A small, founder-centered business, increasingly facing competitive imitation of their core activities, is at a crossroads. Expansion opportunities for the winery include branching into retail, expanding its offerings of wines made to their specifications in Europe, and expanding their direct sales network of end customers to include non-Bonny Doon wines. In considering these options, the core competencies of Bonny Doon as well as the interests o...

ICICI was the first Indian company to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. This case is set in 1998, when the company had to decide whether to enter the retail credit segment of the Indian financial market. Although the retail credit sector presents attractive growth opportunities, ICICI lacked many of the capabilities needed to succeed in this space and would have to compete against a host of established domestic and foreign banks. Describe...

The first ten pages of the case 'Walt Disney Co.: The Entertainment King' are comprised of the company's history, from 1923 to 2001. The Walt years are described, as is the company's decline after his death and its resurgence under Eisner. The last five pages are devoted to Eisner's strategic challenges in 2001: managing synergy, managing the brand, and managing creativity. Students are asked to think about the keys to Disney's mid-1980s turnarou...

A survey of 345 Fortune "1000" industrial companies in 1979 shows that portfolio planning is becoming a popular method for managing the diversity of businesses within large organizations. Despite the described limitations of portfolio planning, most of the companies find portfolio planning worth pursuing because it helps them focus on the unique contribution each subsidiary makes to the business of the corporation.

Focuses on a six-month period in 1994, during which the company experienced a series of dramatic upheavals. The events described include: 1) the sudden death of company president Frank Wells; 2) a health crisis facing Chairman Michael Eisner; 3) the "departure" of filmed entertainment division chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg; 4) the creation of a new corporate unit; 5) network acquisition rumors; and 6) the cancellation of plans for "Disney America."

Supplements the (A) case.

Conventional wisdom holds that a company's divisions should be given almost total autonomy--especially under conditions of uncertainty--because they are closer to emerging technologies, customers, and competitors than corporate headquarters could ever be. But research from Michael Raynor and Joseph Bower suggests that the corporate office should be more, not less, directive in turbulent markets. Rapid changes in an industry make it difficult to p...

Supplements the (A) case.

Philips is a major science-based multinational that has been restructuring since the early 1970s. This case provides an historical perspective on earlier efforts as well as a detailed description of the one pursued under Cor Boonstra, CEO from 1996 to 2001, that reorganized Philips from a product-country matrix structure into global product divisions. Closes with Boonstra's successor, Gerard Kleisterlee, facing the challenge of defining his own a...

While the core competence concept appealed powerfully to companies disillusioned with diversification, it did not offer any practical guidelines for developing corporate-level strategy. To fill the gap, the authors propose the parenting framework, with tools for answering two questions: Which business should a company own? What parenting approach will get the best performance from those businesses? To determine the fit between a parent and its bu...