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This teaching case describes the journey undertaken by the Beijing Capital International Airport's IT department in the implementation of various large-scale IT projects during the construction of the Terminal 3 project. The case specifically singled out the Airport Security system in the Terminal 3 project and provided a detailed description on its implementation. Airport security has always been one of the key concerns in all Airport management activities. In recent times, Airport security has become a hot topic especially given the increasing threats posted by terrorists (e.g., 9/11 incident and MH370). The case portrays Mr. Roland Lee, the project manager of the Airport Security system, as the central protagonist confronting the various challenges in balancing the risks and the requirements to keep the project on time, on budget and of high quality.

This case, based on data collected in a longitudinal field study, presents Dr. Nathalie MajorCook, a Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) pediatrician, who in January 2012 was considering what to do about a 2-year grant-funded pilot project, which had provided an innovative patient care coordination service to 23 families of children described as technology-dependent, medically complex and fragile. Convinced that the Complex Care Coordination service is worthwhile, Dr. Major-Cook wants to move it beyond the pilot test phase to a funded, ongoing service. The case situation is a 'cliff hanger,' in that in January 2012, Dr. Major-Cook has not yet learned whether a proposal to fund this as an ongoing service will be approved. If it does not receive approval, she will face the unpleasant task of explaining to parents that this valuable service will end in a few short months. If it does receive approval, several decisions need to be made and actions taken in order to scale the service up, so that it can support about 100 families of technology-dependent, medically complex and fragile children in the region. Dr. Major-Cook also wonders if there is anything else she can do to tip the scales in favor of this decision. The case context is unique and captivating; the young patients under Dr. Major-Cook's care suffer from multiple, and sometimes rare life-threatening diseases. The new Complex Care Coordination model, entailing several new roles and a new way to exchange important information among care providers, was designed to improve the quality of healthcare service delivery, increase parental satisfaction and reduce care costs.

This case details the setting up and growth of a high technology venture, Shanakt Consulting, in India. The company is founded by skilled academicians who had limited experience in setting up and managing a business. Shanakt's innovative RFID technology can be useful across several industries including mining, healthcare, heavy industries, and aviation, among others. RFID is the precursor to the Internet of Things, which is considered by many to be the next big wave in the field of networks and communication. Being in a promising but niche domain, with few competitors, Shanakt is likely to face a positive scenario for its business. However, the events in the Shanakt story do not unfold as planned, causing its management to arrive at crossroads. Shanakt toys with several business models including refining its products to target a particular industry, providing training kits, and manufacturing and developing prototypes. It has to decide on its future course of action. This case provides a detailed view, through the eyes of a technology startup, of the internal thought processes and strategy, and the external environment in a developing country that influences the growth of a new venture. It also sheds light on interactions of the startup with public sector firms, an important part of the Indian economy. Moreover, it highlights the impact of management team composition, and strategic decision making on the performance of such a firm.

The case examines how the founder of a startup company came up with the entrepreneurial idea and used Kickstarter as a platform to establish and grow his company. The case describes in detail the history of the company and charts out the crowdfunding campaigns that provided the company the initial funding. The case concludes at the point at which the founder is considering different funding options to scale the company even further. The case can be used in a variety of classes including digital business, open innovation, strategic IT management, digital innovation and entrepreneurship, and digital marketing.

On January 1, 2011, the Valle del Lili Foundation, a university hospital in Cali, Colombia, went from using paper for medical records and all associated clinical and administrative processes to managing everything electronically. This was a significant deviation from the industry norm since it was unusual for a hospital to simultaneously implement electronic medical records, computerized physician order entry, and enterprise resource planning. If they are implemented at all, they are generally done so independently. Also, hospitals that rise to the challenge of adopting information technology face a high failure rate, mainly for staff-related reasons, especially when medical staff resist its use. VLF's management team knew it had to achieve the buy-in of doctors as well as of clinical and clerical staff if it was to successfully implement SAP, a system that would reformulate workflows throughout the hospital. This case documents how the hospital achieved this ambitious goal. In doing so, it illustrates how organizations can manage large-scale change processes.

National Innovation Foundation (NIF) was a partner organization of the Honey Bee Network (HBN), which was a networked organization of individuals, innovators, farmers, scholars, academicians, policy makers, entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The HBN worked to create a network of grassroot innovators and acknowledged him/her by protecting the IPR of the innovator. It is a Government organization, and hence works under bureaucratic setup. However, it works with non-government organizations as well as, individuals and therefore, should be very flexible. NIF desires to get a web-based information system developed. The challenge are multi-fold: selection the appropriate platform (ERP, Best-of-the-breed, or customized solution), technology (content management systems, frameworks versus coding), software development methodology (classic waterfall model or agile), process (on project basis or work and time based contract). The case helps to compare various alternatives on the above issues. This would achieve their objective. The project team had to take decisions on a number of crucial aspects like deciding which software development methodology and what approach to follow which would suit the unique requirements of the organization. NIF was a dynamic organization and their requirements kept changing. How to determine a pricing policy was another major concern for the project team.

