Business ecosystems require careful orchestration and strategic choices regarding make/buy/partner decisions and membership access. This case examines the strategic and technological issues related to managing SAP's thriving ecosystem of user communities, software vendors, integration partners and technology providers. It details how the ecosystem gets developed and the challenges in meeting the needs of the internal organization, large partners, and small up and coming firms. SAP executives, in this case, have to make a decision if a relatively small startup firm should be elevated to the highest strategic partnership level, normally reserved for very large firms.

The vice-president of the Bank of London was stunned to hear that the union representing clerical workers was initiating a complaint of gender discrimination in starting salaries. The vice-president had believed the Bank of London was actively promoting diversity and inclusion as a natural part of its culture; additionally, the senior leadership team understood how vital diversity and inclusion were to organizational effectiveness and growth. The vice-president was wondering what the accusation of discrimination was costing the Bank of London, and how to manage perceptions both inside and outside of the organization. To determine this, he wanted to understand if discrimination had in fact occurred and analyzed the following factors between male and female job-holders: beginning salary, time at current job, education and experience.

The case features a dispute between the US Forest Service and conservation groups over forest management practices on the Bitterroot National Forest in Montana. The conservation groups sued the Forest Service in US District Court and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court with the Forest Service eventually winning on the issues. However, in August 2008, Dave Bull, the Forest Service Supervisor, was frustrated with the recurrent conflicts that impeded the Forest Service's ability to pursue important forest management projects (e.g., fuel reduction projects to protect people's lives and properties). Dave's staff of 145 people spent 80% of its time on data collection and analysis, much of it preparing for anticipated lawsuits, and 20% on project implementation. Dave wanted to reverse those numbers, but after 50 years of conflict, he was not sure where to start. He felt he needed a strategy to improve collaboration, but that carried some risks. If he made things worse, he might get an early retirement. As the case closes, Dave is examining the Forest Service's approach to collaboration. The Forest Service encouraged collaborative strategies but it said, "The final decision still rests with the agency." Given this caveat, Dave was wondering how he could effectively encourage collaboration among the stakeholders. The case explores this issue and gives Dave some direction.

In this first in a series of articles created in partnership with Harvard Health Publications, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School discusses regret and its potential benefits. Regret needn't be a self-flagellating emotion, he says. In fact, when asked to rank negative emotions in terms of value, people placed regret at the top, crediting it with helping them make sense of life events and remedy what went wrong.

Eliot Robbens is the CEO of TrakVue, a spinout launched two years ago with highly ambitious financial projections. His vice president of sales has just quit after only six months, becoming the second sales VP that Eliot has lost. The company is a year behind in achieving its results, and Eliot has a board meeting coming up in just a few days. Where to turn? His old friend Amory declines to advise him and suggests executive coaching. An affable squash opponent counsels that he save himself by landing a couple of big accounts. His beloved wife offers a vaguely Zen exhortation. How can Eliot get genuine help? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0904B and R0904Z. Jaithirth Rao, an IT entrepreneur and the founder of MphasiS, has experienced Eliot's difficulty himself. He calls it "the myth of the self-reliant leader." Rao cautions that colleagues' own agendas may color their advice and that executive coaches may fail to perceive the ambiguities in a situation. A formal network of peers can be powerful, he says - as can a loyal and perceptive assistant. Susan J. Ashford, a dean and a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, suggests that the biggest challenge for Eliot is developing greater learning agility. He must admit his weaknesses, share his concerns with colleagues and the board, and create a company culture in which input is valued. Stephen J. Socolof, a founder and a managing partner of New Venture Partners, says that Eliot should acquire an active network of mentors and should regularly ask for help from the board, which will appreciate being kept in the loop.

In January 2008, CBS anchor Katie Couric asked then-candidate Barack Obama what single book, apart from the Bible, he would bring with him to the White House. He cited Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin's account of Abraham Lincoln's leadership during the Civil War. It was a signal that Obama intended to model his leadership during the current crisis on the style of his presidential predecessor from Illinois. By bringing heavyweight politicians who are themselves past and future presidential contenders into his cabinet, Obama has indeed reprised Lincoln's strategy of creating a team composed of his most able rivals. If the new U.S. president can learn from Lincoln so, too, can business executives now grappling with similar questions of how to lead in turbulent times. To draw out the lessons of Lincoln's administration, HBR senior editor Diane Coutu interviewed Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose other books include No Ordinary Time (about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their era), The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. In their wide-ranging conversation, Goodwin discusses the advantages of forming an executive committee of strong-willed, forthright individuals who won't insulate a leader from uncomfortable but important dissent. She describes how Lincoln managed a group of people who were capable of taking over the top job - and sometimes plotting to do so. She sheds light on Lincoln's magic, which she says was not so much a matter of charisma as of emotional intelligence. And she takes the historian's long view on the current economic crisis and the opportunities for political and business leaders alike to take advantage of these extraordinary times.

