Publications

September 2006 (Revised April 2007)
Case

Medtronic Vision 2010

By: Lynda M. Applegate

Describes the company's year-long efforts to transition from a medical device company selling products to physicians for use with patients suffering chronic end-stage disease, to a medical technology company providing life-long solutions for people with chronic... View Details

Keywords: Business Plan; Transition; Decision Choices and Conditions; Corporate Entrepreneurship; Financial Management; Financing and Loans; Health Care and Treatment; Innovation and Invention; Strategic Planning; Health Industry

January 2018 (Revised September 2021)
Case

Saudi Arabia: Vision 2030

By: Richard H.K. Vietor and Haviland Sheldahl-Thomason

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman faces several challenges, both domestic and foreign. Domestically, he needs to build the country’s economy to accommodate a "youth bulge" while balancing between liberals and conservatives. And he needs to diversify the economy away from its... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Economy; Demographics; Diversification; Government and Politics; International Relations; Saudi Arabia

September 1994
Case

BayFunds

By: Alvin J. Silk, Lisa Klein Pearo and Jamie Harper

In June, 1994, the Senior Vice President of BayBank's Investment Management Group is preparing a strategic plan for her organization's line of mutual funds. Sixteen months earlier, BayBank, Massachusetts's leading retail bank, had entered the mutual fund business by... View Details

Keywords: Banks and Banking; Marketing Strategy; Brands and Branding; Investment Funds; Product Marketing; Integration; Financial Services Industry

Vikram S. Gandhi is the Gerald P. Kaminsky Senior Lecturer of Business Administration in the General Management Unit. He has developed and teaches two new courses in the Elective Curriculum of the MBA Program. The first is a finance and investing course, Sustainable... View Details

Keywords: financial services

June 2005 (Revised August 2011)
Case

Narayana Hrudayalaya Heart Hospital: Cardiac Care for the Poor (A)

By: Tarun Khanna, V. Kasturi Rangan and Merlina Manocaran

Describes the mission, vision, and strategy of a team of entrepreneurs headed by a charismatic heart surgeon who founded a heart hospital in Bangalore, India. The purpose of the hospital was to offer health care for the masses. This tertiary care hospital performed... View Details

Keywords: Social Entrepreneurship; Health Care and Treatment; Goals and Objectives; Social Marketing; Mission and Purpose; Strategic Planning; Social Enterprise; Welfare; Health Industry; Service Industry; Bangalore

June 2007
Case

AARP Foundation (A)

By: Srikant M. Datar, Herman B. Leonard, Marc J. Epstein and Thomas Goodwin

AARP Foundation--a leading non-profit corporation--must create a new "Dashboard" performance measurement tool to track the effectiveness of its new strategic plan. View Details

Keywords: Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Performance Effectiveness; Performance Evaluation; Strategic Planning; Nonprofit Organizations; Welfare; Business Strategy

December 2008 (Revised January 2011)
Case

Arcadia Biosciences: Seeds of Change

By: Arthur A. Daemmrich, Forest L. Reinhardt and Mary Louise Shelman

Arcadia Biosciences is an entrepreneurial California agricultural biotech company seeking to earn carbon credits by modifying commodity crops for use in China and India. Eric Rey, Arcadia's CEO, faced a strategic inflection point in early September 2008. The company... View Details

Keywords: Business Startups; Entrepreneurship; Growth and Development Strategy; Environmental Sustainability; Science-Based Business; Climate Change; Agriculture and Agribusiness Industry; Biotechnology Industry; China; India; California

TeachingInterests

Tuck MBA Program

VG is the most popular teacher in the Tuck MBA Program. VG has been named in BusinessWeek’s Guide to Best Business Schools as an outstanding teacher. His current courses focus on Implementing Strategy and his research on Global Leadership's research on... View Details

June 2010
Case

Enterprise Risk Management at Hydro One (Multimedia)

By: Anette Mikes

An early adopter of Enterprise Risk Management, energy giant Hydro One anticipated new threats and opportunities in an industry that faced climate change and carbon legislation, the deregulation of electricity markets, and the greater adoption of renewable... View Details

Keywords: Risk Management; Energy; Energy Industry; Canada

April 2017 (Revised July 2017)
Case

ISRO: Explore Space or Exploit CubeSats?

