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This note, which serves as a glossary, was constructed to ease the transition of students into financial accounting courses. The glossary includes both foundational terms that are widely used and terms introduced in one or more common financial accounting cases. The terms are explained in a manner that aims to inform both novice and advanced students.

This note, which serves as a glossary, was constructed to ease the transition of students into financial accounting courses. The glossary includes both foundational terms that are widely used and terms introduced in one or more common financial accounting cases. The terms are explained in a manner that aims to inform both novice and advanced students.

Queues (or waiting lines) are common in modern life. We wait in lines at the campus cafeteria, to board an airplane, in the emergency room, and when we call a company for customer service. We even wait for applications to be initiated and processed by our smartphone processors, and our online orders wait to be fulfilled at companies' warehouses before being shipped to us. How long we wait in line depends on several factors and parameters. It may depend on the number of servers working and the amount of time it takes to serve each individual customer (the system's capacity) or on how many customers arrive at any given time (the system's demand or flow rate). Most importantly, queues form due to random variations in arrival patterns and service times.

Queues (or waiting lines) are common in modern life. We wait in lines at the campus cafeteria, to board an airplane, in the emergency room, and when we call a company for customer service. We even wait for applications to be initiated and processed by our smartphone processors, and our online orders wait to be fulfilled at companies’ warehouses before being shipped to us. How long we wait in line depends on several factors and parameters. It may depend on the number of servers working and the amount of time it takes to serve each individual customer (the system’s capacity) or on how many customers arrive at any given time (the system’s demand or flow rate). Most importantly, queues form due to random variations in arrival patterns and service times.

This note was written primarily for black entrepreneurs, to help them raise capital. The second objective was to recognize the capital providers who are part of the solution to the problem. The note reviews the evidence that black entrepreneurs have less access to capital than do white entrepreneurs, examines the reasons for that disparity, reflects on the societal impact, and-uniquely-compiles a directory of entities that have funded black entrepreneurs.

In the face of a rapidly-changing economy, organiztions that wish to compete in the future of work must develop strategies for acquiring, retaining, and developing talent for their organizations. This primer reviews the major trends shaping jobs, workplaces, and worker demographics. It then discusses many of the largest weaknesses in traditional talent management systems. The case then closes by describing how firms can create "talent management pipelines." In this framework, firms' core asset - talent - is subjected to the same quality-management proceudres that revolutionized global supply chain practices in the 20th century.

Crafting a Founders' Agreement is an important component of startup infrastructure as it documents a complex set of decisions that build a company's roots. Its four key elements are: roles and responsibilities, rights (decision rights, rewards, position on board), commitments (time invested, IP, capital contributions) and contingencies (vesting, stock restrictions etc.). The note indicates how to initiate a conversation with a co-founder, and provides a checklist of questions that can serve as a conversation guide to draft the Founders' Agreement together. An Agreement is a framework, not a rigid set of rules set in stone, and should be created with flexibility and conditionality. The process of creating and revising the Agreement can bring clarity and commitment to the founding team and enable them to anticipate conflicts before they hurt the business. A Sample Agreement is included.

Millennials are redefining what it means to develop future leaders. In business organizations, leadership development-defined as "the expansion of a person's capacity to be effective in leadership roles and processes"-has traditionally been the work of corporate development programs for select employees handpicked and cultivated by senior management. With the millennial generation of leaders, however, leadership self-development is becoming far more common. This note embraces the movement towards leader self-development. It also recognizes that, for it to be successful, those who are now in the driver's seat-the high-potential and emerging leaders themselves-must be equipped to succeed. The note lays out the PACE Model for leadership self-development, grounded in research, to help developing leaders forge systematic habits to accelerate self-development and success.