Because no two recessions are exactly alike, marketers find themselves in poorly charted waters every time one occurs. But guidance is available, say Quelch and Jocz, who have studied marketing successes (by Smucker, Procter & Gamble, Anheuser-Busch, and others) as well as failures throughout past recessions and identified patterns in consumer and company behavior that strongly affect performance. Understanding consumers' changing psychology and habits, the authors argue, will enable firms to hone their strategies so they can both survive the current downturn and prosper afterward. Consumers in a recession can be divided into four groups: The slam-on-the-brakes segment, which feels the hardest hit, reduces all types of spending. Pained-but-patient consumers, who constitute the largest segment, also economize in each area, though less aggressively. Comfortably well-off individuals consume at near-prerecession levels but become a little more selective (and less conspicuous) about their purchases. Live-for-today consumers pretty much carry on as usual, responding to the recession mainly by extending their timetables for making major purchases. People may switch segments if their economic situations change for the worse. All groups prioritize consumption by sorting products and services into the following categories: essentials (central to survival or well-being), treats (justifiable), postponables (can be put off), and expendables (unnecessary or unjustifiable). As firms manage their marketing investments, they must simultaneously assess their brands' opportunities, allocate resources for the long term, and balance their budgets. Many make the mistake of cutting costs indiscriminately, which can jeopardize long-term performance. Instead, firms should streamline their product portfolios, improve the affordability of their offerings, and bolster customers' trust.

In tough times, many retailers focus on their most loyal customers. That seems sensible enough. But, paradoxically, your most loyal customers are not your best source of revenue growth in a recession. You're already collecting most of the money they're spending. If they suddenly spend 25% less, most of that will come out of what they spend in your stores. It's not likely that you'll pry away customers who are fiercely loyal to other retailers either. Your best opportunity lies with "switchers" - the people who spend money both in your shops and elsewhere. If you collect, say, only 20% of what they're spending today but can increase that to 30%, you'll still realize a net gain even if their total spending drops by 25%. Drawing on a study of more than 50 major U.S.-based retailers and over 20 years of global consulting experience, consultants Favaro, Romberger, and Meer set out five operating rules to help retail executives determine where to direct recession-squeezed resources for the biggest return. These rules basically boil down to: (1) Identify the people who are shopping both in your stores and in others'. (2) Figure out what they're buying elsewhere (or want and can't find at all) and adjust your offer so you can give it to them. (3) Analyze which of your costs contribute to producing the benefits the switchers want, then spend more on those activities and less on the ones that don't matter to them. (4) Organize your efforts efficiently by grouping your stores into clusters based on different populations of switchers. And, finally, (5) focus your customer research, merchandise-planning, performance management, and strategic-planning processes on the switchers. By following those rules, struggling retailers will discover that they have a larger universe of growth opportunities than they might think.

Multisided platforms can lower your transaction costs and increase customer reach. But powerful MSPs like Microsoft, Google, and Apple have also tended to extract most of the value from their platforms, mainly because companies that played with them didn't adequately understand their motives and operating strategies. As a result, firms can easily find themselves ceding control over customers to MSPs or being unwittingly turned into commodities. Hagiu and Yoffie, both professors at Harvard Business School, explore how MSPs can use their power to "hold up" companies that join them. The authors offer guidelines to help managers create an effective strategy for dealing with MSPs, identifying three basic issues that managers must address: (1) Whether to play with existing MSPs, build their own platform, or do both; (2) once they've concluded that at least one third-party MSP can benefit their business, deciding how many to join; and (3) figuring out how to play - that is, which features or services they should adopt and which they should reject in order to maintain their company's competitive advantage. Some companies that lack the power to influence an MSP's actions may have few options. But many firms - either on their own or in alliances - can make choices that will differentiate them from competitors and curb MSPs' power over their businesses.

