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Entrepreneurship.

The case can be taught for students at the Master's level and research scholars in management education.

Univexcellence was an idea conceived by Surbhi from her science project in 1997 when she was studying at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Jaipur, India. The science project model was based on the theme “World is a classroom, room is university”. It was shown that the world would be converted into a room, and the room itself would become a University through satellite communication. Surbhi decided to become a computer engineer and learn about it herself so as to become self-dependent as a business woman. Keeping this in mind, she completed a computer engineering course. A strong sense of efficacy enhances human accomplishment and personal well-being in many ways. Surbhi has proved it in her case.

The case describes challenges and setbacks faced by a woman entrepreneur and through her self-confidence and persistence, illustrate show she solved them to the benefit of her business.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or e-mail support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

Why do some individuals become entrepreneurs while others do not? This fundamental question has vexed entrepreneurship scholars for some time, giving rise to various schools of thought. Traditional economic motivation theories, for example, suggest that entrepreneurial opportunities arise from changes in either supply (Shane, 2000) or demand (Dew et al., 2004) and emphasize personal economic gain as a motivator for pursuing entrepreneurship. Both neoclassical equilibrium and psychological theories take a person-centric perspective whereby stable, enduring differences among people’s characteristics, determines who becomes an entrepreneur. Opportunity recognition may be enhanced through perspective taking (i.e. putting oneself in the shoes of another person) (Prandelli et al., 2016).

The founders of the company provided us with access to the inner workings of the company, their mentors and advisors and themselves. This study used archival research and interviews when preparing this case. Interviews allow for the development of uncensored, real-life insights into the entrepreneur’s business experience. The authors first conducted a 90-min interview with Rajia and Ray at DifferenceMaker^® Central on the UMass Lowell campus. DifferenceMaker^® provided us with pictures and timelines from when Rajia and Ray participated in the various DifferenceMaker^® activities and competitions. A follow-on 90-min interview was conducted with the founders four months later at the UMass Lowell Innovation Hub to delve deeper into their transition from engineers to entrepreneurs.

In the summer of 2016, the future of invisaWear suddenly became uncertain. Rajia Abdelaziz and Ray Hamilton had conceived an idea for smart jewelry that they felt solved a real problem. But it was one thing to have a great idea and quite another to turn that idea into a real business. As engineering students, they were accustomed to solving problems, but if they truly wanted to make an impact, they had to learn to solve problems as entrepreneurs. With the help of DifferenceMaker^® and their mentors, they developed an entrepreneurial mind-set and decided to build invisaWear into a company.

This case is suitable for an undergraduate course in business or entrepreneurship. This case is intended to illustrate to both business and non-business students how individuals with different backgrounds can become entrepreneurs. Presented as a real-life example of how engineering students can make the transition to an entrepreneurial mind-set, the case can also be used to hone in on select topics including opportunity recognition, problem-solving, ideation and the business model canvas.

This case study considers the supply chain redesign of a multinational company, with specific emphasis on production lot sizing, inventory policy and transportation decisions.

The material is intended for senior level students of business administration, logistics and similar departments. An intermediate knowledge of supply chain, purchasing and inventory concepts is required; therefore, the case is better suited for students who have taken one-semester courses on supply chain management and inventory management. This case can be used in graduate courses as part of discussions on physical distribution, supply chain design/redesign, risk pooling through process optimization.

Within the global market, establishing the right business model where cost of operations is optimized has become key for competitiveness. This necessitates the simultaneous consideration and reevaluation of production, inventory and transportation interactivities within the integrated supply chain. We first discuss the business procurement model of a multinational company with emphasis on critical aspects of the current structure. An alternative model brought into consideration by the managers of the company considers consolidation of shipments through supply hubs and distribution to regional manufacturers. We present an analysis based on perspectives of company managers for and against this new business model. We finally provide numeric evidence on relevant costs of both models in order to enhance further discussion on redesign decisions.

The discussion regarding the case will provide a better understanding of key concepts of supply chain integration and coordination as well as the significance of the optimization of underlying processes.

Teaching notes.

Emerging markets – marketing and business strategy; social entrepreneurship; opportunity identification; frugal innovation.

MBA; marketing management; specialis ed courses such as entrepreneurship and international marketing. Data rich case, but analytical difficulty is only moderate.

Reboot Systems was conceived as a reverse engineering/refurbishing company for used computers when Rahul Chowdhury and Subbarao came in contact with Anand Tater who had started a small business in the used computer market. The team recognised the potential of the refurbished computer market in India, which was largely unorganised with penetration of personal computers pegged at less than 5 per cent. They identified the opportunity to address the digital divide, caused by lack of affordability and accessibility, by providing inexpensive “as good as new” used computers to those who aspired to own a computer. Additionally, in extending the life of used computers on a large-scale through “frugal innovation”, they hoped to reduce the extent of e-waste generated in the economy. This case provides a rich description of an emerging market characterised by market heterogeneity, social-political governance with poor policy measures, unorganised markets, chronic shortage of resources and inadequate infrastructure. Entrepreneurs hoping to address social issues must tackle these problems at the grass-root level and come up with improvised solutions that address the unique needs of the heterogeneous and resource constrained market. Some of Reboot Systems pressing challenges were in building a viable strategic approach to the market and ensuring scalability in a sustainable way.

