SM190
Robert A. Burgelman, Robert Eric Siegel, Morgan Hallmon
2010
In 2010, First Solar was the global leader in photovoltaic (PV) modules and looked to dominate the market going forward. The company’s strong market position was largely predicated on its proprietary Cadmium Telluride (CdTe) cell technology, which had…
SM181A
Sara Leslie, Jesper Sorensen
2010
Peter Löscher became CEO of Siemens in July, 2007. It was one of the most turbulent times in the company’s history as the company was reeling from a compliance scandal involving hundreds of millions of Euros in suspected bribes, and had to pay billions…
OIT96
Gretchen Daily, Sara Leslie, Erica Plambeck
2010
This case focuses on an opportunity that American Electric Power (AEP) has to invest, with The Nature Conservancy (TNC), in one of the world’s first projects for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). The proposed plan was…
OIT103
Lyn Denend, Haim Mendelson, Stefanos Zenios
2010
In 2005, Stanford Hospital and Clinics (SHC) was internationally recognized as a leading medical institution in terms of its clinical capabilities and specialty expertise. However, the organization was lagging many of its competitors in terms of its…
M333
Jennifer Aaker, Sara Leslie
2010
Tony Hsieh, originally an investor and advisor to the online footwear company, Zappos, joined the company in 2000, serving as the co-CEO. His partner, Nick Swinmurn, was intent on building the next internet retailing powerhouse and satisfying customers’…
RE135
Kathleen Kavanaugh, Jake Kraft, Baba Shiv
2010
The Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), Bob Joss, must decide whether to make the school’s new campus LEED certified. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and was an environmental certification awarded by the U…
OIT71C
Lyn Denend, Erica Plambeck
2010
In 2007, Walmart was sourcing approximately $750 million in seafood annually. Although output from the world’s fisheries had declined to 3 percent of production levels in the year 1900, the company’s volume of seafood business was growing at roughly 25…
P76
David Baron
2010
Despite concerns about censorship and putting users in jeopardy, Google decided to launch Google.cn in 2006. Google stated that it would monitor conditions in China and even reconsider its approach to China if warranted.
Three years later, in December 2009…
OIT98
Lyn Denend, Marianna Samson, Cynthia Yock, Paul Yock, Stefanos Zenios
2010
For roughly a decade, the team at Emphasys Medical had been working to design, develop, and then gain regulatory approval in the U.S. to market an innovative new device therapy to treat emphysema. However, after investing millions of dollars to test the…
M325
Jennifer Aaker, Victoria Chang
2010
In 2005, Jessica Jackley and cofounder Matt Flannery had started San Francisco-based Kiva because during a three-month work assignment in East Africa, Jackley had met Ugandan entrepreneurs and wanted to share their inspirational stories with friends and…
M328
Jennifer Aaker, Ravdeep Chawla, Sara Leslie
2010
Community service had a long history of success at NIKE. Often, employees did not even see their work as “volunteering”—they felt like they were doing what they loved and making a difference to the people around them. Despite this enthusiasm, corporate…
E381A
William Barnett, Sara Leslie
2010
Paul Coletta, a senior customer experience manager, and Floyd Morgan, a principal software engineer, had worked on the TurboTax tax preparation product at Intuit for several years. They had always gravitated toward the new product mindset and with Web 2…
E381B
William Barnett, Sara Leslie
2010
Paul Coletta, a senior customer experience manager, and Floyd Morgan, a principal software engineer, had worked on the TurboTax tax preparation product at Intuit for several years. They had always gravitated toward the new product mindset and with Web 2…
E377
Mark Leslie, Claire Magat, Michael Marks
2010
An initial public offering (IPO) is the first sale of stock or shares by a company to the public. IPOs are often issued by smaller, younger companies seeking capital to expand, although they can also be done by large privately owned companies looking to…
L17
David Hoyt, Charles O'Reilly III, Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton
2010
JetBlue Airways grew rapidly from its founding in 2000, focusing on providing low-cost service to previously underserved cities, while giving passengers a high-quality experience, (“bringing humanity back to air travel”). An ice storm at JFK airport on…
IB88
William Barnett, Mi Feng, Xiaoqu Luo
2010
By 2008, Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba.com Inc., was in a position to consider how to fortify Taobao’s dominant position in China’s online consumer-to-consumer (C2C) market. Ma and his company had come a long way since May 2003, when they first launched the…
HR36
Hayagreeva Rao, Thomas J Friel
2010
As one of the world’s largest producers of industrial electronics components, Chemrad Corporation generated annual sales in excess of $1 billion. A public company listed on the NYSE, Chemrad had been a favorite of analysts for two decades for its strong…
E370
Andrew Rachleff, Bethany Coates
2010
Late one evening in October 2008, Andy Rachleff, the president and CEO of kaChing, stepped out of the office for a walk around the block. The 8-member team at kaChing, an online social investing start up that planned to automate the practice of emulating…
E359
Kirk Bowman, James Lattin, Claire Magat
2010
The case highlights the evolution of a wide-area-network (WAN) optimization company from its founding day to its potential IPO. It explores the various challenges faced by management along the way, both in terms of determining what characteristics are…
E358
Bethany Coates, R. Ellis, Lisa Sweeney
2010
After earning their MBAs from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2008, Tessa Marks and Jason Church started a search fund, Sierra Capital Partners (SCP), with the goal of purchasing and running a company together. Marks, who had been a management…
HR37
Hayagreeva Rao, Thomas Friel
2010
Manutech Corporation was a global manufacturing company focused primarily on contract manufacturing for many of the world’s leading computer industry original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Manutech, founded in the late 1970s, operated manufacturing…
E391
Mark Leslie, Andrew Rachleff
2010
Kevin Donnelly, a junior partner at up and coming venture firm New Wave Ventures, has invested in NOW!, a start-up consumer internet company. Kevin and Mark Rosen, NOW!’s founder, agree to hire a new CEO, Todd Brown, to lead and develop a compelling…
E152B
James Lattin, Mark Leslie, Brett Lang
2010
Vocera Communications (B) is a company update as of 2007, after a new CEO/Chairman was hired. The company had evolved over the years into a healthcare technology company, and several other significant changes had taken place, specifically regarding…
E400
Mark Leslie, Robert Joss
2010
This case presents two vignettes from the perspective of Laura White, a newly-promoted manager of the Cook Islands operations for a large Australian bank. In Vignette A, White learns of the existence of an Offshore Banking Unit (OBU) – the source of…
