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In organizations, learning and the associated changes it brings cannot be forced. Individuals who act as "learning champions" within an organization need to be convinced of the benefits of the learning initiative themselves so that they can take the "positive" message to their teams and become key facilitators and enablers within the organization. Otherwise, their negativity can influence their team members, especially if the team members are not sold on the initiative in the first place.

In 2008 San Francisco International Airport (known by its three-letter airport code, SFO) had announced a $383 million plan to renovate and reopen Terminal 2. Assistant deputy director of aviation security Kim Dickie and her team had selected Quantum Secure's SAFE software suite as the new Terminal 2 credentialing system, but she needed to develop a business case quickly that would convince senior management to give the green light to fund the purchase. The case describes a scenario that occurs frequently in the real world, in which a decision offers some real but qualitative value in ways that are difficult or impossible to quantify. The discussion and analysis gives students the opportunity to consider the factors that will drive the internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV), and discounted payback period calculations without constructing comprehensive spreadsheet models. Analyzing the case suggests the limits of such approaches in cases where perceived value is difficult to quantify. The case prepares students to evaluate and justify purchasing requests when interacting with financial gatekeepers such as CFOs and CEOs by introducing a framework to analyze the quantifiable benefits of a capital expenditure while keeping in mind important intangible benefits.

With the increase of globalization in trading and online shopping, phony products are on the rise in the market. This article introduces a range of technologies that have been implemented in the supply chain to deter counterfeiters. Technology for both product authentication and tracing and tracking products in the supply chain will be discussed, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each solution. Additionally, success stories on combating counterfeits are introduced. Finally, issues related to rising anti-counterfeiting costs, collaborative efforts in fighting fakes, and a multi-pronged plan are explored.

This teaching case discusses the challenges facing GreenField Software (GFS), a start-up company offering software products and services to support sustainability. The case describes the start-up process, the crafting of the firm's strategy and structure, and the development of its products and services in the emerging 'green Information Technology (IT)' industry. It follows the key decisions made by the CEO and his executive team as they navigate a shifting and increasingly competitive marketplace. As GFS approaches the 2-year anniversary of its launch, the team must decide several key issues. These include whether to market their product as a business continuity solution or as a 'green IT' solution; what intellectual property will differentiate them from the competition; and how to respond to the changing needs of the marketplace.

"This case study illustrates the principles of disruptive innovation in the context of the music industry in India. Widespread technological changes, including the spread of the Internet and mobile penetration, began to redefine the industry in terms of the way music was created, accessed and consumed. With these technological changes sweeping the industry in a relatively short time frame, the cost of music creation and consumption declined rapidly and incumbents began to find it difficult to sustain operations at current profit margins. The Indian music industry was the archetype of an industry disrupted by technological forces. In such a scenario, the case highlights the dilemma of Sony Music India, a large music recording company, which had been operating in the Indian music industry since 1998 and was now exploring the potential options available for growth and profitability in the evolving digital music space. The Indian subsidiary benefits from learning from its parent but operates under a different business model. The case is set in 2012, and places the student in the shoes of Vivek Paul, Head of Digital Media, who is pondering over what form Sony's digital platform offering should take. How different was the Indian music landscape from the West? What were the disruptive impacts? Should the response of the company mirror its parent corporation? What was the economic upside? Should the company sell exclusively through its own site? Should the company launch a separate organization to manage its digital business? "

Since early 2009, the information technology (IT) division of a leading manufacturer of semiconductor chips had noticed a growing trend among the company's 80,000 employees worldwide to bring their own smartphones and storage devices to their individual workstations. Recognizing that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) was not a passing fad but a growing phenomenon, the company decided in January 2010 to formally implement this initiative. As the company's chief information security officer prepares for a full rollout of BYOD, he revisits the issue of ensuring security of corporate data stored on devices owned by individual employees. He also wonders how Intel should respond to the demand for e-Discovery, wherein a litigant could seek access to internal documents stored on devices not owned by the company. He also reflects on a more fundamental and strategic issue: How can Intel extract value from the BYOD initiative and turn this initiative into a new source of competitive advantage?

Information technologies enable key divisions of an organization such as HR, Training, Operations, and Legal, to achieve operational efficiency. In addition, IT can and must be used to enhance the company's strategic positioning by "socially" engaging an ecosystem of stakeholders: employees, suppliers, and customers. For this, the company's back-end IT infrastructure must be linked up with the front-line so that information can flow smoothly, and important decisions can be made in real-time. In this context, we make a distinction between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement. The latter category of IT is now emerging, and will change the business landscape in substantial ways. This case is about one such platform of engagement called Wooqer, which business heads can harness to tackle a variety of problems. Wooqer facilitates communities of users to function independently, without requiring constant assistance from IT. The case begins by describing the information systems that drive business at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, India's largest apparel retailer. In a rapidly expanding retail environment, Madura's Strategy Head has to decide between implementing point solutions to different technology problems, and rolling out a system of engagement.