China is Apple's fastest growing market but the road to success has not been smooth. This case documents Apple's journey on this road to success; the role that Tim Cook played on this journey; the basic dynamics of China's telecommunications sector, the world's largest and most dynamic; and obstacles Apple is likely to encounter on the road to its future there. Apple's products are predominantly contract manufactured in China by Foxconn, a Taiwanese company that was the focus of considerable criticism and negative publicity for poor working conditions and suicides among its young workers. Apple, an aspirational brand in China, was named the top brand in the world in 2015 by Brand Finance--followed in second place by their global nemesis, Samsung. The growing consumer power of the Chinese middle class has accelerated demand for Apple products. Apple's popularity in China led to considerable counterfeiting or copying of their prototypes, products, know how, trade secrets, service model, and store concepts. It has spawned a cottage industry that supplies fake Apple stores with logos, uniforms, shopping bags, shelves and other accessories to make them appear real. Face-seeking behavior, the propensity of some Chinese to show off high status consumer goods, further spurs the activities of Apple counterfeiters and imitators to meet market demand. After more than a quarter century of continuous high levels of economic growth, China's economy is cooling. Despite a panoply of obstacles, Apple CEO Tim Cook maintains that China is key to Apple's bottom line now and in the future.

WaterCo's new customer information and billing system (CIBS), its largest information technology (IT) project ever, was over-budget and very late, with no end in sight. In the (A) case, the board of directors must decide what action to take with regards to management's actions, and regarding the project contractor. The (B) case outlines what happened afterwards. The cases span a 10-year period from inception to litigation. The case is useful as a tool to explore governance issues at the board and senior management levels as they pertain to enterprise risk management and IT risk.

WaterCo's new customer information and billing system (CIBS), its largest information technology (IT) project ever, was over-budget and very late, with no end in sight. In the (A) case, the board of directors must decide what action to take with regards to management's actions, and regarding the project contractor. The (B) case outlines what happened afterwards. The cases span a 10-year period from inception to litigation. The case is useful as a tool to explore governance issues at the board and senior management levels as they pertain to enterprise risk management and IT risk.

Computerization of a government department is a very challenging process, as it involves multiple stakeholders and power-centers. Stakeholder identification, as well as designing a system specific to the needs of a particular department can be a complex process. The computerization of police department in ASWI was initiated in mid 90's but it was not successful. The case illustrates the challenges of computerization process in a bureaucratic environment. With multiple touch points and interdependent processes, designing and implementing a technology solution for such environment could be a major challenge.

CFX Inc, an e-commerce start-up based out of India, has built a large e-marketplace that allows sellers and buyers to transact online. The firm currently has 30,000 sellers and aims to have around 50,000 sellers by FY 2015-16. The company has around 6Mn customers today and anticipates their growth to triple in the next 2 years. In order to provide best shopping experience to their growing customer base, the firm needs to collect, store and analyze different kinds of data (transactional, behavioural, syndicated, and demographic) and improve their customer shopping experience. The company is in the process of identifying and designing suitable data management systems to sustain and manage their business growth. As part of this initiative, they hire a consultant to study their data management requirements, design a data model and offer implementation related recommendations. The management expects the consultant to come out with a concrete set of recommendations in terms of the nature of solution, choice of the database, a data model that suits CFX's requirements, cost-benefit trade-offs involved and implementation considerations.

NoSQL refers to a new class of database systems used in big data environments. These database systems aim to address some of the limitations of traditional database management systems. This technical note describes the key challenges in traditional database systems and introduces the concept of NoSQL databases. The design for NoSQL databases are also explained with illustrative examples.

This case revisits the events in late 2013 that gave rise to what was at the time the largest breach of confidential data in history. Indeed, on December 19, 2013, Target announced that its computer network had been infiltrated by cybercriminals who stole 40 million debit and credit card numbers as well as the personal information of some 70 million additional customers. The case presents the cybercriminals' activities leading up to the breach, details of the commission of the theft, the measures that Target had put in place to deter such attacks, its ill-fated response during the attack and, finally, the impact of the breach on Target as well as on the retail industry as a whole.

In early 2015, the chief information officer at Lumière Business Solutions (Lumière) was reflecting on the impact of technology on the company's business performance. Lumière had been using cloud technology to provide clients and employees 24/7 access to project progress and documentation. Clients appreciated the fact that, despite being a small firm, Lumière was as competitive and quick to respond as any other big market-research company. What were the factors that had made this adoption easy? How much of the firm's efficiency could be attributed to the cloud? So far, most of Lumière's applications on the cloud had been sourced from Google Marketplace, but with other players like Microsoft getting into cloud technology aggressively, should Lumière start to explore these new offerings as well? Given the trade-offs that Lumière had made while choosing the cloud, would this technology continue to pay off in the future?

Ahmedabad Container Depot (ACD) was a fast growing inland container depot (ICD) in Ahmedabad. ACD had been facing various challenges due to inefficient manual container tracking system at the facility. Due to good business, the company was able to reach 90 - 95% of its capacity which was also the main problem ACD had to deal with. The management wanted to increase efficiency by reducing the number of moves required to locate a container by implementing a technology solution. The Head IT of ACD, Bhavik, was examining proposals from vendors and had identified a few alternatives. He was also considering the options that other large container yards had used successfully. His dilemma was to determine the feasibility of the alternatives, particularly those which had not been tested by any other firms in the country. Also, implementing technology could cause a change in roles and responsibilities; dealing with that situation was another area of concern.

