Preface

Preface

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Instructor’s Manual! We hope you find it useful in preparing for your class, as we have a few ideas to pass along that have worked for us.

One of the interesting things about this course is that there is little written on how to teach it. It is not a course that frequently shows up in MER or JME, nor are there special sessions on how to teach the class. That is a shame, and something we’d like to see addressed. Please consider chairing special sessions on B2B classes, involving students in case-writing and other such topics that can help all of us advance our teaching in B2B. We would welcome the chance to participate in those sessions, too.

Please consider writing a case for the next edition. We think having original cases can be one of the strengths of this book, but we need your help because there just aren’t that many out there.Keep in mind that SMA now has a case track so if you submit a case to SMA, publish only the abstract so you (or your students) can maintain the copyright on the case.

We’d also like to invite you to consider having your students write an original case for use in our next edition. We’ve added several new cases to the current edition, and two of them were written by students. Lou Pelton at North Texashas his students write original cases as part of his class, an idea that I’ve adopted with quite good success. The JC Decaux case was actually written by my students at the University of Caen, France, while I taught on an exchange. Planktos and METL were both written by a graduate student, Raul Benavidez. Raul worked for METL before going back for his MBA.No more than 1 out of 5 student-written casesmay be worth publishing, but if you have one that is worth publishing, get the students’ permission and send it to us. Don’t worry about teaching notes – we’d love for you to write it but don’t let the lack of a teaching note prevent submitting it to us. Original cases can be great learning experiences, too, and you get to avoid hearing the same presentations over and over!

Please let us know what you want in an instructor’s manual, as well as in the text. We have some obvious biases when it comes to our approach to this class – if we’re not matching up well with your approach, tell us how we can fit better to help you become more productive.

Many thanks to John Thompson, TCU, for creating the PowerPoints and to Ron Weir of East Tennessee for creating the test bank. Any kudos for creativity go to them; any issues or concerns, the fault is ours so please let us know.

And to our students, who also let us know how we’re doing on a regular basis, thank you.

Bob DwyerJeff Tanner

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