Case questions: Global Knowledge Management at Danone

  1. What are the most important knowledge-management challenges faced by Danone?
  2. What role does the company’s structure and history play in these challenges?
  3. What does the company need to do well in order to succeed (make sure you define what “success” means in this context)?
  4. What is your assessment of the Networking Attitude initiative?
  5. What are its strengths and weaknesses?
  6. Why do you think that the “Communities” follow-up initiative was successful, while the Who’s Who initiative was not? What conclusions can you draw from this regarding keeping a knowledge-based initiative going?
  7. Would this work well in your current organization? Why or why not?
  8. Why was the Networking Attribute initiative under the leadership of Human Resources instead of Information Technology?
  9. Do you agree with this decision?
  10. What should the role of IT be in managing knowledge within an organization?
  11. What should Franck Mougin and Benedikt Beneti do next?
  12. Which of the three options (go wider, go deeper, go richer) they are considering do you recommend? Why?
  13. How does CEO Franck Riboud’s approach to leading Danone affect your recommendation?

Case Questions: Balancing Access with Accuracy for Infant HIV Diagnostics in Tanzania

  1. What test, or combination of tests, would you recommend for initial roll-out in Tanzania?
  2. On what evidence are you basing this decision?
  3. What are the possible risks of your decision? How might you mitigate those risks?
  4. How would you assess whether you made the correct choice?
  5. In order to make a better decision regarding which test (or tests) to implement, what additional information would you like to collect from the key Tanzanian stakeholders (i.e., government, heath care providers, and citizens)?
  6. How would you collect this information?
  7. How would you assess the value of collecting the information, especially against the time and effort cost of gathering it?
  8. Assume that you can choose only one of the tests for roll-out. What specific communication strategy would you use among key stakeholders to gain support for this test?
  9. With which group would you begin?
  10. How would you explain and frame the advantages and disadvantages of the tests?
  11. How might your communication strategy change based on the test you chose for roll-out?

Case Questions: In-Vitro Fertilization: Outcomes Measurement

  1. If you ran an in-vitro fertilization clinic, what are the two or three key metrics you would want to track (and why)?
  2. Compare these to the key metrics about which a potential IVF customer would care?
  3. Compare these to the key metrics on which a national standards body should focus?
  4. In your own organization or industry, is there agreement among the various stakeholders about the key metrics to measure success? Explain why or why not.
  5. Assess the online reporting environment for IVF clinics.
  6. Why do you think data published by the CDC was viewed as more credible than the data published by SART? Why do you think SART continued to publish its own outcomes data?
  7. The CDC eventually decided to accept SART’s data entered into the CDC’s existing online system run by Westat. In your opinion, was this a good decision?
  8. How would you reliably implement patient verification of their own data (as mentioned in the case)? What are the problems with doing this?
  9. What opportunities are there for developing better outcome measures and reporting for the IVF field?
  10. What specific data, if any, do you think Dr. Goldfarb should advocate developing national standards for collecting and reporting?
  11. Describe the problems with collecting some of the new types of data that was discussed in the case. Is it possible to resolve these issues? If so, what would you suggest?

Case Questions: Intermountain Health Care

  1. Describe IHC’s approach to their overhaul of Clinical Care Management.
  2. How did it differ from their previous practices? From others in the industry?
  3. Why doesn’t every patient care organization do things this way?
  4. How would you rate the performance of IHC? Make sure you define what you mean by “performance.”
  1. What role does information technology play in IHC’s management of Clinical Care?
  2. In what ways do they collect and analyze information effectively?
  3. How does their single system approach (the PCMS) tie in with their overall management strategy? What data collection problems does it solve?
  4. In your opinion, does the PCMS dictate their delivery of health care or does it support it? Explain.
  5. Discuss IHC’s information systems in relation to data, information, and knowledge management.
  6. Identify what constitutes data, information, and knowledge for IHC. How do they interrelate?
  7. What is the role of process in relation to data, information, and knowledge for IHC?
  8. If you were Brent James, what strategy would you use to convince resistant physicians to “subscribe” to IHC’s approach? To adopt PCMS?

Case questions: Data.gov

(Note: It would be useful for you to spend a few minutes visiting the data.gov site before addressing the case questions. Visit a few data set information (metadata) pages and try downloading some data. Also, try visiting application sites like datamasher.org.)

