In August 2016, Aron West, owner and creative director of board game publisher Elzra, was deciding whether or not to part ways with Impressions, his distributor. West had a hit product with his game Catacombs and its spinoff games and had recently concluded a very successful crowdfunding campaign. West was starting to believe that he was able to move on from Impressions, which specialized in small publishers with few products. Impressions acted as an extra layer of distribution between major distributors and small companies that may not have been worth the larger distributors' time. For their services, Impressions took 18% of the end price of the product, roughly equal to Elzra's share. The decision was also relevant because Elzra and Aron West had experienced some difficulty with which ales Impressions had a legitimate claim to, and the lack of flexibility exhibited by Impressions' president, Aldo Ghiozzi. West had been preparing for life after Impressions by training his operations manager to handle some of the distribution tasks, forging relationships with larger distributors, and developing company infrastructure. On one hand, Impressions was demanding, expensive, and Elzra may have outgrown it. On the other hand, working with Impressions, according to West, made everything easy.

In the 1950s the United Auto Workers negotiated a plan that allowed employees at the big carmakers to donate money directly from their paychecks to the local precursors of United Way. For most of the organization's history, it had no direct relationship with its donors. That has changed. Payroll deductions still play an important role, but United Way is moving to technology-driven engagement that allows individual donors to become more closely involved with the mission. In partnership with Salesforce, it has created a platform on which donors have their own home pages; there they can track all the gifts they've made and all the volunteer hours they've committed to causes and find content or policy news or volunteer opportunities relevant to their interests. It has found that individuals who engage with it online give more and continue giving from year to year. Today some 25,000 people have each given more than $10,000 to United Way; more than 600 have given $1 million; and 35 have given $10 million or more.

If "the essence of strategy is choosing what not to do," as Michael Porter famously wrote, then the essence of execution is truly not doing it. That may sound simple, but most organizations struggle to kill initiatives, even those that no longer support their strategy. Unaware of the cumulative impact or unwilling to part with pet projects or both, senior leaders pile on more and more, expecting teams to absorb it all. Productivity, engagement, performance, and retention tend to suffer as a result. In their consulting work the authors have observed several root causes of initiative overload, including impact blindness, multiplier effects, political logrolling, unfunded mandates, cost myopia, and inertia. Understanding those causes can help leaders diagnose the risks in their organizations and make smarter decisions about what to keep and what to kill. A step-by-step process can guide them. Leaders should: 1. Get a true count of the current initiatives across the enterprise; 2. Assess each one, identifying the business need, the required budget, the head count allocation, and the business impact; 3. Get senior leaders working together to establish priorities, in a discussion driven by the top leadership team and informed by candid feedback from below; 4. Establish a "sunset" clause for each initiative; 5. In yearly planning, require each initiative to reapply for funding and other resources; 6. Strongly communicate that stopping an initiative isn't a sign of failure. Organizations that learn how to wisely cut back can accomplish more in the areas that really matter.

While we know a lot about practices that stimulate new ideas, innovation teams often struggle to apply them. Why? Because people's biases and entrenched behaviors get in the way. In this article a Darden professor explains how design thinking helps people overcome this problem and unleash their creativity. Though ostensibly geared to understanding and molding the experiences of customers, design thinking also profoundly reshapes the experiences of the innovators themselves. For example, immersive customer research helps them set aside their own views and recognize needs customers haven't expressed. Carefully planned dialogues help teams build on their diverse ideas, not just negotiate compromises when differences arise. And experiments with new solutions reduce all stakeholders' fear of change. At every phase-customer discovery, idea generation, and testing-a clear structure makes people more comfortable trying new things, and processes increase collaboration. Because it combines practical tools and human insight, design thinking is a social technology-one that the author predicts will have an impact as large as an earlier social technology: total quality management.

Innovation clusters like San Francisco and Boston have long had an outsize impact on the global economy, and their influence keeps growing. In 2017, for instance, America's 10 largest tech hubs accounted for 58% of U.S. patents. Globally, cities such as Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Seoul produced a similar proportion. The increased geographic concentration of innovation activity poses a challenge for firms based in suburban industrial parks. To stay relevant, they need to tap into urban hotbeds, but setting up operations there can be extremely expensive. In his work on global talent flows, Harvard Business School's Kerr has seen organizations try three solutions: At one extreme, they can relocate their headquarters to a hub, as GE recently did (but make them much smaller). A less expensive strategy is to create an innovation lab or corporate outpost in a talent cluster, as Walmart did with Walmart Labs. The most conservative strategy is to run executive retreats and immersions in talent clusters--a tactic Vodafone uses effectively. These three options aren't mutually exclusive. Given the need to stay in touch with multiple clusters, companies may want to try them all. Each one involves substantial risks that executives must manage. But together they offer a good playbook to firms that are finding themselves outside the action as the clout of a handful of cities grows.

