This case traces the economic history of modern Germany, from its beginnings in the 19th century to its strong performance during the financial crisis and its emergence as a de facto economic and political leader of Europe.

In 2011, Mikkel Larsen, Managing Director, Head of Tax & Accounting Policy, Group Finance at DBS Bank mooted the idea of DBS adopting an integrated reporting approach. He was convinced that this was a more holistic way of reporting on the bank's business strategy and activities, linking each of them clearly to the financial and non-financial impact it would have on its stakeholders. In 2012, when DBS adopted the integrated reporting approach, it was the first listed company in Southeast Asia to do so. The report had been well-received and garnered considerable attention from the external parties such as research analysts and the media. Based on feedback from DBS's stakeholders, DBS incorporated changes that would make the 2013 IR more user-friendly and meaningful for its stakeholders. Larsen was, in May 2014, looking over the 2013 report, recognising that there was always room for improvement. For instance, in preparation for the following years' annual reports, further enhancements, could include defining 'materiality', increasing stakeholder outreach, and reporting 'outcomes' as compared to 'outputs'.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Organizations often try to accelerate product introduction cycles by prioritizing project delivery. However, many projects have two characteristics that make optimal delivery times elusive: The projects tend to involve uncertainty (for example, they develop a new product function whose feasibility has not yet been established); and the workers have information about the status of their tasks that many don't share. Behavioral issues are as important in project timeliness as diligent planning. This article examines the difficulties of project planning and execution and describes a management innovation at Roto Frank, a German company that produces hardware for industrial and residential windows and doors. Roto, headquartered in Leinfelden-Echterdingen, Germany, has augmented its project control system with a formal help process that encourages workers to seek and provide mutual assistance. The authors found that Roto's help process achieved a measurable improvement in project cycle time without changing formal incentives or other management systems. Its success is based largely on two factors: establishing psychological safety and encouraging cooperative behavior among workers by emphasizing their interdependence. The authors argue that this help process has the potential to accelerate projects in many environments. In developing a project planning and monitoring system that encouraged project workers to reveal private information about their tasks, Roto did not rely on financial incentives. Indeed, the authors note that incentives don't need to be monetary or career focused; they can be social and geared toward building positive relationships. Without fears of being blamed for problems, workers were more inclined to call for help rather than procrastinating or passing latent issues on to the next project worker.

In researching what makes for successful project sponsorship, the authors used a project life cycle model with four stages: (1) initiating -from the preliminary idea through approved charter; (2) planning -from approved charter through approved project plan; (3) executing -from approved project plan through acceptance of major deliverables; and (4) closing -from acceptance of major deliverables through final completion. Project success historically has been defined by the "iron triangle"of cost, schedule and performance. The authors use a broader definition based on three success factors. The first success factor involves impact on the project's customers, which is almost always the most important success measure. The second success factor involves meeting agreements: Was the project completed on time, on budget and to specifications? The third success factor is tied to the future benefits to the company, be they new technology, new products, new markets and/or commercial success. The authors conducted separate studies of each project life-cycle stage, using literature reviews, focus groups, surveys and factor analysis in order to examine sponsor behavior and project success factors. For each stage, they found that two or three behaviors had a significant impact on the project success factors. In the initiating stage, the important behaviors for executive sponsors involve setting performance goals for the project, selecting and mentoring the project manager and establishing priorities. In the project's planning stage, the key sponsor behaviors are ensuring planning and developing relationships with stakeholders.

after all, most companies in an industry are seeking to obtain them. The authors contend that ordinary resources may play an overlooked but important role in successful strategies -and competing with ordinary resources can be a valuable complement to competing with strategic resources. An ordinary resource is a common resource on the market, generally perceived as neutral in terms of performance. Such a resource is considered, at best, as ensuring competitive parity. While ordinary resources are not, in and of themselves, a source of competitive advantage and greater performance, they are generally required for the business to function properly. Examples of ordinary resources include compliance with ISO standards in the automobile industry; stores and salespeople in retailing; and websites and logistics competencies in e-commerce. Unless ordinary resources are leveraged, strategic resources cannot always deliver their full-fledged competitive potential. In particular, the use of ordinary resources enables the duplication of a business model in many business units and/or in many countries. For instance, McDonald's Corp. is the world's largest chain of fast-food restaurants. But the replication of the McDonald's business model is possible specifically because the model leverages relatively ordinary resources, in the form of more than 1.8 million employees worldwide. Most entry-level McDonald's employees are not highly qualified, are part-time workers and can be easily replaced. However, the McDonald's brand can only be leveraged thanks to these ordinary resources. The authors also observe that the emergence of new business models that leverage a vast array of ordinary resources -particularly multisided platform business models -raises questions about the relevance of the traditional strategic focus on scarcity-based approaches and unique resources. For example, Airbnb connects an abundant number of people who want to source out their empty rooms to hirers who are

