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As Monsanto launches Roundup Ready® Soybeans in 1995, its executives must choose a target segment and decide how to position the new product and how to support that position through appropriate tactical decisions regarding price, distribution, and communication. The genetically altered soybeans will not die when sprayed with Monsanto's Roundup, the world's leading herbicide.

Dell Computer Corp. manufactures, sells, and services personal computers. The company markets its computers directly to its customers and builds computers after receiving a customer order. This build-to-order model enables Dell to have much smaller investment in working capital than its competitors. It also enables Dell to more fully enjoy the benefits of reduction in component prices and to introduce new products more quickly. Dell has grown quickly and has been able to finance that growth internally by its efficient use of working capital and its profitability. This case highlights the importance of working capital management in a rapidly growing firm.

Margaret McLaughlin has just begun her new appointment as the Dean of Health Professions at the College of St. Catherine in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. As an education leader, her charge is to develop Minnesota's health care workforce for the future. She is approached by members of her nursing faculty, who want her to consider launching their very own nurse-practitioner-run clinic. Typically, clinics have been run and directed by physicians. The faculty have suggested four options for the kind of clinic they might run, and McLaughlin must advise them on a course of action. Teaching Purpose: Students will select the kind of nurse practitioner clinic that would be most appropriate for the College of St. Catherine. The analysis will begin by examining the context in which the college is operating and discuss the major criteria that need to be used in making this decision. They will consider the move "up-market" for nurse practitioners' over time, as they have taken on more responsibilities similar in nature to those of a physician. Specifically, students will discuss how nurse practitioners' work has changed over time and the regulations, technological innovations, patient needs, and infrastructure developments that have encouraged this change. Finally, students will debate whether it would make sense to launch their own clinic. They will choose among four options for how the clinic might look, whom it would serve, and how it would be organized.

This case describes the pay packages offered to Sara Becker, a graduating MBA student, including detailed information about two stock option packages (one of which is an indexed option package). She gathers the information and attempts to compare those compensation offers.

This case is designed to familiarize students with the use of financial ratios. Two retailers, Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., have a very similar value for return on equity (ROE) in the 1997 fiscal year. Students use the information in the case and the accompanying exhibits, which include financial statements as well as disclosures regarding corporate strategies and accounting policies for each company, to analyze the value creation process for each firm. This case provides a good introduction regarding the combination of such information to create a powerful tool for financial statement analysis. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Jeff Taylor, founder and CEO of Monster.com, ponders how his online site, the leading career site on the web, can continue its dominance (60% share in 1999) and growth on the Internet. Monster.com had just launched a nationwide branding campaign on television and entered a four-year deal with AOL. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Describes a situation faced by Mr. Ely Callaway, the 80-year-old founder, chairman, and CEO of Callaway Golf Co., in the fall of 1999. After a decade of stunning success with the marketing concept, Callaway suffered a significant loss and witnessed a steep decline in sales in 1998. Mr. Callaway had built a $800 million business by making a truly more satisfying product for the average golfer, making it pleasingly different from the competition and communicating the benefits to the consumer. The results in 1998 forced Mr. Callaway to reconsider the marketing program that had successfully supported the product until now.

Beansprout Networks is a 3-year-old Internet company designed to foster effective communication between parents and the pediatricians and child-care providers who care for their children. With a significant headstart in the marketplace, it has attracted considerable attention from both venture capitalists and health care analysts. Founder James Chung must now examine his internal strategy, given his desire to maintain a strong, vital, entrepreneurial culture amid rapid increases in headcount, increasing need for structure, and the continuing challenges of combining both high-tech and high-touch skills.

Education services target public schools to assist the school with technology and services that will improve their communication with students, parents, and the community. There is also the goal of increasing scores of measured learning. How does a small company do this? How do they operate nationally with contract employees and maintain a consistent level of service and performance?

Explores the functioning of a German supervisory board in the context of a takeover bid made by a British company.

Bausch & Lomb (B&L) instituted an aggressive sales program in the final weeks of its 1993 fiscal year that pushed a large amount of inventories onto distributors. The company recognized revenues on these products when they were shipped. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

Describes Borders Group, a well-known retail chain, in late 1999 and its traditional strengths and rapid growth in the 1990s. By 1990, however, the company had fallen behind Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble in leveraging the Internet for book retailing, although it potentially had an opportunity to be the leader in integrating the store with the Internet in a "bricks and clicks" model. Allows students to explore the opportunities and pitfalls in pursuing bricks and clicks. Highlights the need for excellence in store execution.

