Professional Essays Writer Digital Microscopy at Carl Zeiss: Managing Disruption

Willy Shih

Strategy & Execution

Ulrich Simon, the head of the Microscopy business group at Carl Zeiss AG knew that his unit was facing a disruptive threat, so he chartered a special team to tackle the industrial segment. Given a high degree of autonomy, the project team developed an understanding of the marketplace challenge and proceeded to develop and execute on a new business plan. Simon gave the team ample freedom to develop new processes and priorities appropriate to the market segment needs, but he couldn’t help but wonder whether it would continue as a stand-alone unit or he would need to reintegrate it into the mainline business. He also was nervous about the plan itself. The team had established timelines and milestones, but now they had to execute and deliver thjeir first product next year.

Disruptive innovation, Marketing, Product development, Supply chain, Technology

Professional Essays Writer Natureview Farm

Karen Martinsen Fleming

Sales & Marketing

When students have the English-language PDF of this Brief Case in a coursepack, they will also have the option to purchase an audio version.Explores channel management issues in the U.S. food industry. Natureview Farm, a Vermont-based producer of organic yogurt with $13 million in revenues, is the leading national yogurt brand (24% market share) sold into natural foods stores. It has achieved this through its special yogurt manufacturing process and through cultivating personal relationships with dairy buyers in the natural foods channel. Set in 2000, when the company faces financial pressure to grow revenues to $20 million by the end of 2001 due to a planned exit by its venture capital investors. The immediate decision point that the protagonist, Natureview’s vice president of marketing, faces is whether to achieve this revenue growth by expanding into the supermarket channel.

Budgeting, Marketing, Pricing, Supply chain

Professional Essays Writer Commerce Bank

Frances X. Frei, Corey Hajim

Technology & Operations

Taught in the second module of a course on Managing Service Operations, which addresses the design of sustainable service models (606-031).Commerce Bank has become one of the fastest growing banks in the country, despite having defied conventional wisdom about how to grow deposits. Banks historically have grown either by competing on deposit rates or through acquisitions that expand their deposit base. Commerce has the lowest deposit rates in each of the local markets it serves and has acquired no other banks, yet its growth rate is unparalleled. Its secret? Commerce differentiates itself on service. Explores the highly refined service model that guides the design of its operations and service features and considers the trade-offs involved in competing on service.

Supply chain

Professional Essays Writer MOD Pizza: A Winning Recipe?

Boris Groysberg, John D. Vaughan, Matthew Preble

Leadership & Managing People

Scott and Ally Svenson, the founders of MOD Pizza, had to make a number of decisions in planning how to scale their small company. They wanted to grow MOD from 45 stores as of May 2015 to 200 stores by the end of 2016, and while the two believed that MOD could manage this growth from an operational standpoint, they wanted to make sure that MOD’s culture was sufficiently strong to survive this rollout. The company had developed a strong culture, and the Svensons did not want MOD’s core values and philosophies to be compromised as it rapidly expanded. To that end, they considered what the company needed to do in order to protect its core culture. Should it put rigid safeguards in place or trust that MOD could successfully scale its culture by hiring the right people and helping them develop as employees? The Svensons also discussed the possibility of an IPO at some point in the near future; what would this mean for its ability to stay true to its core values?

Entrepreneurship, Growth strategy, Labor, Leadership, Managing people, Marketing, Organizational culture, Social responsibility, Supply chain

Professional Essays Writer Cirque du Soleil

Thomas J. DeLong, Vineeta Vijayaraghavan

Organizational Development

Retaining talent is an issue for any company whose success relies on the creativity and excellence of its employees. This is especially true for Cirque du Soleil, the spectacularly successful “circus without animals,” whose 2,100 employees include 500 artists–mimes, clowns, acrobats, gymnasts, musicians, and production professionals. Managing a company full of creative people is a juggling act in itself, between keeping its artists happy and pursuing a successful strategy for attracting more business and talent.

Organizational culture, Supply chain

Professional Essays Writer Airbnb, Etsy, Uber: Growing from One Thousand to One Million Customers

Thales S. Teixeira, Morgan Brown

Strategy & Execution

By 2016, two-sided online platforms (or marketplaces) were pervasive among the highest growing internet startups around. These marketplaces sought to match suppliers of assets for rent, physical products or services with customers demanding them. Among the most notable two-sided platforms in terms of their tremendous early growth were Airbnb, Etsy and Uber. They offered short-term property rentals, handcrafted goods, and car rides, respectively. As two-sided markets grew to scale, network effects kicked in as more consumers bred more suppliers and vice versa. But how did these platforms ride the second wave of growth? How did they grow from one thousand to one million customers?

Marketing, Strategy, Supply chain

Professional Essays Writer ZARA: Fast Fashion

Pankaj Ghemawat, Jose Luis Nueno

Strategy & Execution

Focuses on Inditex, an apparel retailer from Spain, which has set up an extremely quick response system for its ZARA chain. Instead of predicting months before a season starts what women will want to wear, ZARA observes what’s selling and what’s not and continuously adjusts what it produces and merchandises on that basis. Powered by ZARA’s success, Inditex has expanded into 39 countries, making it one of the most global retailers in the world. But in 2002, it faces important questions concerning its future growth.

Competition, Globalization, Marketing, Mergers & acquisitions, Supply chain

Professional Essays Writer Trouble at Tessei

Ethan S. Bernstein, Ryan W. Buell

Technology & Operations

In 2005, Teruo Yabe is asked to revive Tessei, the 669-person JR-East subsidiary responsible for cleaning its Shinkansen (“”bullet””) trains. Operational mistakes, customer complaints, safety issues, and employee turnover are at or near all-time highs, even as the demands on Tessei continued to grow. Given previous leaders’ failed attempts to fix Tessei’s problems with increased managerial monitoring and controls, Yabe seeks a creative approach to overcome the motivation, capability, and coordination challenges facing his organization. Like many contemporary leaders, he selects transparency as his tool. He is, however, unique in adopting a highly nuanced approach to implementing transparency. In the process, he not only leads a fantastic organizational turnaround but even helps to make otherwise “”dirty”” work more meaningful for Tessei front-line employees. The case therefore presents students, particularly in leadership, organizational behavior, operations management , and service operations courses, with an opportunity to think through how a well-crafted transparency strategy can act as a powerful leadership tool.

Leadership, Motivating people, Product development, Supply chain, Transparency

Professional Essays Writer Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the Tiger Reserve

Ryan W. Buell, Ananth Raman, Vidhya Muthuram

Leadership & Managing People

Celebrated as one of the world’s premiere luxury hotel brands, Oberoi Hotels attracts and serves some of the most quality sensitive guests in the world. The case considers the challenge of how an organization, with a standardized service model, can repeatedly delight customers whose expectations grow with every interaction. To explore this question, the case details the design elements of Oberoi’s complex service operation, including its approaches to employee management and continuous improvement, as well as the dynamics of service competition in a rapidly growing market. Teaching Note includes links to videos intended for display during classroom debrief.

Developing employees, Labor, Motivating people, Product development, Supply chain