個案總覽

You are the CEO of an e-cigarette company that has just been acquired by a major tobacco company. Your company operates in the European market. The July 2013 draft of the EU Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) recently has been crafted by the European Commission, but it has not yet been examined by the EU Parliament and its Council. The draft proposes that all e-cigarette products be classified as medical devices, regardless of nicotine content. This is the strictest available mode of regulation. If the directive goes into effect as written, e-cigarettes would have to undergo costly and lengthy clinical trials to receive approval and face much stricter marketability restrictions. The case details the state of the e-cigarette industry in 2013, including consumer data, distribution, competition from similar products, and public health concerns. Students will analyze the current regulatory environment, determine what outcome would be most favorable to the e-cigarette industry, and identify the ways to achieve that goal.

Citibank reshaped considerably its e-business program after the financial crisis of 2008 focusing on leveraging its geographical reach, rolling out global initiatives to maintain its leadership in treasury and trade services, and becoming even more customer-centric. Citi restructured its R&D centers and its marketing strategy to assist customers in finding solutions rather than selling products. Citi's execution was fast-paced, but the landscape for treasury and trade services was changing rapidly after the financial crisis. Multi-banking became a must and a new solution marketed by SWIFT allowed to multi-bank on the internet at low cost and with greater efficiency than previous solutions. While adoption was slow, the change in the competitive landscape was significant. The data of any bank could now be seen and manipulated through the internet portal of any other bank. Internet portals continued to evolve offering new features and functionalities at product level: Citi updated its CitiDirect BE and TreasuryVision platforms to offer what the market asked for. But seamless bank-corporate integration at technology level was not evolving at the same pace. Corporation and bank data exchanges were inefficient, making a number of treasury tasks labor-intensive. Corporations came to prefer multi-banking platforms after the financial crisis, and were demanding automated integration of bank data into their ERPs. An e-business transformation was on the way. Internet banking portals became multi-banking portals, as did proprietary bank-corporate EDI links like CitiConnect. But it was cloud computing that promised the definitive technological solution for the bank-corporate integration model. The ERP vendor SAP was the first to experiment with a private cloud model and allow direct straight-through processing of each financial transaction sent from the ERP directly to bank middleware. Citi was the first bank to sign up with the project, but its competitors followed.

Amitabha needs to define the market strategy for IDEI, an NGO selling low-cost irrigation products to the bottom of the pyramid, to ensure sustainability (to make it as independent as possible of funding). The fundamental questions are how to set up the supply chain and what price to charge for the products.

An MBA graduate is asked by the CEO to look at Clarks' strategy in Africa. To achieve growth on a large scale makes entering new countries inevitable. The case describes the firm, attempts by various other shoemakers to enter the market, and the MBA's effort to frame the challenge.

Algramo is a company whose objective is to improve the lives of those living below the poverty line. Using a revolutionary technology tailored to "bottom of the pyramid" customers, Algramo's products can save families on average 40%, while the company's return is around 20%.

The Banco Espírito Santo (BES) case covers issues related to bank strategy, safety and soundness, the role of conglomerates, and problems related to family control. The setting is Europe, following the financial crisis of 2007-09, and its efforts to create a single banking market. It illustrates the lack of transparency inherent in conglomerates that have banks 'embedded' in them, the additional opacity associated with family control, the problems of tracking cross-border risk exposures even under market integration funds in the EU and the Eurozone, and the associated systemic risks.

Golf over the years emerged as a global, cash-driven property development industry with nearly 4.4 million registered players in Europe alone in 2014. It developed as a business relying on a dense network of small- and medium-sized enterprises steeped in tradition. The combination of high growth and low brand value led to the golf industry lagging significantly behind other industries in terms of sustainability and social and environmental responsibility. With the downturn of 2008, things started to change, reluctantly at first then more proactively. Sustainability emerged as a hot topic on greens around the world. Bert Stadhouders knew more about it than anyone else. Freshly appointed in January 2014 as project manager for the Sustainable Golf Project, he was himself a dedicated golfer and a sustainability specialist. He had witnessed firsthand the disdain with which the sport was treating its sustainability footprint, as if oblivious to the CSR higher callings. In fact, beyond its green image and vocabulary, the game generated massive environmental and social challenges. Bert wondered how he could help drive sustainability to the top of the agenda in a reluctant industry steeped in conventions and history. Were the economic difficulties of the time a bounty or a boon for sustainability as a cause? To address sustainability on a global scale in golf, how could he factor in the huge differences between upcoming markets in Asia and more mature markets in Europe and the United States?