By: Prithwiraj Choudhury, Tarun Khanna, Karim Lakhani and Rachna Tahilyani

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) achieved global acclaim by launching successful missions to the moon and Mars at a fraction of the cost of prior Western missions. It is now faced with an important strategic dilemma—whether to continue exploring deep space... View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Decision Choices and Conditions; Aerospace Industry; India

August 2005 (Revised September 2006)
Case

Polyphonic HMI: Mixing Music and Math

By: Anita Elberse, Jehoshua Eliashberg and Julian Villanueva

In 2003, Mike McCready, CEO of Barcelona-based Polyphonic HMI, was preparing to launch an artificial intelligence tool that could create significant value for music businesses. The technology, referred to as Hit Song Science (HSS), analyzed the mathematical... View Details

Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Music Entertainment; Business History; Leadership; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning; Problems and Challenges; Mathematical Methods; Entertainment and Recreation Industry

April 2014 (Revised July 2015)
Case

Sanofi Pasteur: The Dengue Vaccine Dilemma

By: V. Kasturi Rangan, David E. Bloom, Vincent Dessain and Emilie Billaud

In 2012, Sanofi Pasteur was racing to develop a vaccine against dengue, a mosquito-borne disease, and was evaluating this product in a Phase IIb trial conducted with school children in Thailand. But while the candidate vaccine met the high safety expectations and a... View Details

Keywords: Health Testing and Trials; Product Launch; Market Entry and Exit; Emerging Markets; Pharmaceutical Industry; France

October 2024 (Revised May 2025)
Case

Southern California Industrial: Freezer Drive

By: Arthur I Segel, Dwight Angelini and W. Matt Kelly

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Boston based real estate private equity firm was seeking to make their very first West Coast investments in hopes of establishing their presence in the strategic region. An exciting property suddenly became available on the... View Details

Keywords: Real Estate Development; Acquisition; Health Pandemics; Risk and Uncertainty; Expansion; Cost vs Benefits; Investment Return; Real Estate Industry

May 2003 (Revised March 2006)
Case

Carol Fishman Cohen: Professional Career Reentry (A)

By: Myra M. Hart, Robin J. Ely and Susan Wojewoda

Explores the career challenges facing highly successful women who leave the full-time workforce for several years to manage family commitments. Carol Cohen is a 1985 Harvard MBA who has professional line experience in a manufacturing environment, followed by a... View Details

Keywords: Work-Life Balance; Family and Family Relationships

December 1996 (Revised June 2003)
Case

Cynthia Hogan and the Birth of Novartis

By: Rosabeth M. Kanter

An American woman heads an integration office for merger transition activities between two giant Swiss pharmaceutical companies. She needed to develop an implementation plan to shape the new global powerhouse. View Details

Keywords: Mergers and Acquisitions; Global Strategy; Organizational Design; Strategic Planning; Pharmaceutical Industry; Switzerland; United States

December 1973 (Revised June 1982)
Case

MRC, Inc. (A)

MRC must place a value on an acquisition prospect and also decide whether a deal makes sense from strategic and organizational perspectives. An updated version of and earlier case by W.E. Fruhan, Jr. and J.H. McArthur. View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Valuation; Acquisition

October 1992 (Revised October 1994)
Case

Randall's Department Stores

By: Walter J. Salmon and Gwendolyn K. Ortmeyer

Discusses a well-known traditional department store that confronts a very difficult issue of whether to change its pricing policy from a high-low to an everyday pricing approach. Demands that the student formulate a plan of execution for changing the pricing, if... View Details

Keywords: Fluctuation; Price; Marketing Strategy; Strategic Planning

September 1983 (Revised July 1998)
Case

Heather Evans

By: Howard H. Stevenson and Michael J. Roberts

Focuses on the efforts of Heather Evans, a second-year MBA student, and her attempts to start her own dress business. Examines the business plan and the process of acquiring control over the financial and human resources necessary to implement the plan. View Details

Keywords: Business Plan; Business Startups; Investment; Human Resources; Strategic Planning; Apparel and Accessories Industry

January 2002
Case

DeRemate.com: Building a Latin American Internet Auction Site

Analyzes the strategic decision-making process in terms of market forces and short-term growth for an online trading community site in Latin America. A major competitor to E-bay, DeRemate.com is contemplating expansion throughout Latin America. View Details

Keywords: Strategic Planning; Competition; Expansion; Internet and the Web; Auctions; Latin America