In 2012, Carvana Co., an e-commerce platform for buying used cars, hosted a competition called "Don't Get Kicked!" wherein 570 teams competed to predict if a car purchased at auction was a "kick" (i.e., a bad buy)—a vehicle with a major defect. At the time of the competition, data science was a burgeoning field, and industry watchers wondered if machine learning could help a company such as Carva
Carla is at a crossroads. She's in dire financial straits and seriously considering leaving her husband of 20 years. A group of her friends has invited her to vacation with them at the annual revival of a megachurch south of where she lives, and Carla desperately wants to go with them to have a chance to think and pray, but she needs at least $400 for the trip, and her options are once again askin
From a single boutique in Damascus, Syria, in 1955, the Chalhoub Group had grown by 2019 to operate more than 650 luxury retail stores in 14 countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. By blending its knowledge of luxury and its unique Middle East expertise, the Group had built a powerhouse of brands, enjoyed a reputation for excellent service with all its partners, and offered a differ
Iconoclasts with strongly held beliefs and a willingness to buck orthodoxy, Apple's Steve Jobs and the Chicago Bulls' Phil Jackson shared similarities in character, leadership style, and life experience that extended beyond the extraordinary successes they achieved in their chosen fields. Both came of age in the United States of the mid-20th century, a time and place characterized by Americans' gr
Market lore recounts a host of fabled asset price bubbles: the Dutch tulip bubble of the 1630s, the South Sea and Mississippi bubbles of 1720, the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, and the global real estate bubble of the mid-2000s. One survey reported the occurrence of some 60 bubbles since the 17th century. Despite their apparent prevalence, asset price bubbles are a challenging theoretical and
Debates on issues about the economy, growth, inequality, fiscal responsibility, and financial crises frequently reduce to debates about money. Moreover, debates about money often reduce to the soundness of money, meaning the ability of a unit of currency to retain its value. Eventually, discussions about soundness touch on the classic era of the gold standard. The aims of this note are to (1) desc
Karen Miner is a partner at a management consulting firm, and she is becoming increasingly resentful of another partner who consistently prioritizes their family life, while letting others pick up their slack at their busy office. When Miner vents about it to trusted colleagues, she finds that they agree that it is a big problem, and pervasive throughout the office. With this case, students can ro
Peloton had redefined many things about the boutique exercise experience, bringing it into members' homes and eliminating per-class fees of roughly $34, instead charging $40 per month. Rather than chatting with a pal beside the gym locker for a few moments before class, customers had Peloton's online community of hundreds of thousands of people who interacted with one another digitally throughout
In March 1921, the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) wrestled with setting monetary policy during a severe economic contraction, called by many a depression. FRB members disagreed over whether to respond to the depression, and if so, how. The depression had sparked a crisis of purpose and policy within the FRB. For the past six years, FRB leaders had been trying to get the Treasury to allow the Federal
In the A case, F-1890, the leaders of the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) and the US Treasury confronted questions that seemed likely to shape the Federal Reserve (Fed) for years to come. What should be the Fed's role in the American economy? How should the Fed help resolve World War I's debt burden and the resulting inflation? What reforms, if any, should the monetary authorities seek? Perhaps most i
In February 1933, President Herbert Hoover reviewed the past four years of his administration. He had met a stock market crash and a recession that worsened into the Depression with actions out of the playbook of Republican "orthodoxy": balanced budgets, tax reduction, protectionism, and community relief based on volunteerism. Yet as the Depression deepened, Hoover pivoted toward policies that pus
Following an A case that presents the dominant narrative around the causes and remedies for the Great Depression, this B case provides correspondence between outgoing president Herbert Hoover and president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933, economic conditions turned suddenly worse, and opinion was divided on the question of whether demand shocks or supply shocks had caused the Great Depression
While organizations have been collecting data for years, not all businesses have the talent, culture, and systems in place in order to take advantage of their data. This case uses Walker Advertising, a company that partnered with law firms to advertise their services, to discuss broader themes around the role of data science in a traditional business. Predictive modeling is a crucial function of b
In this B case, the actual events of the 1933 World Economic Conference are summarized, along with the actions and intentions of newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and reactions by the domestic press and the international community. It also includes the text of his remarks to the conference.
In May 1932, US president Herbert Hoover and British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald called for leaders from 65 nations to attend the World Economic Conference, scheduled to occur in the winter of 1933 after the American presidential election. Hoover turned his attention to the instructions he would have to give to the American delegation about the forthcoming conference. Arguments by pundits, cri
Cutting-Edge Marketing Analytics: Cases and Technical Notes Bundle is a collection of the original cases and technical notes that inspired the successful first-edition book. Covering an array of practical marketing problems, Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics provides proven methodology matched with several business cases, many of which include actual data.
In April 1930, US Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon reviewed recent stock market events as he prepared to enter a meeting of the Federal Reserve Board, which he chaired. In September and October 1929, the US stock market had fallen about a third, and then recovered somewhat. In response to the turmoil, the Federal Reserve (Fed) had lowered the discount rate in five steps from 6% to 3.71%, and marke
The two-day seminar will be conducted on-site at the UVA Darden Sands Family Grounds, located in the Rosslyn district of Arlington, Virginia, just outside of Washington, DC. The course has two parts. The first day and a half will focus on structured learning sessions with both full-group and breakout portions. Participants will have many opportunities to discuss and explore. The latter half of the
TJ, a manager at an investment company, is alarmed when, during an evening out with Leslie, his female colleague, and five male prospective clients, the men behave in an overly familiar way with her. Although Leslie assures TJ that she can handle this type of attention, TJ nonetheless is very uncomfortable with the situation. What should he do?
