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Jewellworld.com was established in April 2000 to take advantage of the business opportunity presented by the Internet. Participating in Jewellworld.com's B2B platform was like participating in a virtual Jewelry trade fair, through which sellers could showcase their products to buyers online and buyers could contact sellers and even place orders online. However, Jewellworld.com quickly realized that Hong Kong's jewelry industry was by no means at the forefront of information technology. Facilitates discussion around a strategic/marketing planning process, which involves: sizing up the business environment, sizing up the company, identifying and generating strategic options, and assessing the options.

Follows the actions of GE CEO, Jeff Immelt, as he implements a growth strategy for the $150 billion company in a tough business environment. In four years, he reinvigorates GE's technology, expands its services, develops a commercial focus, pushes developing countries, and backs "unstoppable trends" to realign GE's business portfolio around growth platforms. At the same time, he reorganizes the company, promotes "growth leaders" into top roles, and reorients the culture around innovation and risk taking. Finally, in 2006, he sees signs of growth, but wonders whether it is sustainable.

Spreadsheet supplement for case 306-087.

By the mid-2000s, no segment of the $180 billion global medical device industry was as dynamic as the market for drug eluting stents (DESs). In the United States, which accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total DES market, only two companies had regulatory approval to sell the small devices: Johnson & Johnson and Boston Scientific. In combination, these two organizations expected 2005 DES sales of approximately $5.5 billion--an increase of 36% from 2004. Forecasts called for the segment to exceed $7 billion by 2008. Driven in part by its size, the DES market was among the most competitive and challenging sectors in the medical device industry. The competitive landscape was marked by intense rivalries and plagued by fierce litigation over intellectual property. Yet, it was also characterized by complex intercompany partnerships, collaboration, and licensing deals. Although DESs had been shown to significantly reduce restenosis rates, new safety concerns were emerging related to the development of life threatening blood clots linked to DESs.

Examines how a school district can differentiate its management of high-performing vs. high-need schools based on a variety of indicators, including performance and capacity at the school level.

Proactive corporations have typically invested in increasingly ambitious sustainability initiatives. However, managers need to identify the circumstances favoring the generation of both public benefits and corporate profits. For some firms, better utilization of resources may result from some environment-related investments. For others, obtaining ISO 14001 certification or having some eco-labeled products can enable them to pursue competitive advantage. However, no one generic strategy makes business sense for all firms. Presents a framework for categorizing generic types of competitive environmental strategies to help managers define and prioritize areas of organizational action, thus optimizing the overall economic return on environmental investments and making them into sources of competitive advantage.

Professional cycling teams use road bikes made up of several parts or components: frames, forks, wheels and tires, saddles, seat posts, handlebars, and pedals. Pedals hold a cyclist's special shoes in place so they can "clip in" for greater control and power, and several companies make different models of pedals. Lance Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, uses Shimano pedals. Shimano, founded and based in Sakai City, Japan, makes many of the key components of a bike. The fact that each of the different components to a high-end road bike are manufactured by different companies makes for a complicated bike industry supply chain. By 2006, Shimano had grown from a family-based business (founded by Shozoburo Shimano in 1920) that focused on freewheels, to a $1.6 billion global company (with net income of $186 million) that not only manufactured mid- to high-end bike components (and low-end components as well), but also made fishing tackle. Eighty percent of the company's sales were from high-end bike components and 20 % from mid-range bicycle components. Seventy-five percent of the company's earnings could be attributed to components. Shimano led the bike component industry, owning over 80 % of the high-end component market. But growth did not come overnight. Shimano's leaders reflected on the company and its growth trajectory. They were particularly proud of Shimano's market domination, largely attributable to the company's commitment to research and technology, as well as to the amount of value the company had been able to leverage from the industry's supply chain. As new technologies and new companies began to enter the market, and the longer term sales trend of a mature road bike industry remained relatively flat--despite the "Armstrong effect"--Shimano's leaders and their team wondered how to continue their growth in the mid- to high-end components market and achieve growth on an even greater global scale.

Provides an overview framework for understanding international strategy. Observes that international strategy draws on much of the same theory as corporate strategy. The same tests that can be applied to justify expansion across businesses--the better off and ownership tests--also apply to expansion across borders. What is different about international strategy is that widening a firm's domain to the entire globe introduces substantively different degrees of heterogeneity, scale, and volatility across markets. These three factors create new opportunities and trade-offs for multinationals. Effective international strategy is based on a source of competitive advantage that capitalizes on one of these factors and aligns the configuration of all its activities in support of that advantage. Multinationals need to choose the products they offer, the countries in which they compete, the location of their activities, and their organizational design contingent on their international strategy.

As of 2005, over 10 million people were using peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks to swap music, movies, and software for free. P2P software programs such as Kazaa, Limewire, and eDonkey received a great deal of media attention. Music and movie industry organizations believed that downloading copyrighted material was stealing. The same industry associations took the P2P companies to court, maintaining that the P2P software developers should be held responsible when users unlawfully copied copyrighted songs, movies, and television programs. P2P software creators claimed that they were merely promoting a technology with multiple uses. Indeed, P2P was a network architecture that could be deployed to a number of other applications, such as distributed computing, instant messaging, voice telephony, spam filtering, and other commercial activities. In the midst of high-profile battles between the entertainment industry and P2P file-sharing software developers, a number of proprietary systems offering legal downloads had emerged. Entertainment industry supporters pointed to Apple's iTunes .99 cent download fee per song as an indicator of the future. Although iTunes satisfied entertainment industry executives that it was possible to pay for downloads successfully, the battle between proprietary systems and P2P file sharing seemed to continue. Who would win in the long run?