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In today's dynamic and competitive world, a project manager's key challenge is coping with frequent unexpected events. Such events can be classified according to their level of predictability as follows: events that were anticipated but whose impacts were much stronger than expected; events that could not have been predicted; and events that could have been predicted but were not. Coping with frequent unexpected events requires an organizational culture that allows the project manager to exercise a great amount of flexibility. The traditional approach to project management emphasizes that project success depends on stability. According to this approach, project success can be achieved by focusing on planning and on controlling and managing risks. Although the popularity of this approach has sharply increased across industries, research covering a wide variety of projects consistently reveals poor performance. The authors collected data from more than 150 successful project managers affiliated with more than 20 organizations and concluded that today's successful project managers cope with unexpected events by a combination of traditional and "agile"approaches to project management. Using business examples drawn from their research at organizations such as Procter & Gamble, NASA and the construction services company Boldt, the authors identified four key roles that successful project managers play: •The first role, developing collaboration, is performed early on during the project. •The second role, integrating planning and review with learning, is performed periodically throughout the project. •The third role, preventing major disruptions, is performed occasionally. •The fourth role, maintaining forward momentum, is performed continuously. Today's managers must be people-oriented, information-oriented and action-oriented.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many studies have shown the importance of mentoring and coaching in supporting individuals' career and personal growth. However, changes in the career landscape in recent years, including global mobility, an increasingly diverse workforce and shortened job tenures, present managers with new complexities and uncertainties. The notion that one mentor can meet all of an individual's developmental needs is often inconceivable. Instead, the authors argue that there are a number of network support roles beyond that of formal mentor. As individuals change roles, industries or organizations or relocate to different countries, they need to build a "personal board of advisors" that fits their careers and their busy lives. The authors' research suggests that individuals seek career and psychosocial support from multiple people. In their research the authors found that most of the members of people's personal boards of advisors played an active role in supporting the individuals' career and personal development. However, some individuals also mentioned the importance of people who had passed away but continued to motivate and inspire them. The authors identified six types of personal board members: personal guides, personal advisors, full-service mentors, career advisors, career guides and role models.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many project managers and their executive sponsors are surprised when projects go off track: "Why didn't we see that coming?"Even projects that employ sophisticated techniques for risk management have surprising derailments. However, risk management can only manage known risks, and "unknown unknowns"(often called "unk-unks") are lurking in every project. The authors argue, however, that many unk-unks aren't really unk-unks at all. Rather, they are things no one has bothered to find out. Indeed, the authors point out, there are two kinds of unknowns: unknown unknowns (things we don't know we don't know) and known unknowns (things we know we don't know). Every project has some of both. The techniques of conventional risk management apply only to the known unknowns. However, some unk-unks can be converted into known unknowns through a process of directed recognition. The article provides an overview of the targets, methods and tools of directed recognition -the where, why and how. First, the authors introduce six project domains in and around a project where uncertainty resides (and where recognition should occur). Second, they describe the characteristics that increase uncertainty in projects and explain why they make unk-unks more likely. Finally, they present a set of techniques for converting knowable unk-unks into known unknowns. Although unk-unks are by definition things managers don't realize they are missing, it's possible, the authors say, to look at a project and its context and realize that unk-unks are likely to exist -and why.

business value from analytics is not data management or complex modeling skills. Instead, the number one barrier mentioned by survey respondents involved translating analytics into business actions -in other words, making business decisions based on the results, not producing the results themselves. With more access to useful data, companies are increasingly using sophisticated analytical methods. That, the authors argue, means there's often a gap between an organization's capacity to produce analytical results and its ability to apply them effectively to business issues. Much can be done to make analytics more consumable for managers. At the individual level, data analysts can learn more about the business; in fact, about a third (34%) of the survey respondents reported that their organizations train analytics professionals to understand business issues. Organizations can also systemically improve infrastructure and processes; improved data quality, for example,can make it easier to turn data into competitive advantage. Managers can also take steps to become savvier at understanding analytical results. In fact, managers and executives are working to become more knowledgeable about data and analytics: Many of the survey respondents reported that their organizations develop analytical skills through on-the-job (58%) or formal (23%) training. Almost half the respondents (49%) reported that their organizations train managers to make better use of analytics. Beyond training, other known steps include: identifying trustworthy analytics professionals within the organization, requiring straightforward explanations and asking detailed questions. However, the authors'research indicates that, despite their efforts, managers continue to find it difficult to keep pace with their organization's analysts for two reasons: burgeoning analytics sophistication and competing demands for managerial attention.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In the 2014 Sustainability Report, new research by MIT Sloan Management Review, The Boston Consulting Group and the UN Global Compact, shows that a growing number of companies are turning to collaborations -with suppliers, NGOs, industry alliances, governments, even competitors -to become more sustainable. Our research found that as sustainability issues become increasingly complex, global in nature and pivotal to success, companies are realizing that they can't make the necessary impact acting alone.. Authors: MIT Sloan Management Review, The Boston Consulting Group and the United Nations Global Compact.

