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Assigning Darden cases and technical notes to your students just became much easier! Now, when you log on to Darden Business Publishing with your faculty account, you will see a new “My Course Packs” tab at the top of the home page. Use the quick-start guide found on your course pack dashboard to get started, or view the step-by-step instructions here.

This new feature will also save your students time and money. When you create a course pack, the materials are automatically assigned a reduced academic rate—half off the standard retail price. Your course pack dashboard also has a tracking feature that allows you to see how many of your students have downloaded an assignment. To get started, simply add documents to your Favorites, then include them in your course pack. Once you have activated your course pack, you will receive an e-mail with a link to the course pack product page to share with your students. 

Dr. Elliott Weiss’ book The Lean Anthology: A Practical Primer in Continual Improvement was just published by Productivity Press. Dr. Weiss is a professor at the Darden School of Business, specializing in operations management. Darden Business Publishing recently sat down with Dr. Weiss to discuss his book.

 Why did you write The Lean Anthology?

One of my challenges as an educator has been to get nontechnical students to understand and appreciate the concepts of operations management, since many of our examples are in the manufacturing area. We wanted to provide practical examples from everyday life that made the concepts straightforward. The cases are characterized by their ease of accessibility—they are simple vignettes that illustrate everyday people negotiating the travails of common life. Entertaining, lively characters observe and integrate the principles of Lean into their households and their personal and professional lives. This format benefits readers—those who have a manufacturing background and those who don’t—by presenting information in a familiar context and by extending readers’ understanding of Lean beyond business settings.

Who should read The Lean Anthology?

The collection has several uses. First, a reader can use it to build a holistic intuition of Lean and operations management concepts. Since the cases examine simple, everyday examples, the collection allows non-engineers and those without an operations management background to gain insight into the theory underlying Lean, as well as how this theory is expressed in the real world. The collection has applications as an educational tool for business school instructors, or for corporate educators or trainers. Because the vignettes and their accompanying explanations, learning objectives, key takeaways, and discussion activities are modular in nature, they can be used as individual lessons or classroom activities to supplement an existing curriculum.

What would you like to see people learn from the book?

 The collection is a tool for understanding Lean and operations management concepts through short, screenplay-style stories and explanations of how each story illustrates a concept. Reading these cases can provide a non-engineer or someone without a formal operations management background an intuitive understanding of continuous process improvement.

Reading these cases and reflecting on the assignment questions can improve comprehension in an operations management class, increase performance on the job, provide a corporate educator or management instructor with easy-to-use lessons to supplement a Lean curriculum, and allow the reader to improve his or her everyday use of Lean. And, of course, using Lean concepts in everyday life can help us all to save money and make time for the fun stuff!

In the 2014 academic year, Dr. Weiss reintroduced the services operations course elective at Darden. He has written more than 175 cases and technical notes for Darden Business Publishing. Those interested in The Lean Anthology can purchase it through Amazon.com or directly from the Productivity Press website. Teaching notes to help instructors apply these useful concepts in the classroom are available free of charge for registered faculty at Darden Business Publishing.

More about The Lean Anthology

Purpose

Living Lean is a series of operations-management case studies that present everyday scenarios for a Lean process-improvement journey. Our definition of Lean is the relentless pursuit of the strategic elimination of waste. Each Living Lean vignette helps the reader both understand and intuitively apply a different approach to the strategic elimination of waste. The stories are organized into a framework for implementing a Lean transformation called the “Five Cs”—Customer, Capability, Control, Coordination, and Context/Culture. This collection offers a relevant, interesting, and fun approach to the challenges and opportunities of a Lean journey.

 Context

The cases are characterized by their ease of accessibility—they are simple vignettes that illustrate everyday people negotiating the travails of common life. Entertaining, lively characters observe and integrate the principles of Lean into their households and their personal and professional lives. This format benefits readers—those who have a manufacturing background and those who don’t—by presenting information in a familiar context and by extending readers’ understanding of Lean beyond business settings.

 Since these Lean vignettes describe real settings, they are holistic in nature. This means that the scenario and dialogue might incorporate lessons drawn from several classes or topics. There will be, however, a primary “lesson” revealed in each, and this theme will be identified to facilitate the instructor’s ability to seamlessly integrate these vignettes into his or her existing course curriculum.

