Case studies
Teaching cases offers students the opportunity to explore real world challenges in the classroom environment, allowing them to test their assumptions and decision-making skills before taking their knowledge into the workplace.
Bruce-Alfred Technologies (BAT) has built a successful business selling packaged software. Its marketing has long promised free technical support to all customers, a key point of…
Abstract
Bruce-Alfred Technologies (BAT) has built a successful business selling packaged software. Its marketing has long promised free technical support to all customers, a key point of differentiation from BAT's competitors. However, the call center providing tech support is now in crisis. Wait times for callers are unacceptably high, leading to low customer satisfaction and negative press. BAT managers are evaluating the Fast Track Proposal, which would create two classes of calls. Fast Track calls would be promised a one-minute wait but pay for service. Standard calls would still be free but be given lower priority and have no wait time guarantee. Considers both the operational impact of this change and the strategic considerations of backing away from free tech support.
To emphasize the impact of priorities and alternative ways of managing capacity, discuss different ways of pricing services--i.e., pay-per-transaction vs. subscription, and demonstrate the basics of the relation between utilization and delay.
Details
Keywords
Sunil Chopra, Scott D. Flamm and Waikar Sachin
A midwest hospital purchases new CT Scanners which are much faster than the existing technology. Processes in the radiology department are optimized to the older, existing…
Abstract
A midwest hospital purchases new CT Scanners which are much faster than the existing technology. Processes in the radiology department are optimized to the older, existing scanners and technicians are unable to take full advantage of the new scanner speed. The hospital finds itself working to change the processes to suit the new scanners capabilities and take full advantage of their speed.
This case allows students to analyze process capacity and time performance in different settings and understand how process structure impacts both operational and financial performance.
Details
Keywords
Robert C. Wolcott and Michael J. Lippitz
The (A) case describes the evolution between 1999 and 2005 of an unusual innovation team within the office of the chief information officer at oil and gas giant BP. This team…
Abstract
The (A) case describes the evolution between 1999 and 2005 of an unusual innovation team within the office of the chief information officer at oil and gas giant BP. This team helped business units conceive, develop, and implement novel, value-added applications for emerging information technologies. The team leader, vice president and chief technology officer Phiroz Darukhanavala (“Daru”), eschewed a large group and venture budget in favor of a small, lean team intimately engaged with BP's business units. The case describes several mechanisms created by the CTO office during its early evolution: “Blue Chalk” events that expanded executives' appreciation of emerging technology capabilities, a network of relationships through which emerging technologies were scouted and vetted, a structured technology transfer process, and annual “game-changer” projects.
The (B) case describes how the CTO office team members in 2011 again solicited advice from their ecosystem of thought leaders and held workshops to significantly enhance their impact. As a result, they began developing solutions for broader, more fundamental business problems that came to be known as Grand Challenges: extremely difficult business problems whose solutions could potentially create hundreds of millions—or billions—of dollars in business value.
After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to:
Understand the management challenges associated with realizing the business value of new technologies
Explore how innovation management evolves as an innovation team learns from its successes and failures and, more importantly, builds a reputation within and outside the company
Examine a prototypical “advocate” model of corporate entrepreneurial practice
Explore a leading example of a successful internal innovation program
Understand the management challenges associated with realizing the business value of new technologies
Explore how innovation management evolves as an innovation team learns from its successes and failures and, more importantly, builds a reputation within and outside the company
Examine a prototypical “advocate” model of corporate entrepreneurial practice
Explore a leading example of a successful internal innovation program
Details
Keywords
Robert C. Wolcott and Michael J. Lippitz
The (A) case describes the evolution between 1999 and 2005 of an unusual innovation team within the office of the chief information officer at oil and gas giant BP. This team…
Abstract
The (A) case describes the evolution between 1999 and 2005 of an unusual innovation team within the office of the chief information officer at oil and gas giant BP. This team helped business units conceive, develop, and implement novel, value-added applications for emerging information technologies. The team leader, vice president and chief technology officer Phiroz Darukhanavala (“Daru”), eschewed a large group and venture budget in favor of a small, lean team intimately engaged with BP's business units. The case describes several mechanisms created by the CTO office during its early evolution: “Blue Chalk” events that expanded executives' appreciation of emerging technology capabilities, a network of relationships through which emerging technologies were scouted and vetted, a structured technology transfer process, and annual “game-changer” projects.