Mindful of his company's long history of sensitivity to the environmental or health effects of the chemicals in its products, the author decided to risk losing sales by reformulating Saran Wrap. SC Johnson had acquired it from Dow in 1998, and the product's superior microwavability and impenetrable barrier to odor made it the market leader for decades. Polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) was responsible for both those unique differentiators. When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, environmental groups, and consumers began to express concern over the use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), the difference between PVC and PVDC got lost in the discussion. Nevertheless, the company was concerned as well, because it used PVCs in some of its external packaging. It launched a process called Greenlist to help it reevaluate their inclusion. Since then Greenlist has been rigorously updated to sort ingredients according to category and rank them for impact on human and environmental health. The company has removed potentially hazardous products many times--and taken whatever hit accompanied each instance. It could have simply eliminated PVCs from the product packaging and left Saran Wrap as it was. Instead it pledged to stop selling wraps that contained chlorine of any kind, including PVDCs, by 2004. A dedicated research, development, and engineering team was assigned to try to re-create Saran Wrap without PVDCs within a year. But preserving its unique characteristics proved impossible, and this once iconic product became an also-ran.

Like many other companies, Deloitte realized that its system for evaluating the work of employees--and then training them, promoting them, and paying them accordingly--was increasingly out of step with its objectives. It searched for something nimbler, real-time, and more individualized--something squarely focused on fueling performance in the future rather than assessing it in the past. The new system will have no cascading objectives, no once-a-year reviews, and no 360-degree-feedback tools. Its hallmarks are speed, agility, one-size-fits-one, and constant learning, all underpinned by a new way of collecting reliable performance data. To arrive at this design, Deloitte drew on three pieces of evidence: a simple counting of hours, a review of research in the science of ratings, and a carefully controlled study of its own organization. It discovered that the organization was spending close to 2 million hours a year on performance management, and that "idiosyncratic rater effects" led to ratings that revealed more about team leaders than about the people they were rating. From an empirical study of its own high-performing teams, the company learned that three items correlated best with high performance for a team: "My coworkers are committed to doing quality work," "The mission of our company inspires me," and "I have the chance to use my strengths every day." Of these, the third was the most powerful across the organization. With all this evidence in hand, the company set about designing a radical new performance management system, which the authors describe in this article.

Much of what we believe about the best ways to compensate and motivate the sales force is based on theory and lab experiments. But in the past decade, researchers have been moving out of the lab and into the field, analyzing companies' sales and pay data, and conducting experiments involving actual salespeople. The findings from this new wave of research support some current compensation practices but call others into question. For example, studies clearly show that caps on commissions hurt sales. If managers must retain a cap, they should set it as high as possible to avoid reducing reps' incentives. Although overly complicated compensation systems have their downsides, research has found that a system needs to include enough elements (such as quarterly performance and overachievement bonuses) to keep high performers, low performers, and average performers engaged throughout the year. Managers should be careful in setting and adjusting quotas. For instance, studies show that ratcheting (raising a salesperson's annual quota if he or she exceeded it the previous year) dampens motivation. The research also suggests that it's important to pay attention to the timing of bonuses: A reward given at the end of a period is more motivating than one given at the beginning.

U.S. businesses spend $800 billion annually on sales force compensation and another $15 billion on sales training. Yet the backward-looking metrics they rely on (such as revenue generated) to gauge the impact of this spending provide limited insight into how a salesperson will do going forward and what types of training and incentives will be most effective. As a result, many companies misallocate sales force investments. The authors worked with data from a Fortune 500 B2B software, hardware, and services firm to develop a method for measuring reps' future profitability. The metric, salesperson future value (SFV), is the net present value of future cash flows from a salesperson's existing and prospective customers minus the costs of developing, motivating, and retaining the rep. The SFV analysis revealed that the firm had been overvaluing poor performers and undervaluing stars. Using the SFV calculations and data on each rep's prior training and incentives, the authors segmented reps according to whether they were motivated more by training or by various incentives. The firm then increased training for some reps and increased incentives for others, thus achieving an 8% increase in SFV across the sales force. The firm also increased its investments in high-SFV reps and reduced investments in low-SFV reps--a reallocation of resources that increased the firm's revenue by 4%.

