個案總覽

This case is the first part of a two-part series on Innova Technology, a technology start-up company based in Singapore. The two cases focus on: Case (A) - Developing, producing and marketing a product innovation Case (B) - Growth strategies for a young technology company The case is set in May 2012, and begins with the protagonist, Rick Tan, chief executive officer of Innova Technology Private Limited, contemplating what his company's go-to-market strategy should be. Tan and his business partner, Jonathan Lim, who is also the Chief Technology Officer for Innova Technology, developed PROTAG, a new anti-loss device, using Bluetooth technology. The device, which is about the size of two credit cards stacked together, is synched to a mobile phone and can be attached to valuable personal belongings such as keys, wallets, handbags, passports and even phones. If the valuable item were to be separated from the person by more than a certain distance, the device would set off an alarm alerting the owner of its potential loss. Tan and Lim are two young entrepreneurs who set up Innova Technology in January 2011 as a technology start-up under the auspices of Singapore Management University's Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Tan, the partner with the business and finance skills, focused on developing a sound business plan and raising funds for their product. Lim, the technology guru, channelled his efforts to fine-tune the technology and develop a design with unique functionality. After extensive market research and encouraging results from beta test sales using the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo, Tan had confidence in his product. Yet, he was keenly aware that a great product could fall flat in the market if it was not backed by a well-designed marketing strategy. The partners had invested in manufacturing and 5,000 pieces of PROTAG had already been shipped out from the factory.

The six vignettes in this case present situations that call for the application of one of the six leadership styles: coercive, pacesetting, authoritative, affiliative, democratic, and coaching. The vignettes, each demonstrating a correct, incorrect, or possible use of a particular style, can be used in class for the purpose of developing students' leadership style, diagnostic skills, as a group discussion material, or as test material for post-class examination. Each of the vignettes is a generalized experience story based on examples shared by participants in executive education programs run over the course of the author's eight years of teaching the leadership styles model as presented by Goleman (2000) at a leading European business school. The vignettes have been tested within the context of MBA and executive MBA programs, and executive education courses for high potentials, middle managers, and board level executives.

In 2008 Joe Justice saw the announcement for the Progressive Insurance X Prize-a $10 million prize aimed at the (im)possibility to build a 100 miles per gallon (mpg) car to road-legal safety specifications. Joe persuaded his wife to use their college grad savings of $5,000 to pay the registration fee. He started the work alone but blogged about what he was doing and what he was learning. Through social networking tools like Facebook and WordPress bloggers who shared his interest learned about his project. Some of these people joined Joe in his endeavor to tackle the challenge. Only three months later, Wikispeed had been formed. It counted 44 members in four countries, and had a functioning prototype which was entered in the X Prize competition. In 2010 they came in 10th in the mainstream class, outrunning more than one hundred other cars from well-funded companies and universities around the world. Following the press reaction to the success of team Wikispeed in 2011 they were invited to showcase their concept car at the Detroit auto show, the largest motor show in the world. Their car, the SGT01, was put on display in Cobo Hall right next to Ford and Chevrolet. Wikispeed was contacted by more than a hundred people who were interested in joining the team as well as in ordering the prototype. By 2013, more than five hundred people had joined team Wikispeed. They had also sold nine prototypes. The immediate issue of the case study is the decision whether the team should use a pair of existing axles, cut and welded them together to the right length for the next iteration of their prototype or develop their own pair of axles from scratch. More fundamentally, this case study looks at the way team Wikispeed used tools from the world of software development, such as modularity, which they call object-oriented architecture, scrum, and extreme manufacturing (XM) to organize their innovation efforts.

In mid-2008, the senior vice-president of Global Supply Chain at Elizabeth Arden in New York City was troubled with the challenges that lay before him. He had been hired to make sweeping changes to the company's management of its supply chain, and he had already made a significant impact in forecasting, inventory control and service performance. His next move would require a radical consolidation of suppliers, make dramatic changes to inventory management, have a far-reaching impact on product development and require major lead time reductions. Given such a disruptive move, would current suppliers be able to meet expectations? Could the company's current employees keep up with the pace of change expected? How many would have to be let go, and what would this do the morale of the workforce? Were significant results to shareholders really achievable? How much money would be saved, where would the savings come from and when would they be realized? The senior vice-president was determined to execute the re-engineering in a manner that would best address all these concerns.

