Whereas brand names can "prime" consumers to react positively to a product or business, slogans often backfire, because people recognize them as attempts to persuade. Marketers should be aware of this backlash and avoid messages that can be seen, even subconsciously, as manipulative.
New research is upending the long-held belief that the desire for profit is what inspires innovation. Recent studies show that innovations by consumers who give their ideas away are outpacing innovations by companies that hope to sell them. And that throws the need for intellectual property protection into a whole new light.
Employers and employees alike benefit from choices that promote good health. But too often, companies refresh the cafeteria menu, offer discounted gym memberships, and leave it up to the individual to go from there. Research shows, however, that management's decisions contribute to morbidity and mortality at least as much as employees' own actions. Layoffs, long hours, failure to provide health insurance, lack of autonomy on the job, and general financial insecurity all promote ill health as a result of stress and its correlates. Furthermore, businesses don't always see the direct economic consequences of their actions. Companies must scrutinize their decisions carefully to encourage a healthier workforce.
The Old Boys' Club simply will not be dismantled. So, to rise up in the ranks, high-potential women must secure sponsors in the C-suite, where most executives are men. Smart companies are already facilitating this path to sponsorship so that their future leadership ranks reflect the full range of available talent.
Data from the executive search firm Spencer Stuart reveals trends in the makeup of boards of directors, comparing the years 1987 and 2011. Most directors are still white men, but they're older and more independent. As the role of boards has professionalized over the years, they have evolved from larger groups to leaner decision-making bodies composed of directors with specific skill sets.
These vignettes are based on a fictional organization, Starling Systems, in which Jack Swain, Starling's COO, has been selected by the company's board of directors to replace the recently departed CEO. Jack must deal with four challenging situations in his early days as CEO. The first involves managing a difficult conversation with Robert Cortez, Starling's senior vice president of finance, who was also vying for the CEO position. Jack cannot use title or compensation to convince Cortez not to leave so must somehow come up with alternate reasons to compel this valuable management team member to stay. The second vignette deals with Jack's revelation based on a conversation with Starling's recently department director of business development that the company's vice president of sales may be mistreating his employees. The third vignette finds Jack in a sticky situation where he has offered the COO position to an outside candidate, and he now must explain to his vice president of operations, currently serving as interim COO, why she was not offered the position. Finally, Jack must deal with infighting between his top performing customer service representative and his newly-hired vice president of customer service.
Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, introduced a new innovation strategy named "healthymagination" in Spring 2009. With cost, quality, and access as its three pillars, healthymagination ensures a strong focus for new product introduction efforts all around GE. But will this focus enable GE to achieve and maintain market leadership across a healthcare market that is being buffeted by strong currents, including cost pressures, changes in chronic disease patterns, and rationalization of buyer behavior? Moreover, healthcare spending is also increasing in emerging economies, which could provide a strong growth engine for the future. Tom Gentile, the CEO of GE Healthcare Systems (GEHS), a key player in the Medical Imaging market, wonders how the innovation strategy might respond to these changes. GE has historically been a technology leader, selling the most advanced equipment to a variety of medical establishments. Will a complete shift to healthymagination allow GE to demonstrate strong organic growth through innovation, as Immelt had charged executives at GE?
Bryan Preston, CEO of the Back Office Cooperative, leads several large human service providers through the process of building a shared-services platform to leverage scale and efficiencies. This successful collaboration matches the business case for restructuring against the constraints of mission-driven enterprises.
The Arbor City Community Foundation (ACCF) was a medium-sized endowment established in Illinois in the late 1970s through the hard work of several local families. The vision of the ACCF was to be a comprehensive center for philanthropy in the greater Arbor City region. ACCF had a fund balance (known collectively as "the fund") of just under $240 million. The ACCF board of trustees had appointed a committee to oversee investment decisions relating to the foundation assets. The investment committee, under the guidance of the board, pursued an active risk-management policy for the fund. The committee members were primarily concerned with the volatility and distribution of portfolio returns. They relied on the value-at-risk (VaR) methodology as a measurement of the risk of both short- and mid-term investment losses. The questions in Part (A) of the case direct the students to analyze the risk inherent in both one particular asset and the entire ACCF portfolio. For this analysis the students need to calculate daily VaR and monthly VaR values and interpret these figures in the context of ACCF's risk management. In Part (B) the foundation receives a major donation. As a result, the risk inherent in its portfolio changes considerably. The students are asked to evaluate the risk of the fund's new portfolio and to perform a portfolio rebalancing analysis.