Go (or Wei-ch'i, as it is known in China) is a centuries-old board game popular across Asia. Many have drawn parallels between military successes and the game's complex methods, in which a player encircles, isolates, and captures enemy pieces and geography, but Go also offers lessons for business.
This technical note offers a basic description of Go, followed by a collection of business-strategy
This case allows instructors to lay out the challenges of providing universal access to safe drinking water in some developing and emerging countries—one of the current UN development goals. The challenge across developing countries is to find long-lasting and sustainable solutions, and to realize that present answers to the challenge may be a far cry from these criteria. The discussion aims to ad
This note describes the most common financial ratios and how they provide insight into firm performance. The emphasis is on how ratios summarize operating behaviors and results in ways that facilitate interpretation and highlight decisions. There are three broad categories of ratios covered in the note: profitability, operating efficiency, and leverage (the use of debt financing). The note defines
This note reviews the basics of projecting cash flows for a typical operating decision. To find the economic consequences of any decision, one needs to project the cash flow effects of that decision and discount those at the appropriate hurdle rate. The focus on cash flows arises because any evaluation of economic impact must recognize opportunity costs—the other uses to which one might allocate r
This case uses an array of carefully selected and excerpted revenue recognition related information contained in Salesforce.com's January 31, 2019, 10-K. Maria, the fictional protagonist, is seeking to understand those disclosures as part of her preparation for an upcoming job interview with the company. As such, she is relying on those disclosures to provide insights as to the company's main prod
This case teaches students the importance of maintaining a strong FICO score by illustrating the consequences of paying bills late or not at all. The protagonist is David Molina, a waiter at a struggling Italian restaurant located down the block from where he lives. Money is tight for Molina right now—his limited income means he lives paycheck to paycheck. However, Molina knows things will be look
The consulting field, with its variety of different experiences and scenarios, often presents numerous challenges and conflicts for those involved. These vignettes, some based on actual situations, present a number of dilemmas in which the protagonists must determine the right course of action, often when that is not easily identifiable. These vignettes identify situations in which one's values, e
This case follows a man named Jaime as he considers options for obtaining furniture for the new apartment he and his brother, Angelo, have leased. Jaime would like a new couch, a coffee table, and a TV to improve their living room, but his $2,000-a-month income at an auto shop and lack of savings means he will have to make some difficult choices. Angelo suggests that Jaime construct a budget and o
At the start of 2018, Brad Katsuyama and his leadership team at the Investors Exchange (IEX) had much to be proud of - and much to worry about - as they contemplated the rollout of their latest innovation in equity trading. In a trading landscape increasingly defined by issues related to speed, IEX was building a reputation as a thoughtful innovator trying to level the playing field for its client
This case covers the initial public offering (IPO) of the Siemens AG subsidiary Healthineers. The case offers the opportunity to discuss IPOs and to value the company. In contrast to "Healthineers: A Strategic IPO" (UVA-F-1881), which provides some base case valuation analysis, this version of the case is designed to be used when a primary teaching objective is to have students perform more of the
This is a Japanese translation of the June 10, 2003, version of UVA-F-1368. In mid-June 2000, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor is considering an investment of $125 million of convertible preferred stock in his firm by a group of private investors including Citadel Investment Group LLC. The offer comes at a difficult time for the company, because only three months earlier, its stock had reached a r
Wendy Chan, a manager in strategy at Accenture, a global professional services company, was offered the opportunity to help build and formalize a partnership between Accenture and a nonprofit called Upwardly Global. The nonprofit provided job coaching services to work-authorized, college-educated immigrants, refugees, and asylees, helping them rebuild their careers in the United States and fully c
Despite the steady growth of tennis interest worldwide (in 2011, the Women's Tennis Association's top 10 players were all from different countries), the manufacture of acrylic surface materials for hard courts was not a growth industry. To achieve any reasonable growth, tennis-court-surface manufacturers had developed product lines that served related sports. During most of 2017, Surface Systems h
This is a Japanese translation of the August 22, 2003, version of UVA-QA-0618. A regional director of a consulting firm must decide how to compete for a major consulting contract. Appshop can take a level payment contract, a lower level payment with a prospective bonus given high performance, or bid on an RFP where a significant reward is given contingent on the client's savings. The case can be u
This is a Japanese translation of the November 17, 2005, version of UVA-F-1483. In May 2005, Warren Buffett, the chair and chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., announced that MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, would acquire the electric utility PacifiCorp. MidAmerican would purchase PacifiCorp from its parent, Scottish Power and renewed public i
This is a Japanese translation of the June 16, 2003 version of UVA-BP-0472. This case presents the "best practices" of a highly successful post-merger integrator that grew from $400 million in 1997, to $1.5 billion in 2000, to $4 billion in 2002.The case focus is on the $4.0 billion IT sector of Northrop Grumman, a company confronting immense change in the rapidly consolidating defense business. T
Mark Seidman at the Federal Trade Commission is evaluating a proposed merger between two health care entities and competing market leaders in southwest Virginia. The rural region is characterized by poverty, unemployment, and poor population health indicators relative to the rest of the state. The merger would form a virtual monopoly, normally prohibited by federal consumer protection laws, but th
In this B case, the follow-up to S-0314, Marissa Levine, the Virginia Commissioner of Health, considers reports for and against the merger of two health care entities in rural Virginia, as she decides whether to issue a waiver to allow it.
This case set explores the differences in and conflicts among the interests of for-profit health care systems, of rural, low-income residents, and of federal,
This optional C case follows S-0314 and S-0315, and describes the results of decisions on whether to allow a merger of two health care entities in rural Virginia.
This case set explores the differences in and conflicts among the interests of for-profit health care systems, of rural, low-income residents, and of federal, state, and local governments. It allows students to engage in an in-depth dis
