In 1988, Eric Molson became Chairman of the Board of The Molson Companies Ltd. (TMCL). Founded in 1786, the company focused on brewing until the mid-1960s, when it decided to diversify to fuel its growth. In 1988, TMCL had four main divisions: Brewing, Chemicals, Retail, and Sports (the Montreal Canadiens hockey team). Despite lingering doubts …
A middle manager must decide whether to endorse an investment proposal for a third attempt at a new product from a troubled business unit. He describes the long and arduous process by which the device, after years of persistent problems and losses, developed the product of a computer privacy screen and its absolute confidence in …
In 2006, four successful entrepreneurs decided to create a world-class mega-university. The project was slow at first until Vineet Gupta was able to locate a small property in Sonipat, Haryana. Forty-eight hours before the payment deadline, Ashish Dhawan and Sanjeev Bikchandani agreed to invest in their personal capital to launch the project. However, they proposed …
At the end of November 2020, Demetrio Santander and Juan David Gómez finalized the details of a launch that should take place in a few days. After three years of effort and dedication, the entrepreneurs had positioned Waykana as a fast-growing Ecuadorian company with a national and international presence. The company sold loose leaves of …
The student starts his own business and bakes cookies to order. The basic times of each operation are established and the student is asked to determine the consequences for the operating system. It serves as an exercise and review of concepts such as capacity, bottlenecks and delivery times. Students should be able to make some …
CEO Emma Mcilroy and her team weighed the merits of two different business models as they prepared for a funding round to scale Tomboy, a menswear-inspired fashion brand based on a badass tomboy image. The financing argument would depend on the resource and process gaps that the company would have to close in its business …
Consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble is faced with an urgent need to reinvigorate new product innovations given its recent focus on incremental product improvement and aggressive growth targets. As part of this effort, the company’s top executives form a small, self-contained, cross-functional Corporate New Ventures team led by a young former brand manager. In …
This 2008 case examines how Google worked to avoid potential negative by-products of rapid growth, such as bureaucracy, slow decision-making, lack of transparency, and organizational inconsistency. When the protagonist of the case, Kim Scott, started at Google in 2004, she wondered if she would still be there in a few years, because she liked small …
Nigel and Tammy Peck owned the Adventure Inn in Durango, Colorado. It took several years to acquire the 25-room motel and the combined savings of a lifetime. After only 18 months of owning the property, Nigel’s trusted friend and hotel agent, John Hazen, suggested that they had made such dramatic improvements by remodeling and renaming …
The case ‘HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0’ presents the concept of inbound marketing that leads potential customers to a business through the use of Web 2.0 tools and applications such as blogs, search engine optimization and social networks. Students follow the growth of HubSpot, an entrepreneurial company facing significant challenges in its quest for …