Techno Greats Case Study

CASE STUDY

Techno Greats

Ed Worthy, General Manager of Techno Greats, swung his BMW M6 Cabriolet out of the driveway of his suburban home at 6:00 am and headed to the laboratory in Calgary, fifteen miles away. The trip to the laboratory took about twenty minutes and gave Ed an opportunity to think about the lab problems without interruption.

Techno Greats operated 10 labs in Canada, specializing in research surrounding blood and plasma substitutes for surgical procedures. It had about 250 employees, nearly half of whom were employed at the Techno Greats Corporation head offices in the Techno Bio-Sciences building in Calgary, along with the lab Ed managed.

Ed had started with Techno Greats as a researcher in its Vancouver research lab ten years ago, after his graduation from Capilano College. After three years he was promoted to Lab Supervisor, and two years later was made Assistant to the Manager of the Vancouver research lab. A year and a half ago he had been transferred to the Calgary Lab as Assistant to the Calgary General Manager, and one month later, when the manager retired, Ed was promoted to General Manager of the Calgary Lab. He had risen in the ranks and now was poised to rise higher.

Ed was in good spirits this morning. Various thoughts occurred to him as he manoeuvred the silver sports car into his personal parking place. He said to himself, “This will be the day to really get things done”. He thought of the day’s work, first one project, then another, trying to establish priorities. He decided that the investment and stock option plan was probably the most important, certainly the most urgent. He recalled that on Friday the Vice-President had casually asked him if he had given the project any further thought. Ed realized that he had not been giving it any attention lately. He had been meaning to get to work on his idea for over three months, but something else always seemed to crop up.

“I haven’t had time to really work it out”, he said to himself. “I’d better get going and finish it off one of these days”. He then began to break down the objectives, procedures, and implementation steps in the project. It gave him a feeling of satisfaction as he calculated the anticipated increase in capital the offering would bring to the company. “It’s high time”, he told himself. “This idea should have been completed a long time ago”.

Ed had first conceived the investment and stock option plan idea almost two years ago just prior to leaving the Vancouver lab. He had talked it over with his General Manager there and both had agreed that it was a good idea and worth developing. The idea was temporarily shelved when Ed had been transferred to the Calgary lab a month later.