E399
George Foster, Sara Rosenthal
2012
The Financial Engines case chronicles the firm’s evolution from launch to IPO, highlighting the various decisions and events that impacted the company’s business model from 1997 through 2010. The concept for the company sprung from Nobel Prize winning…
P78C
Saumitra Jha, Debra Schifrin
2012
Managing Local Political Risk: Parking the Tata Nano highlights the role of political geography in shaping risks to businesses. The case has three parts: an (A) case, (B) case, and (C) case. The (A) case is set in 2006 and discusses the decision Tata…
P78B
Saumitra Jha, Debra Schifrin
2012
Managing Local Political Risk: Parking the Tata Nano highlights the role of political geography in shaping risks to businesses. The case has three parts: an (A) case, (B) case, and (C) case. The (A) case is set in 2006 and discusses the decision Tata…
RE137 old version
Douglas Abbey, Chris Mahowald, Max Lamont
2012
In March 2008, a group of investors considered purchasing 8,300 residential lots in 11 states from one of the largest U.S. homebuilders, at a price of 10 cents on the dollar. The deal would also involve purchasing a partially-built condominium complex…
OB81B
Shelley Correll, Debra Schifrin, Sarah Soule
2012
The (B) case reveals Mae O’Malley’s decision to grow her law firm, Paragon Legal, in the San Francisco area for two to three years, and then think about expanding to new geographical areas. O’Malley wanted Paragon Legal to grow organically so it could…
E459
Mark Leslie, Sara Rosenthal
2012
This case, GSB No. E-459, explores the SeaMicro CEO’s decision of whether or not to sell the company in early 2012. SeaMicro, a developer of low-power servers, has risen quickly as an innovative and significant force in a server market dominated by…
IDE03
Gina Jorasch, Michael Kennedy, Jesper Sorensen
2012
D.light is one of the leading manufacturers of solar powered lighting technology specifically designed for use by the world’s poorest, bottom of the pyramid customers. Having sold over 7 million lights since 2007, the company has been relatively…
F278
William Meehan III, Paul Pfleiderer, Michael Kennedy, Debra McCoy, Sheila Melvin
2012
This case describes the co-founders and leadership team of Asia Alternatives Management (“Asia Alt”), a private equity fund-of-funds focused on Asia, as they consider whether or not to invest in Vietnam. The case recounts the history of Asia Alt and its…
E437
Russell Siegelman, Sara Rosenthal
2012
The Sustainable Conservation case presents the story of San Francisco-based nonprofit that was founded to solve environmental problems in California through collaborative partnerships between the public and private sector. The nonprofit had built up…
SM208
Robert Burgelman, Robert Siegel, Scott Nolan
2012
Flibe Energy is a startup in the nuclear power space seeking to find a safe way to enable nuclear energy using a technology previously dismissed by the US government since it could not be used for making material for nuclear weapons. The founders believe…
SM209B
Robert A Burgelman, Robert E Siegel, Rosy Lee
2012
On June 12, 2008, Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems announced plans to merge. The combined company was to be renamed Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE). Invitrogen offered to acquire Applied Biosystems for $6.7 billion in cash and stock. AB shareholders…
SM209A
Robert A. Burgelman, Robert E. Siegel, Rosy Lee
2012
Founded in 1987, Invitrogen was one of the largest catalog life science companies in the industry. Its customers came from academic research, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and government laboratories. Scientists viewed Invitrogen as a one…
E453
Mark Leslie, Kirk Bowman, Sara Rosenthal
2012
These three short vignettes involve challenges faced by Andrew Markham, the CEO of Sage Networks. In the first, Markham believes that one of his VPs, Robert Salinas, may be having covert discussions with the CEO of a competitive company to discuss the…
SM210
Robert A Burgelman, Robert E Siegel, Tomas Uribe
2012
It was 2005 and David Steiner, CEO of Waste Management (WM), had just received a report from an internal advisory panel created some months before to assess the future of the waste management industry and propose how the company’s strategy should be…
M345
Jennifer Aaker, Sara Gaviser Leslie, Debra Schifrin
2012
The Business Case for Happiness discusses why it is important for employees and customers to be happy, how happiness positively impacts the bottom line, and how an organization can design for happiness. Research shows that employee happiness leads to…
M343
Jennifer L Aaker, Debra Schifrin
2012
In 2012 the New York-based airline JetBlue served 70 cities with 650 daily flights. JetBlue prided itself on being a fun, low-cost airline with high-quality customer service and popular amenities not found on other airlines. But while it had loyal…
SPM49
George Foster, David Hoyt
2012
Thoroughbred horse racing was in decline at the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st century. Nearly all metrics, from number of horses and races, to attendance, and amount wagered, was falling. Studies indicated this was likely to continue…
OB83(B)
Chris Beaumont, Asaka Itoh, Hiromichi Kimura, Robert Kneller, Charles O'Reilly III
2012
Yasuchika Hasegawa, president of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, had a vision to make Takeda a top tier company in oncology by 2015. In 2008, Takeda acquired Millennium Pharmaceuticals, a respected oncology company with annual sales of $528 million in…
OB83(C)
Chris Beaumont, Asaka Itoh, Hiromichi Kimura, Robert Kneller, Charles O'Reilly III
2012
In addition to acquiring Millennium Pharmaceuticals in 2008 and Amgen Japan in 2009, Takeda implemented a major reorganization of its global organization. President Yasuchika Hasegawa reorganized Takeda’s business in the U.S. and aggressively expanded…
P79C
Saumitra Jha
2012
In 1985, M.C. Mehta, a lawyer and head of his own environmental NGO, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Supreme Court of India to enforce the 1981 Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act in the environs of India’s National Capital…
SPM50
George Foster, David Hoyt
2012
By the early 21st century, the economics of thoroughbred horse racing in the United States was backwards – owners invested about four times as much money into the sport than the total amount of purse money available. Owners raced their horses as early as…
OB45V12
Jeffrey Pfeffer
2012
Gary Loveman, a former assistant professor at Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, became Chief Operating Officer of Harrah’s Entertainment in 1998. He was an outsider in a very insular business who had no significant administrative or…
OB85C
David Bradford
2012
This case is divided into A, B, and C cases. See OB85 Dealing with a Toxic Boss for an expanded version of the full case. A Case: Ned was an upper middle manager in a major construction company. Six months prior, he was hired away from a…
OB84
Charles O'Reilly III, David Caldwell
2012
In 2011, Cypress Semiconductor was doing well. Their 2010 revenues had grown 32 percent to $884 million, and coupled with diligent cost reduction efforts, their profits before taxes were up nearly 23 percent. In the preceding two years Cypress had…