  1. What would you say is the primary objective of Data.gov?
  2. Has the project met those objectives (as of the events in the case)?
  3. In your opinion, what are the two most critical challenges facing Vivek Kundra going forward with the Data.gov initiative.
  4. Make recommendations how Kundra can address each of those challenges.
  5. A data warehouse is generally defined as a large, enterprise-wide database that draws its data from multiple sources. With this in mind:
  6. How does data.gov differ from a traditional data warehouse?
  7. Why did they implement it this way?
  8. Do you agree with their approach? What are the advantages and disadvantages?
  9. Do you agree with the decision to make “wholesale data” available through Data.gov instead of “retail data?”
  10. What are the advantages and disadvantages of that decision?
  11. Who are the major stakeholders of Data.gov and what are the specific threats and opportunities for each from that choice?
  12. Which approach is more useful to third-party application developers who want to use the data? Why?

Case questions: Netflix Leading with Data

(If you’re not already familiar with their site, take a few minutes and visit Netflix.com before you answer these questions.)

  1. Describe the Netflix business model.
  2. Who are their three main customer groups? How do the differences in these groups affect the type of movies they want?
  3. What are the key strengths and weaknesses in their business model?
  4. How did their model differ from Blockbuster? If you were Blockbuster, how could you have responded?
  5. Discuss the ways in which Netflix used its customer-generated data.
  6. What data (be specific) did Netflix collect regarding its customers? How did they collect it?
  7. How did it use this data to improve customer service?
  8. How did it use this data to improve its cost structure?
  9. How did it use this data to improve its logistics?
  10. Since 2010 (the date of the case), Netflix has aggressively pursued their Video-On-Demand service. In 2011, their now-infamous attempt to separate VOD from their DVD-by-mail service (temporarily renamed to Quixster) was a disaster. This article summarizes the mess they made:

  11. Why do you think they made this mistake? Why did they think it was a good idea?
  12. How was this plan consistent with their business model? How was it inconsistent with it?
  13. What data could they have used (be specific) to predict that the change would be poorly received by customers? Did they have this data available to them? If not, how could they obtain it?

Case questions: The Cheezburger Network

Before you answer these questions, check out some of the sites:

  1. Explain how the Cheezburger site content is consistent with the notion of a “digital information good.” (see the reading “Publisher’s Caught in the Web” for a complete explanation of the term).
  2. Discuss the content on these sites in terms of the characteristics of information goods described on page 25 and 26 of “Publisher’s Caught in the Web.”
  3. How does Cheezeburger Network use the characteristics of digital information goods in its marketing and social media strategy?
  4. How does the company generate revenue? How are the revenue streams related?
  1. What are the challenges and opportunities in providing a service like the Cheezburger sites to consumers? Specifically:
  2. Explain how the intended audience is a factor in the viability of the service.
  3. Explain how the content producers are a factor in the viability of the service.
  4. Explain how the information itself is a factor in the viability of the service.
  5. Consider WebMD, a site with a mixture of curated and user-generated content. Would Cheezburger’s business model work for WebMD? Why or why not?
  6. Ben Huh, founder of the Cheezburger Network, has several options going forward regarding how to invest its recent $30 million influx of cash.
  7. Briefly explain the options, along with the pros and cons.
  8. What would you recommend Ben Huh do in the short term? The longer term?
  9. What lessons can you draw that could be applied to other areas of the publishing industry as they move to digital content?

Case questions: deCode Genetics: Hunting for Genes to Develop Drugs

  1. Compare deCODE’s attitude toward data potentially traceable to individuals differ to that of the Data.gov project.
  2. How did each prioritize privacy relative to social benefit?
  3. Was this simply a function of the type of data being collected? If not, what else might have been a factor in the difference in approach?
  4. What criteria would you apply when weighing individual privacy versus societal benefit?
  5. Why do you think deCODE’s genetic database, as originally conceived, ultimately failed?
  6. Was there something they could have done (or do going forward) to give it a better chance at success? If so, what? If not, why not?
  7. Do you think the Icelandic opposition groups were justified in their concerns? Were they justified in their opposition to the premise of the database?