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At the June 2007, Central City Medical Group (CCMG) board meeting, Deb Moore, Executive Director, reported that there were mounting tensions caused by the implementation of an electronic health record (EHR). Physician morale and productivity were spiraling downward. The present challenge was the growing gap between the patient workload and physician capacity, as physicians remained well below historic productivity levels while learning to use the new EHR. The medical director had resigned her post and other senior physicians were threatening to retire. Ms. Moore had a pressing question for the board: should CCMG stop accepting new patients until they returned to full productivity?

"Market Design in Online Businesses" characterizes the challenges entrepreneurs may face in creating a well-functioning ecosystem of users, and helps equip entrepreneurs with tools to overcome these obstacles. Key principles include ensuring thickness, alleviating congestion stemming from overuse, addressing asymmetric information, ensuring that it is safe and straightforward for users to participate, and designing monetization strategies that do not disrupt, but instead contribute to the well-being of the ecosystem.

This note provides an overview of the Harvard Business School course "The Online Economy: Strategy and Entrepreneurship." It covers the framework for the course, key principles within each course module, and a synopsis of each case, along with the lessons the case is meant to convey.

In winter 2010 Bob Stetzel, the new Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Vermont Teddy Bear (VTB), hopes to replace or modernize many of the company's existing systems and invest in some new applications. This catalog marketer (via online and print catalogs) offers three separately managed brands: Vermont Teddy Bear (VTB), PajamaGrams, and Calyx Flowers. Sales are highly seasonal, with peak volumes at Christmas, Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Stetzel has spent his first few months on the job cataloging systems and databases, learning about the 'spider web' of middleware connecting various applications and platforms, and locating employees with expertise to fix them. The company has survived an economic downturn and several costly strategic missteps. The CEO is seeking new sources of revenue and ways to leverage their well-known brand, while the CIO needs to set Information Technology (IT) priorities: should they invest in a full-featured Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) package or take other steps that would more quickly yield tangible results? Whatever choice he makes, Stetzel will have to convince the CEO and the Board of Directors to provide the necessary resources. This case provides students with an opportunity to place themselves in the shoes of a CIO wrestling with strategic IT alignment challenges at a time when resources are severely constrained and competitive rivalry is fierce.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Almost all executives want more and faster information, and almost all companies are racing to provide it. What many of them are overlooking is that the real aim should not be faster information but faster decision making, and those aren't the same things. Executives tend to request more information than they can use, and oftentimes the cycle time of decision making, not the speed of information flow, is the real bottleneck. While it is critical to identify what information is needed, it is just as important to deliver it at the right time. The types of information needed most quickly are not static and can depend on several conditions, including whether the current state of the economy is growing or contracting. The right cycle time for particular types of information can vary widely by industry, but in general the highest requested frequency is for competitor news, sales and customer news. Based on responses to their surveys and interviews of senior executives and managers, the authors provide suggestions and guidelines to enable IT organizations to deliver information more quickly and flexibly. That requires changes to both human and technical capabilities, but those changes could make all the difference in having the correct information to avert a crisis.

Spreadsheet supplement to cases 909E27, 909E28, and 909E29

Micro-blogs (e.g., Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, Tumblr) are starting to become an established category within the general group of social media. Yet, while they rapidly gain interest among consumers and companies alike, there is no evidence to explain why anybody should be interested in an application that is limited to the exchange of short, 140-character text messages. To this end, our article intends to provide some insight. First, we demonstrate that the success of micro-blogs is due to the specific set of characteristics they possess: the creation of ambient awareness; a unique form of push-push-pull communication; and the ability to serve as a platform for virtual exhibitionism and voyeurism. We then discuss how applications such as Twitter can generate value for companies along all three stages of the marketing process: pre-purchase (i.e., marketing research); purchase (i.e., marketing communications); and post-purchase (i.e., customer services). Finally, we present a set of rules-The Three Rs of Micro-Blogging: Relevance; Respect; Return-which companies should consider when relying on this type of application.