Information technologies enable key divisions of an organization such as HR, Training, Operations, and Legal, to achieve operational efficiency. In addition, IT can and must be used to enhance the company's strategic positioning, by "socially" engaging an ecosystem of stakeholders: employees, suppliers, and customers. For this, the company's back-end IT infrastructure must be linked up with the front-line, so that information can flow smoothly, and important decisions can be taken in real-time. In this context, we make a distinction between Systems of Record and Systems of Engagement. The latter category of IT is now emerging, and will change the business landscape in substantial ways. This case is about one such platform of engagement called Wooqer, which business heads can harness to tackle a variety of problems. Wooqer facilitates communities of users to function independently, without requiring constant assistance from IT. The case begins by describing the information systems that drive business at Madura Fashion & Lifestyle, India's largest apparel retailer. In a rapidly expanding retail environment, Madura's Strategy Head has to decide between implementing point solutions to different technology problems, and rolling out a system of engagement.

In 2011, Microsoft's Server & Tools Business (STB) was large, fast growing and highly profitable on the strength of traditional packaged product lines led by the Windows Server operating system. Even as the current packaged business was performing exceptionally well, Microsoft's leadership understood that cloud based solutions would become more prevalent in the future. As the newly appointed President of STB, Satya Nadella had to find a balance between managing the current packaged business and building the cloud offering.

Supplement for case 613031. Update on progress of Microsoft's Server & Tools Business through August 2012. Pleased with the Windows Azure product, Satya Nadella must decide how to attract customers to the cloud based platform.

The e-payments landscape in Singapore was previously dominated by two major card issuers with non-interoperable cards. The Infocomm Development Authority launched an initiative to develop an innovative standard that would provide an interoperable platform in order to boost local micropayments and open up e-payment services for consumers. The result was a pioneering ISO standard - the Contactless e-Purse Application Standard (CEPAS). This open standard, with unique security and high-performance features, enabled multiple payment applications offered by different issuers to be on a single smart card, which consumers could use for bus, taxi, and rail transport, car park and road usage charges, and retail micropayments. The case examines the significant challenges and trade-offs in the development and deployment of this platform innovation - such as orchestrating the efforts of multiple stakeholders and balancing various stakeholders' legitimate interests; incentivising investment in supporting infrastructure and complementary innovations; as well as promoting the adoption and diffusion of the cards by consumers and merchants. The CEPAS platform was also being leveraged for the next generation of e-payment innovations, such as payments via Near Field Communication-enabled mobile phones.

This teaching case focuses on a collaborative project between a major software and services outsourcing company in China (VanceInfo Technologies) and one of its major Western clients (Microsoft Inc.). VanceInfo and Microsoft had been engaged in a long-term client/vendor relationship since 1997 and the project had been the result of this long-term partnership arrangement. The project was deemed quite successful and innovative; hence it provided an opportunity to determine how collaborative innovation could work between two remote and culturally different supply chain partners and how the lessons from this project could be used to inform SSO providers of ways in which they could move up the value chain to more client-focused value added services. The case looks in-depth at the actual working practices that enabled the distributed Microsoft/VanceInfo team to produce a market-led innovative product. Agile methods were highly integral to the functioning of those work practices and are quite carefully scrutinised from the point of view of how they were adapted for use in a distributed, cross-cultural environment. Users of the case study will be asked to formulate answers to several questions geared towards providing general guidelines that SSO providers can follow to achieve similar successful outcomes.

This case is set in April 2013, and discusses the key elements that have contributed to the success of Infosys Ltd's Campus Connect Programme (CC) in developing India's Information Technology talent over the past eight years. The CC programme is an industry-academia initiative that re-constructs the education experience of engineering students. The programme was launched in May 2004 with 70 colleges. By December 2012, the model had been successfully scaled up to cover 400 colleges, and more than 180,000 readers and 8,300 faculty members across India had benefited from the programme's technical and soft skills training, and exposure to industry practices. Since CC's launch, Infosys has experienced a measurable improvement in the quantity and quality of their new recruits. Infosys understands the value of creating a talent ecosystem, and this case explains just how, and why, Campus Connect has worked as a successful example of industry-academia partnership in the talent management space.