An understanding of the characteristics of an emerging market from a macro (environmental) as well as micro (industry specific) perspective, an appreciation of opportunity identification and improvisation in emerging markets as well as differentiating “frugal” innovation from the idea of “Jugaad”, an understanding of the role of strategic vision and mission in accomplishing social and business objectives, an understanding of how to develop sustainability and competitive advantage from a social as well as business perspective.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

The case illustrates an entrepreneurial voyage and venture creation and through it helps in identifying the reasons and causes for that venture's failure. It also enables discussion on the importance of planning a venture, more importantly; financing, managing, growing, and ending a venture and on how to avoid the pitfalls that befall such enterprises. This case can be used in Entrepreneurship courses as well as MBA, PGP and Executive Education programmes on Entrepreneurship.

This case describes how eight entrepreneurs discover different opportunities for new businesses to exploit a single technological invention. The case focuses on the process of entrepreneurial discovery and its implications for the creation of new firms. Many of the teaching materials on entrepreneurship assume that entrepreneurs have already discovered an opportunity. While these materials provide useful information about the process of creating new enterprises, they miss the crucial first step in the entrepreneurial process: identifying an opportunity. The case illustrates the theoretical concept of the role of information in the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities. It can be used in a class on entrepreneurship or management of technology.

Marissa Mayer has been asked to think about factors that were impacting Google's ability to innovate and adjust its strategy so that the organization could remain one of the world's foremost leaders in technology. In an industry (and at a company) that was changing and growing exponentially, it would be difficult to pinpoint specific variables and trends. But Mayer knew that one element crucial to Google's ongoing success would be its ability to recruit the best talent available and foster an environment that would encourage that talent to generate the best ideas. As Mayer contemplated how to ensure this, she considered that women currently represented only a small fraction of Google's engineers, suggesting a missed opportunity.

The case presents a $1+billion technology company seeking new growth through the introduction of a radically new product platform. During its first ten years, PTC Corporation grew faster than Microsoft did during the similar period of its evolution. By the late 1990s PTC was faced with intensified competition and saturation in its core markets. To maintain growth, the company introduced a completely new product platform. While PTC focused on developing and selling the product, it failed to recognize that this new product was so different from its traditional offerings that it required a new organizational structure, sales capabilities, support processes, and market strategy. The case traces the company's evolution from development and launch of Windchill through the four-year period post-launch, during which its founding CEO was forced out and the company transformed. Ultimately, Windchill became a top seller for PTC, but not until after significant internal change.

The PTC case illustrates what it means to build a new business within the context of an existing, successful firm. It can also be used to explore what it takes to accomplish a successful new product launch for a substantially new product platform. Sales and channel strategy also figures prominently in the case.

Agile software development, Knowledge workers and Lean thinking as a management system

The case lends itself to students of business management, or aspiring consultants, who have been exposed to operations management in general and Lean thinking specifically. It is an advanced case study, assuming prior knowledge in these subjects and approaches the subject matter from an organisational development point of view, rather than a pure operations point of view. It is thus well suited to an elective on operational excellence on an MBA or in executive education courses in Lean thinking

The case starts with Mark, manager of a software development team, hearing that he will have budget for two new developers who will join his team in the coming year. While the extra help could be useful, he was considering what the impact of new people would be on the productivity of the team, which he felt was already stretched. Mark continues to consider the entire development chain and how code changes were implemented to ACSESim’s (the company’s primary product) graphical user interfaces. Having recently been acquired by an American company, he was also under pressure to start to adopt some of the parent company’s systems, which would constitute a fairly disruptive, but necessary, change, particularly for future collaborations with other developers in the parent company. With two new developers, experience taught Mark that development could slow down owing to training efforts. To minimise disruption, he was wondering about how to get the new developers up-to-speed quickly and streamline their operations within a changing corporate environment. The case highlights the different mechanisms that were in place at ACSESim, including the use of issue trackers; Kanban boards; version control software; automated systems; stand-up meetings, etc. Each of these mechanisms is discussed briefly and shows the value they added to the development practices that were in place. This also allows students to understand Agile practices and what Lean thinking might mean in a knowledge work environment and then to consider what the proposed changes might mean and how they could be deployed.

To gain an understanding of how Lean and Agile principles can be applied in a software development environment and Lean knowledge work in general To consider the best way to manage new hires so that they can become productive in a Lean or Agile software development environment, whilst dealing with pressures to migrate to new systems.

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS: 9: Operations and Logistics.

Entrepreneurship.

The learning outcomes are to explain the importance of passion in entrepreneurship, develop an understanding of the business model canvas and its elements, identify typical challenges faced by a startup (during early days and while growing), explain the role of seed fund and customer feedback for small business success and identify the appropriate hiring strategy for startups.

The case traces the journey of two Saudi under-graduate software engineering students, namely, Loai Labani and Riyadh Al-Tayib, who had a vision to establish the best information technology (IT) services company in Saudi Arabia. With no previous experience of establishing a company or working for a startup, coupled with the fact that the culture of entrepreneurship in Saudi Arabia is still in its ascendancy, they knew it would be challenging. Nevertheless, at the same time, they were convinced it would be totally up to them to do the hard work needed to propel their vision into reality. The case, after introducing the founders, talks about their respective backgrounds and how it complemented their goal/vision of establishing an IT services company. The case, with references from the literature, also throws light on the entrepreneurship culture in Saudi Arabia but the focus is the various challenges faced by the team in setting up their business and the strategies they used in dealing with the challenges. Some of the challenges discussed are securing early customers, initial financing to support startup, business model development, managing daily operations and hiring and marketing strategy. The case ends with another challenge faced by the founders, for the readers to think about the possible ways of dealing with the challenge at hand.

The case will be used for under-graduate level students.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 3: Entrepreneurship.