When Mark Roberge joined HubSpot as its fourth employee, he had no sales experience but still was charged with building the sales team. His background proved to be an advantage, however: With his engineering training, Roberge brought an analytic rigor to the task. And he quickly realized that the sales compensation plan could motivate salespeople not only to sell more but also to behave in ways that advanced the start-up's evolving strategy. Each time the firm entered a new stage of growth, Roberge revised the comp plan to support its changing priorities: (1) Customer acquisition. Early on, HubSpot needed to bring in lots of customers and see how well its offer was working. So it rewarded salespeople for customers who stayed at least four months, and soon grew to 1,000 customers. (2) Customer success and retention. In the second phase, HubSpot focused on ensuring that its product fit the market. Realizing that many customers were jumping ship because they'd been given the wrong expectations, Roberge began tying commission rates to the rate of customer retention. (3) Sustainable growth. After it fixed retention, HubSpot saw that its service worked best for customers who made a commitment to it. So the firm's third plan rewarded salespeople for customers who signed up for a full year at a time. The continual adaptation paid off: In seven years HubSpot hit $100 million in sales.

For more than three decades, Andris Zoltners, now an emeritus professor at Northwestern, has been studying the best ways to organize and pay salespeople. The pioneer of sales analytics, he is the founder of one of the world's largest sales consulting firms and the author of six books on sales management. In this interview, he shares some of his insights with HBR. Companies make several common mistakes with sales compensation, Zoltners notes: over- or underincentivizing key products, setting quotas too high or too low, and underpaying top performers or overpaying people with good territories. Companies often get the proportion of incentive pay wrong, too, because they fail to account for "free sales"--residual sales they get nearly automatically. They may think they're paying 60% in salary and 40% in commissions, but if their salespeople have a lot of free sales, commissions could be closer to 15%. Overly complicated plans are also a problem. Some plans have different payments for dozens of objectives. That's too much; salespeople can focus on only four or five goals at most. Yet a bigger issue may be an overreliance on compensation in the first place, Zoltners suggests. There are other drivers of sales success--the people you hire, their managers, the design of territories. And while analytics are a useful tool, culture may prove to be an even better one.

According to the Family Business Institute, only 30% of family businesses last into the second generation, 12% remain viable into the third, and 3% operate into the fourth generation or beyond. Those that do continue often see their value decline significantly as a result of mismanaged succession. The authors, all associates of the global executive search firm Egon Zehnder, partnered with Family Business Network International to analyze 50 leading family firms. Through interviews with both family and nonfamily executives, they discovered that the most successful of these companies do four things well: (1) They establish good governance practices that separate the family and the business and ensure oversight from a professional board. (2) They are careful not to lose what makes them special--a quality the authors call "family gravity." (3) They assess future leaders on alignment with company values as well as on competencies. (4) They follow a disciplined selection process when considering candidates for the top post, and take care to provide meaningful support during the integration process.

The ubiquity of internet access has caused a sharp rise in the number of businesses offering platforms that connect users for communication or commerce. Entrepreneurs are particularly drawn to these platforms because they create significant value and have modest operating costs, and network effects protect their position once established--users rarely leave a vibrant platform. But these businesses also raise significant start-up challenges. Every platform starts out empty. Platforms need to immediately attract not only many users but multiple types of users. For example, it's not enough that many customers want to book taxis by smartphone. Drivers must also be willing to accept smartphone bookings. Harvard Business School professor Ben Edelman has been studying the dynamics of platform businesses and the strategies for launching them for 10 years. In this article he draws on research on dozens of platform sites and products to offer a framework for building a successful platform business. It involves asking five basic questions: (1) Can I attract a large group of users at once? (2) Can I offer stand-alone value to users? (3) How can I build credibility with customers? (4) How should I charge users? (5) Should my platform be compatible with legacy systems?

The authors have conducted a two-year study of how new CEOs in large organizations gain access to seasoned counsel and feedback. Although these leaders have usually experienced mentoring earlier in their careers, arrival at the top suddenly narrows the available and appropriate options. To keep raising their game--and having their thinking usefully challenged--CEOs need wise mentoring. They're finding it, the authors learned, by turning to high-profile veteran leaders from outside their companies. But these arrangements have some tricky aspects: Special considerations must go into matching mentor and mentee, structuring their sessions to deliver the intended benefits, and prioritizing the process so that it isn't crowded out by other demands. Total confidentiality is an absolute necessity--as are regular meetings--and storytelling is the mode of knowledge sharing both parties usually prefer. "Most interesting to us," the authors write, "was the psychological boost that mentors' war stories seemed to give new CEOs."

In this edited interview with HBR senior editor Alison Beard, the chess player and Soviet exile discusses strategy, power, and the importance of playing your own game.