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Clifford Chance, LLP, a global law firm headquartered in London, needs to make a decision whether to stay in the central business district of London or move to a redeveloped business park at Canary Wharf, 3 miles outside of central London. Peter Charleton, head of the London Office, is proposing to move to Canary Wharf and building a single, landmark headquarters with all the necessary amenities and premium fit-outs that is appropriate for an elite law firm. The tension surrounding the case is the choice to move from the hub of commerce in central London to a relatively obscure site whose owners (Olympia & York) have a history of financial bankruptcy. What business elements (clients, operations, employees, etc.) should they consider if they move the firm and how much relative weight do they place on each element? How do they frame the advantages and disadvantages between central London and Canary Wharf? What type of items should they program into the new facility (cellular or open floor plans, ceiling heights, common space, dining facilities, gymnasiums, etc.)? How should they prioritize these items?

In 2006, Jiang Wei, CFO of China Resources Corporation, was seeking to implement a variety of new management control systems in a complex diversified corporation during a period of rapid economic expansion in mainland China. Instilling efficiency, productivity, management, and control into what had been a traditional state-owned enterprise posed challenges on many fronts. The case enables a discussion of the various ways in which balanced scorecards and strategy maps can be integrated with traditional management control systems to govern strategy implementation in a diversified corporation. Additionally, it allows students to appreciate the benefits and challenges of using highly formal performance management systems in the face of strategic uncertainty.

Barilla, the world's largest pasta company, has introduced a new high-quality, high-priced product line that features a range of authentic Italian food products sourced from artisan producers. Management believes the line will appeal to consumers seeking healthier foods and convenience, and will help extend Barilla's brand identification beyond pasta. However, the new line is a bold departure from Barilla's core competencies of high-volume production and sales of fast moving, low-priced goods. Provides an opportunity to discuss trends in consumer eating habits, supply chains for locally-produced goods, and changes in retail formats. In addition, provides an opportunity to discuss the difference in investment philosophy between a family-owned company and a publicly-traded company.

Wipro Technologies, a rapidly growing software services firm based in India, decided to use principles from the Toyota Production System (also known as lean) to fundamentally change their operating model. Looks at why Wipro chose to use lean and how they went about implementing it in a novel context such as this. Provides detail of Wipro's internal and external environment, which was necessitating the change (shift from delivering a low-cost product to providing a business solution). Also, explores whether this new approach can lead to a substantial competitive advantage.

RKS has designed a revolutionary electric guitar and needs to decide how to best market their innovation. The iconic status of existing electric guitars, and the lack of any recent radical innovations in the category, pose challenges in securing consumer adoption. If the company goes it alone, it needs to determine the type of consumer most likely to adopt the new product, taking into account the novel aspects of the RKS guitar. Alternatively, the company could find a marketing partner or license its novel design to a bigger player. Rich in descriptions of consumer behavior that enable a discussion of the process that would lead consumers to purchase a new product. Also, outlines the company's design philosophy, which was developed to help its designers get into the mind of the consumer.

TH Lee, a leading private equity firm, needs to decide whether to commit to the acquisition of AOL Time Warner's music group, and whether to commit the entire amount needed, $1.4 billion. The music industry has suffered greatly in recent years, largely as a result of music piracy.

Ben Walter is thinking of purchasing Butler Lumber and needs to decide how he would run the business and how much to pay for it.

In July 2006, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa wondered how he could further enhance the success and visibility of his animation production company headquartered in Tokyo, Production I.G. For the year ended May 2006, Production I.G. had sales of 5,439 million yen ($47.3 million), operating profit of 404 million yen ($3.5 million), and 184 employees. Its recent film Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2 competed at Cannes Film Festival in 2004, and the company had gone public in December 2005. These were no small accomplishments for a Japanese animation production company. Indeed, despite the global success of Japanese animation, the industry was fragmented with about 430 animation production companies and dominated by distributors--TV stations, movie distributors, DVD distributors and advertising agencies, which held the lion's share of content copyrights. Distributors controlled the funding and contracted the production out to animation production companies. As a result, most of the latter were small companies laboring in obscurity. As such, no Japanese animation production company came even close to the size of Walt Disney Co.: in 2005 Disney had revenues of $32 billion, whereas Toei Animation, the largest animation production company in Japan, had revenue of only 21 billion yen ($175 million). To Ishikawa's mind, one of the key decisions concerned the mix of the "contents garden" that his company should aspire to. Should he increase the share of animation productions based on manga (comics and print cartoons) relative to original-productions (i.e. animation stories created entirely by Production I.G.)?

The transfer of perinatal services at St. Joseph's Health Care Centre (SJHC) to the Women's and Children's Services at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC), included the relocation of clinical programs, 500 staff and about 40 physicians. SJHC's perinatal program had been among the hospital's premier programs and was recognized as a world-class tertiary perinatal program for more than 30 years. The hospital's comprehensive care for newborns included providing care for very sick infants and extremely premature babies. The move to LHSC was a source of much concern to key stakeholders, leading scientists and specialists with much negative impact on recruitment, retention and staff morale. The vice-president, acute and ambulatory care at SJHC and the vice-president, women and children's clinical business unit at LHSC were appointed to help prepare leaders throughout all stages of the restructuring. On their agenda were the following issues: culture, safety procedures, team conflict, excessive turnover, structure, leadership orientation, among others. Where should they start; and how could they get physicians, patient care leaders and staff to think past six months, given that there are numerous issues that keep them busy on a daily, weekly and monthly basis?

Part of a 3-case series in which students get to see the unfolding of due diligence on private equity (buy out) deal. In this, the A case, the deal team has negotiated a letter of intent with FleetCor, a firm that operates a fuel payment network for vehicle fleets. Presents the basic investment thesis and analysis that the team has done to get to this stage. Asks students to not only come to a point of view on whether this looks like a good opportunity at the price and financial structure proposed, but what due diligence needs to be done prior to actually writing the check.

