Research Questions

Doug Baker, CEO of Ecolab since 2004, turned his chair away from the desk and looked out over the St. Paul, Minnesota, skyline. In his 10 years at the helm of the Minnesota cleaning and sanitation firm, he had transitioned the company from a premier provider of cleaning, sanitation, and hygiene supplies to a leader […]

Nike, Inc. is the world market share leader in athletic footwear, with 44 percent of the world market, compared to only 30 percent for Adidas/Reebok (see Exhibit 1). The Nike brand alone is valued at $10.7 billion—the most valuable brand among sports businesses. Many high-profile athletes and sports teams around the world are sponsored by

Introduction Driving down the Silicon Valley corridor from San Francisco to the brown hills of Palo Alto near Stanford University, a casual observer might catch multiple sightings of the Model S, an all- electric vehicle made by Tesla Motors with a range of almost 300 miles. Although the company has many fans in the tech-friendly

Following six years of innovation and upheaval in the smartphone industry, 2013 was shaping up to be no different. Industry players continued to differentiate and capitalize on the rapidly evolving landscape. Early market leaders struggled to recapture market share lost years earlier to newer entrants, and new players vied to remain disruptive. Apple, whose iPhone

With mixed emotions, Charles Nimako put down the 2011 summary report on Safe Water Network’s projects in Ghana. His team, along with Safe Water Network leaders in New York, had worked for almost two years to make the Dzemeni (pronounced JEM-uh-nee) site profitable and provide safe drinking water to local Ghanaians. They had brought innovative

“Trump says Facebook is against him. Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like. That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.” —Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg,1 September 2017“We are in a new world. It is a new challenge for internet communities to deal with nation

“It’s my job as the CEO to ensure that we’re positioning the company for not just short term success, but long term success . . . We’re evolving into more of a health care company and we’re doing many things. We have 26,000 pharmacists and nurse practitioners, who are helping millions of patients across the

Uber, a company providing peer-to-peer shared car rides through a smartphone app, was founded by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp in San Francisco, California, in March 2009. Within four years, by June 2014, Uber was operating in 130 cities, garnering $2 billion in net revenue, and was valued at $18.2 billion. With these impressive statistics

Walmart.com’s CEO, Neill Ashe, announced in early 2013 that the online division of Walmart stores was on pace to reach its goal of $9 billion in revenue in its 2014 fiscal year (February 2013 through January 2014).1 In addition, Ashe noted that, after extensive website overhauls to improve search functionality and overall user experience, website

Paul Otellini gazed out the window of his new office at Intel’s headquarters and was struck by how much Silicon Valley, Intel Corporation, and he had changed. San Jose and the surrounding communities were no longer the sleepy towns of orchards they had been when he began at Intel in 1974. Intel had evolved from