Social and Political Sciences

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of the PS4 versus the other competing console systems, both in the long term and the short term?

8. Describe Spotify’s strengths and weakness, what distinguishes it from the competition, the opportunities and threats in its environment? Compared with illegal, free platforms, what are the advantages that prompt Internet users to subscribe to Spotify? Could the company consider other advantages that would enable it to reach more customers or charge them more to subscribe?

9. Why does Starbucks Canada need to re-assess its mobile payments strategy? Given the shape of the mobile payments landscape in 2013, what are the most important criteria that management should be using to assess the various mobile payment options? What caused the issues faced by Starbucks US after their rollout of Square mobile payments? As a senior manager for Starbucks Canada, what would you recommend and why?

10. How did Uber achieve its present position? Where are the positive feedback loops? Is Uber losing momentum? Was surge pricing a distraction or a core part of the business model?

11. In February 2014, Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp for $19 billion. When Facebook announced the acquisition, it vowed to keep WhatsApp operating independently, letting the founders control the direction of the company and allowing WhatsApp to stay true to its mission. Do you think that this decision was the right one? Was Facebook correct to purchase WhatsApp? Even at $22 billion? How could it create value if it did not integrate WhatsApp with Facebook?

12. In 2006, Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, was looking for a way to solve Netflix’s customer churn problem. Netflix used Cinematch, its proprietary movie recommendation software, to promote individually determined best-fit movies to customers. Hastings determined that a 10% improvement to the Cinematch algorithm would decrease customer churn and increase annual revenue by up to $89 million. However, traditional options for improving the algorithm, such as hiring and training new employees, were time intensive and costly. Hastings decided to improve Netflix’s software by crowdsourcing, and began planning the Netflix Prize, an open contest searching for a 10% improvement on Cinematch. Explain and discuss the dilemmas Hastings faced as he planned the contest, such as whether to use an existing crowdsourcing platform or create his own, what company information to expose, how to protect customer privacy while making internal datasets public, how to allocate IP, and how to manage the crowd.

13. The Wikimedia Foundation is responsible for supporting Wikipedia and various other projects through administration, technical and financial support. Since its founding, Wikipedia has changed the way people around the world research information by allowing individuals to document and write history in a collaborative and decentralized fashion. If you were Lila Tretikov the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and how would you balance fundraising, technology development and manage your organization?

14. Launched in early 2005, Zopa is a peer-to-peer online brokerage that couples British residents who want to lend with those who want to borrow. The company represents a new business model in the retail financial services industry, and since Zopa is not technically a bank and does not lend money itself, the capital requirements to run the business are relatively small. Compared to a traditional full service bank Zopa concentrates on only a few steps of the value chain. This case study provides an overview of how Zopa, a value innovator, has developed a unique position in the market through an innovative business model. Explain Zopa’s value innovation and how Zopa shook up an established industry structure and its key players. Discuss the sustainability of Zopa’s competitive advantage in a business in which network effects play an important role. Finally, suggest how incumbent firms should respond to Zopa’s innovative new business model.