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Provides practical guidelines for conducting market research to explore and validate demand for entrepreneurial offering. Explains how the research objectives of entrepreneurs might differ from those relevant to managers evaluating product or service offerings to established markets. For each of several research techniques, specifies conditions under which the technique is most likely to yield valuable insights; describes how the technique should be adapted for use in an entrepreneurial context; and offers tips and cautions about applying the technique. The techniques include customer surveys, usability tests, market trials, split tests, and Net Promoter Score. Appendices discuss the use of focus groups and conjoint analysis in an entrepreneurial context. The Note is therefore suitable for use in MBA, Executive Education, Field Study, or project contexts where the focus is startups, new business development, product development, or innovation.

Provides practical guidelines for conducting customer visits to explore and validate demand for an entrepreneurial offering. Reviews conditions under which visits will yield superior insights, compared to other research methods. Describes criteria for selecting visit sites; how to plan for visits; how to conduct them most effectively; and how to debrief after visits. The note is therefore relevant to MBA, Executive Education, Field Study, or project contexts where the focus is startups, entrepreneurial management, new product development, business development, or innovation.

The Dodd-Frank Act, in response to the preceding financial crisis of 2008-09, fundamentally changed the finance industry and greatly affected its biggest players. This technical note gives an overview of the Dodd-Frank Act, the most important parts of the act (and other regulatory reform), and the affect its reforms could have on the country's largest financial institutions. It is important to note that the Dodd-Frank Act does not necessarily create hard and fast rules but often provides only guidance for regulators to proceed with rule-making activities.

In this note, several measures to evaluate the performance of a mutual fund are discussed, including Sharpe Ratio, Treynor Ratio, Jensen’s Measure, and Modigliani’s Measure. It is well known that investors can increase expected returns by assuming higher risk, and hence performance measures must incorporate the concept of risk.

This note presents a framework and tool for leading fundamental systemic change in organizations and beyond. It identifies the 10 key elements of systemic change and arrays them along the spokes of a wheel, which suggests momentum and an interconnected rather than linear process for changing systems. All spokes must be engaged and then re-engaged to keep change moving. The practical model shows how spokes are related and reinforce one another and also presents a logical order for connecting them.

This note describes location choice decisions for start-up companies within a city: for instance, what to look for in a facility and the economics of clusters.

No abstract available.

This note introduces the concept of risk or merger arbitrage. Risk arbitrage is an investing method that attempts to capitalize on announced transactions pertaining to mergers, spin-offs, takeovers, liquidations, and corporate restructuring. The arbitrageur attempts to create riskless profit by simultaneous purchases and/or sales of assets that are part of an announced transaction. In the note, we outline the basics types of deals — including cash mergers, stock mergers, cash-stock deals and embedded options — and the methods to evaluate their profitability. The note also provides information on using Bloomberg’s mergers and acquisitions database and the Bloomberg M&A Analysis function to track pending transactions in the early and mid-2000s.

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is a programming language built into Microsoft Office and other applications. In Microsoft Excel, VBA can be used to develop models, simplify repetitive tasks, and increase user-friendliness. This note is designed to provide students with a basic understanding of the building blocks of VBA programming. It is intended as an introductory reading for students with no prior experience in VBA programming.

This technical note introduces business students to the concepts of modeling discrete choice (e.g., a consumer purchasing brand A versus brand B) using logistic regression and maximum-likelihood estimation. It draws the analogy between modeling discrete choice and building a regression model with a dummy dependent variable and on an example illustrates the need for estimating the probability of a choice rather than the choice itself, which leads to a special kind of regression - logistic regression. The note presents the concepts of utility and a random utility choice model, of which the logistic regression model is the most commonly used. It shows how choice probabilities can be constructed from utilities leading to the logit model. It then presents the maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) method of fitting the logit model to the choice data. Working through a detailed example using Solver and accompanying spreadsheet model, the note gives students deep understanding for how MLE works and how it is similar and different to the standard least-squared estimation in linear regression. The note concludes by presenting the results of estimation using StatTools, a commercial statistical software. The note avoids the use of heavy mathematical machinery but still requires rudimentary knowledge of exponent and logarithmic functions, probability, and optimization with Solver, as well as familiarity with the "standard" linear regression. Applications include building of models for consumer choice, estimating price elasticity, price optimization, product versioning, product line design, and conjoint analysis.

tudents can examine how international taxation is a system of global tax rules that apply to transactions between two or more countries. They will see how, given differing tax consequences across countries, taxpayers must incorporate tax planning into their strategic decisions to avoid excessive taxation by structuring transactions to limit their additional global tax exposure while taxpayers, seeking to maximize after-tax returns, can structure transactions to chase the lowest tax consequences.

The CareerLeader business career self-assessment program provides diagnostic information in three key areas of individual differences.

This note was prepared as a practical guide for strategic analysis and action. The intent is to introduce students to the breadth of material in strategic management and to enable students to apply strategic analysis in a decision-making process. This note uses the perspective of a general manager in approaching strategic issues.

This note was prepared as a practical guide for strategic analysis and action. The intent is to introduce students to the breadth of material in strategic management and to enable students to apply strategic analysis in a decision-making process. The point of view we take on strategic issues is that of a general manager.

Moral disengagement is a process that enables people to engage in negative behaviors, from small misdeeds to great atrocities, without believing that they are causing harm or doing wrong. When Conrad Black, the fallen Canadian mogul convicted of multiple counts of fraud and obstruction of justice, claims that he "would never dream of committing a crime in a thousand years," moral disengagement is what allows him to make that claim and believe it. This note provides an overview of the eight mechanisms of moral disengagement as first described by Albert Bandura, and provides examples of how they operate in our daily lives.

This note discusses the appropriate accounting treatment for stock-based compensation under International Financial Reporting Standards and briefly examines the differences relative to Accounting Standards for Private Enterprises. Stock options and restricted stock are discussed specifically, with an example of each provided. The impact of vesting conditions is detailed, including service conditions, market performance conditions, and non-market performance conditions. Further, the note addresses the accounting significance of cash-settled versus share-settled stock-based compensation. A brief discussion of disclosure requirements and income tax considerations is also provided. Finally, the note gives background on the recent developments of stock option backdating and say-on-pay requirements.

In this note, the author discusses how research shows that consistent growth companies engage in growth experiments or tests to gather better data to be used in determining which growth ideas are worth investing in. A Learning Launch is described as a process that can be used to do those growth experiments. Students will be shown that by doing Learning Launches, a business can evaluate many growth ideas quickly and cheaply, allowing it to gain better evidence to winnow down a multitude of ideas into a smaller group of ideas that appear to be more viable based on information learned.

This technical note is the fourth in a series focusing on business growth. It addresses how to create a diversified Growth Portfolio based on the Learning Launch experiments. The note covers how growth requires several key elements-the right individuals and organizational mindsets, the right internal enabling system, and the right processes, which include experimental learning and creating and managing Growth Portfolios.