Alibaba is not a retailer in the traditional sense. It doesn't source or keep stock, and logistics services are carried out by third-party providers. Instead, Alibaba is what you get if you take all the functions associated with retail and coordinate them online into a sprawling, data-driven network of sellers, marketers, service providers, logistics companies, and manufacturers. Indeed, Alibaba does what Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Google, FedEx, all of the wholesalers, and a good portion of manufacturers in the U.S. do, with a healthy helping of financial services for garnish. Alibaba achieves this by leveraging the new technologies of network coordination and data intelligence. It harnesses the efforts of thousands of Chinese businesses to create an ecosystem that is faster, smarter, and more efficient than traditional business infrastructures. This is an emerging business model that Ming Zeng, the chair of Alibaba's Academic Council, calls smart business. Players in the ecosystem share data and apply machine-learning technology to identify and better fulfill consumer needs. This article provides a framework for transforming a company into a smart business.

Grit, a combination of passion and perseverance, predicts success in many demanding fields. A perfect example is health care, where the grit of individual doctors and nurses has saved many lives. But today providing superior care is so complex that no lone practitioner can do it all. Great care requires gritty teams that never stop striving for improvement and institutions that exhibit grit across entire systems of providers. In this article Duckworth, the author of the best seller Grit, and Lee, a clinician and health care leader, describe health care's new model of organizational grit. It begins with hiring people with grit--who love what they do, always want to get better, and are resilient in the face of setbacks. Their single-minded determination stems from a clear personal-goal hierarchy, in which shorter-term objectives support a top-level goal that gives direction to everything they do. To be gritty, organizations must have a similar clarity about priorities, and their top-level goal and their employees' must be aligned. If everyone is pursuing a separate passion, a culture won't be gritty. The gritty health care organizations the authors have seen (such as Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic) all make "putting patients first" their overarching goal and use it to guide every decision. They also work to cultivate grit by, for example, setting high expectations; offering the resources, support, and trust people need to keep learning and growing; and establishing strong social norms that promote their top-level goal. While the objectives of organizations in other sectors may differ, they can apply the principles the authors outline here to become gritty, too.

Companies often crimp profits by using discounts to attract price-sensitive customers and by failing to give high-end customers reasons to spend more. A multitiered offering can use a stripped-down product (the "Good" option) to attract new customers, the existing product ("Better") to keep current customers happy, and a feature-laden premium version ("Best") to increase spending by customers who want more. There's nothing new about this concept, of course--think of the different grades of fuel at any gas station and the varying packages marketed by cable TV providers, to name just two examples--yet many companies and industries have failed to embrace it. The author, a consultant who has helped many organizations adopt G-B-B pricing, presents a step-by-step guide to devising, testing, and launching the strategy. Key steps include identifying "fence" attributes that will prevent current customers from trading down from the existing offering; carefully choosing features and names to create clear differentiation and value; and setting prices using feedback from in-house experts and, when possible, drawing on conjoint analysis and other market research.

When we experience a setback at work, we tend to either become defensive and blame others, or berate ourselves. Neither response is helpful. Shirking responsibility by getting defensive may alleviate the sting of failure, but it comes at the expense of learning. Self-flagellation, on the other hand, may feel warranted in the moment, but it can lead to an inaccurately gloomy assessment of one's potential, which undermines personal development. Research shows that we should respond instead with self-compassion. People who do this tend to demonstrate three behaviors: First, they are kind rather than judgmental about their own failures and mistakes; second, they recognize that failures are a shared human experience; and third, they take a balanced approach to negative emotions when they stumble or fall short--they allow themselves to feel bad, but they don't let negative emotions take over. Self-compassion boosts performance by triggering the "growth mindset"--the belief that improvement is achievable through dedication and hard work. It also helps us connect with a more authentic self.