On September 26, 2013, the chief executive officer of the world-leading pasta manufacturer, the Barilla Group, was challenged with a precarious situation. A day earlier, during an interview on an Italian radio show, the company chairman made a series of anti-gay remarks when asked why the company did not feature advertisements with gay families. Social media exploded with negative comments and numerous equality themed pictures creatively featuring pasta. U.S. late night television shows mocked the company, and various equality rights organizations around the world called for a boycott of its products. Competitors also issued statements and ads extolling their respect for diversity. Everyone - customers, news media, competitors and organizations supporting diversity - were looking for an explanation. The company desperately needed to devise a strategy to publicly respond and avoid the negative long-term consequences of a damaged brand name, decreased market share and ultimately lost revenues.

Advantage Food & Beverage (AF&B), a sales and service vending machine company, has added an Avanti kiosk division and hired a sales representative to devote all their time to selling the kiosk service to businesses within a specific geographic market. In the first year of the kiosk operation, AF&B hired and fired three sales representatives while acquiring seven Avanti customers. A management review uncovered issues with the selling process and the lack of presentations to prospective customers. AF&B's owner pondered the relationship between the personal selling process and AF&B's current compensation approach for sales representatives. How could AF&B's compensation approach be changed to meet senior management's new emphasis on presentations, and how would the various options impact AF&B's profit and loss statement?

On June 27, 2012, the storied British bank Barclays admitted that it repeatedly attempted to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) over a four-year period from 2005-2009. In its settlement, Barclays agreed to pay $453 million in fines and penalties to bank regulators in the U.K. and U.S. The media decried Barclays' rate-rigging efforts as "the scandal of all scandals" and bemoaned the spread of "Wall Street sleaze." By late 2012, dozens of other banks did indeed face LIBOR-rigging inquiries by regulators in various countries. This case delves into the scandal, exploring how the rate-rigging worked, who knew what when, and how the blame was laid, allowing students to explore the social and situational pressures involved in the rigging of the LIBOR.

Over the past decade or so, Karnataka Soaps and Detergents Ltd (KS&DL) - an Indian public sector enterprise - has observed a significant fall in its signature product's brand image, Mysore Sandalwood. The company now aims to rebuild its overall image by launching their new, Mysore Sandals Millennium, soap in January 2012. Millennium is a super-premium luxury soap offering that has taken three years of research and development and is targeted at the top-end consumer segment. It is priced at US$12.60 for a bar - making it the most expensive Indian soap on the market - where the premium range is available for as low as US$0.35 a bar. Will KS&DL succeed in marketing a product priced at a level that makes it unaffordable to most Indians? How can the company best go about executing and communicating its strategy to make this launch a success?

Four GlaxoSmithKline employees were accused of bribing Chinese health care workers to prescribe the company's drugs. The accusations brought to light the questionable incentive structures of the Chinese health care system and the pressure on companies to adhere to local customs while still observing local laws.

Endeavor Global was a nonprofit that for 15 years had worked to nurture entrepreneurship in emerging markets by selecting local high-impact entrepreneurs for mentoring and aid in scaling up their businesses from committed local business leaders. In summer 2012, Endeavor received an invitation to replicate its model in Miami, Florida, and the Endeavor board was meeting to debate the value of such a move. At issue were questions of organizational mission and the relevance of Miami, as well as branding, funding, and focus. The invitation had come in the midst of a major expansion effort by Endeavor into new emerging markets and threatened to disrupt those efforts and tax a new hybrid funding model which Endeavor was implementing. Founder Linda Rottenberg with the support of her board must determine the implications of possibly opening in Miami on Endeavor's resources and mission? How could Rottenberg justify to overseas affiliates a choice to invest in a first-world city?

The fiduciary duties of loyalty and care, the corporate opportunity doctrine and the business judgment rule are introduced in the context of three vignettes drawn from decided cases that explore: a classic test of loyalty when one partner elects to take advantage of an opportunity the partnership may also be able to pursue (Meinhard v. Salmon); the care and procedure directors should employ when approving a merger or sale of the company (Smith v. Van Gorkom); and the board's role and process in hiring, firing and severance decisions (Ovitz at Disney).

In January 2013, the CEO of the Russian automotive company Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ) was pleased with the results of the recently implemented changes to the company's product-market strategy and the related organizational processes. He believed that this series of radical changes could help GAZ further cement its domestic market leadership position and at the same time allow it to complete a dramatic turnaround that had resulted in the company's most profitable year ever. He was now planning the launch of the third generation all-new Gazelle Next light transport truck, which he believed would take the company to a new level of competitiveness and revenue growth in Russia, and even more importantly, in other emerging markets.

