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After successful litigation against tobacco companies, a handful of lawyers turned their attention to the fast food industry and its possible connection to obesity. McDonald's was a prime target. Details McDonald's response to the litigation and the question of its role in the rise of obesity in the United States. Study questions guide students in analyzing both the market and nonmarket strategies that McDonald's employed.

Jonathan King and Jim Stott, the founders of Stonewall Kitchen, started out in 1992 with a simple business selling jams and jellies at local farmers' markets. By 2004, they had grown the company into a $25 million organization with 250 employees. They expanded their range of services to include high-end specialty food manufacturing and wholesaling, as well as retailing through free-standing stores and catalogs. King, who serves as president and CEO, set an aggressive growth goal: to quadruple the business to $100 million within the next five years. Challenges students to consider product/market issues as well as organizational and cultural implications. Raises questions about the impact on the business and the founders of taking on new partners.

The general partners of Gobi Partners, a venture fund located in Shanghai, are trying to decide the best way to raise money for their first fund. Their strategy of investing in early-stage digital media companies in China was well-received by strategic investors--IBM and NTT DoCoMo are cornerstone investors in the fund--but classic institutional investors are wary of such a targeted approach, despite the team's successful track record with different private equity groups. Over a year after their first closing at $30 million, the limited partners are urging Gobi to raise the balance of its $100 million fund. But how, without either abandoning the strategy that has won them a measure of success in such a short time or bringing on more strategic investors with goals that might conflict with those currently in the fund?

Follows Jeff Hawkins, Donna Dubinsky, and, later, Ed Colligan from the founding of Palm, Inc., through the founding of Handspring, to the point that Handspring and Palm began considering a merger. Examines the conditions that drove the two rival companies toward a merger. In a relatively stagnant market for personal technology, Handspring lacked the financial resources to launch its next-generation product, the Treo 600; meanwhile, Palm's market position was threatened by a lack of breakthrough product innovation and viable growth plans. From the date of its founding, Handspring nurtured a rivalry with its chief competitor, Palm, Inc. By early 2003, Palm, Inc. had stabilized its business, while Handspring found itself in a dire financial situation. Handspring pursued two financing alternatives: a PIPE and a merger with Palm--engendering two different operating states for the company. The board of directors and management team were fairly evenly split between the two deals, each of which involved uncertainty.

Sets the stage for analyzing the strategy of labor organizer Ray Rogers in bringing J.P. Stevens to the bargaining table when conventional union tactics failed. Though set in the specific context of labor-management relations, it illustrates much more fundamental aspects of negotiation analysis, strategy, and tactics. A rewritten version of an earlier case.

By the mid-1980s, it was clear that not all transplant centers in the growing organ transplantation market were able to achieve and sustain the same levels of quality and high rates of transplant procedure success. Similarly, significant variation had emerged in the cost of these complex and expensive procedures. Within this dynamic environment, United Resource Networks (URN) was founded in 1989. The express purpose of this new organization was to manage variation in the transplantation process to enable the delivery of higher quality, lower cost, more predictable results to patients, employers, and health insurers. The company would accomplish this by establishing a virtual network of transplant centers that were made available to its customers through preferred contracting arrangements. By 2004, URN had built the largest transplantation network in the United States, growing at an average annual rate of 40% over the last 10 years. With 4,000 customers and 44,000,000 covered lives, the network managed approximately 10% of the nation's organ transplants each year. Explores the URN business model as an example of the innovative strategies being used by health plans to carefully manage complex medical conditions and control the risks associated with expensive procedures, such as organ transplants.

At the dawn of the 20th anniversary of its involvement in China's passenger car industry, Shanghai Volkswagen (SVW) found itself caught in changed external and internal environments, with factors critical to its past success gone or quickly diminishing. Although taking first-mover risks has rewarded Volkswagen with a dominant market position and high profitability, such dominance and profitability might not be sustained in the long run as the competitive landscape transforms. The test is whether SVW can quickly adapt to the new environment and establish a new set of competitive advantages that positions it favorably against its rivals.