The (B) case describes how the CTO office team members in 2011 again solicited advice from their ecosystem of thought leaders and held workshops to significantly enhance their impact. As a result, they began developing solutions for broader, more fundamental business problems that came to be known as Grand Challenges: extremely difficult business problems whose solutions could potentially create hundreds of millions—or billions—of dollars in business value.
After reading and analyzing the case, students will be able to:
Understand the management challenges associated with realizing the business value of new technologies
Explore how innovation management evolves as an innovation team learns from its successes and failures and, more importantly, builds a reputation within and outside the company
Examine a prototypical “advocate” model of corporate entrepreneurial practice
Explore a leading example of a successful internal innovation program
Understand the management challenges associated with realizing the business value of new technologies
Explore how innovation management evolves as an innovation team learns from its successes and failures and, more importantly, builds a reputation within and outside the company
Examine a prototypical “advocate” model of corporate entrepreneurial practice
Explore a leading example of a successful internal innovation program
Details
Keywords
Robert D. Dewar, Hayagreeva Rao and Jeff Schumacher
Describes the career transfer and development system at UPS, showing incentives and policies that move managers across countries and functions, and how this movement develops high…
Abstract
Describes the career transfer and development system at UPS, showing incentives and policies that move managers across countries and functions, and how this movement develops high quality general managers.
To demonstrate the way in which a cross-functional, cross-cultural career transfer program can break down silo and national barriers and achieve cost effective integration.
Details
Keywords
Carolina Lunker Sauce is a new product attempting to break into the fishing attractants category. The company founders are evaluating cutting the retail price of the product in…
Abstract
Carolina Lunker Sauce is a new product attempting to break into the fishing attractants category. The company founders are evaluating cutting the retail price of the product in order to secure distribution. Analyzing this decision forces the leaders of this struggling company to evaluate their overall new product strategy and the product’s positioning in the market.
To focus on new product strategy, positioning, and pricing.
Details
Keywords
Ivan Lansberg, Mary Alice Crump and Sachin Waikar
This case presents the history and recent governance challenges of Carvajal, S.A., a Colombia-based, family-owned, billion-dollar-plus holding company that had offered…
Abstract
This case presents the history and recent governance challenges of Carvajal, S.A., a Colombia-based, family-owned, billion-dollar-plus holding company that had offered printing-related (e.g., Yellow Pages, notebooks) and other products and services across and beyond South America for more than a century. Specifically, the case details the company’s state of affairs in early 2011, a time by which Carvajal’s flagship businesses had matured rapidly with the emergence of digital technology and diminished demand for paper/print-based products. Though profits and growth remained positive, Carvajal’s leaders knew that upholding the business’s legacy of returns, dividends for all family members, and extensive philanthropy would take significant strategy and execution.
Compounding the strategy issues, Carvajal faced these market challenges with new leadership: the first non-family CEO since the company’s inception. Well-established Colombian executive Ricardo Obregon had been hired in 2008 over two family candidates to lead the business. Obregon was to oversee a complex governance network that included a holding company with seven operating companies, their management and respective boards, a family council, and 280 members (including spouses) of a shareholding family in its sixth generation. Carvajal’s business and family leaders had to face market issues and decisions that included the possibility of taking public the operating companies and/or the holding company while maintaining the business’s long traditions of unity, respect, strong ethics, and philanthropy. That meant optimizing several crucial relationships: between the family and the new CEO; between the family and the board; between the operating companies and the holding company; and between members of the large Carvajal family, many of whom now resided outside of Colombia and Latin America.
Understand general and specific challenges associated with carrying on a longstanding family business facing multiple market challenges; explore the process of engaging a complex family-business governance network to handle business challenges while maintaining family values; consider the effects of culture on a multi-generation family business.
