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Being in charge of cleaning up the March 24, 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill accident, meant that Otto Harrison, the general manager of Exxon International Alaskan Operations, was there when the storm clouds over the event were thick. Despite years of learning, wisdom, growth, and dealing with success and failure, Harrison had never faced a challenge of this magnitude. He was sure his experiences would be utilized in full force. The questions he thought about included whether three different governing bodies, the state of Alaska, the federal government, and Exxon, a publicly held corporation, could work together toward a common goal-to leave few signs of the biggest oil spill ever to occur in North America. What type of help was most needed now? Would Exxon's plan satisfy the numerous stakeholders? How would the plan be viewed publicly? What impact would the cleanup plan have on Exxon's business? In the (A) case, the Exxon Valdez accident and immediate challenges are described so students can put themselves in Harrison's place to lead through the crisis. The (B) case (epilogue) outlines more problems and includes actions taken to try to clean up the oil as quickly and effectively as they could. The tragedy changed the oil industry in many ways-some of which are described in the epilogue.

Martin Field, the new controller for the automobile replacement-parts company Run, Inc., is not comfortable with a large write-off that the family-owned company plans to make in 2004. Fairly new to the position, Field had not prepared the financial information for the annual report and he hesitated to alert anyone about the balance between the receivables and inventory items. Although external auditors give Run, Inc.'s financials a clean bill of health, Field was still not comfortable and must decide what steps to take.

First conceived as a business plan in Stanford Business School's "Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities" class, the Golden Baseball League is an independent baseball league in California and Arizona. Tracks the development of the business from idea to launch of the first season of play.

Under Jack Rivkin's leadership, Shearson Lehman's research department rose from relative obscurity to the highest ranking research department on Wall Street within three years. When Rivkin is promoted to head of equity, he wonders how to succeed in his new position.

A $385 million loss for the final months of fiscal year 1994 signaled Continental might go bankrupt. Could new CEO Gordon Bethune turn Continental around? Continental was in dire straits because the deregulation of the commercial airline industry in 1978 ushered in a new era focused on mergers and acquisitions and bitter employee-management relations. Venerable airline brands with a commitment to quality, like Continental, were prime takeover targets. After Texas Air Chairman Frank Lorenzo (HBS 1963) secured Continental in his hostile takeover bid, tensions escalated between Lorenzo and the old guard--especially when Lorenzo declared Continental bankrupt in the fall of 1983 and then fired and replaced half his staff with cheaper nonunion labor. In October 1994, five months after Continental exited its second bankruptcy, Bethune was elevated to CEO and created a Go Forward Plan to return Continental to profitability. Two years after unveiling the Go Forward Plan, Continental was at the top of the industry in a number of important performance metrics.

A retired bank CEO, one of Turkey's most admired leaders, wants to start a leadership institute to develop emerging leaders in the eastern Mediterranean region. Describes his biography and values, the models he established for excellent financial performance and corporate social and environmental responsibility at the bank, and his attempt to partner with an American university to establish the institute. His first approach did not work; what should he do now?

In 2006, Ruth's Chris Steak House was fresh off of a sizzling initial public offering and was now interested in growing their business internationally. With restaurants in just four countries outside the United States, a model to identify and rank new international markets was needed. Provides a practical example for students to take quantitative and non-quantitative variables to create a short list of potential new markets.

Esquel Group is one of the world's leading producers of premium cotton shirts, and among the most dynamic and progressive global-scale textile and apparel manufacturers. The company was founded in 1978 in Hong Kong. Over the years Esquel, which was part of an old-fashioned industry, gradually grew to become a larger and more modern organization: it expanded its product offering as well as its scope of operations, adding to garment manufacturing the production of woven and knitted fabric, spinning operations, and eventually cotton ginning and farming; it opened manufacturing facilities outside China and multiple representative offices in the U.S., the U.K. and Japan; developed strong product development capabilities and expanded its service offering to its customers; and invested in supporting IT and supply chain management applications and applied advance RFID solutions to improve efficiency of internal operations. In parallel, a strong corporate culture was established, emphasizing ethical business practices, creativity, and continual improvement. All these initiatives provided Esquel with the means to offer high-quality, innovative products and services, and to secure a loyal customer base consisting of some of the world's best known and most highly respected brands. While striving to run a successful business, Esquel also took steps to ensure the well-being of its employees and to have a positive impact on society, and was devoted to protecting the environment in areas where it operated. Describes in detail the transformations the company has gone through over the years, and the uniqueness of its corporate culture, and product and service offerings. In addition, discusses the pros and cons of Esquel's strategy and provides some perspective about the future of the company (e.g., what steps it should take to meet its growth targets; how will the elimination of quota restrictions impact Esquel; etc.).