The collection has several uses. First, a reader can use it to build a holistic intuition of Lean and operations-management concepts. Since the cases examine simple, everyday examples, the collection allows non-engineers and those without an operations-management background to gain insight into the theory underlying Lean, as well as how this theory is expressed in the real world. The collection has applications as an educational tool for business school instructors, or for corporate educators or trainers. Because the vignettes and their accompanying explanations, learning objectives, key takeaways, and discussion activities are modular in nature, they can be used as individual lessons or classroom activities to supplement an existing curriculum. An explanation accompanies each Lean vignette, as do a list of learning objectives, a text box identifying key takeaways, and brain teasers that ask the reader to generalize the insights by generating additional examples in both the professional and personal realms.

Taken in its entirety, Living Lean covers substantially all of a core operations-management curriculum at the MBA level, but it can be used successfully at an undergraduate or training level because the stories are short, simple, easily accessible, and completely explained. The organization of the cases into the framework of the Five Cs is also helpful as a means of developing intuition around the strategic design of operations within a company from a leadership level. Instructors can utilize all of the cases in a module or select cases on an as-needed basis.

Care has been taken throughout the development of the cases (which include illustrations) to create characters and scenarios that are diverse in nature. The hope is that, in doing so, we have created a resource that is appealing to an even wider audience and that is more accessible in the classroom.

The collection is a tool for understanding Lean and operations-management concepts through short, screenplay-style stories and explanations of how each story illustrates a concept. Reading these cases can provide a non-engineer or someone without a formal operations-management background with an intuitive understanding of continuous process improvement.

Reading these cases and reflecting on the assignment questions can improve comprehension in an operations-management class, increase performance on the job, provide a corporate educator or management instructor with easy-to-use lessons to supplement a Lean curriculum, and allow the reader to improve his or her everyday use of Lean. And, of course, using Lean concepts in everyday life can help us all to save money and make time for the fun stuff!

Book Review

The Daily Progress, January 3, 2015

Six professors at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business have been recognized with the Wells Fargo Award for Excellence in Course Materials for teaching cases they developed to prepare students to make decisions in the face of uncertainty.

 Cases, which describe real-life business challenges, show students how all business functions fit together and help them hone their ability to take effective action. In class, professors engage students in a Socratic-style discussion of how to tackle the issues that case materials present. The case method is a hallmark of the Darden experience and is considered the gold standard of management education.

 This year’s award winners are Professors Marian Moore, Erika Hayes James, Susan Chaplinsky, Pedro Matos, Rich Evans, and Yiorgos Allayannis.

 Both Moore and James received the Wells Fargo Award for High-Impact Case.

 The Research and Course Development Committee at Darden, which presented the awards, recognized Moore’s case “Positioning: The Essence of Marketing Strategy.”  The case provides readers with a tool to develop a positioning statement in order to reach their target market.

 The committee recognized James’s case “Decision-Making and Leading through Crisis,” which she co-wrote with Darden researcher Gerry Yemen. The case offers students a perspective on making decisions during times of crisis.

 Susan Chaplinsky received the Wells Fargo Award for Distinguished Case Writer for the impact her case-writing contributions have made over her tenure. Chaplinsky, the Tipton R. Snavely professor of business administration at Darden, last year received the All-University Teaching Award, and in 2012 she received the Wachovia Award for Excellence in Teaching Materials—Innovative Case.

 Matos, Evans, and Allayannis received the Wells Fargo Award for Case Series for the cases “Gold as a Portfolio Diversifier: The World Gold Council and Investing in Gold,” “The Market for Gold: SPDR Gold Shares and Beyond,” and “Betting on Gold Using a Futures-Based Gold ETF.” This series focuses on the performance of gold as an investment asset in the wake of the market collapse of 2008 and in the macroeconomic uncertainty of fall 2012. It challenges students to examine whether gold would have provided capital preservation and improved the overall risk-return tradeoff of a portfolio or whether it was an asset class at the peak of a bubble.

 The Wells Fargo Award for Excellence in Course Materials is intended to encourage the development of world-class educational materials that reflect well on Darden’s educational mission. 