The Arbor City Community Foundation (ACCF) was a medium-sized endowment established in Illinois in the late 1970s through the hard work of several local families. The vision of the ACCF was to be a comprehensive center for philanthropy in the greater Arbor City region. ACCF had a fund balance (known collectively as "the fund") of just under $240 million. The ACCF board of trustees had appointed a committee to oversee investment decisions relating to the foundation assets. The investment committee, under the guidance of the board, pursued an active risk-management policy for the fund. The committee members were primarily concerned with the volatility and distribution of portfolio returns. They relied on the value-at-risk (VaR) methodology as a measurement of the risk of both short- and mid-term investment losses. The questions in Part (A) of the case direct the students to analyze the risk inherent in both one particular asset and the entire ACCF portfolio. For this analysis the students need to calculate daily VaR and monthly VaR values and interpret these figures in the context of ACCF's risk management. In Part (B) the foundation receives a major donation. As a result, the risk inherent in its portfolio changes considerably. The students are asked to evaluate the risk of the fund's new portfolio and to perform a portfolio rebalancing analysis.
The Arbor City Community Foundation (ACCF) was a medium-sized endowment established in Illinois in the late 1970s through the hard work of several local families. The vision of the ACCF was to be a comprehensive center for philanthropy in the greater Arbor City region. ACCF had a fund balance (known collectively as "the fund") of just under $240 million. The ACCF board of trustees had appointed a committee to oversee investment decisions relating to the foundation assets. The investment committee, under the guidance of the board, pursued an active risk-management policy for the fund. The committee members were primarily concerned with the volatility and distribution of portfolio returns. They relied on the value-at-risk (VaR) methodology as a measurement of the risk of both short- and mid-term investment losses. In its report for the investment committee, the ACCF risk analytics team recommended the daily VaR at 95% confidence as a measure for short-term risk and reported the corresponding numbers. It is now the task of the investment committee to interpret these figures. The case questions guide the executive students to a critical evaluation of both the reported VaR figures as well as of the VaR methodology.
A midwest hospital purchases new CT Scanners which are much faster than the existing technology. Processes in the radiology department are optimized to the older, existing scanners, and technicians are unable to take full advantage of the new scanner speed. The hospital finds itself working to change the processes to suit the new scanners capabilities and take full advantage of their speed.
MentorMob had sprung from the passions-for web development and for online communities-of the company's co-founders, Kris Chinosorn (CEO) and Vince Leung (COO). The company pursued the ambitious goals of reinventing the way people learn and becoming the world's utility for learning about anything. The website leveraged a crowdsourcing model for information sharing, teaching, and learning. By enabling participants to learn-and to crowdsource from each other while learning-the site sought to both engage users at different stages of learning and to develop a compelling experience unobtainable without a crowd. Chinosorn and Leung needed to prioritize in order to achieve the growth and scale needed to become world's utility for learning. What should they do next to keep MentorMob's growth on track? What issues should get their greatest attention?
This is part of a case series. This case takes two perspectives on the same set of case facts about a military logistics supplier gone wrong: one from the perspective of the Department of Defense contractor ('Bill') and one from the perspective of the Kuwaiti-based supplier ('Rohit'). The case develops fictional characters to help elicit class discussion and teaching opportunities on issues of (1) how difficult it is to manage complicated ethical issues across national and cultural boundaries, and in stressful environments such as regions embroiled in military conflict, (2) how these contexts elicit in-group favouritism and out-group biases, and (3) how overcoming these limitations in global environments requires expanding one's circle of moral regard. The case involves fictional characters but the content of the case is based on publicly available information about Agility Corporation, a Kuwaiti-based supplier of food and transport for the US Department of Defense who has been indicted for fraud.
