This case is primarily about the opportunity for mid-career professionals to return to work after a career break. It focuses on the company iRelaunch, which helps companies develop and implement career re-entry programs and connects employees and employers. The case protagonist is Carol Fishman Cohen, co-founder of iRelaunch. The case also touches on the different types of return to work programs and includes a vignette on Chevron which highlights the experience of three women participating in the company's pilot return to work program.

The case describes TG Capital Limited (TG is the fictitious name of a real company) as a global investment fund founded in 2014. Having successfully invested in a few technology start-ups across Southeast Asia, Mainland China, and Hong Kong by working with major companies in these regions, TG is known for its technological expertise and investments. In 2019, when the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the city's de facto central bank and banking regulator, announced the issuance of another four virtual-banking licenses in addition to the first four. TG's management, which was committed to being the first to review all the latest technology-related opportunities and to moving into fintech, had to decide whether to step into the virtual-banking business by applying for a license.

In 2017, the chief information officer (CIO) of Midwest Health System (Midwest), a major health care provider in a central town in the United States, noticed that incorrect billing, data theft, waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care industry had increased over the years. Compliance requirements related to various rules and regulations had also posed increasing challenges. The CIO wanted to meet with his colleagues in the information systems and audit groups to review risks related to information technology and the billing and collection process-the most critical process in terms of its impact on Midwest's operations and financial statements. His plan was to modify and strengthen existing controls and to institute new ones to mitigate the significant risks identified. The CIO believed that better controls would enable Midwest to improve patient satisfaction and reduce loss of revenues due to incorrect billing, fraud, and other factors by ensuring better security processes while complying with various rules and regulations.

This article examines the value of peer networks, then offers advice on how to maintain and grow professional relationships when physical gatherings are not an option. Developing a robust peer network has long been considered mission critical for business professionals. However, if you want them to last decades, networks require regular maintenance, which is more difficult when physical distancing requirements exist. Anyone who puts time and thought into virtual networking can build a more robust professional network that can help improve decision-making, identify career opportunities, and overcome personal challenges for years to come. The main obstacle to networking virtually is not taking the time to do it. Virtual networking, of course, will never replace connecting in person, so as you network online, think about ways to maintain and deepen your connections when larger physical gatherings become possible. No matter where your professional connections were formed, keep in mind that everyone on the planet has shared the soul-searching experience of being isolated from others during the pandemic. This represents an opportunity to connect with others like never before, which can help advance your career—not to mention improve how we collectively face the challenges and inequities that exist in the workplace and our communities in this disruptive age.

This article explores how companies can make themselves more competitive by understanding how crises open the door to innovation, then offers advice on how to foster innovation in good times and bad. Thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, organizations around the world are experimenting like never before, and this forced increase in experimentation represents a unique opportunity to take innovation to a higher level because it is taking place while everyone’s standard operating environment has been disrupted. One lesson for organizations experimenting during the pandemic is that there can be value in mistakes. Making sure that you don’t miss the serendipitous opportunity of a lifetime requires the willingness to venture down a rabbit hole without being held back by your original objective. Working without a clear objective can be wasteful, but it also opens the door to finding something unique and valuable. At the same time, the tension that typically exists between an organization’s fiscal stewards and its creative folks exists for a reason—failure is costly. As a result, building an innovative culture that is also a sustainable and profitable culture is a balancing act.

Most global companies have made substantial investments in digital solutions and building deep functional excellence across the supply chain. But few have balanced those efforts with a corresponding push to develop the new competencies required to unlock the full value of digital. To build a supply chain that can sense unforeseen events and nimbly pivot in response, you must do more than retool with a range of the best available new technologies. You must also rethink and reskill your supply chain. In order to rethink a supply chain, you must move from viewing it as an inanimate mechanism built to execute against a plan to perceiving it as a living organism. A pivoting supply chain moves beyond traditional concepts of optimization to make your supply chain attuned to its ever-changing environment and free of a silo mentality. In practical terms, you bring your supply chain to life via uncompromising vision, real-life learning, and sprints (a minimum viable product approach with small and achievable portions of capability building). COVID-19 has delivered costly lessons on the strategic importance of supply chain agility, spurring companies to move beyond retooling their operations for traditional optimization, toward rethinking their basic assumptions about how their supply chains should operate, and toward reskilling their people with a focus on competencies that help supply chains sense and pivot.

