Dominion Engineering Works

Christopher A. Bartlett

Case | HBS Case Collection | June 1983 (Revised April 1991)

Dominion Engineering Works

Abstract

Dominion Engineering Works faces important strategic decisions about whether to continue its focused strategy of selling newsprint machines to the Canadian paper industry or whether recent changes in industry conditions and the emergence of three global competitors will force it to diversify its product line and/or its geographic markets. Allows analysis of global competitive strategy versus a national champion strategy in an evolving industry. Can be used with Note on the Paper Machine Industry.

Keywords: Machinery and Machining; Globalized Markets and Industries; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Partners and Partnerships; Competitive Strategy; Customization and Personalization; Diversification;

Format: Print

13 pages

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Bartlett, Christopher A. "Dominion Engineering Works." Harvard Business School Case 383-184, June 1983. (Revised April 1991.)

Describes the entrepreneurial leadership of Jack Manning Bancroft (JMB), a young Indigenous Australian university student who created the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME), a nonprofit organization he formed to respond to the problem of Indigenous high school students completing high school at less than half the rate of non-Indigenous students. The case traces the strategic, organizational, and cultural challenges JMB faced in building an organization that eventually offered mentoring partnerships to 8,000 Indigenous students in 350 high schools throughout Australia. Furthermore, the AIME students were completing school and going on to university at the same rate as non-Indigenous students. The case concludes as JMB contemplates taking his successful, sophisticated model to the United States.

This case describes the challenges facing the CEO of a small, Singapore-based industrial robotics company that decides to diversify away from its core industrial robot business by leveraging its expertise into the medical-devices industry. It launches an innovative product (a specialized surgical robot) in an unfamiliar market segment (spinal surgery) and decides to enter the unfamiliar, distant U.S. healthcare market, which is characterized by rapid technological change and intense competition with large, established competitors. RoboTech's initial struggles with maintaining product supply and customer support are also complicated by regulatory pressures and shifting reimbursement rates. The case illustrates the strategic and organizational pressures that result from facing numerous unanticipated pressures in a company that lacks the resources, capabilities, and management experience to deal with them. Although the case was developed for courses in international management/international business, it is also well suited to courses in strategy, technology management, and general management.

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Dominion Engineering Works

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