HEIDI ROIZEN AND T/MAKER CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING IN A SMALL BUSINESS The following scenarios were taken from actual business situations faced by the management team at T/Maker. Put yourself in the position of making a decision as described in the text. In doing so, consider the profile of the T/Maker Company, while simultaneously using your own style and discretion in forming a response. Please be specific with your recommendations. Number 1: You and your business partner manage a small software company that has been growing steadily. From the beginning of the business, you have both held fast to the policy of promoting in-house and recognize the hard work that employees give the company. Of your present 20 employees, a technical developer, Bill Meelatur, has been particularly loyal. Though he is now well-paid according to your company’s modest standards, he stuck it through with you during the company’s struggling early years, sacrificing what he could have earned then at larger, more established companies. His loyalty and knowledge have thus made him invaluable to the company. Your company has now grown to the point where you need a chief operating officer to take over mostly technically related responsibilities. You decide, for the first time, to look out-of-house because the position is such a demanding one. You put together a search committee to fill the job. You find the perfect candidate, an employee with a competitor, who is very interested in coming to work with your small, exciting company. After preliminary discussions, you realize he won’t consider an offer below his present salary, which is significantly higher than Bill’s. The company is not in the position to increase all present salaries, but you are uncomfortable with making an offer to this candidate that is out of line with the company’s present scheme. More importantly you are not sure how Bill would react and do not want to lose him. What would you do? Number 2: You are the president of small company that emphasizes an ethical approach to doing business. The company has always done well but is now experiencing a decline and is very cash-poor. You know you will work hard to get through this time but that doesn’t change the fact that you are worried and anxious. The offices were recently moved into a wonderful new space (a decision made in better times). All of the old master film from previous registration cards, manuals, and other basically obsolete materials were stored in the library, near an air-conditioning unit. One night the unit breaks down, spraying water all over the master film. The film is ruined. The agent that owns the building is responsible for the air-conditioning unit, and asks you for an estimate of damage as a result of the occurrence. You consider the film ruined. It would take about $30,000 to replace the film. While it’s true that you probably would never have used it again, it does have historical value to the company. At the same time, even if you claim $30,000 to replace the film, you would use the money in other ways. You need to come up with an answer for the agent. What do you tell him or her?Number 3: You are the president of a small company in the software industry. You are the major shareholder, have been running the company for about seven years, and have been chosen as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in the United States. The company has experienced fast and solid growth, and you recently ran for and won the presidency of the Software Publishers Association. You are not married and have dated a number of men that you have met in the software business. They are all familiar with your business, and with a few you have had extensive business dealings. They are valuable business colleagues as well as personal friends, and you have worked hard to maintain friendships with them beyond any other type of relationship you may have shared at one time. It is also true, given that you are one of very few successful and single women in the industry, that there is lively gossip about your personal life. News tends to travel along the grapevine fast. You’ve been able to ignore it, for the most part, because you know you conduct your business and personal lives with integrity and fairness. You have been putting together a new business plan for your company for the purpose of winning venture capital money. This is an important step for you and your company, and you are trying to make the plan as comprehensive and attractive as possible. You need to list business references, individuals who can recommend you highly regarding your business abilities and your personal integrity. You have several good possibilities. There are also a couple of names you would like to use of men that you have dated in the past. You wonder, since venture capitalists might know about your personal life, if this will affect their assessment of these references. Do you list these names as references, or not? Number 4: You are the president of a small, seven-year-old software company in Mountain View, California. The company has established itself with quality software products, and, as a result, enjoys strong connections to the best software distribution houses and to industry writers that are important in giving software products visibility in the press. You often work with outside software programmers and bring to the table your ability to assess the market viability of their programs, develop and package the product, and, finally, get the product distributed by the most comprehensive and reliable distributors in the industry. You are personal friends with the most powerful people in the industry and have been elected president of the Software Publishers Association. One particular day you have an appointment Mr. I. Doan-Gettit, a programmer who has written software you are interested in developing. Mr. Doan-Gettit is sitting with you at your desk discussing the terms of a potential contract with your company, and says, “I can see how you add value at the retail store level, and I don’t mind giving you the rights to that. But I want to retain the rights to sell at the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) level. After all, once the products is known in the industry, I can pick up the phone and call Microsoft just as easily as you can.” You want the OEM rights as well as the retail rights. (OEM sales are sales in volume to other