Reading Report

Student Name:
Student Number:

Book/Magazine: Harvard Business School

Chapter/Articule: Cinemex

Author:

Session: 8 Date: 12/02/19 Pages: 1-29

Year: 1999 Editorial: Harvard Business Country: USA

School

Key Points

1. Business

2. Startup

3. Leadership

4. Innovation

5. New founding

Summary

Harvard Business School features the story of one of the first companies to use outstanding
business models for its time. Cinema had entered the mexican movie theatre business with a
whole new model that focused on things that on a larger scale would make a bigger difference on
its operations, resulting on more revenues and a strong presence in a market that was almost
abandoned.

Cinemex’s founders were three young men who just had finished their MBA at the Harvard
Business School, and were eager to build a new company for a business that was forgotten and
deficiently taken care of in a country that was a moderate consumer of the movie industry. They
used all their knowledge acquired at HBS, but also took advantage on their personal positions to
start from zero a company that would change the way movies were sold not only in Mexico City,
but in the entire country. They carefully reviewed every little detail of the business, making a
company with every aspect already thought of, and offered it to investors in several places from
Mexico to the U.S. They also were clever, knowing that the american model of showcasing movies
would be a revolutionising form in Mexico, where movie theatres hadn’t changed for several
decades now. They worried about costumer service, complex design, and the biggest impact was
on their employees treatment, with a whole new model on how these formed part of the company.
Of course this decisions made Cinemex the most popular movie theatre in the country for several
years, changing the whole experience for theatre-goers, but also for investors and employees as
well.

The leadership of the three men who founded this company was the main reason of Cinemex
success, but also their willing and eagerness to build something people would look up to.

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! Profesor: Javier Montaño Navarro
Global Leadership Skills
 Reading Report

Additional questions to be resolved:

1. Did you like the reading, whether or not and why?

Yes, it was interesting to understand how one of the biggest companies of our country was built up and
how a business of this scale is managed from the inside.

2. What is the main learning from the reading for you?

To be eager to innovate and to always think in the smallest details, which can make a big difference.

3. What immediate application can you give in your work or in your personal life of that main learning?
To always love what I do and trust in my capacity to do things.

Pág 2
! de 2
! Profesor: Javier Montaño Navarro
Global Leadership Skills