個案總覽

On March 27, 2014, the new chief executive officer of Lululemon Athletica Inc., headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, has just announced the previous year's flat fourth quarter results. These unimpressive financial figures have amplified the need to address the company's damaged reputation. In 2013, the apparel brand faced a product recall and a public relations backlash after a controversial interview and botched apology by its founder, as well as the resignation of several key executive employees. A communications strategy must be devised to repair the company's reputation and regain the trust of both investors and customers.

While internationalization may present growth opportunities for Canadian small businesses, the challenges involved can be daunting. In August 2013 the founder and president of Maynooth Natural Granite was trying to decide whether he should expand his small business internationally. He was satisfied that he was able to turn his gravel pit into a well-recognized supplier of washed decorative rock in Ontario. However, the president was concerned that his success could be short-lived, as Ontario had a saturated gardening market. As he explored new international opportunities he must decide whether he would be able to replicate his success in the new markets while balancing the responsibilities of his Canadian business interests and his family life.

In January 2014, the chief executive officer of AutoTherm, a small smart-thermostat design company located in Toronto, Canada, was considering the company's future in light of the uncertainties and fast changing dynamics of the industry. As an incumbent and small engineering firm, AutoTherm's plans to sell its first product, B133, through partnership with a large electronics company had not been quite successful. Given the dire state of the company's financial resources, how can AutoTherm be rescued and go forward?

The introduction of a new class of persistent herbicides is anticipated by DuPont as a game-changer for the firm and its customers. Instead, the product creates unforeseen damage to vegetation. The mobilisation of the customer base soon extends to the general public and regulators, leading to withdrawal of the product and ultimately the sale of the DuPont business unit concerned.

Heather Day, a marketing director and brand manager, must evaluate her options for Progressive Insurance's next Snapshot product advertising campaign. Working on a limited budget, Day must select between employing television ads featuring the popular character known as Flo and continuing with the launch of advertising campaigns already in use, such as "Rate Sucker." The case places Progressive's proposed advertising campaign into a broader historical context and asks how the Snapshot product both fits into the company's current business model and affects its channel strategy. Students are presented with a myriad of exhibits that help make this authentic marketing scenario come to life.

The case presents a situation in which Merck's World Wide Licensing (WWL) division needs to make important organizational decisions to increase the speed, the breadth and the efficiency of its global licensing and partnering activities.

The case describes the merger of Air India and Indian Airlines, two national carriers. The due diligence predicted both airlines would survive and prosper amidst fierce global and domestic competition by leveraging combined assets and capital more efficiently and by building a stronger sustainable business. However, the merged entity suffered huge financial losses year after year, raising doubts about Air India's continued existence. The case highlights various reasons for the merger failure as argued by the media, analysts and experts.

On January 28, 2009, the president and CEO of the Business Development Bank of Canada is considering the impact of the minister of finance's announcement in his recent 2009 budget that the bank would offer a new financial product to help auto and heavy equipment dealers suffering through the global financial and economic crisis. A wholly owned Government of Canada Crown corporation, the bank's mandate is to help create and develop Canadian businesses through financing, subordinate financing, venture capital and consulting services, with a focus on small and medium-sized enterprises. It is expected both to complement private-sector financial institutions and to earn a rate of return on common equity greater than or equal to the government's average long-term cost of capital. Taken by surprise due to budget secrecy, the president has spent the last two days in conversations with his staff, senior government officials and his board chair. He needs a plan to quickly launch this new and completely unfamiliar line of business while navigating the complex governance and stakeholder environment that BDC faces.

Tata Motors, a leading automobile manufacturer in India, pro-actively responded to the changing competitive environment and redesigned its human capital strategy. As part of the new strategy, huge investments were made in revamping the learning and development function for Tata Motors employees. Multiple initiatives were launched to promote a learning culture, which also earned the company international recognition in the learning and development community. The challenge for Tata Motors is to evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives in terms of their relative advantages and their ability to develop a learning culture in the organization. Effectively capturing and measuring these parameters is crucial for justifying future investments in learning and development.

GREENoneTEC, the global market leader in manufacturing flat plate solar thermal collectors, was facing new challenges: the potential market entry of Chinese low-cost competitors and a substitution threat from photovoltaics. The company's founder and chief executive officer had developed GREENoneTEC from a garage start-up to the industry's leading firm; however, GREENoneTEC's research and development, production, quality, sales and distribution strategies, and diversification into other segments of the solar market would all have to be considered from new angles. How could GREENoneTEC create and maintain a sustainable competitive advantage in this changing and difficult environment?

The pharmaceutical industry was under siege, with regular price rollbacks and the powerful advance of generics frequently making news headlines. Many of the industry's leading companies, including Novartis, were cutting their sales forces, while sales representatives who still had jobs felt increasingly disengaged. David Epstein, the head of Novartis's Pharmaceuticals division, bucked the trend. He introduced a strategic initiative that aimed to fundamentally transform Novartis' selling model. Epstein committed to an aspirational goal of equipping 80% of the company's field forces worldwide with the latest iPad technology by the end of 2012, in just 15 months. A few months later, he set his teams an even more ambitious challenge: to equip 100% of the sales force by the end of 2013, which meant rolling out 25,000 new devices across the globe within a two-year period. Novartis was about to embark on a digital transformation journey, with the ultimate goal of providing the right drug to the right patient at the right time.

