Set in 2013, this case describes the expansion of car2go, a popular car sharing service developed by Daimler AG. The case addresses the changing commuting preferences among urban residents, the evolution of urban transportation and new service developments in the automotive products market. Unlike traditional models of car sharing or renting, which required advance bookings, hourly billing and returns to the originating location, car2go’s business model offered minute-based rates and a free-floating selection of cars that allowed customers to pick up or leave vehicles wherever they liked.

Peninsula Industries' U.S. country manager, Peter Lee, has a problem-his star hire, Dylan Pierce, is threatening to quit. Peninsula is a large Korean conglomerate multinational that has been keen to attract foreigners. Dylan was hired by Peter to work in Peninsula's U.S. operations. After 18 months, Dylan was promoted to company HQ in Seoul, to work with Peter's former boss. Dylan, who is gay and who thrived at Peninsula's California office, quickly runs afoul of the conservative culture at Peninsula's Korean HQ. Dylan's boss in Korea tells him he needs to be less "girly" if he wants to succeed at the company. Angered, humiliated, and confused, Dylan tells Peter he's ready to quit. Peter must respond.

Dow had adopted the "Breakthroughs to World Challenges" (BWC) program as part of its ten-year 2015 Sustainability Goals. BWC was an internal award recognizing products that effectively addressed one of five world challenges: energy and climate change, sustainable water supply, decent affordable housing, personal health, and food supply. By late summer 2014, two products had been designated as BWCs and two others were set to be announced in the fall. Dow senior executives believed that Dow was creating shared value through its BWC products. As management began drafting the company's sustainability plan for 2015 and beyond, CEO Andrew Liveris confronted the question of whether to maintain, modify or terminate the BWC program.

In 2014, seven years after he was appointed CEO of the Danish shipping and oil conglomerate A.P. Møller Maersk (the Maersk Group), Nils Andersen was reexamining the size and role of corporate headquarters in the company he had reshaped as a "premium conglomerate." During his tenure, Andersen had divided what had previously been operated as almost a single entity into separate lines of business, each accountable for its own performance and expected to deal at arms-length with its "sister" businesses, while substantially reducing the size and functions of the corporate headquarters. But as the business units (BUs) and corporate headquarters adjusted to their new roles, new issues surfaced.

This is part of a case series. John Erceg was in a quandary. It was a sunny spring day in Barcelona in April 2010, and he'd been negotiating for several weeks with a possible buyer for the company that he'd created from scratch and built over the past seven years. Apart from buying two Barcelona apartments that got him started - thanks to his then girlfriend and now wife Lucia's good credit and a couple of hefty mortgages - and apart from maxing out a couple of credit cards in the early days and personally funding small losses in the early years, Erceg had not invested a single euro in an online travel agency business for which he had just been offered 17.3 million euros. The offer from GoTravelNow had come as a complete surprise. EnGrande, as Budgetplaces' corporate entity was called, was growing fast and was highly profitable, and Erceg wasn't sure what to do. After weeks of negotiations, he had managed to improve the cash portion of the offer to 8.5 million euros. 'A life-changing amount of security for seven years worth of work,' he thought. Should he take the offer that was on the table? It was time to decide.

Supplement to case LBS124. This is part of a case series. John Erceg was in a quandary. It was a sunny spring day in Barcelona in April 2010, and he'd been negotiating for several weeks with a possible buyer for the company that he'd created from scratch and built over the past seven years. Apart from buying two Barcelona apartments that got him started - thanks to his then girlfriend and now wife Lucia's good credit and a couple of hefty mortgages - and apart from maxing out a couple of credit cards in the early days and personally funding small losses in the early years, Erceg had not invested a single euro in an online travel agency business for which he had just been offered 17.3 million euros. The offer from GoTravelNow had come as a complete surprise. EnGrande, as Budgetplaces' corporate entity was called, was growing fast and was highly profitable, and Erceg wasn't sure what to do. After weeks of negotiations, he had managed to improve the cash portion of the offer to 8.5 million euros. 'A life-changing amount of security for seven years worth of work,' he thought. Should he take the offer that was on the table? It was time to decide.

