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Supplements the (A) case.

Describes the FDA's classification scheme for the three classes of medical devices and the review processes.

Updates Apple Computer--1992.

Allows students to observe two competing businesses transform themselves over time. By following the competitive actions and reactions over more than 10 years, students gain an appreciation of how rivals raise the competitive ante, search for new ways to add customer value, and come to realize that sustaining a competitive advantage is difficult.

Updates the (A) case.

Martin Sorrell has used WPP to acquire a large portfolio of marketing service firms including J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather. How did he make this minnow-swallows-many-whales trick work, and can he make the whole into something bigger than the parts?

Bob Holland takes over as CEO of this iconoclastic ice cream company in February 1995 when it faces a major crisis. Holland must now develop a strategy that both adapts to the external environment and is consistent with the company's unique heritage.

The dramatic shifts of the imaging industry from analog to digital technology is creating emerging markets in 1995. How can a competitor position itself to enter the market successfully? This case describes the key technologies, market segments, competitors, and strategic issues in the emerging digital camera market. Focuses on the emergence of business and consumer segments for desktop personal computer imaging--the so-called "descent to the desktop." Competitors profiled are Apple, Canon, Dycam, Eastman Kodak, Fuji, and Sony.

When Washington attorney and longtime Capital Hill staff member James Woolsey became director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1993, he inherited a bombshell that would soon become public. A joint CIA-FBI investigation had found that Aldrich Ames, a longtime Agency employee, had sold intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union. Ames had compromised the safety of Soviets, who had sought to help the US, in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars, with which he bought a large home and fancy cars. The public announcement of the Ames scandal in February 1994 would pose a dilemma for Woolsey. Public and Congressional reaction -- focused on the failure of the CIA itself to detect Ames' duplicity for almost a decade -- was harshly critical of the Agency. There was a widespread expectation that Woolsey would mete out harsh punishment for those who had failed to detect Ames' activity. For his part, however, Woolsey was unsure as to what sort of punishment, if any, was appropriate. As a public clamor grew for "heads to roll," Woolsey would have to consider what was fair to long-time CIA officials, what was best for the morale of a beleaguered agency, and what was expected by the public. HKS Case Number 1339.0.

The road to the breakthrough Dayton Peace Accords, which ushered in the prospect of a stable peace in the war-torn former Yugoslavia, is built through an intricate, high-pressure negotiation brokered by the United States and involving Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and the western European powers. This case focuses on the dynamics of those negotiations as led by US State Department chief negotiator Richard Holbrooke and members of his negotiating team. It raises strategy issues (When would it be wise to push for a ceasefire?); ethics issues (Is it moral to negotiate with those accused of war crimes?); and personality issues (Is it strategy or the force of Holbrooke's personality which ultimately brings the parties to the table?). Based on extensive interviews with Mr. Holbrooke, this case brings to light new details about one of the highest-stakes negotiations of the post-Cold War era. HKS Case Number 1356.0

Firms in high-technology industries frequently face the dangers and opportunities associated with strategic inflection points in their development trajectory. Strategic inflection points (SIPs) are caused by changes in fundamental industry dynamics, winning strategies, and dominant technologies. SIPs generate strategic dissonance in the organization because they are associated with divergences between the basis of competition and the firm's distinctive competence, and between top management's strategic intent and strategic action. Top management can take advantage of the information generated by strategic dissonance to develop new strategic intent and lead the organization through the turbulence and uncertainty associated with SIPs. This requires a capacity for strategic recognition on the part of top and senior management. Strategic recognition in turn is facilitated by an internal selection environment that allocates resources based on competitive reality and values dissent and debate. Strategic recognition is the foundation for exerting strategic leadership: encouraging debate and bringing debate to a conclusion that realigns the basis of competition and distinctive competence.

Supplements the (A) case.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Among the many tools a manager can use for strategic planning, scenario planning stands out for its ability to capture a range of possibilities in rich detail. By identifying basic trends and uncertainties, a manager can construct a series of scenarios what help to compensate for the usual errors in decision making--overconfidence and tunnel vision. Through case studies of Interpublic, an international advertising agency, and Anglo-American Corp. in South Africa, the author describes how to build scenarios in a step-by-step process and how to use the resulting stories to plan a company's future.

Every business today competes in two worlds; a physical world of resources that managers can see and touch and a virtual world made of information. Executives must pay attention to how their companies create value in both arenas--the marketplace and the marketspace. But the processes for accomplishing this are not the same in the two worlds. Managers who understand how to master both can create and extract value in the most efficient and effective manner. Creating value in any stage of a virtual value chain involves a sequence of five activities: gathering, organizing, selecting, synthesizing, and distributing information. Just as someone takes raw material and refines it into someting useful, so a manager today collects raw information and adds value through these five steps.

Describes the pharmaceutical industry in the 1990s, with particular emphasis on the mergers between American manufacturers and prescription-benefits managers (PBMs). PBMs are distributors with unprecedented access to information on patient and physician characteristics. Students have an opportunity to analyze the mergers using transactions-cost techniques.

Reengineering efforts are sweeping the country as companies shift from purely functional organizations to those that better accommodate horizontal work flows. Broad, crosscutting processes such as product development and order fulfillment have become the new organizational building blocks, Managers, in turn, have begun to develop new ways of working. But much remains to be learned about how these new organizations are crafted and led. The critical questions involve strategy and management practice. In this roundtable, Xerox's Allaire, USAA's Herres, SmithKline Beecham's Leschly, and Pepsi's Weatherup, four senior executives who have helped pioneer the shift to process-based organizations, discuss their experiences. They represent diverse industries and a wide range of competitive challenges, but their observations about processes and process management are strikingly similar.

Describes the history of the competition policy in the European Union, and focuses on the evolution of pan-European and member-state statutes. The tension between policy and enforcement at various levels draws attention to issues of market definition, especially in merger policy.

Describes the challenges confronting a recent HBS graduate who has started a direct-mail toy company. The entrepreneur must evaluate industry conditions in both toys and direct mail, and determine whether he has developed a viable business concept. Presents detailed financial projections associated with each of three major repositioning options.

Describes structural conditions in the American baseball industry in 1995. Although this case covers conditions leading to the 1994-95 strike, it is designed primarily for analysis of the structural tensions that arise between suppliers, buyers, and rivals as industry revenues diminish.

Smart companies may incur huge losses when they enter unknown territory--new alliances, markets, products, technologies. Failures could be prevented or their cost contained if managers approached innovative ventures with the right planning and control tools. Discovery-driven planning is a practical tool that acknowledges the difference between planning for a new venture and for a more conventional business. Using Kao Corp.'s entry into floppy disks, the authors present a step-by-step approach to help companies think differently about planning. Managers should begin with the bottom line and work their way up the income statement, first determining a new venture's profit potential.