...The HBS Case Method Pioneered by HBS faculty and one of the highlights of the HBS experience, the case method is a profound educational innovation that presents the greatest challenges confronting leading companies, nonprofits, and government organizations—complete with the constraints and incomplete information found in real business issues—and places the student in the role of the decision maker. There are no simple solutions; yet through the dynamic process of exchanging perspectives, countering and defending points, and building on each other's ideas, students become adept at analyzing issues, exercising judgment, and making difficult decisions—the hallmarks of skillful leadership. Page Content Over 80 percent of cases sold throughout the world are written by HBS faculty, who produce approximately 350 new cases per year. Simply put, we believe the case method is the best way to prepare students for the challenges of leadership. How the HBS Case Method Works When students are presented with a case, they place themselves in the role of the decision maker as they read through the situation and identify the problem they are faced with. The next step is to perform the necessary analysis—examining the causes and considering alternative courses of actions to come to a set of recommendations. To get the most out of cases, students read and reflect on the case, and then meet in learning teams before class to "warm up" and discuss their findings with other classmates. In class—under...
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...Hikmi Syed AbdullahHaza Nuzly Abdull Hamed Aryati BakriNorasnita Ahmad | 32432/ N28-403-1532423/N28-403-0932426/N28-403-2132405/N28-402-1232421/N28-403-0732430/N28-403-1732433/N28-403-1432427/N28-403-20 | iskandar@utm.mymhafiz@utm.myhalina@utm.myhaslinah@utm.mynorris@utm.myhaza@utm.myaryati@utm.mynorasnita@utm.my | Synopsis | This 1-credit course will provide an extension to the existing 2-credit subject (UCD2762) on how to analyze and evaluate the business opportunities using the knowledge and skills acquired from the previous subject. Class members will consider business planning, self-assessment, idea generation, and operating strategies required to start a new small business. Students will also be exposed to Harvard Business School Case Method in order to give them exposure to the real world problems and their solutions. Active participation by students during class discussions and activities is encouraged & expected. Students successfully completing this course will be able to: * Research, recognize and access business opportunities. * Use analytical and critical thinking skills to determine the feasibility of a business concept. * Gained hands on experience with conducting research, develop, write, evaluate, presenting and defending segments of a business plan. | | Learning Outcomes | At the end of the semester, the student will have the: | CO | Course Outcomes | Related Program Outcome (PO) | Evaluation Method | 1. | Ability to think...
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...High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6c92feaa-fc0f-11e0-b1d8-00144feab49a.html#ixzz2Cu5c99bj Case study: Diageo By Abby Ghobadian The story: After a series of mergers, demergers and acquisitions, the management of Diageo, the conglomerate formed by the 1997 merger of Guinness and Grand Met, made a strategic decision to focus on premium alcohol drinks. Diageo was in charge of an expanding and wide-ranging collection of brands, some of which had broad appeal across many countries while others had more regional appeal, sometimes limited to just a few markets. The challenge: After both organic growth and acquisitions, three key dilemmas emerged by 2002. First, how to manage brands with significantly different appeal, such as Guinness, a brand with strong Irish roots but huge global appeal, or Buchanan’s, the leading Scotch whisky in Latin America. Second, how to rejuvenate tired brands and third, how to improve the market share of the most successful brands, such as Captain Morgan, J & B, Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker. The initial strategy: To help managers maintain focus and allocate resources, Diageo developed three brand classifications: global priority, local priority and category. The global priority brands were the big sellers that were...
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...HBS Case-SYSCO 1. Why does SYSCO need BI? SYSCO needs Business Intelligence to increase efficiency by organizing information generated by its operations. SYSCO has two different divisions, the broad-line companies and the specialty companies, which have separated profit and loss statements. With the use of BI, people can easily access the statements between these different divisions. There is a lack of consistency between part numbers, customer identifications, order statuses, and other important information which makes it difficult for managers to monitor and compare performance. 2. How can SYSCO take advantage of BI? Business Intelligence can be advantageous to SYSCO by providing statistical analysis, graphical representations and access to important data. With the use of dashboards, users at every level can easily access summaries of important information. BI software can combine data from separate warehouses and databases to help managers make better business decisions. With all the information centralized, managers save time when accessing other divisions’ databases. BI uses data mining to automatically sort through large pools of data to determine trends and patterns that could have otherwise been overlooked by managers. 3. What are the potential obstacles? The potential obstacle of Business Intelligence implementation is determining how much software to buy and when to buy it. SYSCO needs to determine the correct balance of software with the current needs...