Supplement to case LBS124. This is part of a case series. John Erceg was in a quandary. It was a sunny spring day in Barcelona in April 2010, and he'd been negotiating for several weeks with a possible buyer for the company that he'd created from scratch and built over the past seven years. Apart from buying two Barcelona apartments that got him started - thanks to his then girlfriend and now wife Lucia's good credit and a couple of hefty mortgages - and apart from maxing out a couple of credit cards in the early days and personally funding small losses in the early years, Erceg had not invested a single euro in an online travel agency business for which he had just been offered 17.3 million euros. The offer from GoTravelNow had come as a complete surprise. EnGrande, as Budgetplaces' corporate entity was called, was growing fast and was highly profitable, and Erceg wasn't sure what to do. After weeks of negotiations, he had managed to improve the cash portion of the offer to 8.5 million euros. 'A life-changing amount of security for seven years worth of work,' he thought. Should he take the offer that was on the table? It was time to decide.

MAY 21, 2014, MANILA. For the first time, the World Economic Forum (WEF) had come to the Philippines. Ayala Corporation, one of the nation's oldest and most successful conglomerates, hosted an evening reception that brought together the "Who's Who" of the Philippines. Jaime Augusto and Fernando Zobel de Ayala, the seventh generation chairman and president, respectively, of the Ayala Corporation, were inspiring and natural ambassadors, promoting the Philippines as an up-and-coming market to global investors and potential business partners, investing time and effort in nation-building activities. Just after the East Asia Forum, Ayala's biannual executive strategy meeting was held, with some eighth generation family members attending for the first time. Among the topics discussed were how to strategically allocate resources to grow the corporation inside and/or beyond the Philippines and how to venture beyond the traditional business models. The next generation had to consider fundamental questions. What were the keys to Ayala's success over the past 180 years? Would they still be relevant in the future? Would inclusion and nation building continue to serve as reliable pillars for the business? Finally, how should they best prepare themselves to become the next generation of responsible stewards?

When Delta emerged from bankruptcy, in 2007, its leaders knew that a full recovery would depend on innovative thinking. They began by instituting an employee profit-sharing program and a unique stock ownership plan that gives 15% of the company's equity to pilots, flight attendants, ground crew members, and support staff. Delta also deepened its foreign partnerships by buying a minority stake in three overseas carriers--Aeromexico, Brazil's GOL, and Virgin Atlantic--while strengthening its existing alliance with Air France--KLM. It moved toward vertical integration by acquiring the Trainer oil refinery, outside Philadelphia--a decision that shocked both aviation and oil industry observers, but succeeded in driving down the company's fuel costs while making its executives smarter about hedging, buying, refining, and transporting fuel. And it took back its reservations system, becoming the only U.S. airline to own and control the data around it. Thanks to these and other unconventional moves, Delta is now one of the healthiest, most profitable airlines in the world.

Power clearly isn't what it used to be. We see Goliaths being toppled by Davids all around us, from the networked drivers of Uber to the crowdfunded creatives of Kickstarter. But it's difficult to understand what power actually is in this changed world, and how to gain more of it. Two fresh voices to HBR--Jeremy Heimans, cofounder of Purpose and Avaaz, and Henry Timms, director of the 92nd Street Y in New York--offer a framework for organizations seeking to effectively use the two distinct forces of "old power" and "new power." Old power, the authors argue, works like a currency. It is held by few and is zero-sum. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. Like water or electricity, it's most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it. New power actors differ from old power players along two dimensions: the models they use to accumulate and exercise power and the values they embrace. Some enterprises, like Facebook, have new power models but don't seem to embrace the values; others, like Patagonia, have new power values but wield their influence using traditional old power models. This big-picture piece examines the underlying dynamics at work and looks at how power is really shifting: who has it, how it is distributed, and where it is heading.