Buying a high-tech solution that appears to quickly address an identified need or problem is tempting, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. So why resist? In short, the attractive easy out rarely pays off in the long run. According to the authors’ research, the ability to resist tempting but low-value IT investments is a hallmark of higher-performing companies. This article examines five temptations resisted by high performers, and outlines what they chose to do instead. The first temptation many companies face is to limit the application of new technologies to quick-payoff, high-visibility processes. The higher-value choice is to reimagine business processes across the company, not just in customer-facing areas. The second temptation is to patch or “lift-and-shift” legacy systems. The higher-value choice is to see the cloud not simply as a data centre but as a catalyst for innovation. The third temptation is to experiment with “hot” technologies in isolation. The higher-value choice is to identify foundational technologies and adopt them based on their potential effect on the entire organization. The fourth temptation is to rely on standard classroom training programs. The higher-value choice is to take a more flexible, future-focused approach. The fifth temptation is to move responsibility for IT to business leaders. The higher-value choice is to embrace systems that break down boundaries constraining data, infrastructure, and applications.

Following the COVID-19 outbreak, countries and corporations are now examining supply chain strategies and aiming to reduce exposure to difficult future global events. While these responsive actions can help companies survive until market conditions improve, further mitigating disruption requires adding flexibility to business processes and product offerings. In the short to mid-term, companies can employ responsiveness and flexibility to enhance their chance of survival. To plan for the impact of disruption, assess how economic and political events, market trends, emerging technologies, or social movements might impact your supply chain. Any potential for a drastic shift in the balance of your bottlenecked vs. redundant resources, along with the potential emergence of new critical suppliers or the disappearance of core customers, warrants planning to take transformative action. When your own resources/assets/expertise become a bottleneck, you need to expand the corresponding resources/assets or acquire additional talent. When your resources/assets/expertise incur more redundancy, and this shift isn’t temporary, resources need to be trimmed. When your supply is the bottleneck and demand is the redundancy, critical supplies need to be rationed according to customer value and urgency. When your demand is the bottleneck and supply is the redundancy, the company might need to adapt like restaurants that started using their supply chains to operate as online grocery stores.

In order to overcome the challenges introduced by COVID-19 and leverage opportunities, firms need to embark on a born-again journey of self-discovery and healing. This involves accepting the need to engage in a grieving process that shapes a new raison d’être for the firm after rejecting traditional thinking and redefining business practices. Based on the author’s research and work with clients across numerous industries, this article outlines the Business Recovery Strategy framework and explains how it can help managers organize their thinking and plan innovation. To help stakeholders appreciate the reinvented firm, managers should take the following actions to align business practices with the new normal: 1) firms’ strategic review processes should be demystified; 2) firms should set up a committee charged with anticipating possible future disruptions; 3) firms should engage in cost reduction strategies while creatively sourcing the funding necessary to avoid cutting key employees and budgets; 4) when social distancing needs subside and reduce the need for remote working, employers should consider a hybrid approach instead of a return to previous workplace practices; 5) companies should ensure they understand new customer needs and behaviours that the crisis created; 6) companies should implement a more bottom-up marketing strategy; 7) firms should focus more on value and consider empathic communication and branding strategies; and 8) firms should consider strategies that are a combination of the physical and digital, or “phygital.”

Why today’s business leaders need to show that great stories about fighting for what really matters can exist beyond fiction.

Supplement to 717028. The UK was due to leave the EU in March 2019 after a referendum vote in June 2016. Following additional extensions and multiple failed attempts to reach an agreement with Parliament, Theresa May stepped down as Conservative Party leader and was replaced by Boris Johnson. Johnson claimed that Brexit would happen "come what may". This case outlines the major controversial issues and compares Theresa May's agreement to Boris Johnson's.

Recent years have seen the dramatic rise of direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands by several startups. Many of these brands, such as Dollar Shave Club, Harry's, Glossier, and Allbirds, entered mature markets dominated by established companies, and yet they grew rapidly to attain valuations over $1 billion. At the same time, some DTC brands such as Casper saw a significant drop in their valuations after going public. Are these DTC brands fads or the dawn of a new era? And how should incumbents respond?

The case describes Lime's (the startup of dockless electric scooter sharing services) arrival in Madrid, Spain. The case looks at the strategy of the company when it launched in the summer of 2018, until the City Hall of Madrid passed a Sustainable Mobility Ordinance in October of that year, regulating the operation of the company. This case features a "role play" with two main characters: Álvaro Salvat, general manager of Lime in Spain, and Francisco José López Carmona, director of traffic management and oversight in the City Hall of Madrid. This case illustrates the entrepreneurial dilemma of "asking for permission or begging for forgiveness" faced by all disruptive entrepreneurs. It also looks at the business implications of the different strategic approaches to regulation and engagement with city officials that entrepreneurs can take. Finally, it will delve deep into the micro-mobility sector, which like many other potentially disruptive technologies, can serve a big market but is also defined by uncertainty.