In January 2006, Joe Hogan, head of General Electric (GE) Healthcare Technologies, prepared to step into William Castell's shoes as CEO of GE Healthcare, the world's leading manufacturer of diagnostic imaging equipment. In 2004, former CEO Jeff Immelt acquired Amersham for $10 billion. The acquisition was part of Immelt's GE-wide move to reemphasize research and development. Hogan had run GE Healthcare's predecessor organization, GE Medical Systems (GEMS). A 20-year GE veteran, Hogan witnessed three distinct stages of the subsidiary's development as it evolved from the Global Product Co. (GPC) to the modified GPC and then to GE Healthcare. By 2005, the company had a 34% market share of the worldwide diagnostic imaging equipment business. GE executives designed the acquisitions to catalyze the firm's move from an engineering and physics-based diagnostic company to a life sciences-based health care solutions company that could better meet worldwide health care needs. Hogan wondered: What challenges did GEMS' previous quantum leaps portend for this new step-function change?

The Hong Kong Jockey Club had grown from simple origins into an enormous gaming operator, with a statutory monopoly on horse racing, football betting and lotteries. At the same time, the Club served as Hong Kong's largest charity and community benefactor. It was also Hong Kong's largest single taxpayer, the operator of a prestigious membership Club and had undertaken some of the most sophisticated implementations of information technology in Asia. Under the leadership of Lawrence Wong, the Jockey Club's first ethnic-Chinese executive, the club had set about installing management discipline in the organization and raising betting revenues. He had also overseen the launch of football betting in 2003. By 2005 the emergence of local illegal and unauthorized offshore gambling operators, typically Internet-based and which paid no taxes, operated with little overhead, few regulatory restraints, and could thus offer bigger payout and more betting options posed a significant threat to the club's revenues. Wong would have to lead the club's efforts to defend gaming revenues against a host of threats and competitive forces.

Incorporated in 1983, Giordano International consolidated its position as a leading casual apparel retailer in Asia Pacific by offering customers value for money, good customer service, and classic, simple designs. By constantly improving its operating efficiencies, the company survived the Asian economic downturn and the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Its newest challenges, however, were increased competition, surging rents, higher interest rates, and the omnipresent threat from the avian bird flu. How Giordano could sustain its past success was perhaps the most critical question confronting its management. Provides an opportunity to examine what strategy would ensure Giordano's continued success over the intermediate and long-term future.

Strategizing is the process of perceiving, analyzing, and shaping competitive situations. This note aims provide some basic orientation and sketches some frameworks that can guide the strategizing process.

Decision trees can be helpful in analyzing the key drivers of profitability and in designing risk-mitigation strategies. When analyzing competitive situations, each player's viewpoint can be represented by a separate decision tree, creating a "decision forest." In some situations, it is also useful to summarize two players' decision trees in a single payoff matrix. This note introduces those concepts step by step.

In 1995, Hiroshi Okuda, president of Toyota Motor Corp., considers whether to push for a more aggressive launch of the Toyota Prius--an automobile that incorporates Toyota's new and technically advanced hybrid power train. This launch decision allows discussion of the importance of the Prius in Toyota's overall product strategy and explores issues ranging from market structure to competitive advantage and competitive dynamics.

Tsingtao Brewery Co., Ltd., the most famous Chinese beer producer, was surpassed by Yanjing Beer in the mid-1990s due to an inefficient operations system and fierce competition from home and overseas competitors. From 1994 to 2002, Tsingtao Brewery took over 47 small and medium-size companies and regained its dominant position in the beer industry. However, the quick expansion incurred many problems--capital and managerial pool bottlenecks, cultural conflicts, multiple brands, low profitability, and the other ailments associated with being such a big company. In July 2001, general manager Zuoyi died suddenly of a heart attack and Jin Zhiguo succeeded Peng. Jin decided to transform the business strategy of Tsingtao Brewery from "growing large to become powerful" to "growing powerful to become large," which focused on post-acquisition integration.

Examines the corporate strategy of German energy giant E.ON. The firm is vertically integrated, horizontally diversified across electricity and natural gas, and active in numerous countries in Europe as well as in the United States. Explores the costs and benefits of the company's choices about its vertical, horizontal, and geographical scope. Considers the risks of economic regulation, increasing concerns about environmental externalities from carbon emissions and nuclear power, and political and price risks in upstream markets for fossil fuels.

Examines one of the most important entrepreneurial decisions made in the history of Porsche, made in early 1998: to build a sport utility vehicle (SUV)--the Cayenne. After decades of relying on one or two sports car models and nearly going bankrupt and losing its independence in 1993, Porsche had to diversify its product lines. Also examines the branding implications of the internationalization of production.

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In 2004, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. proposed to build a new supercenter in Inglewood, a low-income community near Los Angeles. The proposal was a part of Wal-Mart's strategy to bring its supercenter format to California. Introduced in the late 1980s, supercenters added a full line of groceries and specialty departments to Wal-Mart's traditional assortment of general merchandise. Wal-Mart's planned entry into California caused problems even before the discounter opened a single supercenter. To compete with Wal-Mart, supermarkets in California cut grocery workers' health benefits and wages. The unions ordered a strike against the supermarkets. The labor unrest lasted five months and involved 70,000 workers. In the meantime, Inglewood's city council rejected Wal-Mart's request to build a supercenter. The retailer took its expansion plans directly to the voters of Inglewood. With the help of the California initiative process, Wal-Mart forced a public vote on the proposed 60-acre development. Will Inglewood's voters dampen the shine of "America's most admired company?"