In May 2016, three scientists from Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology were preparing for a meeting with several managers from the institute's technology transfer department. The three scientists were planning to commercialize a new technology they had created, and hoped to use their invention to launch a new company as a spinoff from their work at the institute. However, because the scientists had created the technology while working .....more

Teaching note for product 9B20M010.

Teaching note for product 9B17M154.

For the Deutscher Fussball-Bund e.V. (DFB)—the German Football Association—winning the most prestigious football trophy, the 2014 FIFA World Cup, was the culmination of a long period of suffering, reinventing, and rebuilding. Once the dominating force in world football, the German team had been at rock bottom around the beginning of the millennium. To manage its way out of this crisis and leave competitors behind once again, the DFB had to fundamentally .....more

Late in 2016, the owner of a lingerie business in Dusseldorf, Germany, faced a series of questions regarding the health of her business in a changing environment. The German retail environment had traditionally consisted of many specialized (often family-owned) small- to medium-sized retailers, and many of these stores had not kept pace with globalization and the digital revolution; market changes and increasing competition forced them to close. Other .....more

Teaching note for product 9B17M090.