The case describes Lime's (the startup of dockless electric scooter sharing services) arrival in Madrid, Spain. The case looks at the strategy of the company when it launched in the summer of 2018, until the City Hall of Madrid passed a Sustainable Mobility Ordinance in October of that year, regulating the operation of the company. This case features a "role play" with two main characters: Álvaro Salvat, general manager of Lime in Spain, and Francisco José López Carmona, director of traffic management and oversight in the City Hall of Madrid. This case illustrates the entrepreneurial dilemma of "asking for permission or begging for forgiveness" faced by all disruptive entrepreneurs. It also looks at the business implications of the different strategic approaches to regulation and engagement with city officials that entrepreneurs can take. Finally, it will delve deep into the micro-mobility sector, which like many other potentially disruptive technologies, can serve a big market but is also defined by uncertainty.

The case describes Lime's (the startup of dockless electric scooter sharing services) arrival in Madrid, Spain. The case looks at the strategy of the company when it launched in the summer of 2018, until the City Hall of Madrid passed a Sustainable Mobility Ordinance in October of that year, regulating the operation of the company. This case features a "role play" with two main characters: Álvaro Salvat, general manager of Lime in Spain, and Francisco José López Carmona, director of traffic management and oversight in the City Hall of Madrid. This case illustrates the entrepreneurial dilemma of "asking for permission or begging for forgiveness" faced by all disruptive entrepreneurs. It also looks at the business implications of the different strategic approaches to regulation and engagement with city officials that entrepreneurs can take. Finally, it will delve deep into the micro-mobility sector, which like many other potentially disruptive technologies, can serve a big market but is also defined by uncertainty.

The case describes Lime's (the startup of dockless electric scooter sharing services) arrival in Madrid, Spain. The case looks at the strategy of the company when it launched in the summer of 2018, until the City Hall of Madrid passed a Sustainable Mobility Ordinance in October of that year, regulating the operation of the company. This case features a "role play" with two main characters: Álvaro Salvat, general manager of Lime in Spain, and Francisco José López Carmona, director of traffic management and oversight in the City Hall of Madrid. This case illustrates the entrepreneurial dilemma of "asking for permission or begging for forgiveness" faced by all disruptive entrepreneurs. It also looks at the business implications of the different strategic approaches to regulation and engagement with city officials that entrepreneurs can take. Finally, it will delve deep into the micro-mobility sector, which like many other potentially disruptive technologies, can serve a big market but is also defined by uncertainty.

This article examines the cardinal tenets of design thinking using the research, theory, and insights of social psychology. People's intuitions are often incorrect and, moreover, it is often difficult for people to revise their thinking. There are four principles common to many design thinking approaches: observe and notice; frame and reframe; imagine and design; and make and experiment. For each of these design thinking prescriptions, this article analyzes the social-psychological phenomena involved and illustrates practical applications from a real design thinking project at IDEO. Design thinkers and their companies can use these insights from social psychology to inform and inspire the design thinking process.

Initially conceived as a competitor to Bloomberg's terminals, a consortium of financial services firms launched its own secure messaging platform, Symphony, in 2014. Symphony soon expanded beyond chat to include a range of services including data integrations, bots, applications, and a web conferencing solution; by 2019 Symphony's user base grew to 400 thousand clients, larger than Bloomberg's. This case explores Symphony's options for future growth-including how to leverage the need for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the financial sector and possible expansion beyond financial services. In analyzing the firm's options, students must consider an array of challenges, including: competitive pressure within the sector and beyond its scope, changing use attitudes for communications technology, the rise of cloud computing, and a changing regulatory environment.

IDL Innovation Hong Kong Co. Ltd. (IDL) was a well-known interior design company specializing in commercial retail centres. The design company’s goal was to help its partners create more value by presenting effective interior design. However, with the rise of e-commerce, the financial performance of the conventional retail industry had dropped significantly. To help the industry regain customers, the design company developed a new business framework that combined online components with traditional consumer social spaces, based on the common interests, wants, and needs of consumers. In September 2018, the design company transformed a shopping centre in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China, that had been losing sales for some time. The shopping mall soon saw a substantial and consistent increase in foot traffic, sales, and revenue. The project was a great success for both the mall and IDL, but could this concept be also effective when applied to other projects?

This case focuses on the supply chain strategy of Apple Inc. (Apple). Set in early 2020, it provides a detailed description of the company’s supply chain network and capabilities. Data in the case allows students to develop an understanding of Apple’s source of competitiveness and to gain insights into the management of a large, complex global supply chain network that focused on the intersection of services, hardware and software. Students will obtain an understanding of the supply chain challenges faced by Apple, in the context of supporting its corporate strategy and growth objectives.