The amount of product and service information available to B2B customers--reports, blogs, display ads, email marketing, and more--has become overwhelming, leading to indecision and a sharply reduced likelihood of making a substantive purchase. The best reps have turned this conundrum into a prime selling opportunity. Above all else, they help buyers make sense of the information they've encountered. Their approach is a form of sensemaking, and it encompasses three broad activities. Sensemaking sellers connect customers with relevant resources, curating the information they share for utility and clarity and including only what will help customers proceed with confidence. They clarify information, helping customers feel that they've asked the right questions, understood competing perspectives, and accounted for potential contingencies. And they collaborate on customer learning, Socratically guiding buyers on a purchase journey rather than telling them what to do. A lack of self-confidence impedes big deals more often than a lack of confidence in a particular vendor does. Sensemaking sellers boost customers' self-confidence, enabling buyers to take bold, decisive action with assurance and peace of mind.
Corporations are facing increased scrutiny over their political spending--particularly when their stated values seem to contradict their lobbying efforts. A 2020 report by the Center for Political Accountability offers abundant examples, including corporations that have publicly demanded racial equality while contributing to groups and candidates that promote racial gerrymandering and corporations that purport to be concerned about climate change while donating to groups that challenge the EPA's clean-power plan. In this groundbreaking article the authors argue that companies should halt political spending entirely to reduce the risk of political blowback and enable executives to focus attention and resources on running their companies.
You have a great idea--a product tweak that will save your company money, a process change to increase your team's productivity, or a plan for heading off a looming crisis. There's just one snag: You're not sure how to approach your boss about it, or worse, you've tried and failed to get the attention of higher-ups. According to the author's research, two factors are key to a successful pitch: having the confidence to make your suggestion and knowing how to frame it to get the best reception from your boss. The key, the author says, is to understand the psychology of higher-ups--to get inside their heads. Doing so can help you recognize what tips the scales in your favor--and identify the (rare) instances when it's best to try to go around or above them. Here's how.
Three years ago, Marjorie Rodriguez founded a company with the goal of supporting the LGBTQ+ community through employment opportunities. Now she needs to decide whether to expand the business, which would require bringing in non-transgender salespeople. That wasn't her original vision for the firm--but would it allow her to have a bigger impact? This fictional case study by Sandeep Puri features expert commentary by Fran Dunaway and Khadijah Tribble.
Three years ago, Marjorie Rodriguez founded a company with the goal of supporting the LGBTQ+ community through employment opportunities. Now she needs to decide whether to expand the business, which would require bringing in non-transgender salespeople. That wasn't her original vision for the firm--but would it allow her to have a bigger impact? This fictional case study by Sandeep Puri features expert commentary by Fran Dunaway and Khadijah Tribble.
Three years ago, Marjorie Rodriguez founded a company with the goal of supporting the LGBTQ+ community through employment opportunities. Now she needs to decide whether to expand the business, which would require bringing in non-transgender salespeople. That wasn't her original vision for the firm--but would it allow her to have a bigger impact? This fictional case study by Sandeep Puri features expert commentary by Fran Dunaway and Khadijah Tribble.
Luisa Mazinter, the CMO of TymeBank in South Africa, was tasked in August 2019 with maintaining the country's first digital bank's rate of customer acquisitions, while increasing the account usage of their existing customers. Six months after the launch, TymeBank had been described as one of the fastest-growing digital banks in the world. Although the brand launch had been successful across a number of measures, Mazinter knew that maintaining this momentum in the coming year would present additional challenges. The dominant major banks were responding by reducing their fees, promoting new digital services and aggressively targeting TymeBank's target market. New entrants also presented a looming threat. The case requires students to identify Mazinter's marketing choices, analyze the emerging market environment, competitive positioning, and existing integrated marketing communications campaign, propose an appropriate allocation of marketing spend for September to December 2019, and recommend how TymeBank needed to evolve its marketing activities into 2020.
In December 2019, Throwback Brewery, a small brewery and farm-to-table restaurant in New Hampshire, had many things working in its favor: a loyal customer base, a strong culture and long-tenured Team Leaders who had helped to make the brewery the success it had become. At the same time, Throwback Brewery struggled with internal issues such as pay disparity among its employees and a lack of effective communication between the owners Nicole and Annette and their employees. To address these issues and keep the company on a growth trajectory, Nicole and Annette wondered if a more formal talent management system was needed to assess staff performance. In hopes of improving upon the company's shortcomings and aligning Throwback Brewery for continued growth and success, Nicole and Annette consider talent management options including a personnel performance appraisal process.
The case portrays Dr. Tamara Stenn, a researcher and social entrepreneur wrestling with a market entry decision in December 2020. Stenn spent three years in Bolivia researching the quinoa farming industry as a Fulbright scholar. Upon her return to the US in 2018 she founded a co-operative, A Perfect Seed (APS) with Bolivian farmers and US-based academics in order to import exclusive Royal Bolivian quinoa varieties into the US market. Quinoa, considered a superfood, was already widely available in the US market but most of the sales were of the cheaper Peruvian variety farmed with industrial means. Stenn saw an opportunity to appeal to the most sophisticated US consumer that valued the authenticity and cultural nuances of foods. However, in late 2020 Stenn found herself with limited sales, opportunistic in nature, and needed to decide on what market to focus on as she was re-applying to the Start Co-op accelerator in Boston, MA. The case includes the social entrepreneur and APS' backgrounds, challenges faced, elaborates on the quinoa industry, and discusses different market options. This case is written to be used in undergraduate courses related to marketing, entrepreneurship, and social entrepreneurship. Additionally, it could also be used in development economics courses, as the students need to grapple with market-driven conditions, brought about by economic development projects and global trade, that impact the wellbeing of native producers.
