Recommended Research

Some of the best lessons in business development and investments can be learned from the in-depth case studies written by the Stanford and Harvard business schools. Fortunately, these programs have recently made their case studies available for purchase by the public.

The cost of these case studies is often less than $7 for electronic download via Adobe PDF. The programs allow you to print one copy for your personal study. To access the below case studies, simply go to the Harvard Online Business website and search for the below titles, join as a new customer, and download the case studies. It is that easy!

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Ashco Favorite Case Studies from Harvard Online Business

Starting Up in High Gear: An Interview with Venture Capitalist Vinod Khosla
The current high level of venture capital investment is driving enormous innovation in business. About 40% of the growth in the U.S. GDP is coming out of the tech sector, and most of that can be traced to the vibrancy of entrepreneurial initiatives, according to accomplished entrepreneur and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. But in a wide-ranging interview, Khosla says greed is at a high level, too, and he's concerned about its effect on entrepreneurs and their infant businesses. Today, an entrepreneur with a plan for a new business can get funded within a week. But the entrepreneur doesn't get an honest, painstaking critique. The weaknesses of the plan are often ignored. The result is that great ideas don't reach their full potential. Khosla touches on the qualities required of today's entrepreneurs and the difficulties that established companies face in adapting to the Internet. He also offers some of his secrets for finding and exploiting the biggest new technologies.

What Is Strategy? (HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)
HBR OnPoint Articles save you time by enhancing an original Harvard Business Review article with an overview that draws out the main points and an annotated bibliography that points you to related resources. This enables you to scan, absorb, and share the management insights with others. Today's dynamic markets and technologies have called into question the sustainability of competitive advantage. Under pressure to improve productivity, quality, and speed, managers have embraced tools such as TQM, benchmarking, and reengineering. Dramatic operational improvements have resulted, but rarely have these gains translated into sustainable profitability. And gradually, the tools have taken the place of strategy. As managers push to improve on all fronts, they move further away from viable competitive positions. Michael Porter argues that operational effectiveness, although necessary to superior performance, is not sufficient, because its techniques are easy to imitate. In contrast, the essence of strategy is choosing a unique and valuable position rooted in systems of activities that are much more difficult to match.

How Snapple Got Its Juice Back
In 1993, Quaker Oats paid $1.7 billion for the rapidly growing Snapple brand. In 1997, it sold the brand to Triarc for a mere $300 million. In 2000, Triarc sold it to Cadbury Schweppes for an estimated $1 billion. How could so much value be lost and regained so quickly? John Deighton's answer to these questions is one that many marketing professionals are likely to resist: There is a vital interplay, he says, between the challenges that a brand faces and the culture of the corporation that owns it. Quaker's textbook marketing approach backfired, whereas Triarc's revival of Snapple's original anything-goes attitude worked. Success in brand management stems from the quality of strategy execution, and successful execution is a matter of temperament. Some strategies are best entrusted to managers with cautious, prudent temperaments; others flourish in the hands of risk takers. So before you commit to a deal, don't just consider a brand's sales. Also give some thought to its soul and how it fits with yours.

How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea
Coming up with creative ideas is easy; selling them to strangers is hard. Entrepreneurs, sales executives, and marketing managers often go to great lengths to demonstrate how their new concepts are practical and profitable--only to be rejected by corporate decision makers who don't seem to understand the value of the ideas. Why does this happen? Having studied Hollywood executives who assess screenplay pitches, the author says the person on the receiving end--the "catcher"--tends to gauge the pitcher's creativity as well as the proposal itself. An impression of the pitcher's ability to come up with workable ideas can quickly and permanently overshadow the catcher's feelings about an idea's worth. To determine whether these observations apply to business settings beyond Hollywood, the author attended product design, marketing, and venture-capital pitch sessions and conducted interviews with executives responsible for judging new ideas. The results in those environments were similar to her observations in Hollywood, she says. Catchers subconsciously categorize successful pitchers as showrunners (smooth and professional), artists (quirky and unpolished), or neophytes (inexperienced and naive). The research also reveals that catchers tend to respond well when they believe they are participating in an idea's development. As Oscar-winning writer, director, and producer Oliver Stone puts it, screenwriters pitching an idea should "pull back and project what he needs onto your idea in order to make the story whole for him." By finding ways to give your catchers a chance to shine, you sell yourself as a likable collaborator.

Trilogy University
In early 2001, Trilogy Software faced a slowdown in its business, a large number of unsuccessful customer deployments, and an overall weakening in the enterprise software market. In response, the company revamped its business model and restructured the organization. Joe Liemandt, chairman and CEO of Trilogy, along with members of the company's senior management team must decide whether Trilogy University, the company's internal training program for new college recruits and other recently hired employees, supported or detracted from the company's new objectives. Specifically, they must decide whether and, if so, how Trilogy University, the traditional source of new ideas, new products, and new approaches at Trilogy, should be adapted to reflect the strategic changes that were taking place throughout the organization. Teaching Purpose: To examine the challenges of organizational design, alignment, and cultural change.

