clusive use at Institute of Management Technology, Hyderabad (IMT,HYD), 2015

9-109-017
REV: FEBRUARY 18, 2009

ROBERT SIMONS
KATHRYN ROSENBERG
NATALIE KINDRED

Sydney IVF: Stem Cell Research
At Sydney IVF we absolutely respect your beliefs. Because of this, we have taken the care to devise acceptable assisted conception programs for virtually all faiths—Christianity (including the Brethren), Islam,
Judaism (including supervised kosher treatment cycles), Hinduism, and Buddhism. We guarantee that your eggs and your sperm will never be used in a way that you have not explicitly or implicitly consented to.
— (Sydney IVF website)
This case study describes the strategy implementation choices made by executives at Sydney IVF
Limited: an Australian business that tested and performed research using human embryos derived from in vitro fertilization.
In vitro fertilization (IVF) was a process that allowed human eggs to be fertilized outside a woman’s womb. In a typical IVF cycle, a woman’s ovaries were stimulated with fertility drugs to encourage the production of anywhere from 3 to 30 eggs. These eggs were then retrieved from the ovaries and fertilized with sperm in a glass test tube or petri dish—hence the Latin term in vitro, which means “in glass.” The fertilized eggs grew in a specialized culture medium (a nutrient-rich salt solution) for several days. The resulting embryos—clusters of cells that form after an egg is fertilized—were then transferred back to the woman’s uterus with the hope of achieving pregnancy and ultimately a healthy baby.
The in vitro fertilization process typically produced more eggs and embryos than needed for a successful pregnancy. Couples could choose to freeze these surplus embryos for use in future IVF cycles although many would never be used. For these excess embryos, three options were available:
1.

Destroy the