This case gives students the opportunity to explore the concept of organizational status as a competitive asset. CEO Noura Abdullah of Saudi furniture retailer Aura founded her company as a middle-market furniture and home goods store offering affordable yet design-savvy products. By many accounts, both tangible and intangible, Aura had been a success. By late 2014, Aura had drawn considerable attention from several high-status Saudi wedding planners and media outlets, including Harper's Bazaar Interiors, Elle Décor, and Martha Stewart Weddings. This attention yielded unusually strong conversion rates (the percentage of visitors to the store who made a purchase). Foot traffic, on the other hand, remained unexpectedly low, leading Abdullah to wonder whether the high-status affiliations had unintentionally signaled to mid-market consumers that they would not be able to afford Aura's products, keeping such customers away. Students will decide, along with Abdullah, how to handle this unique "problem" as Aura enters a growth phase to other Saudi and Middle Eastern markets.

Set in 2013, Elaine Ng, CEO of the National Library Board of Singapore (NLB), has to ensure the library remains relevant in the new knowledge economy. The goals of the library have changed from providing convenience and accessibility to information to building social capital and facilitating knowledge sharing under the auspices of the Ministry of Information and the Arts. Additionally, new mediums have become available to access information and people can now access information remotely. NLB has also added more depth and breadth to its book collection to meet the specific needs of niche groups such as young professionals and the business community. As a knowledge leader, NLB is taking the lead in environmental sustainability as they partnered with various organisations in conservation efforts. Their partnership with City Development Limited went a step further in creating the world's first green library for children, My Tree House. It was constructed using sustainable materials and was stocked with literature on environmentalism. The collaboration resulted in an on-going effort to educate the young in environmental sustainability.

A recent law-school graduate is delighted to land a job as a junior associate at an up-and-coming legal firm in New Delhi, India. In spite of his initial enthusiasm for the job, after just three months, the young man is on the brink of quitting. The firm has failed to meet its promises with respect to compensation and the nature of the work assigned. After many fruitless attempts to rectify the situation, the young associate is left feeling powerless, cheated and angry. A series of futile arguments with his immediate superior have left him all the more bitter, as he believes that his boss holds some sort of personal grudge against him. He now wonders whether he should quit this job he so desperately wanted, or tough it out and wait for things to get better.

This case allows students to learn the principles of capital budgeting in a global context. It features a power company in Brazil that is a subsidiary of AES Corporation. A new-to-the-firm manager is assigned his first big project: to evaluate and defend the case for investing in a 500 MW thermal power plant. He must present his findings to the Global Valuation Review team, including a recommendation for the project and a bid price for the upcoming government auction. The manager must build three different valuations: a base case, an optimistic scenario, and a pessimistic scenario.

This case is set inside IBM Research's efforts to build a computer that can successfully take on human challengers playing the game show Jeopardy! It opens with the machine named Watson offering the incorrect answer "Toronto" to a seemingly simple question during the championship match. Was the answer a reflection of a strategic weakness, or was it actually consistent with design principles established by the development team? The case seeks to expand students' view of the product development process. Traditional software development projects begin with the gathering of requirements and analysis of the problem, and the writing of a detailed specification. The Jeopardy! problem is different-it requires a probabilistic approach where there is no closed form solution. Instead statistical patterns in the data are important and there is no obvious mapping to the way queries are expressed. Such problems are increasingly common in data mining, optimization problems, or Internet applications where the goal is to find an acceptably good solution in a short amount of time, when a deterministic approach might be less fruitful or impractical. We aspire for students to recognize that product development can take many forms, and that these are enabled by creativity and the right organizational flexibility and mindset. This abridged version of the case focuses on the choice of Jeopardy! as the development target, and the approach taken by the development team. The original case is HBS No. 612-017, and has much more detail on the design strategy for the Watson system.