Most executives will admit that their companies don't innovate in a reliable, orderly way. Too many breakthroughs happen only because of serendipity or individual heroism. Great ideas remain locked inside employees' heads, and the concepts that are developed often aren't the most promising. But there is a way to make innovation more systematic--without massive investments, restructuring, or even a single hire. In this article three consultants explain how a company can build a "minimum viable" innovation function, in just three months, by doing the following: Day 1-30: Define your innovation buckets, looking at how much growth innovations in your core can produce and how much will need to come from new-growth initiatives; Day 20-50: Zero in on a few strategic opportunities, after talking to customers to identify growing needs that match your capabilities; Day 20-70: Dedicate a small team to begin developing innovations; Day 45-90: Set up a committee to shepherd projects, borrowing venture capitalists' best practices. Drawing on the experiences of a financial services firm, a water utility, a hospital, and a 100-year-old nonprofit, the authors describe how to use this approach to build systems that ensure that good ideas are encouraged, identified, shared, prioritized, resourced, and developed.

The data you already have can't tell you how customers will react to innovations. To discover if a truly novel concept will succeed, you must subject it to a rigorous experiment. In most companies, tests do not adhere to scientific and statistical principles. As a result, managers often end up interpreting statistical noise as causation--and making bad decisions. To conduct experiments that are worth the expense and effort, companies need to ask themselves several questions: (1) Does the experiment have a clear purpose? Managers must figure out exactly what they want to learn in order to determine if testing is the best approach. (2) Have stakeholders made a commitment to abide by the results? Are they willing to walk away from a project if the findings suggest they should? (3) Is the experiment doable? The complexity of the variables in a business experiment and their interactions can make it difficult to determine cause-and-effect relationships. Choosing the right sample size is important. (4) How can we ensure reliable results? Randomized field trials, "blind" tests, and big data can help. (5) Have we gotten the most value out of the experiment? Conducting the experiment is just the beginning. Use the data to assess which components of a new initiative might have the highest ROI or the markets where it is most likely to be successful.

Like any corporate operation, innovation requires effective leadership. But it's a different kind than the core business calls for, involving skills and tactics many executives have yet to master. The authors' study of companies that consistently launch novel offerings and enter new markets reveals the process that successful innovation leaders follow--one that draws on risk-reduction ideas developed over the past 50 years. This process, which the authors call the innovator's method, is at heart a journey of discovery, and so the role of the person leading it is to set other people down a path and demonstrate a willingness to push boundaries and embrace uncertainty. Indeed, the innovation leader is not the chief decision maker but the chief experimenter, helping to identify critical assumptions on which new offerings are based, fashion experiments to test those assumptions with customers, and interpret the results. Preparing the organization to accept novel ideas is a crucial part of the job. Innovation leaders can do that by emphasizing that the process is aimed at minimizing the risks of innovation in the same way that other organizational processes minimize core operational risks. Finally, the innovation leader must give team members not just time (uninterrupted blocks are best) but also the resources and tools to explore the unknown.

All too often, groups fail to achieve the storied wisdom of crowds. In recent years, behavioral research has begun to identify precisely where groups go wrong. But so far this academic work has yet to have a noticeable effect on actual practice. The two main reasons for error are "informational signals" (some group members receive incorrect signals from other members) and "reputational pressures" (people silence themselves or change their views to avoid serious penalties). These two factors lead to four separate but interrelated problems: (1) Groups don't merely fail to correct their members' errors; they amplify them. (2) They fall victim to cascade effects, following the statements and actions of those who went first. (3) They become polarized, taking even more extreme positions than originally. (4) They focus on "what everybody knows," ignoring critical information that only one or two members have. The authors offer some simple suggestions for improvement: Silence the leader, "prime" critical thinking, reward group success, assign roles, appoint a devil's advocate, establish contrarian teams, and the Delphi method.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the admission of women to Harvard Business School's MBA program, the authors, who have spent more than 20 years studying professional women, set out to learn what HBS graduates had to say about work and family and how their experiences, attitudes, and decisions might shed light on prevailing controversies. What their comprehensive survey revealed suggests that the conventional wisdom about women's careers doesn't always square with reality. The survey showed, for instance, that: (1) The highly educated, ambitious women and men of HBS don't differ much in terms of what they value and hope for in their lives and careers. (2) It simply isn't true that a large proportion of HBS alumnae have "opted out" to care for children. (3) Going part-time or taking a career break to care for children doesn't explain the gender gap in senior management. (4) The vast majority of women anticipated that their careers would rank equally with those of their partners. Many of them were disappointed. It is now time, the authors write, for companies to consider how they can institutionalize a level playing field for all employees, including caregivers of both genders. The misguided assumption that high-potential women are "riskier" hires than their male peers because they are apt to discard their careers after parenthood has become yet another bias for women to contend with.