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...In a few cases, leases are contracts by which the lessor transfers the right to use its asset to the lessee against the periodic rentals. There are major two types of lease according to the IAS 17: Finance and Operating Lease. Under the previous IAS 17 “Leases” by International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), in operating lease, the lessee does not need to recognize the leased asset in their balance sheet. In 2010, August, the International Accounting Standards Board issued an Exposure Draft (ED), amending various changes to the IAS 17. The effect of the new ED was that lessees would have to recognize a “right-to-use asset” and a lease liability in term of lease interest for their long and short term leases in the balance sheet. On the other hand, “right-of-use” asset would be amortized against the basis of the lease term or the life of the leased asset, whatever is shorter. Since the BonneSante is engaged in operating lease agreements with their lessors that gives them a “right-of-use” of retail outlets and trucks. Since, the revised ED states that the contracting parties must agree on at least 10 years lease term, so the BonneSante must cancel out their lease agreements which are less than 10 years lease term and revise them as per the new requirements. The lessee shall report cash payments against the lease payments as financing activity in the statement of the cash flows but should be separate from other financing...
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...HBS CASE: BMW FILMS 11/11/13 S. Kursat Sornaoglu 012541488 1. How fit is the BMW brand at the time of the case? Are there any reasons to anticipate undesirable financial performance in the future? BMW is well fit and is able to sell it's products easily. There is no reason to anticipate any financial problems. 2. What is BMW’s unique selling proposition? Describe a typical BMW’s target customer and how the company’s products fulfill his needs. They sell the world's most exciting luxury cars which are the ultimate driving machines. A typical BMW customer is a highly educated individual in late 40s with a high income. They are usually married but don't have children. They are hard workers and they don't have spare time. The time they spend on driving is the most pleasurable time in their day. Therefore they want this time to be as enjoyable and comfortable as possible. 3. Using research findings presented in the exhibits (especially Exhibit 11), perform a critical evaluation of the effectiveness of BMW films in attracting potential customers to the brand. Median age and the, age segments who watched this video a lot is not the described core customers of the company. So it is sure that these videos reached out to people who are not the customers of BMW. 84% of the viewers aren't BMW customers and they recommend the video to others. These aspects shows us that the videos definitely caught the attention of the targeted group. Their 88k income level is a good indication showing that...
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...HBS Case Study : Interco 9-291-033 * Started out as shoe company – been around a long time * • Business has spread to other consumer products / services through acquisitions * • Fairly conservative financially, debt level is relatively low * Interco has moved away from apparel and general retail (went from 59% to 40% of total sales) • * Placed more emphasis on the footwear division. (acquired Converse in 1986) • * Placed much more emphasis on the furniture division (sales rose from 20-33% of Interco’s total sales) Current Scenario * • Cheap imports hurting profitability of U.S. apparel manufacturers * • Retailing industry profits reduced due to drop-off in consumer spending and deep discounting programs being offered by retailers in 1987 * • Furniture and home furnishings prospects appear bright given favorable demographic trends in family formations (success of firms like Home Depot proved this ex post!) * • October 1987 stock market crash still in rear-view mirror Operations Currently has four major divisions 1. Apparel (e.g., London Fog) 2. General retail merchandising (Central Hardware) 3. Footware (Converse, Florsheim) 4. Furniture and home furnishings (Ethan Allen) Interco's Goal * • Improve long-term sales and earnings growth • * • Earn increased return on assets and equity Concern Interco concerned stock price may be undervalued * Management felt that bad...