Supplement to case W12442 In 2010, a recent business graduate tries to resolve a constant bottleneck in the printing department of the family business. The two-part case discusses the issues of identifying the need for relevant information and then discusses the staff's resistance to change and how these objections were handled and overcome. This pair of cases seeks to identify the pressures faced by small businesses, along with the task of managing the various stakeholders, including the father-owner and the personnel on the factory shop floor.

In 2010, a recent business graduate tries to resolve a constant bottleneck in the printing department of the family business. The two-part case discusses the issues of identifying the need for relevant information and then discusses the staff's resistance to change and how these objections were handled and overcome. This pair of cases seeks to identify the pressures faced by small businesses, along with the task of managing the various stakeholders, including the father-owner and the personnel on the factory shop floor.

A study from BBDO and AOL offers important insights to advertisers hoping to reach consumers through their smartphones. For starters, "mobile" doesn't always mean on the go; most smartphone use happens at home. And users' number one activity isn't shopping or socializing but relaxing.

Innovative companies fund internal research and development to gain an edge in the marketplace. They also work closely with their suppliers in an effort to offer greater functionality and performance for their customers. However, some critical new product insights don't come from suppliers and customers working together but from the customer's customers. When suppliers and customers cooperate, the authors write, they can "tweak"the technology to provide big gains in value for the customer's customers. In contrast to recent research on how suppliers and customers cooperate to save on costs, the authors examine the innovation process to understand how to achieve outcomes for the end user that otherwise would not occur. Drawing on numerous examples from technology companies, they look at how suppliers and customers become open to tweaking the supplier's offering to better serve the customer's customers; what makes for successful tweaking; and various ways parties can share the fruits of collaboration so that everyone benefits. Although some progressive suppliers and customers saw the potential benefits of working together, many of the businesses the authors examined regarded this kind of cooperation as a last resort. Small suppliers saw large prospective customers as slow to make decisions and overly aggressive about claiming intellectual property that came out of collaborations; large customers also tended to withhold information about how they used the suppliers'technologies and their customers'applications. However, the authors found that some technology businesses consciously seek opportunities to cooperate with their customers and customer's customers. This was particularly true with small and medium-sized companies. The authors explore two key issues: the extent to which contact between the supplier and the customer's customer needs to be direct; and how businesses bridge across different partial understandings to improve their chances of success.

As managers seek to exploit the tremendous amounts of data now available from internal and external sources, they're likely to use the approach they use with all their IT projects--that is, they'll focus on building and deploying technology on time, to plan, and within budget. That works for projects designed to improve business processes and increase efficiency, but when it comes to extracting valuable insights from data and using information to make better decisions, managers need a different approach and mind-set. A big data or analytics project is likely to be smaller and shorter than a conventional IT initiative, such as installing an ERP system. It's also more like scientific research. Commissioned to address a problem or opportunity, such a project frames questions, develops hypotheses, and then experiments to gain knowledge and understanding. The authors have identified five guidelines for taking this voyage of discovery: 1) Place users--the people who will create meaning from the information--at the heart of the initiative; 2) Unlock value from IT by asking second-order questions and giving teams the freedom to reframe business problems; 3) Equip teams with cognitive and behavioral scientists, who understand how people perceive problems and analyze data; 4) Focus on learning by facilitating information sharing, examining assumptions, and striving to understand cause and effect; and 5) Worry more about solving business problems than about deploying technology.

Decision Support, Analytics, and Business Intelligence is an eight-chapter book written by Daniel J. Power, Professor of Management Information Systems at the College of Business Administration at the University of Northern Iowa, and published by Business Expert Press in 2013. This revised and expanded edition targets MBA students and management professionals who need to quickly grasp the basics of analytics, business intelligence, and computerized decision support. Major topics include: modern decision support systems (DSS), business intelligence and data driven support systems, predictive analytics and model-driven support, as well as identifying opportunities for decision support. The author addresses 61 of the most fundamentally relevant concepts needed to build a solid understanding of the rapidly changing realm of computerized decision support. The 8th and final chapter examines the continuing impacts technological developments will exert on DSS. The author compares two types of evaluation activities - formative vs. summative evaluation - to be carried out during and after completing a project. The potential ethical issues associated with building and using DSS, the role of project champion, and the expectations in next-generation decision support are also explored

The case takes place in early 2008. It illustrates the remarkable use that Cirque du Soleil makes of information technology. The case is based, in part, on the keynote speech that Danielle Savoie - who was then Vice-President of Information Technology and Knowledge Management at Cirque du Soleil - gave at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Montreal in December 2007. The case is structured around the touring show life cycle and describes how information technology supports the complete process involved in designing, producing, staffing and diffusing shows at Cirque du Soleil. The case presents key infrastructure and applications and offers insights into how IT can support the key operational processes in an artistic, creative and innovative organization.