, it often fails to respond effectively to new, low-cost competitive challenges or shifts in customer valuation of product features. Innovation management breakdown. Because most large corporations generate sequential product innovations, any systemic inefficiency or dysfunction in the innovation chain can cause extremely serious problems that last for years. Premature core abandonment. Managers may conclude too quickly that a core market is saturated. Or they may incorrectly interpret operational impediments in the core business as evidence that it's time to move into new competitive terrain. Talent bench shortfall. Insufficient capabilities will stop growth dead in its tracks. They also identified a common culprit in detailed case studies of 50 stalled companies--failure to adapt company strategy to changes in the external environment. Two tools can help managers avoid growth stalls: a self-test to diagnose impending stalls and a choice of practices to explicitly identify strategic assumptions and test them for ongoing relevance.

A decade ago, the Thomson Corporation, like most B2B companies, had a much better understanding of the people who purchased its newspapers, journals, and textbooks for their organizations than of the people who actually used them in their daily jobs. Facing an internet shakeup of its market, Thomson realized it needed to bridge that critical knowledge gap. The company began systematically scrutinizing its end users--in much the same way that Procter & Gamble tackles consumer research--as part of a new front-end customer strategy that would become the cornerstone of the firm's transformation. In this article, Harrington, Thomson's CEO, and Tjan, a consultant who advised him, describe how the company adopted a user-centric mind-set--initially in the Thomson Financial division and then throughout the organization. First came a redefinition of the division's market, which was mapped not by type of purchaser but by eight end-user segments. That gave Thomson a clear view of the division's real, addressable market and of corresponding opportunities. After conducting surveys and "day in the life" observations of users, Thomson charted their entire work flow, beginning with what they were doing three minutes before and after using a product, and saw where the organization could add value. Then, through cluster and conjoint analysis, the company determined how pain points and product preferences varied among the users. With that information, Thomson was able to identify three clusters of customers in one segment and develop three categories of offerings. Since beginning to implement this approach, Thomson has changed radically. Its revenue now comes mostly from digital, not print, products, and it generates twice the operating profit and four times the free cash flow it did 10 years ago. In a market that changes by the day, Thomson's revenue is unusually predictable and profitable.