 The members of the Research and Course Development Committee are Raj Venkatesan, committee chairperson and Bank of America research associate professor of Business Administration; Professor S. Venkataraman, senior associate dean for faculty and research; Sean Carr, director of intellectual capital for the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; Steve Momper, director of Darden Business Publishing; Professor Saras Sarasvathy, Isadore Horween research chair of business administration; and Professors Rich Evans and Scott Snell.   

 In 1982, Wachovia, which merged with and is now part of Wells Fargo, established an endowment to fund research and case development awards at Darden. The Wells Fargo Awards alternate each year between recognition of course materials and honoring faculty for their outstanding research and publications.

Darden Business Publishing is very pleased to announce that “Deutsche Bank and the Road to Basel III,” by George (Yiorgos) Allayannis, Gerry Yemen, Andrew C. Wicks, and Matthew Dougherty, was named the best finance case of 2013 in the 24th annual awards and competition sponsored by The Case Centre.

In “Deutsche Bank and the Road to Basel III,” students discuss the role of the acquisition of Postbank, and the potential impact of Basel III on Deutsche Bank. The case is set in 2012, just after Joseph Ackermann stepped down and co-CEOs Jürgen Fitschen and Anshu Jain assumed leadership. After two months in their new role, they are about to have their first quarterly conference call with the analysts. The analysts were anxious to learn if Deutsche Bank was in a position to meet the new capital requirements imposed by Basel III that was due to take effect in 2013. How would the market value Deutsche Bank in this new environment?

“This case talks about big issues,” Allayannis said. “We have figured out how important banks are in the economy and their impact on growth or decline.” At the core of the case is Deutsche Bank’s plan to reposition itself in the market and to meet the capital requirements imposed by Basel III. “It is clear that banks cannot assume excessive risks, they must be responsible.”

The big issues Allayannis mentioned allow for several ethical themes to emerge. Wicks coteaches this case as part of the European Residency (Berlin) of the Global MBA for Executives (GEMBA) program. “The ethical issues presented in this case force students to go outside of their comfort zone.” The decision to balance Deutsche Bank’s global strategy with a local one pushes students beyond the numbers. One possible result is a debate about the implications of “Too big to fail.”

Yemen said the most surprising thing she noticed as she wrote the case was the openness and transparency of the Deutsche Bank website. Even some of the dark events of Deutsche Bank’s past were listed for all to see.

Allayannis teaches “Deutsche Bank and the Road to Basel III” and several of his other cases in his “Financial Institutions and Capital Markets” class in the residency program as well as in the GEMBA program. If students have sufficient background in finance, it may be suitable for the strategy course as well. When Wicks is not teaching in the combined finance-ethics course for GEMBA, he teaches ethics and leadership at the Darden School of Business. Yemen is a senior researcher at Darden, and has written several bestselling cases. Dougherty is a 2012 Darden graduate.

For many years, the Darden School of Business has developed custom simulations for the classroom, but few were ever made commercially available. Now Darden Business Publishing is pleased to announce a new line of reliable, high-quality, easy-to-use simulations for sale on the Forio.com platform. Our first product on Forio.com is Positioning Game—a perceptual mapping exercise created by Paul Farris.

Darden School faculty has a long history of success with its case method of teaching in management education, and high engagement learning is at the core of that success. Simulations add to the classroom dynamics by providing a context in which participants can view and analyze situations and then decide on a course of action.

Developed by Darden faculty and tested in Darden classrooms, Darden simulations are, in many ways, created similarly to cases. Students can easily purchase access to simulations, or a university can purchase a block of seats.

Each simulation uses a standard interface, so if you are familiar with one product, you will be comfortable with the interface of all of our products. Every Darden simulation comes with a user guide for participants and a teacher’s note for the facilitator.

If you are looking for an innovative way to teach product positioning, then give Positioning Game a try! Contact us to schedule a demonstration or to view a brief demonstration on Forio.com. Check back in the spring for the release of additional simulations in quantitative methods and operations management.

Darden Business Publishing is pleased to announce that customers with mobile devices can now purchase our print materials in EPUB format. All newly published and recently revised educational materials will be available in this mobile-friendly format going forward.