The case is set in May 2015 in Singapore, the regional headquarters of the UK-based travel metasearch firm, Skyscanner. After a successful launch as a start-up followed by a period of rapid expansion, the company is now facing the challenge of growth in Asia. In 2011, Skyscanner opened its regional headquarters for Asia in Singapore. The tech-savvy customers in Asia were gradually beginning to discover the Skyscanner service, but their behaviour in using the site was different from that of customers in Western markets. Many users were accessing the site through mobile devices and linking from social media sites, while Western market customers were traditionally searching from a computer using the Google search engine. Skyscanner traditionally worked closely with partners such as airlines and online travel agents to provide information, advertising, and data services. To help attract partners, Skyscanner allowed the partner to "own" the customer, by passing the consumer through to the partner site to complete the transaction. The partners got paid for click-through traffic or from advertising on the Skyscanner website. By May 2015, Skyscanner had created local websites for 14 countries in Asia Pacific, but the challenge was to scale up the business and get more customers using the site by meeting localised needs. How should it further adapt its local offerings and marketing strategies more effectively to better connect to the in-country users in Asia? How should Skyscanner change its internal organisation to be more nimble to respond to the market? This case targets participants who are interested in understanding the challenges associated with adapting an organisation and its business model for local market needs. The case is designed for use in postgraduate and executive education classes. It allows participants to better understand the Asian context and the challenges of growing a multi-national business in Asia.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are an important tool for improving a firm's competitive positioning and performance. Despite M&As' promise, however, they often fail to meet performance goals. Challenges often arise when managers try to integrate two companies' information technology (IT) systems, and the difficulties encountered often create both short- and long-term performance problems for companies. To help address these challenges, we highlight important issues that managers involved in M&As must consider. We also present some best practices that managers should follow to improve the odds of successful IT integration.

With information technology (IT) becoming ever more ubiquitous and pervasive, the resulting deluge of data is driving a wave of digital disruption. No industry, it seems, is immune, and business performance is increasingly dependent on the effective use of IT and investments in technology that generate real business benefits. Yet research continues to report that most of these investments don't pay off as expected. Blame for such scenarios is normally placed at the feet of the Chief Information Officer (CIO). Some commentators have even suggested that it is now time to replace the CIO role with that of CDO (Chief Digital Officer). This line of thinking ignores the inherent organizational dynamics that lead to the derailment of the executive in charge of IT; merely changing the job title won't fix the problem. This article uses research conducted over the course of 8 years to illuminate reasons why CIO leaders are derailed, and what they and the CEO can do to avoid this outcome. Causes of derailment are presented in detail, and prescriptive advice is given for CIOs and CEOs alike regarding how to address causes of executive failure in leading the digital transformation of organizations.

User-generated content, such as online product reviews, is a valuable source of consumer insight. Such unstructured big data is generated in real-time, is easily accessed, and contains messages consumers want managers to hear. Analyzing such data has potential to revolutionize market research and competitive analysis, but how can the messages be extracted? How can the vast amount of data be condensed into insights to help steer businesses' strategy? We describe a nonproprietary technique that can be applied by anyone with statistical training. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) can analyze huge amounts of text and describe the content as focusing on unseen attributes in a specific weighting. For example, a review of a graphic novel might be analyzed to focus 70% on the story line and 30% on the graphics. Aggregating the content from numerous consumers allows us to understand what is, collectively, on consumers' minds, and from this we can infer what consumers care about. We can even highlight which attributes are seen positively or negatively. The value of this technique extends well beyond the CMO's office as LDA can map the relative strategic positions of competitors where they matter most: in the minds of consumers.

Algorithms tend to be myopic. They focus on the data at hand--which often pertains just to short-term outcomes. Algorithms are powerful predictive tools, but they can run amok when not applied properly. Consider what often happens with social media sites. Today many use algorithms to decide which ads and links to show users. But when these algorithms focus too narrowly on maximizing click-throughs, sites quickly become choked with low-quality content. While clicks rise, customer satisfaction plummets. The glitches, say the authors, are not in the algorithms but in the way we interact with them. Managers need to recognize their two major limitations: First, they're completely literal; algorithms do exactly what they're told and disregard every other consideration. While a human would have understood that the sites' designers wanted to maximize quality as measured by clicks, the algorithms maximized clicks at the expense of quality. Second, algorithms are black boxes. Though they can predict the future with great accuracy, they won't say what will cause an event or why. They'll tell you which magazine articles are likely to be shared on Twitter without explaining what motivates people to tweet about them, for instance. To avoid missteps, you need to be explicit about all your goals--hard and soft--when formulating your algorithms. You also must consider the long-term implications of the data the algorithms incorporate to make sure they're not focusing nearsightedly on short-term outcomes. And choose the right data inputs, being sure to gather a wide breadth of information from a diversity of sources.