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 …
Teradyne, a leading manufacturer of semiconductor test equipment, spent several years of effort improving its product development capabilities and implementing more formalized project management approaches. Investigates the development of a next-generation tester that spanned extensive hardware and software design. To do this, the company decided to implement new approaches in project management and project teams. …
Leo Burnett Co. Ltd. is a global advertising agency. The company is partnering with one of its largest customers to launch a new line of hair care products in the trial markets of Canada and Taiwan in preparation for a global launch. Typically, after a brand is launched, the Global Brand Center transfers responsibility for …
Valve, one of the world’s leading video game software companies, has also become an iconic example of an organization without hierarchies. An organization of 400 people, Valve’s unique organizational form (detailed in the case and in the accompanying employee manual) includes 100% self-assigned time, no managers (and therefore no management oversight), such a fluid structure …
JetBlue Airways has grown rapidly since its inception in 2000, focusing on providing low-cost flights to previously underserved cities while providing a high-quality experience for passengers (“Bringing Humanity Return to Air Travel”). An ice storm at JFK airport on February 14, 2007 caused 1,195 flights to be canceled in six days and several planes were …
In 2006, the management team at Merrimack Pharmaceuticals, Inc. had to decide whether to keep the R&D organization in functional departments or reorganize it into multidisciplinary teams. This case follows the results of this decision from 2006 to mid-2014 and examines its effects on productivity, responsibility, communication, and skills development from the perspective of employees …
Trip Hawkins founded Digital Chocolate in Silicon Valley in 2003 to create great games for mobile devices. By 2008, the company had expanded to four countries and Digital Chocolate was a leading developer of single-player games for standard cell phones and iPhones. In 2009, Hawkins set out for Digital Chocolate to begin developing new types …
Karl Henderson was a senior manager at Metrionic Systems, a network solutions provider based in Santa Clara, California. During his time there, he worked and led various cross-functional teams. When given the opportunity to lead a team spread across five continents, Henderson was confident that, with a little preparatory work, he could get along perfectly …
It includes a series of three negotiation exercises that describe the relationships between management and ABC employees over a seven-year period. ABC, originally a family business, prided itself on its cooperative relationship with its Local 190 union. With inflation exploding in the 1970s, the administration considered drastic changes. Management and workers would go through a …
Novartis, the world’s leading healthcare company, was formed in 1996 from the merger of two very different mid-size Swiss pharmaceutical companies. The case tracks the evolution of the company over the past 17 years as it has grown into a truly global company with 127,000 employees of 153 nationalities in 140 countries, with 2012 sales …