Facebook celebrated its ten year anniversary in February 2014. Over the past decade it has grown into the largest social network in the world with one billion users. After filing an IPO in 2012 at a $104 billion valuation (the third largest IPO in U.S. history), the stock price steadily declined, but recovered after the company implemented an effective advertising strategy. Facebook worked to maintain its "hacker ethos" and remain nimble as it matured. The company was worth close to $200 billion. Could this kind of value sustain itself for years to come?

This case reviews Emerson Electric's proposed acquisition of Avocent Corporation in 2009. The focus of this case is how a technology company such as Avocent, with a dramatically different business model compared to its acquirer, should be integrated into a large, multi-industry conglomerate like Emerson. Underlying this managerial question is a broader strategy question-under what conditions should the acquiring firm A modify its own business model and/or fold itself into its acquisition B, rather than trying to integrate B into the old business model? The case also touches upon themes related to the management of human capital during the acquisition of a technology startup.

After years of rapid growth, Peru's economy had recently slowed. Mineral prices were down and the current President, Humala, had only a year remaining in office before the next election. And he could not run again. While the country had many strengths, especially in minerals, natural resources and tourism, infrastructural problems, corruption, drugs, and inequality continued to plague its growth. The next election would help determine Peru's future growth.

After 16 years in management consulting, Barış Karakullukçu left to become the CEO of Mudo in 2012, one of the best-known names in Turkey's retail industry. She was tasked with leading Mudo's transition from a family business to a more institutionalized, corporate structure and ensuring a smooth handover of the company from the first to the second-generation owner. As CEO, she makes a series of difficult decisions to transform the company. She develops a new performance management system, reengineers most of the operations, and replaces 80% of the management team including several C-level executives. Two years later, the impact on operations is positive, however the company's profitability continues to struggle. Karakullukçu must decide how best to move forward. While the founder seeks rapid and opportunistic growth, Karakullukçu believes that the company should stabilize its cost structure and limit expansion plans.

Mark Verbiest, Chairman of Transpower New Zealand, initiated a performance review of Transpower's board of directors. The review, which took four months to complete, provided board members with individualized feedback on their performance, as well as information on how the overall board functioned as a team. As Verbiest considered the feedback from this process he questioned, was Transpower's board operating at optimal performance levels? Was Transpower's new CEO receiving the support she needed to fulfill her responsibilities? And, in light of the evaluation's findings, what should the board's action plan be?

P&G Canada faces ongoing global pressure to increase productivity and reduce spending. Thom Lachman, President of P&G Canada, is seemingly out of options that will make a large enough impact without harming the business, until the idea of a radical space reduction strikes him. The case follows Lachman, working closely with Country HR Manager Jane Lewis, from idea inception to the eve of the company-wide transition to a dramatically scaled-down and reorganized office space. In particular, the case provides a basis for discussion surrounding employee motivation-specifically as it is affected by the change management process and workspaces, benefits versus perks, and sorting effects. A (B) case details the outcome of the office space transition.

BandPage CEO James "J" Sider is about to receive results from BandPage's targeted advertising campaign on music streaming service Rhapsody and learn whether BandPage's strategy to improve ad click through rates and generate revenue has succeeded. BandPage, which began as a Facebook app to help musicians build professional-looking pages and convert fan "likes" into revenue, has become a major hub in the online music network. BandPage has deals with upstream and downstream music partners, from streaming services to ticket sellers to merchandise companies, and has built relationships with artists by providing a one stop shop to update current band information across most major music sites simultaneously. BandPage's most recent project has been to differentiate fans by their behavior on streaming sites in order to target super fans with high priced, exclusive and/or personalized offers from artists. At a time when tensions are high between streaming services and artists who believe that they are not being fairly compensated for the use of their music, Sider is convinced that BandPage can help streaming services drive revenue growth for artists through ticket, merchandise and exclusive offer sales. If the Rhapsody data proves that BandPage's strategy is working, the potential revenue growth for BandPage and all of its partners is massive.