HBR CASE STUDY

Offered a lucrative deal to outfit consumer goods with RFID tags,a technology executive wonders: Would he be providing a valuable custonner service? Or committing a heinous invasion of privacy?

None of Our Business? by Roberta A. Fusaro

E S W THEM the moment he came
A
out of the parking garage. Across the street, about two dozen protesters crowded close to the main entrance of the exposition center, heckling conference goers as they streamed inside.
Fired up with anger and caffeine (almost all clutched steaming cups of coffee-it was still early on a Friday morning), they shouted through bullhorns and waved placards with messages like
"Get Off My Frequency!" and "Mind
Your Own Business!"When two women in charcoal-gray suits walked out the center's doors, a protester broke away and followed them down the sidewalk, trying to press pamphlets into their hands. A police officer ordered the

crowd to stay behind the barricades, but his commands were inaudible beneath the sounds of traffic and civil insurrection. Dante Sorelia shook his head. "How the hell did we reach this point?" he thought as the walk light beckoned him forward. As CEO of a technology firm, Dante was an old hand at privacy debates.
Such intense, public hostility, however, was a fairly recent development. His
Manhattan-based company, Raydar Electronics, was among the top five makers and integrators of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and readers in the
United States. The company developed and sold inventory-tagging technologies

HBR's cases, which are fictional, present common managerial dilemmas and offer concrete solutions from experts.
DECEMBER 2004

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HBR CASE STUDY • None of Our Business?

that allowed its customers - primarily manufacturers and retailers-to streamline their supply chains. Although something of an