The author has examined common growth beliefs and the US growth model and finds no support for them in any area of economic research. Instead, he offers the Organic Growth Index, the result of ten years of research from the Batten Institute at the Darden School. Six keys to organic growth are presented and successful …
In 2014, the board of directors of Allergan Inc. received a surprise takeover offer from Valeant Pharmaceuticals in association with hedge fund activist Bill Ackmans Pershing Square Capital Management. In the unprecedented deal between a buyer and a hedge fund activist, Pershing Square had tacitly accumulated a 9.7% stake in Allergan prior to the Valeant …
The case describes how Quantopian, a Python-based trading algorithm development and backtesting platform, uses its community of quantitative traders (“Quants”) to develop a novel crowdsourcing hedge fund model. The case provides an overview of the existing hedge fund industry and illustrates some potential issues that startups should address. The case also presents crowdsourcing as a …
Founded in 2007, Bolaven Farms is a charitable coffee business. Bolaven Farms was founded in Laos and Hong Kong with the goal of providing high-quality coffee to the global public while helping alleviate poverty among Lao coffee farmers. The business model involves the full integration of the coffee supply chain, from the sowing of coffee …
This series of cases addresses three important turning points in Palm’s history that relate to decisions about its platform: when the company considered opening its operating system (OS) to licensing to third-party hardware manufacturers; 2001 when the company decided to split into two independent companies; and in 2005 when the company migrated from its own …
In early 2006, PayPal management decided how to react to Google’s entry into online payments. EBay-owned PayPal is targeting online retailers outside of the eBay auction community for its next wave of expansion. Google poses a potential threat to PayPal’s “Off eBay” strategy, as do established credit card companies. PayPal management has to decide whether …
Founded by Priscilla and Raymond Lee and led by CEO Stephen Miller, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines was perhaps the world’s first low-cost, long-haul airline. The airline received approval for flights to London, Cologne, Berlin, Milan, Oakland and Chicago in November 2005. In March 2006, it announced the acquisition of two Boeing 747 400s and planned …
Jim Sharpe, 11 years after receiving his MBA from Harvard and working for others, is finally his own boss and 100% owner of a manufacturer of aluminum extrusion profiles. After 10 months of unfunded search, he acquires the company in an LBO and prepares to face his employees on the first day.
The case will be opened in August 2020 when Ozgur Tort and Mustafa Bartin, CEO and director of large format and online retailer of Migros Ticaret A.S. (Migros), the oldest and one of the largest supermarket chain in Turkey, is navigating Migros through COVID19 and the unprecedented surge in demand for groceries online. Between the …
In January 2021, the CEO of SafeGraph, a four-year-old startup selling data as a service, looked to the future. His goal was to become the most reliable source of data on a physical location. The company provided points of interest (POI) and pedestrian traffic data for nearly 7 million businesses in the US and Canada …