Strategic Case Analysis
2
interviewers frequently resort to brainteasers to assess the
intellectual horsepower of a potential employee, a
comprehensive list is provided for this purpose. Whether you
are an MBA student practicing for job interviews, or a
seasoned executive hiring the best and the brightest, you will
find value in these brainteasers.
The chapter on “Advanced Frameworks” provides additional
reading material on business strategy. Application of these
frameworks can be useful while dealing with your
interviewer, a high-powered business executive as a
consultant, and everyone in between. While not typical, the
section on S-curves showcases how corporate strategies can
sometimes be mapped out using an effective framework. On
this, a story is in order.
I had used the S-curves framework in a dialogue with Scott
McNealy, Sun’s venerable CEO (now Chairman) after his
LinuxWorld 2002 conference to showcase why Linux was
eating his lunch. Back then, Sun had a one-O/S (Operating
System) plus one chip (i.e., Solaris O/S on a SPARC chip)
strategy. In that dialogue, Mr. McNealy had disagreed with
me by reiterating that Solaris was not sitting on top of its S-
curve and was still taking off (i.e., it was sitting on the middle
of the S-curve). One of the other Sun executives wrote to me
later, stating that I should have portrayed how Linux was
disrupting the Windows operating system and not Sun’s
Solaris. However, my depiction was correct, for in his
keynote just an hour before, Mr. McNealy had showcased a
dual-boot server, which could run either Solaris or Linux!
The book also provides a glossary of important financial
formulae / ratios. A few of these ratios have been used while
solving the business cases. I hope the formulae will be a good
source of reference for the interviewee / practicing consultant
as also for the corporate executive / business owner.
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