Grupo Garantia was a spectacularly successful conglomerate group in Brazil. Observers commonly called its founder The Midas King - all he touched seemingly turned to gold. The group encompasses four main businesses: Brazil's biggest investment bank; one of Brazil's largest retail chains; one of the world's largest breweries; and an equity investment company. The collection of six cases (including an appendix on Brazil's socio-politics) examines the fortunes of each of the businesses and of the corporation during the period of Brazil's globalization. Students must decide how to shape the future of the group's businesses, which global competition has variously boosted or ravaged. The Grupo's fate is also in question given the stabilization of Brazil's economy and the need to structure corporations according to the new circumstances faced by an economy more integrated into the world economy.

Describes Standard & Poor's sovereign credit ratings business. Provides background on the history of credit ratings agencies, the meaning of credit ratings, the expansion of the sovereign ratings business over recent decades, and the market for credit ratings. Also, discusses current debates in the United States and elsewhere relating to the use of credit ratings in financial and prudential regulation.

Molecular Insight has developed a novel biopharmaceutical to detect heart attacks. The company's unique approach to intellectual property protection uses the Hatch Waxman Act and the Orphan Drug Act. The company is struggling to raise $7 million in Series B financing. Should it continue its current strategy or change its approach? Includes color exhibits.

Kohler Co., best known for its plumbing fixtures, is a large, private family firm. As part of a recapitalization aimed at preserving family ownership of Kohler Co., nonfamily shareholders, who held 4% of common stock, were required to sell their shares to the company. A group of dissenting shareholders filed a lawsuit claiming that the buyout price undervalued their shares by a factor of five. In April 2000, Herbert V. Kohler, Jr., chairman and CEO, has to decide whether to settle with the dissenters and, if so, at what share price. The decision calls for a detailed valuation of the company at the time of the recapitalization. Provides the necessary data for students to value the company using both a discounted cash flow approach and a multiples (comparable companies) approach. Students must identify and understand the different valuation assumptions that can lead to a wide range in price, including the applicability of discounts for lack of marketability and lack of control. Exhibits are available in electronic form to facilitate analysis of the data (HBS courseware 9-205-707).

Tsingtao Brewery Co, Ltd, the best-known Chinese beer producer in the world, had been surpassed in market share by Yanjing Beer in the mid-1990s due to its inefficient operations. From 1994 to 2002, Tsingtao Brewery acquired over 47 small and medium-sized companies and regained its dominant position in the beer industry. However, this resulted in many problems including increased levels of bureaucracy, lack of integration of corporate cultures of the acquired companies, lack of brand focus, low profitability and other problems resulting from the rapid expansion. In July 2001, the General Manager Peng Zuoyi suddenly died of a heart attack. Jin Zhiguo, his successor, believes he should change the company business strategy from 'growing large to become powerful' to 'growing powerful to become large', which focuses on post-acquisition integration.

In just 15 years, founder Huang Guangyu had turned Gome Home Appliance Co. Ltd. into the largest home appliance retail chain in China in terms of sales. However, the company faces several internal and external challenges. It is becoming increasingly difficult for Gome to attract qualified employees, to obtain capital for its continued growth and to ignore its competitors. To respond to these challenges and the changing environment of the industry, Gome's once retired leader, returned as the company's General Manager and has implemented a major reorganization.

Sun Life Financial is a large insurance conglomerate with $14.7 billion in annual revenues. The vice-president for China must formulate an approach for his company's entrance into China. Sun Life has achieved two important milestones: the right to apply for a license and the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for Joint Venture with China Everbright, a local securities company. The financial vice-president must consider strategic options for entry and choose a city in which to focus his efforts in getting a license. In doing so, he needs to consider Sun Life's overall priorities, strategic direction, and how he will sell the concept to senior management in Canada.

