This case describes the journey of a new CEO bringing an innovative vision and strategy to a for-profit hospital under new ownership. It shows the application of a value-based health outcome approach in this setting, focused on the strategic approach, marketing and branding customer-centricity, and leadership challenges. The case describes key drivers: insurance reimbursement and cost pressures, shareholder ROI, consultant physician and surgeon demands, and patient needs and expectations.
Bringing neurodiversity into the larger conversation about workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion is important not only for reasons of fairness: Neurodiverse individuals represent an undervalued talent pool. The authors discuss the challenges neurodivergent employees often face in the workplace and suggest ways that leaders and employees can support their neurodivergent colleagues and help them achieve their potential.
Although the hybrid work model has been widely adopted among many businesses, the complications involving peer relationships and connections that it has introduced linger on. Relying on results from The CMO Survey, the authors derived a set of strategies to help leaders navigate organizational culture and the socialization of new employees during this era of digital transformation.
Allegis Services (India) Pvt. Ltd., the Indian arm of the Allegis Group, a leading talent staffing and recruitment services firm, had become the best-practice advisor on enabling disability inclusion. With a large internal workforce that provided contract staffing and permanent hiring, they provided a template for various organizations that wanted to bring talent with disability into their workforce. Slowly and steadily, there was an increase in the number of people with disability inducted into formal white-collar jobs within Allegis and the clients it serviced. However, some challenges persisted. Given the accommodation requirements for hiring persons with disability, Allegis' clients questioned the business benefits of being disability-inclusive. A few organizations struggled to enable their hires, resulting in a few people with disability opting out of jobs in large and well-reputed organizations. The case broadens the scope of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity (DEI) agenda within organizations by focusing on the dimension of enabling disability inclusion. The case helps debate the need for disability inclusion, the enabling systems and mindsets to be truly disability-inclusive, and its intangible benefits for organizations.
Crop residue burning (CRB) is a major factor contributing to the pollution in the northern part of India and the national capital region (NCR). In November 2021, the NCR consistently recorded an air quality index (AQI) of more than 450, which is hazardous to human health. As a result of these bad weather conditions, Delhi residents have experienced multiple health issues such as red eyes, headaches, cough, itchy skin, and itchy throats. Farmers burning crop residues during the winter months in the states surrounding Delhi contributed to these environmental conditions. Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has been working with farmers in Punjab and Haryana to encourage them to adopt eco-friendly straw management practices as part of CII's Crop Residue Management (CRM) initiative. The CRM's main objective was to eliminate the practice of burning crop residues in the open. Chandrakant Pradhan, manager for CRM, wondered how to demonstrate CRM's results in the upcoming funding agency meeting. As part of his presentation, he wanted to raise stakeholders' awareness of the alternative methods based on ground realities and the tools that farmers have been using primarily in different districts and villages of Punjab and Haryana. As he weaved through the traffic, several thoughts began to race through his mind. How should the data collected diligently by his team through farmer surveys be presented to potential funders? How best to examine and analyze the data? What valuable insights can the data provide that can help raise more funds and support from various stakeholders? Is there enough evidence to show whether this initiative will reduce pollution over time and hence needs to be scaled up?
The case is intended to help the student learn about an important source of startup funding in India, namely, angels. It also provides an opportunity to learn about how organisations emerge - in this instance angel networks - to solve economic problems that economic agents in a market face. The note also provides an overview of how angel networks manage their investment activity. Finally, it also brings out the strategic challenges faced by players in a rapidly evolving ecosystem.
This case is about the digital transformation at Apollo Hospitals (Chennai Main) facility. The case enumerates the various digitalization initiatives with the view to highlight how a successful digitalization project will result in all three possible outcomes - cost reduction/ efficiency improvement, product/ brand differentiation leading to high willingness to pay for the products and services, and improvement in patient/ consultant experience. Most digitalization initiatives would be focused on only one of these, but this case is an instance where there has been an equal focus on all these three outcomes.
The case provides an opportunity to analyze sourcing decisions in a firm. Specifically, the case illustrates the development of a supplier scorecard system in an organization involved in new product development, where the technology of component design may change over time. The case also attempts to link the design of the scorecard mechanism to that of the incentives (or reward mechanisms) for various players.
As the parents of two children with Down syndrome, the authors learned that 80% of people with disabilities in the United States are unemployed. They were determined that their children Bitty and Beau would not become part of that statistic. They decided to open a small coffee shop in their hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina, and employed mostly people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Today they have 17 owned and franchised locations across 11 states and the District of Columbia-with four more slated to open in 2023-which collectively staff 400 people with disabilities. They believe that any organization can open its doors to such workers, and they've learned through experience how to get the best from these team members, how to overcome challenges, and how to capitalize on all the value they provide.
Lately companies have come to recognize the limitations of the view that they must create value only for shareholders. Recognizing that every stakeholder has an impact on other stakeholders-engaged employees improve customer satisfaction, which in turn spurs growth, and so on-many CEOs are pledging to generate benefits for all their constituents: customers, workers, suppliers, communities, and investors. But few leaders have explicit strategies for doing so; most seem to rely on intuitive approaches. The good news is, firms can use data to design and implement effective stakeholder strategies. They should start by exploring outside perspectives of the value they produce-specifically, the ratings of agencies like the Drucker Institute and Just Capital. Firms must then bolster data from such third parties with inside insights and gain an understanding of the interdependencies among their particular stakeholders. Armed with that, they can develop a clear description of their purpose, establish criteria for evaluating progress toward it, set priorities among stakeholders, and start measuring value creation for each group. The last step is sustaining the new strategy through cultural change and by developing supporting processes and organizational structures.