Provides a detailed description of the way in which several improvements and innovations in clinical care were arrived at. Describes individual insights, how these were evaluated and validated, and how they were translated into improved medical practices. The changes in medical care include improvements in primary care, intensive care, and inpatient ward care. Detailed descriptions of each innovation are provided, along with a description of the processes of innovation, generation, and capture. It relates closely to Intermountain (A), which describes the organizational structure Intermountain has put in place to support these processes.

As a child, Al Fuller had seen his working-class, African-American neighborhood disintegrate as factory jobs moved away. He resolved to help inner-city communities do better when he grew up. Some years later, as an accomplished university graduate with several years manufacturing experience, he embarked on a scheme to take over and revitalize first one, then another, corrugated box plant. These plants were plagued by inefficiency, poor quality control, and tense labor relations. Using his understanding of inner-city life, Fuller employed discipline-based strategies to empower his employees and turn the failing plants into engines of community revitalization.

In late June 1987, Mr. Asad Ali, proprietor of Regal Electrogas, was confronted with an important decision regarding the pricing of his company's desert coolers. The market price for this product had risen by approximately 5% in the wake of new taxes introduced in India's national budget, which was announced two weeks earlier. However, the taxes had recently been rescinded in response to public pressure following the announcement. Given this backlash, Asad wondered whether he should reduce his prices immediately.

In the early 1980s, Missouri's director of early childhood education launched a novel parent education pilot project designed to increase children's kindergarten readiness and support family wellbeing by sending specially trained educators on monthly home visits to help parents foster their babies' early development. By 1985, when an evaluation touted strong results for the pilot, the Missouri legislature already had made the program-dubbed Parents as Teachers-a mandatory offering of school districts statewide. Soon after, the St. Louis-based Parents as Teachers National Center, formed to oversee the state program and respond to outside inquiries, became an independent nonprofit. From the start, the National Center staff built quality controls into program design and the training of parent educators while simultaneously embracing rapid growth; by 1999 Parents as Teachers programs served more than 500,000 children in the US and six foreign countries. But despite such quality control efforts, the flexibility and adaptability that aided fast replication left the National Center with no effective way to manage or monitor the more than 2,000 sites worldwide. As a result, the National Center was forced to take a hard look at its replication model, its oversight role, and at how the center could better monitor and improve program quality. HKS Case Number 1849.0

ForeFront Wood Products produces high-quality wooden door sets. The company faces capacity constraints and inefficiencies resulting from its processes and culture. As a consequence, it struggles to be profitable. ForeFront's parent company, ForeFront Holdings, plans an initial public offering in 2007. It has recently hired a new operations manager with the mandate to turn the factory around. As the operations manager begins his job he tours the manufacturing facilities to gather information on production processes and factors affecting capacity, cost, and conformance. Describes the firm's manufacturing and managerial processes. Many issues are covered, including high costs, low yields, unreported defects, and equipment that fails to operate near its rated capacity. Organizational and change management challenges, including high employee turnover, excessive use of overtime, and failure of supervisors to observe or report employee errors are also described.

Chateau Margaux, luxury brand or connoisseur brand? Although France is awash with unsold wine, demand has never been stronger for the very finest Bordeaux. How should Margaux sustain and grow its business? The Chateau management team is wondering if it can take more control of distribution instead of leaving it to the Bordeaux wine merchants. Also, can the Chateau build marketing and sales capabilities on its own? Who is the target market, wine connoisseurs or the newly rich? Corinne Mentzelopoulous, who took over the estate from her father in 1980, wonders whether a new lower-priced wine should be added to the portfolio.

Gianna Angelopoulous-Daskalaki led the bidding organization that secured the 2004 Olympics for Athens and then later the preparations for those Games. Tracks her leadership style and how she and her team won the bid. After substantial planning problems threatened to cost Greece the Olympics, Angelopoulos was asked to take over the preparations, with only 4 of the 7 years remaining. Ends with the question of what she needs to consider in making the decision to take over the Games' preparations, what role she should play, and where she should start.

Describes the formation and rapid growth of a drug testing company. The company needs to decide whether to enter the painkiller testing market, in addition to growing its drug treatment center business.

Describes ongoing systemic reform efforts in the Chicago Public Schools. Introduces the concept of "differentiation and integration," a managerial approach emerging in public school systems that couples "differentiated" treatment and support for individual schools with efforts to "integrate" the work of all schools and the district's central offices around a coherent improvement strategy. Participants have an opportunity to diagnose the circumstances in the 617-school district that drive CPS leadership to manage through differentiation and integration in order to improve student and school performance at scale. The discussion will enable participants to evaluate the district's actions to date; analyze key roles, structures, and functions that facilitate effective differentiation and integration; and identify major challenges to strategy execution.

Established in the late 1960s, Interplast was the first international humanitarian organization to send American medical professionals overseas to provide free reconstructive surgery to children and adults in developing countries. Over the next 30 years, Interplast grew from an informal volunteer-led effort into a professional organization. By 2000, Interplast had over 2500 volunteers, had sponsored trips to 30 countries, and performed over 3000 surgeries each year. This case is intended to be used a background reading for the companion videocase, "The Evolution of Interplast," which details the organization's growth and the debates that arose as it began to shift its focus from direct service (sending surgeons and other medical professionals overseas provide reconstructive surgery) to education, (investing in training foreign doctors) and empowerment (providing resources and infrastructure) so that these local professionals could serve their own population. The videocase chronicles the debate over this shift as well as related policy decisions, raising issues of organizational evolution, strategic change, and nonprofit governance.