The case, 'Santander Acquires Abbey: The Jack Project', applies a general strategic management focus to an analysis of the 'Jack Project', the Spanish banking group's IT centric project to acquire Abbey. The case focuses on José María Fuster, chief information officer (CIO) and his perspective in leveraging IT to integrate Abbey. The following issues are explored: (1) the value of IT; (2) the generation of synergies in M&A; and (3) the prioritisation of IT-related options comparing two different realities. At the end of the case, students will examine how Partenón, Grupo Santander's core IT system, leveraged this acquisition and made an impact on the bank's long-term market position.

During the period 2002-2010 the UK government of the time attempted to relate the rights and entitlements of citizenship with a standard identifier for all British citizens and its representation in a national identity smartcard. The scheme to introduce this identity token for all UK citizens was finally abandoned in December 2010. This teaching case describes the history of this endeavour as promoted by the UK government and its agencies. It also describes the reaction to these plans on the part of numerous other stakeholder groups within the UK. This is a rich case for examining a number of critical, contemporary issues of relevance to Information Systems theory and practice that are occurring worldwide. On the one hand, the attempt to introduce such an identity token brought into focus the critical role that identity and its management plays as supporting infrastructure in areas such as e-Government and e-Business. On the other, the introduction of a national identifier and associated token raised major challenges to data protection, data privacy and public trust in the information governance of this nation state. Indeed, such difficulties constituted a major part of the rationale for the abandonment of the project.

Cable and Wireless, Jamaica (C&WJ) operated in Jamaica under an exclusive license that made it a virtual monopoly. In 1999, the Government of Jamaica decided to renegotiate the license and liberalize the telecommunications industry. Early in the liberalization process, new companies entered the market and C&WJ struggled to cope with the new, competitive dynamics of the market. Although dominant in the landline market, C&WJ found it difficult to compete in the cellular market, lagging behind relatively new entrant Digicel. The recent entry of América Móvil, operating under the brand name Claro, into the market has intensified the competition and is threatening the relegation of C&WJ into third place. In response, C&WJ in 2008 embarked on a new, high-risk transformation strategy that included corporate rebranding and a change of its name to LIME (Landline, Internet, Mobile and Entertainment). This case chronicles the problems faced by LIME in adjusting to a telecommunications industry paradigm.

The general manager of Craig Manufacturing Cambridge Branch felt that there was room to improve top-line growth through better utilization of plant capacity. The company was losing out on sales due to the highly seasonal nature of demand; the plant was fully loaded four months of the year, but it had unused capacity during the remaining months. The general manager had just attended a lecture where a more flexible approach to pricing had been suggested as a way to better manage supply chain and capacity issues. An idea began to emerge: Could Craig Manufacturing use pricing to better match demand to plant capacity? If so, would this practice boost profitability, or would it merely reduce revenues?

Infusion had grown over the 10 years between 2000 and 2010 to become a $50 million per year international software services business with 350 employees. The president is wondering how he could move the company towards becoming a $100 million per year international business through a mixture of organic growth and initiative with partners. The entrepreneurial vision of its original founders lived on in many ways, but the company had found it necessary to install an administrative structure with a professional management layer to underpin delivery in both domestic and international markets. It had not been an easy ride. The company had encountered problems in India, and there had been periods of staff attrition and challenging deliveries to clients. Clients were beginning to pull the company in new directions. The pace of technology change appeared to be relentless. While entrepreneurship was still encouraged in the form of an incubator called Infusion Angels, the CEO was faced with some critical decisions.

The president of Oakville Hydro Energy services needed to make a decision on the installation of an electricity-generating engine at the regional municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant in Burlington, Ontario. This engine installation was in support of the production of green power, by which the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) introduced a feed-in tariff that paid a premium for the generation of this type of green power. One of three specific engines would be purchased and installed to generate electricity from the combustible gases produced during wastewater treatment. The president had to decide which engine generator would produce the most favourable output and the best return for Oakville Hydro and the municipality. The president also needed to decide whether or not to integrate the existing on-site gas storage tank into the controls of the generator system.