Without question, internal collaboration can produce benefits for an organization. This doesn't mean, however, that the more your employees collaborate, the better off the company will be. It may, in fact, be worse off. The author, a professor at UC Berkeley and at Insead, offers a simple method for determining when collaborating on a project makes sense. He calls it calculating the collaboration premium - what's left after you subtract opportunity costs and collaboration costs from a project's expected financial return. The opportunity cost is what's lost by devoting resources to the collaboration project rather than to something else - particularly something that doesn't require collaboration. Collaboration costs arise from the challenges - conflict over goals and budgets, competing objectives, logistical roadblocks - involved in working across organizational boundaries. Sometimes those costs are so high that the project results in a collaboration penalty. The Norwegian company Det Norske Veritas (DNV) would have done well to apply Hansen's calculation before it launched a food-safety initiative combining the expertise, resources, and customer bases of two business units: standards certification and risk-management consulting. According to initial projections, from 2004 to 2008 the joint effort would quadruple the growth to be realized if the two units operated separately. Unfortunately, DNV hadn't formally evaluated food safety's potential relative to other promising sectors; the consulting unit might have more profitably pursued IT risk management on its own. Meanwhile, mistrust and quarreling between the two units scotched efforts to cross-sell, while conflicting goals and incentives pulled individual team members in opposing directions. Two years after launching the initiative, DNV abandoned it. The challenge is to cultivate not more collaboration but the right collaboration. Hansen's formula can get you started.

Understanding how competitors will respond to your actions should be a critical component of decision making. Few companies, however, incorporate such insights into their strategic decisions, in large part because most methods for obtaining them are complex and unreliable. The authors have drawn on their research and work with companies to develop an approach for predicting rivals' behavior that is both accurate and easy to apply. It involves considering just three questions: Will the competitor react at all? Few strategic planners consider the possibility that a rival may not respond to a company's competitive move. Yet 17% of the companies surveyed by the authors did not react to a rival's major initiative. Some competitors may not detect a company's move, while others may not feel threatened by it or may simply be unable to coordinate a timely response. What options will the competitor actively consider? Most companies seriously examine fewer than four response options, and it's likely that among them will be the most obvious, such as introducing a me-too product or matching a price change. To come up with a short list of options, companies will probably look at what they have done in similar situations. Which option will the competitor most likely choose? Your adversaries will choose the option that they consider to be most effective. It helps to know that in anticipating competitive behavior, most companies analyze only one round of moves and countermoves, and they evaluate their options using simple, short-term measures. The key is to get inside your rival's head and look at the situation from that perspective, not yours.

When a change initiative falters, the knee-jerk response can be to blame those who won't get on board. Jeffrey Ford, of the Ohio State University, and Laurie Ford, of Critical Path Consultants, examine why that type of reaction is not only pointless but potentially destructive. Drawing on their years of research and consulting work, the authors recommend seeing resistance for what it really is - feedback - and propose five ways for leaders to use that feedback to effect change more productively. Boost awareness. In the early stages, if the only way to keep the conversation about change alive is to entertain highly charged discussions, so be it. A complete lack of feedback can sound the death knell for change. Return to purpose. Employees need to know not only what will change but why the new reality will be better. Don't be shy about offering explanations as directly as possible. Change the change. People who resist change are often the ones most concerned about getting things right. Give them the chance to help you make a good change initiative better. Build participation and engagement. Heed feedback even when it doesn't seem likely to yield objective improvements. The ownership people feel when you adopt their best ideas will pay off in ways you often cannot foresee. Complete the past. A legacy of bad change can inhibit your change effort, even if you had nothing to do with the unfortunate history. Acknowledging - and, if possible, correcting - past change failures is often essential to future success.

Marketers in a variety of industries are trying to increase customer loyalty, marketing efficiency, and brand authenticity by building communities around their brands. Few companies, however, understand what brand communities require and how they work. Drawing from their research as well as their experience at Harley-Davidson, the authors dispel some common misconceptions about brand communities and offer design principles, cautionary tales, and new approaches to leveraging those communities. For instance, many managers think of a brand community in terms of marketing strategy. In fact, for a community to have the greatest impact, it must be framed as a corporate strategy. Realizing this, Harley-Davidson, for example, retooled every aspect of its organization to support building and maintaining its brand community and treated all community-related activities not just as marketing expenses but as a companywide investment. Another common misconception is that a brand community exists to serve the business. An effective brand community exists to serve its members, who participate in order to fulfill many kinds of needs, such as building relationships, cultivating new interests, and contributing to society. Strong communities work to understand people's needs and to engage participants by offering a variety of roles. Finally, managers often think that a brand community must be tightly controlled. In reality, a robust community defies managerial control. Effective brand stewards can, however, create an environment in which a community can thrive - by, for example, designing multiple experiences that appeal to different audiences. The authors offer an online "Community Readiness Audit" that can help you find out if your organization is up to the task of building a brand community.