La Presse, a French language newspaper in Montreal and the largest French language newspaper in North America, published an article summarizing the judgment of a trademark infringement case involving Lassonde Industries, a large Quebec conglomerate with sales of almost Cdn$760 million, and Olivia's Oasis, a small Quebec manufacturer of health and beauty products with sales of Cdn$250,000. Initially, Olivia's Oasis had successfully defended itself and it was awarded damages and costs by the courts. However, Lassonde appealed, which resulted in Olivia's Oasis having to pay its own legal costs - a judgment that could bankrupt the small company. By the end of the day, thousands of readers and members of the public had reacted via social media with such vehemence that Lassonde felt pressured to pay Olivia's Oasis' costs. The issues are related to the management of a company's reputation and the potential impact of negative public reaction in the long term.

Ford Motor Co. develops and commercializes a green technology that replaces a traditional and scarce resource with an abundant bio-material. The pilot project becomes hugely successful, and, within the company, the idea of expanding the use of bio-material gains considerable momentum, but implementation and customer acceptance prove to be a challenge. Two members from the company's research and engineering division work together to overcome these obstacles and move the company toward a vision of sustainability that involves more than just fuel economy and cost reduction.

This case is used in Darden's "Digital Marketing" course elective. It explores the experience of a niche search firm whose founder attributed her ability to open her recruiting firm to LinkedIn and the new model of recruiting it created. LinkedIn Corporation had been one of the most successful companies in the digital media space, with more than 4,000 employees and a market capitalization of over $25.5 billion in August 2013. But few people knew how LinkedIn had grown and how it had become profitable. LinkedIn had multiple unique aspects to explore: its focus on professional--not simply personal--social interaction, the company's B2B components, and also its marketing positioning from user experience to targeting and growth strategy.

A common and critical dilemma confronting enterprises today is how to ensure that they realize value from their large-scale investments in information technology (IT) and IT-enabled change. IT-enabled investments can bring huge rewards, but only with the right governance and management processes and full engagement from all management levels. This teaching case is about the tough but rewarding journey of the Dutch airline company KLM in improving the governance of IT, moving from managing the cost of IT towards managing the business value of IT. Although KLM still has challenges ahead, the changes in structures, processes and relational mechanisms have helped to restore trust between the business and the IT organization, and lowered business operating costs through a more rigorous selection and portfolio management process. The changes have also increased the resources allocated to IT innovation. Although KLM faced some unique challenges as it began the journey to transform its enterprise governance of IT, the realization of greater business value from today's significant and increasingly complex investments in IT is a concern for all businesses. We therefore believe that the practices and lessons learned at KLM can be applied by other organizations as they seek to more fully engage their own business unit managers in IT investment decision making and in accountability for realizing business value.

The case takes us back to 2009, a year of great turmoil and the start of a transformation journey for BARCO, a global visualisation solutions company. Stefaan Kindekens, newly appointed corporate CIO, is preparing the new IT strategy per request of the board of directors. At the heart of the proposal are the introduction of a new IT operating model and the replacement of the legacy systems landscape. The case allows for discussions about business and IT alignment, IT strategy, and IT governance.

This case study invites students to discuss strategic value creation through the use of information technology (IT). It raises issues of business model innovation, IT strategy, digital platforms, ecosystems, business-IT alignment, and leadership. The key character in the case is the Chief Information Officer, Paul Danneels, who is ready to drive the strategic transformation of the VDAB, the Flemish Employment Agency, from a service provider to a labor market conductor. Starting from a firm understanding of the VDAB's strategic choices, students should be able to discuss the positioning and role of the IT department as well as its views on value delivery.

This case describes the effective information technology (IT) business alignment considerations that led to the successful implementation of a telecommunication platform designed to efficiently route cell phone calls in a financial institution in Chile. The company had several branches throughout the country, including its headquarters in Santiago. This initiative was part of a Technology Cost Savings strategy generated in response to the 2008 crisis. The idea behind it was to align internal business leaders with the IT team in order to optimize these costs, realizing a more efficient telecommunication platform, and to work together, as several cost-reducing initiatives were being executed at the same time. Achievements were thoroughly reviewed by the board of directors, and thus pressure to clean up the house was high. At that time, when users called a cellular phone from a landline, the call was charged using a fee much higher than a mobile company rate. The goal of the project was naturally to optimize these charges. An automatic call routing was designed, discussed and executed with the participation of the business leaders, based on each branch's demand and projected growth. The case relates the project lifecycle: the mistakes made at the beginning, the initial platform tests and bottlenecks, the rejection and frustration of the business, and a posterior crisis control and recovery phase. IT alignment and sponsorship from the directors were crucial, as there was no way back. All these factors, plus the additional IT activities competing for business attention, made this project both a challenging and learning experience.

Local businesses' experiences with using Groupon to promote themselves ran the gamut of roaring success to absolute failure. Why is there such a large range in outcomes for firms that used daily deal sites such as Groupon? This case examines the effectiveness of online daily deal sites from the point of view of local businesses.