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The Telemonitoring at Visiting Nurse Health System case presents one home healthcare organization's efforts to use telemonitoring to improve the quality of care provided to at-risk patients who were discharged from hospitals and needed home care. After two years of using the Health Buddy system for telemonitoring at-risk patients, Mark Oshnock, President of Visiting Nurse Health System (VNHS) must decide whether to invest in buying more Health Buddy units. While Oshnock believed that there were real benefits associated with telemonitoring, he was having difficulty quantifying those benefits and he was concerned about VNHS' ability to continue investing resources in telemonitoring given the realities of the health care reimbursement environment in which they operated. While several studies had demonstrated the benefits of telemonitoring, Oshnock felt that the long-term benefits accruing to the health system as a whole were not immediately quantifiable or visible to the hospitals and insurance companies. Without external support for the telemonitoring initiative from insurance companies, it would be difficult for VNHS to keep up the momentum and ramp up telemonitoring through additional purchases of Health Buddy units. From a purely financial standpoint, such an investment would be very difficult for VNHS to justify. The irony was that with the new regulatory pressures and increased focus on preventative healthcare, telemonitoring pointed to an effective tool in managing and reducing acute care hospitalizations. However, balancing these benefits against limited financial support from other key players in the health care system would be challenging.

GoodGuide, a high-technology start-up company, founded by University of California Professor at Berkeley Dara O'Rourke is at a critical junction. The venture capital funded company has yet to find the business model to monetize a very promising product that provides consumers and manufacturers with information about the sustainability of a product.

The winter of 2009 posed challenges to Cengage Learning, a highly levered provider of textbooks and professional materials that had been carved out of Thomson-Reuters through a 2007 LBO. The recession had not only weakened its pricing power, but its benchmark bonds had plunged to a level that in ordinary years would indicate a distressed value. Yet paired with these difficulties came an opportunity to reduce debt amid dislocations in the high yield and leveraged loan markets. In this case students study materials such as Cengage's capital structure and debt recovery analysis to create a pitchbook recommending whether the company should pursue debt repurchases, a debt-for-debt exchange, or maintain its current position.

The owner of a large hardware, furniture and building centre faced a dilemma regarding how to manage the upcoming wage review process. After two consecutive years of frozen wages, employees were impatient for financial progress, but there was no spare money in the budget. It was possible to pump savings from upcoming process improvement initiatives into wage increases. However, the owner had limited motivation to channel hard-won funds to underperforming employees. On the other hand, he was eager to reward the people who added value. A plan that rewarded only some employees could result in an angry backlash. He had to decide whether he wanted to divert the savings into compensation, and if so, he needed an effective distribution plan.

This case showcases key decisions in promoting the re-launch of Brisk, a ready-to-drink iced tea by Pepsi-Lipton. The decisions are: creative, media and metrics selection. It also deals with budget allocation to traditional (Super Bowl, television) and new (viral ads and social) media.

Hassina Sherjan was born in Afghanistan but grew up and was educated in the United States. A trip to Afghanistan when she was an adult inspired her to move back to her home country with two missions. The first was to educate young women through a non-profit organization she started called Aid Afghanistan for Education and a for-profit company, Boumi, that manufactures and distributes products for the home such as curtains, cushion covers, tea cozies, coasters, bedclothes, and bathroom accessories. The mission of Boumi is to create jobs in Afghanistan, especially for women, based on traditional Afghani designs and using only locally grown cotton. Sherjan wants to grow Boumi so that it can be a substantial, if not major, funding source for Aid Afghanistan for Education. In order to grow Boumi, Sherjan must confront a number of challenges including funding, finding and managing skilled workers, and getting distribution for Boumi products in major markets such as Europe and the United States.

The case describes KKR's Green Portfolio Program, one of the firm's environmental initiatives, which has achieved $160 million in cost savings. While pleased with its progress in achieving greater energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions, the firm is looking for other ways to expand its sustainability initiatives, such as in its supply chain and incorporating sustainability into its due diligence and deal making processes.

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. The case highlights the key role of performance metrics in building a flexible system that could be refined through experimentation and testing, steadily improving performance with the incorporation of new algorithmic ideas and new data sources. The case then delves extensively into the analysis of the "Toronto" failure and why the answer that Watson produced was a rational product of a sound strategy. This leaves students to judge the generality of the strategy and its applicability to important business problems.

No abstract available.

West Ham United are an English football team that competed to win the right to move their games to play in the stadium being constructed for the 2012 London Olympics. They secured financial support from the local government and the backing of the U.K. athletics. West Ham's rival bidder, Tottenham Hotspurs, presented a strong business case for the move and required no public support. West Ham despite this, won the right to move. The case focuses on ensuring fan acceptance of the move.

An industry adage held that "there are two types of rental car companies: those that lose money and Enterprise." The company that would become Enterprise Rent-A-Car was started in 1957 in St. Louis, Missouri, by Jack Taylor. Taylor set up Enterprise offices in neighborhoods rather than at airports because he believed that Americans would welcome a local option for renting cars when their own vehicles were being repaired. In 2010 Enterprise had more than 6,000 rental locations in the United States and a fleet of 850,000 cars in service. Its parent, Enterprise Holdings (comprising Enterprise, National, and Alamo brands) accounted for nearly half of the car rental market and was more than twice the size of Hertz, the number two competitor. Enterprise's competitive advantage was the result of the combination of its practices in hiring, training, compensation, organization, customer service, IT, and fleet management, among others.