The president of Loblaw Companies Ltd. must decide what to do in response to the rumored introduction of Wal-Mart's SuperCenters (combining grocery and nonfood items) in Canada. The potential launch of SuperCenters in Canada was seen by observers as a threat to Loblaw, the market leader in Canadian grocery. Wal-Mart is a vigorous competitor, and the Every Day Low Prices strategy of Wal-Mart's SuperCenters could wean away traffic from Loblaw's various banners.

CEMEX, based in Mexico, has grown through acquisitions from a local cement producer to the world's third largest. Over the last 20 years, the company has been a consistent leader in using IT and managing business information in innovative ways in the cement and ready-mix concrete business. CEMEX has also accumulated knowledge about integrating acquired companies across the world and developing business processes that incorporate best practices in diverse countries and regions. In 2000, CEO Lorenzo Zambrano decided to codify best-practice knowledge across the company around 8 key global business processes through a three-year project called the CEMEX Way. Although implementation cost $200 million, the company could save over $120 million per year in IT and procurement costs. In 2004, the project became a permanent part of CEMEX's approach to doing business globally, but had to be modified to incorporate more local innovation and flexibility as well as to capture best-practice changes more rapidly across the company. How can CEMEX align the behaviors and values of its people and strike the right balance between local business flexibility and global standardization to grow in the future?

The global apparel industry is known to be a buyer-driven industry, led by retailers, marketers, and branded manufacturers. In the United States, in particular, a handful of giant retailers (Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, Dayton Hudson, JC Penney), which account for over two-thirds of all apparel sales, dominate the industry. In recent years, these companies have increasingly deployed information technologies to gain market knowledge, streamline their value chains, and manage their extensive global sourcing networks. In response to market demand, TAL Apparel Ltd. (TAL), a no-name Hong Kong-based garment manufacturer, has developed a sophisticated information management system to manage the supply chain for its retailer customers, thus solidifying its position in the apparel value chain. By taking ownership of the customer ordering, inventory management, and shipment dispatch functions, the manufacturer has gained valuable access to real-time market information, allowing it to venture into the design and test marketing business. Explores how a traditionally weak member in the apparel industry uses IT to gain competitive advantage in the intensely competitive global marketplace.

Since its inception in 1984, Lenovo Group Ltd. had grown from a company engaged primarily in the distribution of imported computers to being the largest IT corporation in the People 's Republic of China. Although Lenovo was able to hold onto its market leadership position, competitive pressure from Dell, IBM, Toshiba, and HP was increasing, with the company taking large hits, mainly at the hands of Dell. Engaging in a series of price wars to retain the low end of the consumer segment, Lenovo was also struggling to maintain its stronghold in corporate sales to Chinese government ministries and schools. With the PC market in China maturing rapidly, Lenovo's main challenge was to develop a business model that would not only combat Dell's direct selling model but would also take advantage of the group's traditional strengths. With a view to meeting the group's projected target of becoming a Fortune 500 company by 2010, Lenovo was looking toward tapping international markets as well as exploring product diversification strategies in the local market. Lenovo's predicament highlights the growing pains many Chinese companies faced in their efforts to become global players while defending their domestic market share from foreign rivals.

Flextronics, the world's largest contract manufacturing firm, made a strategic decision to expand its business to include original design and manufacturing (ODM) services. As an ODM supplier, Flextronics designed and built products that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) purchased and sold under their brand names. Purchasing from an ODM allowed OEMs to bring new products to market quickly and efficiently. ODMs could sell the same basic product to many OEMs, providing substantial design and manufacturing efficiencies. Flextronics' first ODM products were cellular phone handsets. The company had substantial hardware capabilities, which grew out of its contract manufacturing experience. In 2004, Flextronics considered adding software design expertise and considered a number of approaches to accomplish this. Having learned of the outstanding reputation of Indian software companies, the company's CEO and the president of its Design and OEM Services operation visited India. Describes the contract manufacturing and design landscape in 2004, with a focus on software.