Details
Keywords
Mark Jeffery, Joseph F. Norton, Derek Yung and Alex Gershbeyn
The case concerns a real $25 million program consisting of nine concurrent projects to deliver and implement a custom-built in-store customer relationship management (CRM) system…
Abstract
The case concerns a real $25 million program consisting of nine concurrent projects to deliver and implement a custom-built in-store customer relationship management (CRM) system and a new point-of-sale system in 400 stores of a national retail chain. The name of the company has been disguised for confidentiality reasons. Once deployed, the new system should give Clothes ‘R’ Us a significant strategic advantage over competitors in the marketplace; it will increase in-store manager productivity, cut costs, and ultimately drive increased sales for the retail chain. The program is in crisis, however, because the product managers have just left to join a competitor. The explicit details of the program are given, including examples of best practice program governance and the real activity network diagram for the program. Detailed Excel spreadsheets are also provided with the actual earned value data for the program. Students analyze the spreadsheets and the data given in the case to diagnose the impact of the most recent risk event and past risk events that occurred in the program. Ultimately students must answer the essential executive questions: What is wrong with the program? How should it be fixed, and what is the impact in time and money to the program? In addition, qualitative warning signs are given throughout the case—these warning signs are red flags to executives for early proactive intervention in troubled projects.
The goal of the case is to teach complex program oversight. Students analyze actual earned value data for a real $25 million program consisting of nine concurrent programs and assess the impact of risk events as they occur in the program. A key takeaway of the case is that relatively simple tools (Excel spreadsheets and time tracking) combined with good project planning can be used to effectively control very complex projects. Students also learn the qualitative warning signs within programs that can serve as early indicators of problems.
Details
Keywords
How does a mature business develop new growth markets, assuming it already has new products? That was the challenge facing The Coca-Cola Company and its global system of bottlers…
Abstract
How does a mature business develop new growth markets, assuming it already has new products? That was the challenge facing The Coca-Cola Company and its global system of bottlers in the 2000s when demand for its core line of carbonated soft drinks flattened. The Australian bottler, Amatil, pinned its hopes on energy drinks, a fast-growth, youth-oriented category that was capturing headlines and share away from traditional products. To wrest control from the upstart brands that originated them, Amatil was targeting the retail context where young people congregated and formed their preferences, in pubs, nightclubs, healthclubs, and sporting events. This international case explores the challenges encountered when a mature company with considerable distribution assets, well-honed systems, and entrenched operating procedures attempts to sell into an underserved retail channel with requirements quite unlike those of the company's mainstream buyers. How does it attract market interest? How does it develop new routes-to-market without undercutting the cost efficiencies and delivery value that have earned it dominant position elsewhere? How does it win over what could be its core customers of the future without alienating today's faithful? These are just some of the questions that Amatil management was determined to solve.
Understand issues related to retail channel strategy development in fast-changing international consumer markets, and the challenges of adapting legacy routes-to-market systems to changing consumer demands.
Details
Keywords
Colfax Corporation was a young, privately held collection of pump-manufacturing companies from the United States and Europe. Intending to go public, it was eager to find a story…
Abstract
Colfax Corporation was a young, privately held collection of pump-manufacturing companies from the United States and Europe. Intending to go public, it was eager to find a story for investors of how it could grow at rates faster than its subsidiaries had historically grown in their home regions and core-customer industrial markets. This case describes a singular new-growth opportunity: selling Colfax solutions into state-owned petroleum enterprises in the Middle East at a time when these producers were straining to add capacity. Designing the optimal marketing system required Colfax to weigh a complex of issues, including global resource allocation and deployment, a process for customer-relationship building, and estimates for revenue streams versus investment outlays. The design process was, in short, far more than “sticking sales rep pins in the map.” Case readers are asked to think along with the Colfax global management team in deciding, “How much can we afford to risk our current income model in order to build new capacity in a new region in a new way?”
Understanding issues related to global B2B marketing channel strategy development, as well as complexities of entering unfamiliar new international markets such as Middle East oil and gas.
Details
Keywords
Subject
Country
Case length
Case provider
- The CASE Journal
- The Case for Women
- Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals
- Darden Business Publishing Cases
- Emerging Markets Case Studies
- Management School, Fudan University
- Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
- Kellogg School of Management
- The Case Writing Centre, University of Cape Town, Graduate School of Business