Scalix Corporation, a Linux-based, e-mail and calendaring software company, was founded in 2002 by Julie Hanna Farris while she was an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) at Mayfield, a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, CA. Describes the evolution of Scalix's sales model. As a start-up company, it attempted to sell directly to CIOs of large enterprises. After facing an uphill battle in that market and then experiencing a few successful sales to small public sector accounts, the company corrected its course.

The proposed takeover of Noranda Inc. (one of the biggest mineral players in the world) by the Chinese state owned enterprise, China Minmetals Corporation, was cause for Canadian government concern as it required some understanding about the workings and objectives of state owned enterprises. There was particular concern around the labour issues and human rights violations in China, and the possible impact of these on the proposed takeover. Equally important, Canada ran the substantial risk of sending the wrong message to the People's Republic of China if it was to block such a takeover, and in some respects, to be seen as shutting its doors to one of the world's largest and most powerful emerging economies.

One of the critical tasks in the marketing of new innovations is predicting demand and rates of diffusion for those products. Focuses on four innovative products from different domains. Although one can speculate on the scope and rate of diffusion for each of these products independently, it's helpful to compare and contrast diffusion across these products. Doing so allows one to focus on the "levers" or product characteristics that influence product diffusion, making one product a star and another a dog. Importantly, looking across products allows one to pick up on things that get lost in discussing a single product.

As 2004 came to a close, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, found itself facing a variety of stakeholder issues. The largest company in the world, which had ranked number one on the Fortune 500 for several years, was accused of, among other things, sending jobs overseas, destroying small-town America, paying its workers substandard wages and providing abysmal healthcare coverage, and discriminating against women and minorities. Many outsiders accused the retailer of circumventing or ignoring the principles upon which the legendary Sam Walton founded the company: respect for the individual, service to customers, and constant striving for excellence. As 2005 began, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott and other Wal-Mart executives had to address the various issues. This case details not only the rise of Wal-Mart and its notable capabilities and strategies, but also how the retailer had inadvertantly found itself with such a negative reputation.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club had grown from simple origins into an enormous gaming operator, with a statutory monopoly on horse racing, football betting and lotteries. At the same time, the Club served as Hong Kong's largest charity and community benefactor. It was also Hong Kong's largest single taxpayer, the operator of a prestigious membership Club and had undertaken some of the most sophisticated implementations of information technology in Asia. Under the leadership of Lawrence Wong, the Jockey Club's first ethnic-Chinese executive, the club had set about installing management discipline in the organization and raising betting revenues. He had also overseen the launch of football betting in 2003. By 2005 the emergence of local illegal and unauthorized offshore gambling operators, typically Internet-based and which paid no taxes, operated with little overhead, few regulatory restraints, and could thus offer bigger payout and more betting options posed a significant threat to the club's revenues. Wong would have to lead the club's efforts to defend gaming revenues against a host of threats and competitive forces.

Six Sigma has become a popular management philosophy adopted by several large companies, including Maple Leaf Foods, as a means of reducing waste systematically. The plant manager at the Rivermede plant is preparing for a meeting with the senior manager to discuss the new initiative Six Sigma @ the Edge. Based on the success of Six Sigma at this plant, it was chosen as a pilot for this new initiative. Students will develop a deeper understanding of Six Sigma and the challenges associated with embedding it in the organization.