Describes STAR TV, a pan-Asian satellite network that has standardized its strategy across its target markets. STAR's acquisition by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation provides an opportune point to analyze whether the viability of this strategy is likely to increase or decrease over time. This analysis sets up a broader discussion of the dynamics of globalization.

In an effort to control the spreading of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, The South African government enacted a controversial patent law, the effect of which would enable the country to import or manufacture much-needed AIDS medicines at substantially lower costs than usually available. The pharmaceutical industry and the United States government opposed this legislation believing it would undermine the importance of protecting intellectual property rights. The United States eventually imposed sanctions on South Africa. An uneasy truce was finally reached, and in 1999, South Africa was considered amendments to the patent law. The United States position softened in response to the scope of the epidemic and the need to provide medicines in South Africa at affordable prices, and the President of the United States issued an Executive Order prohibiting sanctions.

This case describes the development and subsequent failure of Iridium. Iridium was a satellite-based communications system initially developed by Motorola and then spun off as a separate company. Using its constellation of 66 low earth-orbit satellites, the Iridium system was intended to provide reliable communications from virtually any point on the globe. On November 1, 1998, Iridium began commercial telephone service and satellite-paging service began two weeks later. However, a variety of problems plagued the company, and by May 1999, Iridium had only 10,000 subscribers. In August 1999, Iridium defaulted on its debt and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In March 2000, with only 50,000 subscribers, Iridium terminated its services. Motorola's estimated financial exposure to the bankruptcy of Iridium was $2.2 billion.

This case focuses on the privatization of water and sanitation services in the city of Cancún, Mexico. Cancún's growth from a small fishing village in the 1970s to a major international tourist destination by the 1990s overwhelmed the city's public drinking water and sewerage systems. Insufficient coverage, deficient budgets, poor output quality, and environmental pollution were long-standing problems. With the aim of solving some of these problems, Cancún privatized water and sanitation provision in 1994, granting Mexico's first comprehensive private concession for water or wastewater system operation. Two years later, the concessionaire's inability to fulfill its service coverage and investment commitments led to a major legal confrontation with the state government of Quintana Roo and state administrative takeover of the concession company's operations. The case is designed to be used in discussions about (1) the problems generated by the absence of competitive bidding and transparency in concession processes; (2) the difficulty of raising tariffs without visible service improvements; (3) the role of regulatory monitoring and enforcement of concession performance targets; and (4) the impacts of contingencies like macroeconomic instability (Mexico's 1994 peso devaluation) on concession commitments. In 1996, the state government of Quintana Roo took over operation of Cancún's water and sanitation services, privatized only two years earlier. HKS Case Number 1593.0

As the 1998-99 school year began in the state of Kerala, India, state education officials were setting out to bring radical change to government schools. A new approach-designed to be child-friendly and to de-emphasize rote learning and textbook-based teacher lectures in favor of "guided learning and playful interaction"-would, in the words of Education Secretary K. Jayakumar, be no less than "an affirmation of the rights of the child." But as the extension of the so-called District Primary Education Program (DPEP) began to reach all school districts in Kerala, the approach was embroiled in controversy. The leader of the political opposition called for it to be halted. Newly-organized protest groups, charged that reform threatened to dilute education standards and create two tiers of Kerala students. It would fall to Mr. Jayakumar and other state officials to convince the public that the DPEP plan was best for the nearly three million school children of Kerala. Their task required officials to defend the concept of the program, even as they continued to oversee the details of its implementation. The approach they chose would leave some convinced that DPEP had been successfully institutionalized in Kerala, while some of the reform's strongest proponents believed that DPEP had been profoundly compromised. HKS Case Number 1573.0

What would prompt an elected official to take on what appears to be a moral cause with little immediate political benefit? That is the implicit political ethics question raised by this case, which describes the somewhat quixotic, decade-long effort of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy to block, through legislation, the export of so-called "unregistered" pesticides -- that is, agricultural chemicals that were not approved for sale in the United States. As chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee when he began his crusade, Leahy sought to make reform of U.S. pesticide export policy a centerpiece of his tenure, notwithstanding the hostility of commercial interests with close ties to the committee and the indifference of the public. HKS Case Number 1583.0

Managers now know that knowledge is an organization's most vital competitive asset. But most are still struggling with practicalities. How can knowledge be leveraged into marketplace success in any organization? A new economy is emerging built on knowledge and innovation. At its center are knowledge workers, whose mission is not only to create a world of new products and services, but also rethink the larger purposes and day-to-day practices of the world of business. The case describes the efforts for effective knowledge management for one of the communities inside Xerox.