ProfitLogic
Describes an "application software" company that has been through several evolutions--from consulting firm to applications service provider (ASP). The firm has received significant venture funding to pursue the ASP model but this has not worked, at least at the time the case ends. The company faces a choice: continuing with its current ASP business model, increasing its burn rate to convert to a licensed software model, or decreasing its burn rate to offer a more custom version of the ASP product. Teaching Purpose: Focuses on the articulation of P&L and cash flow models associated with each of the three business models articulated in the case. Pushes students to sort through the risks and rewards of these alternatives.

Intuit's New CEO: Steve Bennett
Describes the transition to a new CEO at Intuit, a successful software and financial services firm in California. The new CEO must decide what to change and how fast. He must also navigate within a culture everyone believes to be successful but he believes can be improved. Teaching Purpose: To learn about CEO transitions in an entrepreneurial venture.

Intuit, Inc.: Transforming an Entrepreneurial Company into a Collaborative Organization
Describes how Intuit, Inc.'s CEO, Steve Bennett, changes the company from an entrepreneurial "siloed" organization into a collaborative one.

Apple Computer (A): Corporate Strategy and Culture (Abridged)
Provides an overview of the company's history, industry, competitive position, strategy, and organization. Analyzes the culture and morale at Apple. Written at a time when the company faces a very compelling threat to their business, and when morale within the company is very low. The purpose is to identify the key organizational issues that the company must address.

Akamai's Underwater Options
Akamai's stock price declines dramatically with the NASDAQ in 2000, causing virtually all employee options to go underwater. Ownership and retention incentives are largely destroyed, and employee morale falls sharply. Management weighs the pros and cons of various alternative "solutions" to this problem (including repricing, issuing a new supplemental grant, canceling the underwater options and issuing a delayed regrant, and making a tender offer to exchange underwater options for fewer shares of restricted stock). Teaching Purpose: To show the difficulties and alternatives companies face when options fall underwater. Provides the opportunity to analyze various solutions to this problem: equity pay design, the tradeoffs between stock and options, the role and relevance of accounting and taxation in option design, and the difference between cost and value of options.

Challenge of Commitment
Defines commitment, describes the psychological and organizational factors that underly it, and provides a comprehensive discussion of the policies and practices managers can employ to enhance commitment. Identifies control and commitment as two critical strategies managers must learn to manage and mix.

General Electric: Jack Welch's Second Wave
By the mid 1980's Jack Welch had completely transformed General Electric with more than 300 divestitures and acquisitions since the beginning of the decade. Welch insisted that his business units be number one or number two in their markets, and have the strength of large companies and the leanness and agility of small ones. Yet, although Welch had succeeded restructuring GE the way he wanted, employee morale was low. The case focuses on Welch raising employee productivity by continuing to remove layers of management and by allowing employees to have a greater voice in their own affairs.

Regal Cinemas LBO
Describes one of the greatest LBO failures of the 1990s and asks students to explain how two experienced buyout sponsors ran into such difficulties. Teaching Purpose: To elucidate multiple failures in governance and control, including adverse and failure of board oversight of strategy and execution.

RJR Nabisco Board: Guardians of the Gate?
Charles Hugel, the chairman of RJR Nabisco, receives a call from RJR Nabisco's CEO, Ross Johnson; Johnson plans to present an LBO plan to the board of directors at the board meeting the following week. The case details Hugel's actions as chairman, and describes the events leading up to the bidding deadline for the company. The special committee of RJR Nabisco's board must decide which of the three groups vying for the company submitted the best bid.

Seagate Technology Buyout
Set in March 2000, when a group of private investors and senior managers were negotiating a deal to acquire the disk drive operations of Seagate Technology. The motivating factor for the buyout was the apparently anomalous market value of Seagate's equity--Seagate's equity value was just a fraction of the value of its minority stake in Veritas Software Corp., a software maker. The investor group had to decide how much to offer for the operating assets, as well as how to finance the transaction. Further complicating the analysis was the fact that, unlike in traditional buyout settings, the target company was in a highly cyclical, volatile, and capital intensive industry. Teaching Purpose: To illustrate cash flow valuation (adjusted present value and WACC), including estimating the cost of capital from comparables, as well as the impact of financing decisions on value; to discuss leveraged buyouts, both in traditional settings within mature industries, as well as in the more volatile technology sector; to discuss tax implications associated with corporate divestitures; to qualitatively evaluate potential costs of financial distress in a capital-intensive technology-driven setting.

