The co-evolution of technology, labor, and labor over the past 30 years has dramatically affected our understanding of the organizations and industries in which they compete. IT is no longer just a tool to support “back office” transactions, but it has become a strategic part of most companies, allowing the redefinition of markets and industries, …
Martha Radosevich, president of Health Payment Review, a small software startup, faces a serious cash flow problem: Health Payment Review built a PC-based prototype, but ran out of money to build a commercially acceptable mainframe product . As an interim measure to generate money, Marcia tries to sell the prototype PC, but is opposed by …
EDuctions, a small privately owned business, has developed a new voluntary perk for employees: a credit card with paycheck. The CLEAR card gave workers, particularly workers with low income and bad debts, access to a card with strict credit limits, no APR and automatic payment. The company’s initial experience suggested that the CLEAR card might …
Designed to stimulate discussion of outsourcing issues from the perspective of a company considering outsourcing its IS operations to a third party.
This case B cannot be taught as a stand-alone case, but is a direct continuation of the FocusCase “Argo Interactive (A): Surviving in the RollerCoasting Mobile Industry” [EFC1E]. This second part illustrates the decisions the company made during and after its near-death crisis regarding financing, market focus, (new) product development, personnel issues, positioning, and the …
Several different brokerage business models have emerged for the intellectual property (IP) market over the past five to ten years. This notice describes the most popular: non-practicing entities (or patent trolls), defensive patent aggregators, online IP platforms, live IP auctions, and IP exchanges.
In October 2008, the Hong Kong University Libraries (“HKU Libraries”) successfully launched an initiative to introduce radio frequency identification (“RFID”) into its main library. With the RFID initiative, HKU libraries sought to effectively manage the public and private resources made available to the institution. In 2008, the libraries served a total of 102,676 registered borrowers …
In late 1999, Steve Riggio, vice president and acting CEO of barnesandnoble.com wondered what his company should do against Amazon.com, the online retailer that is the largest online book seller in the United States. While barnesandnoble.com has been careful to expand into new media-related categories, such as magazines, CDs, and posters, Amazon.com has expanded into …
Profile of Bill Gates intended to facilitate a discussion on the nature of lasting success. Contains biographical data and extracts from autobiographical records.
Sustainable IT (information technology) includes the responsible use of resources (both IT and non-IT) with ecological, economic and social dimensions. Sustainable IT has the potential to make a significant contribution to a company’s sustainability strategy. In this teaching case, we examine what Intel IT has done to transform its operations with sustainable IT, resulting in …