Supplement to case LBS190 This is part of a case series. This case takes two perspectives on the same set of case facts about a military logistics supplier gone wrong: one from the perspective of the Department of Defense contractor ('Bill') and one from the perspective of the Kuwaiti-based supplier ('Rohit'). The case develops fictional characters to help elicit class discussion and teaching opportunities on issues of (1) how difficult it is to manage complicated ethical issues across national and cultural boundaries, and in stressful environments such as regions embroiled in military conflict, (2) how these contexts elicit in-group favouritism and out-group biases, and (3) how overcoming these limitations in global environments requires expanding one's circle of moral regard. The case involves fictional characters but the content of the case is based on publicly available information about Agility Corporation, a Kuwaiti-based supplier of food and transport for the US Department of Defense who has been indicted for fraud.
In 2009, the digital world was in a period of drastic change. The YES Network, the regional sports network linked to the New York Yankees baseball club, was at the forefront of the issue of the day: the management of digital rights. In simpler terms, they were faced with the challenge of merchandising broadband, wireless and interactive TV while not undermining our existing television audiences. Risks were high and the management challenge intense. This issue was facing all regional sport networks (RSNs) as club and league management seek to maintain their fanbases, grow their revenues and expand their footprints. In 2009, the technology for online streaming existed, was in place, and was affordable. However, the quest for a business model between the content owners (television networks and content rights holders such as MLBAM) and the 'TV Everywhere' concept of cable operators such as Time Warner and Comcast was ongoing. This case outlines the challenge of monetizing these new areas while not disrupting core business models and cannibalizing current revenue sources. Notably, the television cable model was superior to the broadcast model in terms of revenue generation with cable networks reporting high profitability in 2009.
When Kevin Peters became president of Office Depot's North American operations, in 2010, its customer service scores (as graded by a third-party mystery-shopping firm) were soaring-but sales were falling. To understand why, he went undercover, quietly visiting 70 stores in more than 15 states. He talked to customers and observed their behavior. What struck him most was how often they walked out of the store empty-handed. It turned out that Office Depot's customer service scores depended on factors that shoppers didn't really care about-such as the cleanliness of floors and bathrooms. And its employees were being incentivized to focus on the wrong things. (In fact, the company learned that some of its associates preferred interacting with stock over interacting with people.) Peters's conversations with customers gave him three insights: The chain needed to offer smaller stores, to dramatically improve the in-store experience, and to add value with services such as shipping and copying. Office Depot has since rolled out 30 pilot stores, retrained associates, and begun to see the first signs of improvement.
Providing earnings guidance-publicly releasing managerial forecasts of a company's profits-has become a highly controversial practice, with critics ranging from Warren Buffett to a McKinsey team to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Yet more than a thousand U.S. corporations issue such forecasts each year. Are they making a mistake? On the contrary, argues Lev, an accounting professor at NYU Stern: Investors want more information, and they will reward companies that make it available. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, Lev maintains that investors care a lot about what drives a company's long-term growth; however, they often need help understanding what the drivers are. Guidance, non-GAAP pro forma earnings statements, and executive conference calls with investors and analysts after the release of earnings statements are potent tools. Done right, they can bring higher stock prices, lower volatility, and reduced cost of capital, and they may also temper shareholder litigation and its consequences. Some guidance for guiders is in order: Offer guidance only if your predictions are consistently better than analysts' consensus forecasts. Don't stand out as a "guidance refusenik" in a sector where guidance is prevalent. Maintain credibility and don't duck the truth-manipulating expectations so that reported earnings will comfortably exceed them breeds mistrust. Resist legal advice to be cryptic or bland, and don't overlook the value of "soft" information; executives' narrative and tone color many investors' decisions and account for most stock price changes in the wake of financial reports. These are not easy times to be an executive dealing with financial markets. But running away from disillusioned investors only makes things worse. Far better is to figure out what they value and to shape your financial reporting and communications strategies accordingly.