Eliot Robbens is the CEO of TrakVue, a spinout launched two years ago with highly ambitious financial projections. His vice president of sales has just quit after only six months, becoming the second sales VP that Eliot has lost. The company is a year behind in achieving its results, and Eliot has a board meeting coming up in just a few days. Where to turn? His old friend Amory declines to advise him and suggests executive coaching. An affable squash opponent counsels that he save himself by landing a couple of big accounts. His beloved wife offers a vaguely Zen exhortation. How can Eliot get genuine help? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0904B and R0904Z. Jaithirth Rao, an IT entrepreneur and the founder of MphasiS, has experienced Eliot's difficulty himself. He calls it "the myth of the self-reliant leader." Rao cautions that colleagues' own agendas may color their advice and that executive coaches may fail to perceive the ambiguities in a situation. A formal network of peers can be powerful, he says - as can a loyal and perceptive assistant. Susan J. Ashford, a dean and a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, suggests that the biggest challenge for Eliot is developing greater learning agility. He must admit his weaknesses, share his concerns with colleagues and the board, and create a company culture in which input is valued. Stephen J. Socolof, a founder and a managing partner of New Venture Partners, says that Eliot should acquire an active network of mentors and should regularly ask for help from the board, which will appreciate being kept in the loop.

Eliot Robbens is the CEO of TrakVue, a spinout launched two years ago with highly ambitious financial projections. His vice president of sales has just quit after only six months, becoming the second sales VP that Eliot has lost. The company is a year behind in achieving its results, and Eliot has a board meeting coming up in just a few days. Where to turn? His old friend Amory declines to advise him and suggests executive coaching. An affable squash opponent counsels that he save himself by landing a couple of big accounts. His beloved wife offers a vaguely Zen exhortation. How can Eliot get genuine help? Three experts comment on this fictional case study in R0904B and R0904Z. Jaithirth Rao, an IT entrepreneur and the founder of MphasiS, has experienced Eliot's difficulty himself. He calls it "the myth of the self-reliant leader." Rao cautions that colleagues' own agendas may color their advice and that executive coaches may fail to perceive the ambiguities in a situation. A formal network of peers can be powerful, he says - as can a loyal and perceptive assistant. Susan J. Ashford, a dean and a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, suggests that the biggest challenge for Eliot is developing greater learning agility. He must admit his weaknesses, share his concerns with colleagues and the board, and create a company culture in which input is valued. Stephen J. Socolof, a founder and a managing partner of New Venture Partners, says that Eliot should acquire an active network of mentors and should regularly ask for help from the board, which will appreciate being kept in the loop.

What does it take to have staying power in today's economy - to not only survive, but to prosper and thrive? It's a question that has grown all the more pressing of late, as we've watched once-mighty companies like Merrill Lynch and AIG falter and crumble. While examining lending provisions, banking regulations and derivatives structures can provide insight into the specifics of the crash, focusing our attention on the intricacies of the sub-prime mortgage market and asset-backed securities obscures the real lesson, says the author. He argues that our own management theories are the prime culprit - a triumvirate of well-intentioned theories that are taught in every business school and entrenched in every significant publicly-traded company. Intended to ensure longevity and profitability, they have instead led to the opposite - transience - and contributed mightily to both the technology crash of 2001-02 and the financial-services crash of 2008. Neither crash would have happened, he argues, if our theories were as robust as those used to govern America's National Football League (NFL).

The 39th President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and co-founder of the Carter Center discusses his remarkable staying power as a thought leader. President Carter describes his early years, what led him into politics, his 62-year marriage to Rosalynn and the hopes he has for the Obama administration. He also touches on his unwavering dedication to achieving peace in the Middle East, his goals for the U.S. and the globe-spanning initiatives of the Carter Center.

We now live and work in a 'butterfly effect' environment, the notion from Chaos Theory that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China might cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. As a result, the authors argue that today's leaders must develop 'vigilance' - the ability to scan the periphery of their environment and spot opportunities and threats before their rivals. While investors don't expect prescience, they do rely on a leadership team to sense and act on early warning signs. They describe the three primary qualities that distinguish vigilant leaders from those in the majority, who strive primarily for operational excellence.

Like most managers, you probably have some ideas about how to grow your organization. You may even suspect that one or two of them could turn into something big. Unfortunately, you don't have the data to prove that your ideas will be needle-movers, and the 'numbers guys' insist on proof before any financial support can come your way. If this sounds familiar, you are caught in what the author calls 'growth gridlock' - a frustrating place where the corporate entrepreneur's optimism and need for speed collide with the organization's skepticism and need for control. However, she has found that there are people within organizations - whom she calls 'catalysts' - who manage to achieve sustainable growth despite the odds. The author describes their attributes and explains how their leadership initiates a near-chemical reaction that generates significant top-line results.