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...To PTC Management, The following report states a series of analysis dedicates Prestige Telephone Company’s (PTC) commercial sales’ change and consumers’ reaction due to the proposing of excise tax by government. This report is generally divided into three parts, situation before excise tax has proposed, the impact of the proposed 1% excise tax, and a proposition of a more win-win solution to generate same tax revenue. In March, before excise tax has proposed, commercial customers are charged $800 per hours and total consuming hour is138 hours, total revenue is $110400. Besides, raising or lowering commercial price by $150 will reduce or boost demand for commercial services by 12%. Base on these two conditions, for each additional hours customer consuming, the price of commercial sales will decrease by 9.058 dollars（All data involve in this report is accurate to two decimal places）. The price has a linear relation with quantities consumers’ purchasing. Also, PTC commercial capacity is equal to 85% of revenue maximizing output (which is 96.19 units of PTC products). Under above conditions, before excise tax has proposed, the maximum revenue is $113380.21 with 96.19 consumers’ purchasing at price of $1178.71 in March. In April, after a 1% excise tax was proposed, our price increased by $8. Quantities of output decreased by 0.88. Also, revenue decreased by $2587.25 in total. Furthermore, as customers have a certain amount of income, price of the good increases, customers’...
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...1. Why did Akamai charge content providers and subsidize ISPs? Akamai charged content providers because they were the primary customers of the Akamai’s products. Some of the advantages that were reported in the reading after adopting Akamai’s FreeFlow technology was: * A content provider’s website would load 10x faster after using Akamai * There was protection against sudden traffic bursts * Content providers could save money from ISPs because less bandwidth was being transmitted from the origin servers and more were being sent from Akamai’s servers. Later in its Edgesuite venture, these above benefits continued to be offered in the face of even greater content-heavy web pages. In addition, Edgesuite offered robust security against denial of service attacks and continued flash crowd reliability. All these benefits came at a price for the content providers whom were charged by Akamai. However, Akamai maintained that the money being saved by content providers by using its product justified it adoption. Money here was being saved from lower bandwidth traffic through the ISPs. Several big companies bought into this business model and as outlined in the reading Akamai generated very good revenue during this time period. Meanwhile, in dealing with the ISPs, the reason Akamai was paying them was simply to use their existing bandwidth and storage space. As detailed in the reading, the major ISPs at the time provided internet access to 81% of Americans, but the remained...
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...| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Midwest Office Products | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ...
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...Zack Berry 10/9/12 Ind. Case Assign #2 MGT 4195 Apple Apple Inc. has endured a long, storied history over the past 35 years since its founding in the 1970s. It was started as a computer company and today considers itself a leader in the mobile device industry. Apple has been successful over this time as a result of a number of different reasons. Apple has also been recognized as innovators in any industry they operate in. Historically, the three biggest competitive advantages that Apple has been able to sustain are its attractive, sleek designs, its’ ease of use/usability, as well as always gaining that pivotal first mover advantage. The personal computer (PC) industry was the first market that Apple operated in. Initially it was a favorable market but as time passed and technology was developing at a faster and faster rate, Apple was no longer able to compete as a leader in the industry. More recently however, Apple has been able to compete in the home PC market with its faster processing speeds by switching to Intel chips and it’s new compatibility with a broader range of software on its updated operating system. This update, coupled with their history of creating beautiful, easy to use products, has allowed them to compete in the home PC market and has been growing at an increasing rate and was back up to 5 percent in 2010. In order to sustain this competitive position in the PC market, Apple will have to continue to be leaders in innovation and continue to make their...
