Crown Cork and Seal Company

1. What are the most significant factors affecting competition in the metal container
industry?
2. What strategy does crown cork have for competing in this industry?
3. What advantages, if any, does a firm the size of crown cork have over American
can and continental can? How do you explain the comparisons shown in exhibit 3 in
the case?
4. What recommendations would you make to management?

Coca-Cola Versus Pepsi cola

1. Why was it that concentrate producers have been so profitable?
2. Evaluate the Philip Morris acquisition of seven-up.
3. What is happening in the soft drink industry? How do the major developments
affect smaller competitors?
4. Why was coke able to dominate the world soft drink industry by 1950? Why was
coke so extraordinarily profitable? How was Pepsi able to gain share in the 1950s? In
the 1960s and early 1970s? After the Pepsi challenge? Consider each period
separately, and be specific.
5. What should Pepsi do next?
6. Was the Pepsi Challenge a good idea?

GE Two Decade Transformation

1. How difficult a challenge did welch face in 1981? How effectively did he take
charge?
2. What is Welchs objective in the series of initiatives he launched in the late
1980s and early 1990s? What is he trying to achieve in the round of changes
he put in motion in that period? Is there a logic or rationale supporting the
change process?
3. How does such a large, complex diversified conglomerate defy the critics and
continue to grow so profitably? Have Welchs various initiatives added value?
If so, how?
4. What is your evaluation of Welchs approach to leading change? How
important is he to GEs success? What implications for his replacement?