Dave Robinson, a marketing professor at Haas, offers some notes on performing case analysis and also offers his "Six C's model" of Business Situation Analysis.

Facing massive brain drain from the retirement of a third of its workforce, Tennessee Valley Authority generated a knowledge-retention network to conserve its intellectual capital.

This site presents a moderately structured framework. The authors divide the discussion into four sections. First, they describe the importance of understanding the skills active learners can acquire through effective use of the case analysis method. In the second section, they provide you with a process-oriented framework. This framework can be of value in your efforts to analyze cases and then present the results of your work. Using this framework in a classroom setting yields valuable experiences that can, in turn, help you successfully complete assignments that you will receive from your employer. In the third section they describe briefly what you can expect to occur during in-class case discussions. In the final section, the authors present a moderately structured framework that can help you prepare effective oral and written presentations.

Value-driven competitors have changed the expectations of consumers about the trade-off between quality and price. This shift is gathering momentum, placing a new premium on-and adding new twists to-the old imperatives of differentiation and execution.

Bain has been an early adopter of knowledge management (KM) and demonstrated strong KM leadership. It is clear that the deployment of Bain's corporate portals (CP) significantly improved the speed and accuracy of knowledge flow in the firm. Most importantly, three of Bain's core explicit values are clearly revealed in the design and practices related to the deployment of BVU and GXC: a continuous learning environment, one firm, and focus on client services and results.

Editor's Note: this article is generally useful for those with an interest in KM but is even more so for those who have a general interest in management consulting and/or a specific interest in Bain.

Dangdang.com claims 800,000 unique visitors and takes up to 4,000 orders a day, more than half these days for DVDs and CDs. The firm's founder monitors Amazon for new ideas, which she then pinches--and encourages her employees to order from the American firm's site to get hints for customising her own.

Editor's Note: this is a topical article without long-lasting business take-aways, but the inside snapshot it offers of current infrastructure in China relative to the West is, for this ugly American, quite interesting.

How did a small Seattle company turn itself into a global synonym for java and joe? The answer, we believe, lies with an ingredient as central to Starbucks's business as the premium coffee beans it roasts: Relationships.

Starbucks is not the only company that firmly believes that an emphasis on relationships should be more than simply management rhetoric. Nor is it the only company that has profitably put this belief into practice. Our research indicates that relationships are indeed central to the sustained, superior performance of many of the world's most successful companies. In late 2001, researchers at Booz Allen Hamilton and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management surveyed 113 executives at a representative sample of Fortune 1000 companies and found that winning companies define and deploy relationships in a consistent, specific, multifaceted manner. Although some companies will dub any concluded business deal a relationship, top-performing companies focus extraordinary, enterprise-wide energy on moving beyond a transactional mind-set as they develop trust-based, mutually beneficial, and long-term associations, specifically with four key constituencies: customers, suppliers, alliance partners, and their own employees. Starbucks, we believe, exemplifies this new model of the relationship-centric organization.

Written off as just another ill-conceived megamerger, Hewlett-Packard has exceeded all its goals. Here's why the union has worked -- so far -- and what must come next.

Enron's popularity as a business-school "success story" raises tough questions about how case studies are prepared.

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