First Look

Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) uses an innovative new approach to procuring outside legal counsel: it replaces relationship-based selection and law firms' traditional time-based billing with data-driven decision making and an online reverse auction. In the case, GSK is hit with a potentially devastating suit and must hire a firm in time to respond. The recently hired managing attorney, Sophia Keating, grapples with GSK's approach. The GSK veterans assure her that the approach drives down costs and improves the quality of work by systematically increasing the rigor in the procurement process. Still skeptical, Sophia runs the process of systematically analyzing and comparing the competing firms' bids. This case also describes the process by which these tools were created and adopted. Beyond the implications for law firms and other service providers, lessons from this case are applicable for teaching about institutional change, procurement processes relevant to many fields, and how to increase rigor in typically informal business processes.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/414003-PDF-ENG

In 2013, Anders Byriel, CEO of the family-owned Danish textiles company, Kvadrat, considered the firm's strategic plan. In 2000, Byriel and Mette Bendix, Kvadrat's Product Director, had taken over management of the company from their fathers, who had founded Kvadrat in the 1960s. Byriel and Bendix had joined Kvadrat in 1992, and since that time, Kvadrat had grown from €19 million in annual sales to over €86 million. It had expanded its focus on selling textiles to European architects and furniture manufactures, becoming a global company with a wide product range and a broad customer base. Kvadrat's internal organization had grown and transformed to support this larger business. Now Kvadrat's management team was focused on a number of key initiatives: expansion into Asia, improved sales trends in its curtain and Soft Cells businesses, development of Kvadrat's retail sales operations, the implementation of new Human Resources practices, and the execution of a new organizational design. Was such an extensive growth, turnaround, and internal development agenda feasible? And, were the initiatives being considered the right ones for Kvadrat?

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/413120-PDF-ENG

No abstract available.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/514025-PDF-ENG

No abstract available.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/513053-PDF-ENG

IBM, through its corporate citizenship arm, demonstrated the role of business in partnership for change, conceiving of an organizational innovation in public education linking an employer, the New York City K-12 public education system, and the city's two-year colleges. P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) was a new concept, a six-year high school running to grade 14, graduating students with a high school diploma and an associate's degree in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). This case shows how the innovation developed and why it generated enormous public and media interest in less than a year. Results were strong: one-third of the first students entered below grade level, and soon many were taking college courses. P-TECH addresses a skills gap affecting U.S. competitiveness that quickly caught the attention of elected officials.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/314049-PDF-ENG

P-TECH, an innovation in public education conceived by IBM in partnership with the New York City K-12 public education system and the city's two-year colleges, had barely been underway when other cities and states wanted to replicate it. This case follows the reinvented six-year technology high school model to Chicago, where the Mayor championed five similar reinvented high schools, with five employer-partners including IBM, and with IBM's overall support, and back to New York City and State, as well as to Washington D.C. because of interest from President Obama. This case shows how an organizational innovation still in progress can be taken elsewhere and maintain essential ingredients while also accommodating local and state differences. It raises questions about the necessary conditions for diffusion and replication of innovation.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/314050-PDF-ENG

Describes sustainability efforts at Siemens since arrival of Chief Sustainability Officer, Barbara Kux, in 2008. Asks students to evaluate success of those efforts and outline what the company should do going forward.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/514026-PDF-ENG

This case explores the very different paths taken by the Ford Motor Company and the General Motors Corporation in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Henry Ford's Model T was a car for the masses. After considerable experimentation, Ford Motor perfected a mass production system that converted the vast majority of jobs in the factory into routine tasks. It pioneered the moving assembly line, and it pursued processes that became increasingly integrated and mechanized. While its single-minded focus on cost minimization led to spectacular market success for a time, the resulting inflexibility made it difficult for the company to respond to market changes. This created an opportunity for General Motors and others, particularly in the face of technological shifts to closed-body designs and metal stamping technology, as well as the marketing-led idea of the annual model change. The case offers a setting to examine several frameworks: exploration versus exploitation, the emergence of dominant designs, and vertical integration versus transaction costs and supplier hold-up. The (A) case closes with the question of what GM should do about supplier Fisher Body. The (B) case summarizes the shift to all-steel body stamping and engine manufacturing as the core technologies for automobile production, and how these changes made it difficult for Ford to maintain its first-mover advantage.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/614010-PDF-ENG

No abstract available.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/713514-PDF-ENG

Café Coffee Day (CCD) is contemplating how to respond to the entry of Starbucks into the Indian coffee chain market. The case study describes the emergence of CCD as the leading coffee chain in India, with over 1,400 cafes in India. In early 2013, Starbucks, the world's leading coffee chain company, opened its first 11 outlets in India's metropolitan cities with local giant, Tata, and promises of a national roll out. CCD management debated whether there was plenty of room for both Starbucks and CCD in India's large growing market, or whether Starbucks' entry required CCD to respond more assertively.

Purchase this case:
http://hbr.org/search/714409-PDF-ENG