Paul Polizzotto, a serial social entrepreneur, believes that his new technology startup idea, Givewith, will enable businesses to tie social impact giving to their everyday business transactions, and thereby open up the floodgates to more resources for social and environmental change. Fundamental to the viability of Givewith is what Polizzotto calls "Social Value Economics", the construct that attaching social impact giving to a business transaction can increase its value - through enhanced brand, more satisfied employees, and higher Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings. With his employment contract meeting coming up next day with CBS, the media conglomerate, Polizzotto has to decide whether or not to pursue Givewith and whether to launch it as an independent startup or as a corporate venture. Students are given the opportunity to integrate their analyses of the case, including Polizzotto's entrepreneurial competence and motivation, validity of social value economics, and viability of Givewith to arrive at their recommendation.
The Greening Marines case is appropriate for undergraduate or graduate courses in management, change management, technology implementation, and sustainability and for courses focused on the public sector. Students learn to assess the costs and benefits of a technology solution, analyze stakeholder interests, evaluate enabling and hindering forces, explain how energy cultures influence technology adoption, and devise steps for an organizational change. As Director of the USMC's Expeditionary Energy Office, Colonel James Caley was responsible for developing and directing the USCM's energy strategy. The USMC had increasingly relied on new technologies, which drastically increased fuel needs. In Afghanistan, the estimated fully loaded cost of a gallon of gas was as high as $1000 and one Marine was either wounded or killed in every 50 fuel convoys. In 2016, Caley contemplated a proposal from BEyOnD, which had studied how Marines' used fuel and had concluded that if the USMC could change behaviors, the organization could reduce fuel consumption by 9-20%. BEyOnD was requesting $1.7 million to identify high potential behavioral interventions and experimentally test their impact. Caley needed to decide if he should support BEyOnD's proposal. Whatever his decision, he needed to identify the next steps he should take to generate change.
In September 2017, Fernando Impuesto, Commercial and Technical Services Director at Madrid-based natural gas infrastructure company Enagas, was offered the opportunity to transform the company's pilot intrapreneurship initiative into a robust corporate entrepreneurship program to support the company's new "decarbonization" strategy. Within two weeks, he needed to make a proposal about how to structure the program and focus his efforts in the first year, with the ultimate goal of generating a new portfolio worth €1 billion in five to ten years. Stepping into Impuesto's shoes, students will make recommendations for effectively addressing key corporate entrepreneurship tensions, including: tight vs. loose control; internally focused vs. externally focused initiatives; and old versus new ownership and governance models and relationships.
Toyota's supply chain, long admired as an industry benchmark for efficiency and effectiveness, was unable to supply critical parts to replenish inventory in its plants pursuant to the global chip shortages that resulted from the general disruption created by the Covid-19 pandemic. During the first quarter of 2021, the delta variant of the virus was spreading across the globe. Southeast Asia, where Toyota sourced many auto components, was particularly hard hit. As demand for automobiles was surging during the second half of 2021, a critical shortage of microchips forced Toyota and other automakers to shut down some of their assembly lines. Set against this backdrop, the case focuses on options that firms might pursue in preparing for black swan events such as Covid-19.
Thirty years after its establishment, New Deantronics (ND) set up ForMED Ventures in 2015 for the purpose of investing in innovative medical devices to deliver value to patients, doctors, healthcare professionals, healthcare systems, and societies for better healthcare. Aiming at becoming a world-class developer of medical devices, ForMED invested in 12 projects, 6 in Israel and 6 in the US, in 2020. Another venture, Taitech (Taiwan Technology), was also set up in 2015 to assist local start-ups in Taiwan. In early 2021, ND’s founder Jane Liu announced her retirement in the following year and appointed a 35-year old project section manager, Ivon Liu, as her successor. The goal for Ivon is to double the company’s revenue to USD200M in 5 years. How will Ivon lead a Top Management Team comprised of individuals generally senior than she is in order to achieve the goal by 2025?
The case is about Plastecowood, a company that turns plastic packaging waste into assembly products and sustainable lumber. It was founded by John Northcott in 2012 with the vision of taking a global issue - waste from plastic packaging - and turning it into a business. Two years later, when Plastecowood was struggling with ineffective production and lack of profitability, Henning von Spreckelsen came to the rescue and invested in the company. With his approach to radically rationalizing the production process and focusing on gross margin, he succeeded in pulling the company into profit. The company received orders from a number of large respectable clients and finally was able to make to stock rather than to order, which opened the door to larger volumes than ever before. Although the first COVID-19 phase caused disruption, Plastecowood quickly recovered with record sales. Today, with the company building up speed, it has several strategic options. Should the company enter new markets or expand in existing ones? Should it develop new, higher margin products? Will organic growth suffice, or should it consider acquisitions? Finally, might new business models, such as licensing the technology, bear fruit? Henning needs to present a clear strategy on where to take the company next.
As John Donahoe prepared to take over as CEO of Nike, Inc., he faced growing controversy over the company's failure to support anti-government demonstrations in Hong Kong. After US basketball team Houston Rockets manager Daryl Morey tweeted agreement with the Hong Kong protesters, Nike did not publicly back this stance. Instead, it removed Rockets merchandise from its China stores. Nike's silence on this matter contrasted sharply with its past strong support of individual's opinions. Nike management had to determine how to reconcile the company's image based on Western values with its continued growth in China.