AI-driven text mining, a relatively new business analytics tool, allows users to unlock troves of information contained in documents and make them searchable by content and metadata. The ability to analyze documents requires a number of intricate steps. First, optical character recognition must be used to convert a document image into machine-readable text. The text must then be converted to a format in which it can be analyzed. Finally, information must be extracted from the documents. This case takes students through some of the theory behind and examples of text analysis. This case is a companion to Evisort: An AI-Powered Start-up Uses Text Mining to Become Google for Contracts (Case ID: CU251)

This note provides a framework for addressing the classic chicken-or-egg dilemma facing entrepreneurs launching nascent multi-sided platforms. There are several conditions that lead to a difficult chicken-or-egg problem: strong network effects, high multi-homing costs, limited differentiation, and high other barriers to entry. To overcome this challenge and create competitive advantage by reaching critical scale in network size, there are three categories of solutions to the problem: increasing value, decreasing cost, or subsidizing value for the platform participants. For a multi-sided platform, there are also dynamic considerations for addressing whether to stage one side of the platform first or build both simultaneously.

This technical note discusses the various financial services segments in which technology solutions have been used to solve problems, including lending, payments, wealth/investment management, insurance, and regulation. For each of the segments, the note identifies key issues facing the segment, why and how fintech might provide an answer to the challenges faced, and the potential difficulties fintech may experience in doing so. For example, in lending, fintechs could solve issues related to access and convenience-without the need for costly infrastructure. The note also discusses the potential advantages/disadvantages of traditional banks over fintechs. Finally, the note describes influential technologies that are used in fintech such as application program interface (API), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.

The Coca-Cola Company, founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886, is an iconic American company that sells its products around the world. As the business and financial reporting context has changed over the decades, the company's financial disclosure practices have also evolved-from its first, two-page, public annual report in 1920 to present-day annual reports that extend to over 150 pages. This note introduces corporate disclosure and the expansion of such disclosures over time. To aid the discussion and contextualize the evolution of corporate disclosure, the note also presents a short history of the Coca-Cola Company and securities legislation in the United States.

The Coca-Cola Company, founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886, is an iconic American company that sells its products around the world. As the business and financial reporting context has changed over the decades, the company’s financial disclosure practices have also evolved—from its first, two-page, public annual report in 1920 to present-day annual reports that extend to over 150 pages. This note introduces corporate disclosure and the expansion of such disclosures over time. To aid the discussion and contextualize the evolution of corporate disclosure, the note also presents a short history of the Coca-Cola Company and securities legislation in the United States.

This note provides a perspective and some tools to predict and shape interactions with other players when making strategic decisions. As a strategist, you must consider that your firm's actions evoke reactions from other players in the market and that, reciprocally, you may need to respond to their actions. The note on Strategic Interactions introduces students to the fourth module of the RC Strategy course. We look at strategic interactions in three contexts: between players along the supply chain, between symmetrically placed rivals, and between asymmetrically placed rivals. Common themes run through the three circumstances, but there are important distinctions as well.

This note explains how several retail and service organizations use a practice described here as "structured empowerment" to balance control and flexibility as they grow. I define structured empowerment as a practice that grants employees both (a) the power to make choices from narrow sets of options on a set of inputs and processes and (b) the responsibility to deliver results according to the company's value proposition. This lets a company control operations-by standardizing the options frontline employees can choose from to drive results-and adapt to diverse markets-because combining choices from the options makes a large number of service offerings and routine sequences possible. This abridged version of the note does not reference the case "OXXO's Turf War Against Extra." It is intended to be used in a classroom setting where "OXXO's Turf War Against Extra" is also being taught, abridged so that it does not give away any relevant information about the case.

This note examines the economic and political impact of the Australian government's deregulation and climate change policies, as well as a slew of additional corresponding market factors, on Australia's energy and electricity markets. Since the Australian government began its concerted effort to deregulate the power generation industry in the 1990s, prices for electricity and natural gas have risen significantly faster than either automotive fuel or the broader Australian consumer price index. As a result, Australia's energy and electricity markets and the government's intervention (or lack thereof) in these markets have become an extremely important and divisive political issue for the country.