The manager of the Sony VAIO personal computer in China has been given two segmentation studies. One study is country-specific and product-specific. The other is a global segmentation study, which covers all regions and all of Sony's many consumer electronics. Which segmentation study should the manager rely on-or is there a way to rely on both? After deciding which study is best, which consumer should the manager target, and with what position?

This is part of a case series. This case describes the strategic transformation of DESSO, a Dutch manufacturer of carpet tiles and flooring solutions. The first part of the case describes the difficult situation in which the company found itself in the early 2000s, following a series of changes in ownership. It focuses on the strategic vision developed by Stef Kranendijk, the company's new CEO, as he takes over the company in 2007. An important element of this vision is to make sustainability a key driver of DESSO's innovation strategy. The case highlights the process that led DESSO to consider a Cradle to Cradle(R) approach as well as the potential issues this new orientation raised for important stakeholders, including employees, board members, customers and suppliers. The second part of the case provides some updates as to DESSO's situation in 2010. It describes the short-term results of Kranendijk's strategic vision and how it transformed DESSO's business model. It also gives details on the implementation of the new strategy and the challenges still ahead.

The case describes Nokia's spectacular rise and fall, shedding light on the combination of external factors and internal decisions that resulted in the company's handset business being sold to Microsoft in 2010. During the successful period of growth (roughly 1990 through to 2006), Nokia's focus on design and functionality gained it a worldwide reputation. It was acknowledged as the first smartphone manufacturer. Through the early-mid 2000s it was the undisputed leader in the global mobile phone business. The case traces the first signs of trouble and the company's subsequent decline over the period 2005 to 2010. Pressure in the early 2000s from low-end competitors led to early signs of problems. Then of course the game changed in 2007 with Apple's iPhone and a year later with phones powered by Google's Android operating system from HTC, Samsung and others. Nokia was initially dismissive of these new offerings but its proprietary OS, Symbian, was ageing badly and its App store (Ovi) was no match for Apple's. In September 2010 it was announced that American Stephen Elop, formerly of Microsoft, would become CEO. Not long afterwards a partnership with Microsoft was signed which subsequently led to Nokia's handset business being sold to Microsoft.

This case examines medication administration processes and technologies on a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Taking the point of view of a hospital's VP of Administration, the case also gives students an opportunity to consider the perspectives of the CIO and Medical Director. It describes tragedies in which infants died after being inadvertently overdosed with blood thinners (poor information quality and poor process quality were implicated in these tragedies), and briefly introduces students to several U.S. national initiatives that aim to improve clinical processes and outcomes.

The transition of a company from father to son can often lead to new strategic directions for a company. New leaders have to face issues carried over from the past and confront new challenges facing the business. One of the most fundamental issues 2nd generation leaders have to deal with is the evaluation of new opportunities. Which ones are feasible, which ones are not, and how do these opportunities impact the business, both financially and in terms of its overall strategic position? This case focuses on a rather unique business - an urban ferry and tour boat operator - as its new CEO evaluates several options for reversing a downward trend in profitability. Besides quantitative analysis, what qualitative factors have to be considered in choosing the best path forward? Students are given the opportunity to develop an analytic model based on guidelines available in the Instructor's Manual. The case also allows students to consider stakeholder impacts for several possible strategies.

The case describes Information Technology at Cirque du Soleil in 2000, when a new Chief Information Officer was hired. The main challenge of the CIO was to find out how IT could best serve the Cirque. She was convinced that to meet this challenge, she had to develop an IT strategic vision that would be accepted by the top management of Cirque du Soleil, to deploy a highly professional IT group and increase the credibility of IT among the firm's leaders.

Liu Peijin is the president of Almond China, a subsidiary of the German company Almond Chemical. Almond China's joint venture with Chongqing No. 2 Chemical Company, which is currently failing to thrive, involves a clash of views regarding business ethics. The Chongqing executives are chafing under European standards that preclude gifts and commissions-incentives routinely employed by Almond's competitors. And a huge sale for the joint venture may be at stake. But Liu is thinking of Almond's reputation and its future business dealings in China. Commentaries by Xu Shuibo, the CEO of TNT Mainland China's subsidiary TNT Hoau, and Zhang Tianbing, the global vice president and the director of the China Research Center at A.T. Kearney.

Liu Peijin is the president of Almond China, a subsidiary of the German company Almond Chemical. Almond China's joint venture with Chongqing No. 2 Chemical Company, which is currently failing to thrive, involves a clash of views regarding business ethics. The Chongqing executives are chafing under European standards that preclude gifts and commissions-incentives routinely employed by Almond's competitors. And a huge sale for the joint venture may be at stake. But Liu is thinking of Almond's reputation and its future business dealings in China. Commentaries by Xu Shuibo, the CEO of TNT Mainland China's subsidiary TNT Hoau, and Zhang Tianbing, the global vice president and the director of the China Research Center at A.T. Kearney.

Liu Peijin is the president of Almond China, a subsidiary of the German company Almond Chemical. Almond China's joint venture with Chongqing No. 2 Chemical Company, which is currently failing to thrive, involves a clash of views regarding business ethics. The Chongqing executives are chafing under European standards that preclude gifts and commissions-incentives routinely employed by Almond's competitors. And a huge sale for the joint venture may be at stake. But Liu is thinking of Almond's reputation and its future business dealings in China. Commentaries by Xu Shuibo, the CEO of TNT Mainland China's subsidiary TNT Hoau, and Zhang Tianbing, the global vice president and the director of the China Research Center at A.T. Kearney.