Ducati & Texas Pacific Group: A "Wild Ride" Leveraged Buyout
Describes the attempt of Texas Pacific Group (TPG), a buyout firm, to purchase a controlling stake in Ducati Motor, the world's leading high-performance motorcycle company, based in Bologna, Italy. Ducati is part of Cagiva Group, a family-controlled industrial group. Cagiva has fallen on hard times and Ducati is the crown jewel in the group. Yet even Ducati is under great financial pressure and short on working capital. Abel Halpern, a partner at TPG, is frustrated because a deal with the owners seems to be an ever-moving target. TPG has negotiated with the seller for almost a year. In spite of costly due diligence efforts by TPG, Abel Halpern is now ready to walk away from the deal. In his decision he needs to consider not only valuation and the feasibility of hiring new management to turn the company around but also the feasibility of an eventual exit via the public markets in Italy. Teaching Purpose: To teach students about valuation and buyout financing in entrepreneurial settings; to examine the country context for entrepreneurship, financing, and corporate governance in Italy; to illustrate working capital dynamics in manufacturing firms; and to examine the feasibility of brand expansion beyond a core product.

Eller Media
Covers the leveraged buy-out of an outdoor advertising company by Hellman & Friedman and Karl Eller. Eighteen months after it is bought, the investors are faced with the choice of going public or selling to a strategic buyer. Also involves the decision of whether an entrepreneur and a professional risk capital group should team with one another.

Early Career LBOs Using the Search Fund Model
Many MBA students hope immediately to run their own companies. This note looks at one model, the search fund, as a means to allow a graduating MBA to find, purchase, and operate a company soon after graduation.

Nantucket Nectars
The founders of Nantucket Nectars are trying to decide whether to sell their company. The case describes how the founders started the company and grew the Nantucket Nectars brand name. Teaching Purpose: Guerilla marketing, development of a brand, analysis of when to sell a brand.

Honest Tea
Concerns the decisions of Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff, founders of Honest Tea. Honest Tea is a start-up in the ready-to-drink tea market. Goldman and Nalebuff need to craft an expansion and financing strategy. Teaching Purpose: To understand the interaction of strategy and finance. To examine financing terms and conditions.

Cola Wars Continue: Coke vs. Pepsi in the Twenty-First Century
Examines the industry structure and competitive strategy of Coke and Pepsi over 100 years of rivalry. New challenges of the twenty-first century included boosting flagging domestic cola sales and finding new revenue streams. Both firms also began to modify their bottling, pricing, and brand strategies. They looked to emerging international markets to fuel growth and broaden their brand portfolios to include noncarbonated beverages like tea, juice, sports drinks, and bottled water. For over a century, Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola had vied for the "throat share" of the world's beverage market. The most intense battles of the cola wars were fought over the $60 billion industry in the United States, where the average American consumes 53 gallons of carbonated soft drinks (CSD) per year. In a "carefully waged competitive struggle," from 1975 to 1995 both Coke and Pepsi had achieved average annual growth of around 10% as both U.S. and worldwide CSD consumption consistently rose. This cozy situation was threatened in the late 1990s, however, when U.S. CSD consumption dropped for two consecutive years and worldwide shipments slowed for both Coke and Pepsi. Considers whether Coke's and Pepsi's era of sustained growth and profitability was coming to a close or whether this apparent slowdown was just another blip in the course of a century of enviable performance. Teaching Purpose: Industry and competitor analysis.

Global Beer
Two young American entrepreneurs working in Japan have rapidly established an importing business to take advantage of new regulations permitting microbrewers and brewpubs. Options for further growth include an international brewpub franchise, alliances with Japanese trading houses, or an innovative green tea beer. Teaching Purpose: To explore the challenges facing start-up businesses in global markets.

Joint Juice
Focuses on Joint Juice, a start-up in the new-age beverage category. The company has a patented formula for producing a glucosamine beverage, the only one on the market. (Glucosamine is a nutritional supplement believed to help rejuvenate joints and treat arthritis.) The company has made slow progress in its initial phase, but as the case ends, it has an opportunity to go national with two of the nation's largest grocery chains. Teaching Purpose: To explore the alternative growth strategies of young companies and the challenges presented by rapid growth. The questions that present themselves are: Does Joint Juice know enough to go national? What investments would be required for this strategy? What alternative strategies are available? Can the company grow while continuing to experiment and learn, or must it lock in its strategy if it is to have any chance of executing successfully?

Snapple
Tells the story of Snapple's rise and fall, and poses the question "Can it recover?" Many soft-drink brands flourished in the 1980s serving New York's Yuppies, but only Snapple made the big time. It went from local to national success and was poised to go international when the founders sold out to Quaker. The brand proved harder to manage than Quaker anticipated and in 1997 was sold for a fraction of its acquisition price. The case presents factors accounting for the growth and decline and provides a qualitative study of the brand. What action should the new owners take?

Odwalla, Inc.
Odwalla suffered one of the worst food safety crises in history and not only survived but continued to grow. Now they need to decide how the crisis affected their business and how to expand their business. Teaching Purpose: Discussion of managing a crisis, recovery, and growth.

Natural Blends, Inc.
Describes the continuous flow process used to generate orange juice concentrate. Production involves several tightly-coupled process steps with varying production rates and setup times. Given production constraints and customer requirements, management choices must be made to maximize the greatest contribution. Teaching Purpose: To review basic principles of process analysis, setup/runtimes, bottleneck, effect of batch sizes, WIP, and materials.