In 2010, about 3% of our customers visited our site through a mobile device; today, about 10% of our customers do. EPUB files are easier to view on mobile devices than PDF files, which require constant pinching and zooming to read. EPUB files resize and reflow content depending on the device you are using to view them. Now, if you are reading our cases on your iPhone or Android, you can easily flip through the pages using one of the numerous free EPUB applications available (an extensive list can be found on Wikipedia here, or check your device manufacturer’s app store). If you would like to read our EPUB files on a Kindle, you can, but you will need to convert the EPUB into Kindle’s proprietary format (instructions here).

EPUB files can also be accessed on your desktop or laptop computer using simple conversion software. Two applications that we can recommend are Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions. Both are free and compatible with Mac and PC. Apple users can also view EPUBs using iBooks.

The Strategist’s Toolkit, by Jared Harris and Michael Lenox, is Darden Business Publishing’s first e-book, and it is available in EPUB format. This book is the primary resource in Darden’s first-year “Business Strategy” course, as well as in the highly subscribed-to online course “Foundations of Business Strategy” offered through Coursera.

If you have a mobile device, give EPUB a try. Then let us know what you think, either in the comments section below or by emailing your feedback.

Welcome to the redesigned Darden Business Publishing website! Although our site may seem familiar, we have added new functions and improved existing ones to make it easier for you to find and purchase content in various formats and to provide a community  in which you can share your teaching experiences with others. Below are just a small number of enhancements that I hope you will find useful.

Use Our Enhanced Search to find exactly what you are looking for. Our search now scans titles, abstracts, keywords, and the full text of documents in the collection. In addition, our advanced search function allows you to filter the results by author, publishing date, product type, as well as other attributes.

Read News and Announcements in the area of management education. Visit often to learn the story behind the development of our latest products or to find out how an instructor used a new case. Read about research you can use in your classroom and enhancements or new functions on our website.

Rate Our Cases and share your experiences by answering an invitation  at the top of each product page.  Share your teaching experience with a particular product with the author and your colleagues in the case community. Your contributions, over time, will create a vast cache of experience, insight, and suggestions to accompany each of our products.

Review Featured Cases and Bestsellers to choose the most current classroom-tested products to add to your syllabus. We typically publish three new cases each week. Visit frequently to keep current with our newly published cases and bestsellers.

Read Our Blog to interact with Darden Business Publishing, its authors, and other customers. Get tips for teaching cases, read comments on stories from colleagues, or contribute your own teaching ideas or experiences.

As you will see, this is a completely updated storefront  and there are more enhancements to come. Registration is required to join the faculty community and take part in our interactive features. If you have not already done so, please reset your password or register to take advantage of these features and join our case-teaching community. By combining Darden Business Publishing’s teaching materials with teaching suggestions and feedback from faculty members everywhere, this site will be the most useful case-teaching resource available anywhere.

About this story: Regularly we feature submissions by business instructors who have discovered a particular insight into how to better teach with a case, simulation, or negotiation exercise. Sharing best practices in effective pedagogical methods helps the entire community of case teachers become more skilled at their craft. If you have case related classroom tips to share with your colleagues please contact us at sales@dardenbusinesspublishing.com, and we will feature it here.

This inaugural blog entry was contributed by Brian Burns¹ from Florida Atlantic University. Burns has observed trends in which students come to class less prepared, are distracted by digital technology, and rely heavily on textbooks as inscrutable evidence. Burns decided to take a unique approach to teaching the case “Euroland Foods S.A.” that completely engaged his students. We thought that you might find his story enjoyable and consider sharing your experiences in the classroom here as well.  

Case Method Success for Undergraduates Comes from Complicating, not Simplifying, the Method by Brian Burns

I tried a new approach this year with the "Euroland Foods S.A." finance case. Students were assigned the roles of the stakeholders in the case. Photo placards with each student’s role-play character emblazoned upon them were handed out at the beginning of the class discussion. (Not for nothing did I choose a photo of Meryl Streep for the Verdin character portraying Margaret Thatcher. The crowd favorite was surely Angelina Jolie, who was the embodiment of Fabienne Morin. A gaggle of European executives and royal princes completed the cast of photos for the Euroland name placards.)