In this dialogue-styled situation, Binnj's CEO has assembled a team of people for a 100-day "science experiment" to determine whether a new high-tech business venture is worth pursuing. He is focused on an untapped market - a new kind of restaurant menu service built on the Apple iPad platform. Members of the team are excited and have been furiously working on the project while retaining their full-time jobs. They have developed a prototype of the technology and business offering, pitched the idea to several clients, and generated significant interest. The case is set at the end of the first 100 days, when the CEO must decide on the next steps.<br><br>This case introduces students to information technology entrepreneurship, technology development approaches, service pricing issues, virtual project management techniques and tools, brainstorming revenue generation opportunities, and the challenges of prioritizing decisions.

Datasets of gaming and hotel customers to perform analysis for the case.

Datasets of listings and powersellers transactions to perform analysis for the case.

This case describes a wallet maker's application of seven Internet marketing technologies: display ads, algorithmic search, sponsored search, social media, interactive content, online distributors, and A/B testing. It provides concise introductions to the key features of each technology, and asks which forms of online marketing the company should prioritize in the future. Also discusses similarities and differences between online and offline marketing, as well as issues of marketing campaign evaluation.

Business Intelligence: Making Decisions through Data Analytics is a six-chapter book written by Dr. Jerzy Surma, an assistant professor at Warsaw School of Economics, and published by Business Expert Press in January of 2011. Written for managers, business consultants, and undergraduate and postgraduate students in business administration, the book explores the use of business intelligence (BI), including data warehousing and data analytics, to support managerial decision-making. The author starts by examining data model infrastructure, then data preparation, followed by data analysis, integration, knowledge discovery, and finally the actual use of discovered knowledge. All examples are based on recent achievements in BI. Finally, the book outlines an overview of a methodology that takes into account the complexity of developing applications in an integrated BI environment. Chapter 1 presents the history of business intelligence (BI), defines pertinent terminology, and reviews BI's possible applications in selected businesses. The chapter concludes with a brief case study highlighting BI concepts that are used to fulfill a company's strategic initiatives.

Business Intelligence: Making Decisions through Data Analytics is a six-chapter book written by Dr. Jerzy Surma, an assistant professor at Warsaw School of Economics, and published by Business Expert Press in January of 2011. Written for managers, business consultants, and undergraduate and postgraduate students in business administration, the book explores the use of business intelligence (BI), including data warehousing and data analytics, to support managerial decision-making. The author starts by examining data model infrastructure, then data preparation, followed by data analysis, integration, knowledge discovery, and finally the actual use of discovered knowledge. All examples are based on recent achievements in BI. Finally, the book outlines an overview of a methodology that takes into account the complexity of developing applications in an integrated BI environment. Chapter 2 first examines the structure and technological role data warehousing plays in business intelligence. It then discusses how data are collected, organized, and modeled for application to business analysis and explains the four steps in designing a data warehouse.

Business Intelligence: Making Decisions through Data Analytics is a six-chapter book written by Dr. Jerzy Surma, an assistant professor at Warsaw School of Economics, and published by Business Expert Press in January of 2011. Written for managers, business consultants, and undergraduate and postgraduate students in business administration, the book explores the use of business intelligence (BI), including data warehousing and data analytics, to support managerial decision-making. The author starts by examining data model infrastructure, then data preparation, followed by data analysis, integration, knowledge discovery, and finally the actual use of discovered knowledge. All examples are based on recent achievements in BI. Finally, the book outlines an overview of a methodology that takes into account the complexity of developing applications in an integrated BI environment. Chapter 3 introduces analytical data mining and explains basic analytical operations using a detailed example. Managerial information and its applications in selected areas in enterprise are discussed. The use of business intelligence (BI) tools in the management of business processes and a company's strategy by means of a balanced scorecard are examined. The role of BI in strategic information management is also discussed.