A survey of 761 of the largest corporations in North America and Europe showed that the number of corporate functions had increased at about a third from 2007 to 2010. Leaders at three out of four companies believed that their functions' influence had grown. At the same time, complaints about the performance of those functions were increasing. The authors combined their survey data with insights from structured interviews at large European multibusiness organizations to understand why corporate functions so often underperform and what might be done about it. They learned that the performance of these functions may well be related to how they respond to the varying management challenges they face at different life-cycle stages. In "youth," for example, the function may not be seen as valuable by all the businesses. Its mandate may be unclear, its staffing problematic, and its efforts to get up and running overhasty. In "adolescence," the function may have a tendency to expand its activities without due regard for how that affects its relationships with the business divisions. In "maturity," when it is well established and its mandate is fairly stable, it may spend too much time benchmarking and searching for best practices, diverting attention from the needs of its internal clients. In the fourth stage, which calls for change, the function's managers may fall into the trap of looking for opportunities to redeploy their skills rather than acquiring new ones. The authors discuss these and other challenges and offer remedies.

With more and more companies doing business in far-flung places and more and more employees telecommuting, virtual teams--those made up of people in different physical locations--are on the rise. Geographic separation can make it challenging for dispersed teammates to communicate and collaborate. But evidence suggests that if virtual work groups are well managed, they can outperform teams with common office space. Consultants at Ferrazzi Greenlight believe that four elements are crucial for success: (1) The right team. Start by assembling qualified people who can work independently and flexibly. Keep the group size small, and divide the labor appropriately. (2) The right leadership. Effective managers foster trust, encourage open dialogue, and set clear goals and guidelines. (3) The right touchpoints. Virtual teammates should meet face-to-face occasionally. This is especially useful when a project kicks off, when someone new comes on board, and when key milestones or problems occur. (4) The right technology. To maximize productivity, install easy-to-use systems for conference calling, making direct calls, sending text messages, and participating in online discussion forums and virtual team rooms.

London mayor Boris Johnson has been a magazine editor and a shadow cabinet minister for the UK's Conservative Party; he is also the author of several books. In this edited interview he discusses work-life balance, influence, and ambition.

Augustin Rey, the president of Emilia, a century-old clothing retailer in Spain, is determined to revamp the company's merchandising strategy and redesign some of its dowdiest stores. He also wants to do away with discounts, circulars, and special sales, and win customers over with a strategy he calls hablar claro--"straight talk." That means the same low prices every day. At first, Emilia's financial results were outstanding. But they've since started to slip: Customer traffic is down significantly, and same-store revenue has dropped. Rey's board of directors is pressuring him to go back to the old ways. This case is based on real events at J.C. Penney and includes commentaries from Shari Rudolph, of Gabriel Brothers, and Yashodhara Shroff, of the Indian retail chain ffolio.

Augustin Rey, the president of Emilia, a century-old clothing retailer in Spain, is determined to revamp the company's merchandising strategy and redesign some of its dowdiest stores. He also wants to do away with discounts, circulars, and special sales, and win customers over with a strategy he calls hablar claro--"straight talk." That means the same low prices every day. At first, Emilia's financial results were outstanding. But they've since started to slip: Customer traffic is down significantly, and same-store revenue has dropped. Rey's board of directors is pressuring him to go back to the old ways. This case is based on real events at J.C. Penney and includes commentaries from Shari Rudolph, of Gabriel Brothers, and Yashodhara Shroff, of the Indian retail chain ffolio.