Describes the situation facing Paul Bentington, the president, CEO, and member of the owning family of BIND, PLC, a large and successful family-owned engineering consulting firm in London. Bentington's sister and brother, both of whom are owners of the firm, confront him regarding family participation both in the governance and management of the firm. Third- and fourth-generation members of the family represent a diversity of backgrounds and experiences, which Bentington's siblings believe would benefit the firm. Yet Bentington has misgivings about whether it is appropriate for his siblings, their spouses, and their children to serve in any leadership role at the family company.

In May 2005, JP Rangaswami, the chief information officer at investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), wonders how to extend the bank's use of blogs. Corporations are now increasingly using these tools to diffuse news, opinions, and knowledge and improve collaboration. At DrKW, there are already over 300 internal blogs and Rangaswami now wants to encourage their internal spread. He has to make a compelling case for using blogs as well as make them easy to use. In addition, Rangaswami wants the bank to allow external blogs that others can view on the Internet. However, given the strict disclosure regulations that govern the bank's operations, Rangaswami wonders whether there are any safeguards that would help convince the bank's executive staff to allow external blogs.

In October 2005, Myrto Lazopoulou, head of user centered design at the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), contemplates how to spread the usage of wikis inside the company. As a "social software" like chats and blogs (both already in use at DrKW), wikis facilitate collaboration. At its barest, a wiki is a Web site that anybody visiting could edit without having to know HTML or Web-authoring tools. The IT department at DrKW had decided to experiment with the technology in late 2004, and now, soon a year later, it had to decide whether and how to roll out the tool for widespread use at the investment bank. Is DrKW ready for such technology?

Incorporated in 1983, Giordano International consolidated its position as a leading casual apparel retailer in Asia Pacific by offering customers value for money, good customer service, and classic, simple designs. By constantly improving its operating efficiencies, the company survived the Asian economic downturn and the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Its newest challenges, however, were increased competition, surging rents, higher interest rates, and the omnipresent threat from the avian bird flu. How Giordano could sustain its past success was perhaps the most critical question confronting its management. Provides an opportunity to examine what strategy would ensure Giordano's continued success over the intermediate and long-term future.

The Employee Benefit Outsourcing (EBO) unit of BPO, Inc. is experiencing rapid growth as a result of industry trends toward greater outsourcing of business processes. Despite rapid growth in revenues, the EBO unit has not been able to make a profit in part because of problems with its operations. A Six Sigma project has been initiated with the goal of developing a computer simulation model of the Health and Welfare Service Delivery process to help get a better handle on the operational problems. The define-and-measure phases of the Six Sigma project have been completed and the case includes the project charter, a process map, detailed operational data, and process performance benchmark data. Students are to use the data provided to develop their own simulation model, validate it with the benchmark data provided, and then use the model to complete the analyze, improve, and control phases of the Six Sigma project. More specifically, students can use the simulation model to test incremental changes to the current process as well as test more radical changes to the process such as the high-touch, low-cost option proposed by EBO's new Senior VP of Operations.

This case follows a classic student venture from on-campus conception in 1994, to harvest during the late 90s Internet wave, to its rebirth as a virtual business model. The enterprise began as a paper-based debit card that enabled Dartmouth College students to purchase merchandise at participating local pizza shops, copy centers, coffeehouses and the like. By the time founder Taren Lent and his partner took their system online in 1996, the 'Green Card' had a broad campus following, significant vendor participation, and average monthly revenue of $160,000. The entrepreneurs funded their expansion with informal investments from family, friends, angels, and a bank loan. In 1999-near the peak of the Internet bubble-they were scooped up by Student Advantage, a 'high-concept' venture-backed dot-com that was spending millions to build online market share in the higher-education space. Taren, who was heading up the campus card division, was astounded at how little attention was being paid to pursuing viable revenue models. When Student Advantage ultimately (and somewhat predictably), ran out of money and was liquidated, the campus card segment was sold to Blackboard. Taren Lent, however, had other ideas. He and a new partner left to start a virtual card venture focused on the higher education market. That focus would soon be put to the test by compelling opportunities that are doable, but not within their narrow strategic focus; e.g. business campuses, theme parks, and government agencies like NASA.