For the past 20 years "disruption" has been a battle cry in business. Not surprisingly, many have come to see it as a near-synonym for innovation. But the obsession with disruption obscures an important truth: Market-creating innovation isn't always disruptive. Disruption may be what people talk about. It's certainly important, and it's all around us. But, as the authors of the best-selling book Blue Ocean Strategy argue, it's only one end of the innovation spectrum. On the other end is what they call nondisruptive creation, through which new industries, new jobs, and profitable growth are created without social harm. Nondisruptive creation reveals an immense potential to establish new markets where none existed before and, in doing so, to foster economic growth without a loss of jobs or damage to other industries, enabling business and society to thrive together.
Advanced analytics can help companies solve a host of management problems, including those related to marketing, sales, and supply-chain operations, which can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage. But as more data becomes available and advanced analytics are further refined, managers may struggle with when, where, and how much to incorporate machines into their business analytics, and to what extent they should bring their own judgment to bear when making data-driven decisions. In general, humans are better at decisions involving intuition and ambiguity resolution. Machines are far superior at decisions requiring deduction, granularity, and scalability. How can you find the right balance? There are three common approaches to analytics: descriptive, where decisions are made mainly by humans; predictive, which combines aspects of the other two; and prescriptive, which usually means autonomous management by machines. This article describes when and how to use each approach and examines the trade-offs and limitations. Although the focus is on marketing and sales, the principles may be applied more broadly.
A paradox of business is that while leaders often employ a hands-on, directive style to rise to the top, once they arrive, they're supposed to empower and enable their teams. Suddenly, they're expected to demonstrate "people skills." And many find it challenging to adapt to that reality. To understand how leaders can successfully make this shift, the authors studied 75 CEO successions, involving 235 candidates. They discovered that the transformation is not a single event but unfolds over time and takes many twists and turns. It's a long journey with three stages: the departure, during which leaders recognize the need to change and leave behind their old ways of working; the voyage, during which they encounter obstacles and trials that teach them important lessons; and the return, when they arrive at a new understanding of what kind of leader they need to be. Completing this odyssey requires humility, self-awareness, and resilience. Several key practices will help executives along the way: understanding the extent of the change required, creating new contexts for learning, enlisting the help of advisers, learning from setbacks, and tapping the power of small wins.
The next era of competition is at hand. To succeed in an environment of high uncertainty, greater short-term pressure, and tighter resource constraints, companies must become even better and more efficient at developing options for future advantage while continuing to perform in the present. Embracing radical optionality, the authors contend, will allow firms to turn uncertainty from a disruptive threat into a potential source of advantage. Doing so requires upending some of the core tenets of strategy. For instance, they must eliminate the gap between thinking (strategy formation) and doing (execution). They should abandon the winner-takes-all approach, which has long been central to strategy and innovation, and strive instead for flexibility. And they need to achieve "polydexterity," the ability to exploit existing advantages in current markets while working toward multiple unknown future states. Companies must embrace complexity, learn to search and execute on ideas simultaneously, and engage with customers on their personal journeys. Accomplishing that will require new organizational forms and work practices, deeper integration between humans and technology, and next-generation performance metrics.
Marketers often worry that performance marketing and its focus on short-term sales is crowding out brand-building activities aimed at enhancing customer perceptions of their brand-and is sometimes working against brand strategy. Brand-building activities are typically measured using metrics that have no predictive or retrospective connection to financial returns. And performance marketing typically lacks measures that account for its impact on brand building, focusing only on sales, leads, and clicks. To achieve performance- accountable brand building and brand-accountable performance marketing, firms must create metrics that measure the effects of both types of investments on a single North Star metric: brand equity. That is then linked to specific financial outcomes-such as revenue, shareholder value, and return on investment-and deployed as a key performance indicator for both brand building and performance marketing. In doing so, companies are better able to make decisions that fortify the financial contributions of both and get them working better together.
Years ago the line between nonprofit and for-profit enterprises was clear, but that has changed. Nonprofits now offer products that compete with those of the best for-profits, and for-profits can deliver as much social value as charities. Despite the blurred distinction, all mission-driven start-ups will eventually face a stark choice about which legal structure to adopt, and they need to make it carefully, because it's hard to undo, say the authors, the CEO of a nonprofit accelerator and a partner in an impact investing fund. To guide their decision, social entrepreneurs should examine several questions: Is the market ready for a for-profit solution? Where is the available capital? And which structure would help the organization attract the talent and resources that it requires?
For better or worse, in today's world everyone is a brand. Whether you're applying for a job, asking for a promotion, or writing a dating profile, your success will depend on getting others to recognize your value. So you need to get comfortable marketing yourself. In this article a branding thought leader and a professional dating coach present a guide to creating your personal brand. It's an intentional, strategic practice in which you craft and express your own value proposition, and it involves seven steps: (1) Define your purpose by exploring your mission, passion, and strengths, and thinking about whom you want to make a difference to and how. (2) Audit your personal brand equity by cataloging your credentials, doing a self-assessment, and researching how other people view you. (3) Construct your personal narrative by identifying memorable, resonant stories that will best convey your brand. (4) Embody your brand by paying attention to the message you're sending in every social interaction. (5) Communicate your brand through speeches, social media, the press, and other channels. (6) Socialize your brand by getting influential people to share your stories. (7) Reevaluate and adjust your brand by doing an annual audit to find deficits to fix and strengths to build on. This process will not only allow you to better control your image and the impact you have on the world but also help you uncover and share the unique abilities you have to offer it.