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...Key issue: Tiffany and Co concluded an agreement with its Japanese Distributor, Mitsukoshi Limited. Tiffany & Co Japan assumed management responsibilities of the operation of 29 boutiques and was now responsible for millions of dollars of inventory that was previously sold wholesale to Mitsukoshi Limited. Tiffany & Co Japan now faces the risk of foreign currency fluctuations previously borne by Mitsukoshi Limited. Tiffany & Co Japan must now make the decision between basic hedging alternatives: Entering into forward agreements to sell yen for dollars or purchasing a yen put option. Exposure As Tiffany & Co’s receivable cash flows are now denominated in ¥ due at future date the firm now faces the foreign exchanges risks with uncertainty of the dollar equivalent of cash flows. Tiffany & Co. now face transaction, translation and operating exposures. Transaction exposure risk is observed in Tiffany’s deferred payment to Mitsukoshi of $25 million as this denominated in USD and cash inflows from Tiffany Japan will be denominated in yen. Translation risk represents foreign assets on financial statements as of July 30 1993 Tiffany & Co showed $7.7million in foreign assets. The most significant exposure that Tiffany will experience is operating risk due to the high amount in ¥ inflows. Tiffany & Co. will need to limit this exposure hedging these inflows in the medium term; however major currency movements will be factored in to the retail price in the...
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...Vanrex is a chemical manufacturing plant that focuses on producing and marketing paint for homes businesses, and institutions. Along with that, they supply coatings for manufactured products, automotive parts, paint cans, aerosol cans, brushes, rollers, and other paint applicators. Vanrex is situated on an eighty acre property in Hayestown Oklahoma. Since its beginnings in 1906, Vanrex has gone from being a manufacturing facility in the middle of nowhere, to now being surrounded by many residents and businesses. They currently have highly priced residential homes as well as Hayestown Elementary School within blocks from the plant.The city has grown in population and currently has 43,256 residents, of which 253 are employees of the company. Vanrex’s philosophies have changed over the years as they have faced challenges with increasing population around their plant facility. They have attempted to adapt to the changing conditions of Haystown as well as the regulations in the industry. Balancing between profits, efficiency, credibility in the city, and maintaining regulatory standards has been a challenging task for the company. Vanrex has been able to get to a profitable point in production since they first opened in 1906. They have also adjusted to regulatory demands and are currently in compliance with the standards of the industry. While maintaining regulatory standards appears to be an area that Vanrex can control, they continue to face public scrutiny from the citizens...
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...Botswana: A Diamond in the Rough Botswana, a country in the south of the African continent, has a surprising success story. This is because this country is located in a continent which has a history of colonization, poverty, and diseases. Botswana created an increase in its' GDP from 25% of the world's gem-quality diamonds, which was operated by a joint venture between the Bostwanan government and De Beers, the South African mining giant, which essentially controlled the world diamond market. If an individual would examine the case of Botswana's story, he/she will agree that this is a success story. Botswana's economic growth has outplaced even the “Asian Tigers”. This group consists of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, which are the best in economic growth in such a short period of time. This is something big. By one estimate, it has the fourth highest GDP in Africa, giving it a standard of living which countries such as Mexico or Turkey has right now. One of the biggest reasons that Botswana has experienced a success story was that they were not in the eyes of the big european colonization in the beginning of the 19th century. Many African countries were being colonized at that time, losing their resources and cultures. Botswana was not united back then, there were members of related African tribes which migrated to the area in the middle of the 18th century. Another reason for this success story is that Botswana did not get affected by the Dutch...
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...luminium case Some points to consider but more research needed ! Q1- Discuss and describe why the primary aluminum industry is competitive. How has the industry changed since 1994? It might be helpful to look at the statistics available at the International Aluminum Institute and Worldal.com -competitive because it is traded as a metal commodity in the London Metal Exhange. –i.e there is a bid and a ask price …trade made at the most competitive price. -Huge no of suppliers -More competitive as power costs fall in countries like China -change since 1994-After reaching all-time highs in excess of $2,500 per ton in 1988 and 1989, aluminum prices fall dramatically in the early 1990s as the former Soviet Union begins exporting far larger quantities of metal. By the beginning of 1994, the price has hit all-time lows.Al demand goes hand in hand with GDP growth-need for housing,construction,transportation. (Give eg of countries) -In 2000-2004 stable prices, but 2004-2008 prices doubles ( inspite of global recession) post 2008 prices falling. -untill the early 2000’s U.S major prod of Al. -After which Canada,Russia and presently China ( emerging markets ,cheap power) http://www.boj.org.jm/uploads/pdf/papers_pamphlets/papers_pamphlets_The_World_Aluminium_Market__An_Analysis_of_ ...
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