The compromise between capital preservation and growth has always been central to the performance of the Harvard endowment. Setting an institutional structure for effectively governing this compromise became especially important when the Harvard Management Company began operating in July of 1974. HMCs investments in venture capital, which began within a decade, created tensions around risk-return tradeoffs. HMC grappled with issues surrounding short term versus long term investment payoffs, the proportion of the portfolio that should be allocated to venture capital and the most appropriate investment form - direct investing in entrepreneurial startups, later stage businesses, or outsourcing this function and investing in funds. Such decisions would matter from the perspective of generations of students and faculty who depended on HMC maximizing returns and getting the balance of the Harvard portfolio right.

Bhagwan Mahaveer Viklang Sahayata Samiti (BMVSS) is an Indian not-for-profit organization engaged in assisting differently-abled persons by providing them with the legendary low-cost prosthesis, the Jaipur Foot, and other mobility-assisting devices, free of cost. Known for its patient-centric culture, its focus on innovation, and for developing the $20 Stanford-Jaipur knee, BMVSS has assisted over a million people in its lifetime of 44 years. As the founder, Mr. D.R. Mehta, thinks about the financial sustainability of BMVSS, he must devise a strategy that will sustain its human impact well into the future.

The American Airlines in 2011 case was developed to provide a setting for the comparative analysis of two very different business models in the U.S. domestic airline industry-the network carrier and the low cost carrier (LCC). These models offer very different value propositions. Firms allocate resources into distinctively different processes, and they earn returns using parallel but different profit models. Yet while most scholars view the LCC model as disruptive, the two different models have been able to co-exist for over forty years, albeit with substantial evolution. By unpacking how one of the major network carriers was able to evolve its model successfully for such a long time before industry structural changes necessitated a radical overhaul, the cases seek to give students insights into how the different business models were established, how competitive forces have driven their evolution, and the importance of constantly evolving and tuning a firm's model.

Eco-Motors, funded in part by Khosla Ventures, has to decide how to go to market with a new technology for internal combustion engines for automotive and industrial use. The OPOC engine has opposed pistons and is a two-stroke engine, as compared to a more traditional in-line or V-oriented 6, 8, or 12 cylinder gas or diesel engine. A two-stroke engine is cheaper to build and has higher power output than a four-stroke engine but historically has been more polluting. At present in the U.S., two-stroke engines are mostly deployed in lawnmowers and chainsaws with four-stroke engines the leaders in cars, boats, and generators. Should the company be an invention company licensing its technology; an engine designer and manufacturer selling to auto, marine, and fixed OEM companies; or a fully integrated power and transport solution? How is the value chain currently organized, what obstacles are there in going to market, and how can this company thrive with this innovation that is cleaner and cheaper than the incumbent but hard to explain and to deploy?

Jos. A. Bank Clothiers, Inc. (Jos. A. Bank), a men's apparel retail chain, made a bid to acquire its industry rival, the Men's Wearhouse. The Men's Wearhouse not only rebuffed the bid but turned around and made a counter bid to acquire Jos. A. Bank. Initially, Jos. A. Bank merely rejected the offer as inadequate but subsequently made an offer to buy Eddie Bauer, a chain selling outdoor apparel, to make itself an unattractive target for the Men's Wearhouse. Surrounding this takeover drama were a host of other actors, including Beacon Light Capital, a hedge fund that called for significant governance changes at Jos. A. Bank, and a second hedge fund, Eminence Capital, that owned stock in both Jos. A. Bank and the Men's Wearhouse, and had filed a lawsuit against Jos. A. Bank to push for the deal to go through. The chairman of Jos. A. Bank's board was faced with a critical decision regarding the acquisition offer from the Men's Wearhouse and his own company's offer to buy Eddie Bauer.

Benecol Spread, a cholesterol-lowering margarine, was a product with unusual media-planning challenges. With a narrow target group and unproven market potential, Johnson & Johnson needed to get the most "bang for the buck" from its Benecol advertising. Would a media-planning model (optimizer) requiring executives to quantify their judgment on several key inputs be helpful in this process? A spreadsheet accompanying the case allows students to weight the target groups and to choose among different advertising vehicles to form the best possible media plan.

Mother Dairy was created as a subsidiary of India's National Dairy Development Board in 1974, with a mandate to leverage the capacities of small, village-based milk producers. After a very successful run as the major supplier of Delhi's milk and dairy products, Mother Dairy is looking at an expanded national footprint as an essential strategy for growth. Milk is a commoditized product, so how can Mother Dairy create differentiation to move the consumer mindset from "mundane milk" to "magical Mother Dairy"? Is it possible to nudge out the existing state players? What would be the inventory and supply-chain challenges of a national launch, especially when the product has a very short shelf life?

The chairman and chief executive officer of China Merchants Bank (CMB) had led CMB through a decade of rapid development, implementing two transformations to save capital, develop culture and serve the financial needs of China's new businesses and consumers. Notwithstanding successes, however, CMB's capital constraint was biting and the stock market was punishing CMB's shareholders. Slower domestic growth, an uncertain international economy and increased government regulation increased the challenge facing the chairman: to set CMB's future strategy.

On the eve of the announcement of the results of India's 2009 elections, a senior research analyst with a leading brokerage and investment house in India was trying to predict the possible outcomes of the election and to gauge their impact on the stock markets. The analyst wanted to recommend some optimal options strategies to his clients, as the outcome of events such as elections always led to high volatility and consequently high risks and returns. The formation of a majority government would likely give a significant boost to the markets, while the formation of a coalition government would likely have the opposite effect. The analyst was struggling to determine the kind of strategy (aggressive or defensive) he should suggest. He was working to help his clients make exponential profits in a short span of time without the fear of losing significant money.