Although experts recommend eight hours of sleep a night, many of us don't get that. A recent study of leaders across the world found that 42% average six hours of shut-eye or less. Insufficient rest leads to poor judgment, lack of self-control, and impaired creativity. And the author's research shows that sleep-deprived bosses hurt their teams along with themselves: They are more likely to mistreat employees and create a workplace where people feel less engaged and may even behave less ethically. Fortunately, there are ways to get more and better rest. These include sticking to a regular bedtime and wake-up time; avoiding caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and screen time before bed; tracking your sleep patterns and adjusting your habits accordingly; getting treatment for sleep disorders; and napping during the workday. If you make sleep a priority, you'll probably be a more productive-and inspiring-leader.

Elena Pelc is the founder and CEO of 2 Proud Pups, a maker of all-natural dog care products. Sales are good, but revenues have plateaued at about $1 million annually. Plus she's pregnant with her first child. She must decide whether to sell the company--which would give her more time with her family and help her start-up grow--or hire a new CEO and continue to exert some control over its future. With commentary from Candace Leak, the founder and CEO of Loanables.com, and Todd Olson, a cofounder and the CEO of Pendo.

The host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central talks about getting that job, managing the transition, what he looks for in new hires, how he avoids burnout, and preparing to go onstage.

Elena Pelc is the founder and CEO of 2 Proud Pups, a maker of all-natural dog care products. Sales are good, but revenues have plateaued at about $1 million annually. Plus she's pregnant with her first child. She must decide whether to sell the company--which would give her more time with her family and help her start-up grow--or hire a new CEO and continue to exert some control over its future. With commentary from Candace Leak, the founder and CEO of Loanables.com, and Todd Olson, a cofounder and the CEO of Pendo.

Elena Pelc is the founder and CEO of 2 Proud Pups, a maker of all-natural dog care products. Sales are good, but revenues have plateaued at about $1 million annually. Plus she's pregnant with her first child. She must decide whether to sell the company--which would give her more time with her family and help her start-up grow--or hire a new CEO and continue to exert some control over its future. With commentary from Candace Leak, the founder and CEO of Loanables.com, and Todd Olson, a cofounder and the CEO of Pendo.

Researchers from INSEAD and Kellogg conducted a statistical analysis of R&D spending and growth, using data on the world's top 2,500 companies. This revealed that consumer packaged goods firms often see better returns on R&D spending when they focus on small changes (such as modifications to packaging) rather than on ambitious "moon shots." Companies operate under two distinctly different philosophies, the researchers found. "The motto of companies with big R&D budgets is 'bigger, better, faster,'" they say, whereas firms with modest R&D budgets "seem to do extremely well by tweaking and improving things in their brands and creating a lot more sales."

Purveyors of high-end goods who want to increase sales to men probably should start hiring more Tom Bradys. New research from Europe shows that male shoppers' spending more than doubled when a tall, athletic-looking male employee was present in the store. Why? It may have something to do with jockeying for status.

The case establishes the importance of various activities, from planning, design, manufacturing to distribution and retailing, in the value chain for a fashion product and thus leads the student on to understand the significance of fulfillment in the fashion industry. The case prompts the students to think about the interactions among the stakeholders, both upstream and downstream of the value chain. It persuades them to evaluate cloud-connected solutions and the underlying technologies of blockchain in the ALBL context and how the implementation challenges can be overcome to facilitate communication between various players in the chain leading to more responsive processes. The case details the design practice of ALBL-Concept to Shelf (CTS), followed by brands under the ALBL umbrella, primarily focusing on the challenges associated with the product development or the design phase. Material flow is discussed in terms of the manufacturing, supply, and retail strategy adopted by the company. It challenges the students to think about the strategies that would enable an Indian fashion retailer to improve the competitiveness in the market and focus on the key strengths of branding and retail of the licensed brands. It also discusses the influence of e-commerce on physical retailing and design of an omni-channel supply chain. This case encompasses the complete gamut of operations of an Indian fashion retailer. It facilitates the students to think about multiple facets working in sync to improve the overall functioning and profitability of ALBL.

This case describes the situation faced by a Trust named ArthaKranti. ArthaKranti (meaning economic revolution) was formed in 2005 to offer an unconventional taxation proposal based on Banking Transaction Tax (BTT). The BTT proposal is radical in nature, with minimum role of the state and with increased efficiency and reach. The vision of ArthaKranti Pratishthan is aligned to the concept of "Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam" or "Global Family-hood". The case provides an opportunity for participants to step into the shoes of the founder Anil Bokil (Bokil) and build a strategy to get BTT implemented. Participants use data on BTT and the public awareness attempts made so far and make reasonable assumptions with the use of SWOT analysis and Pros and Cons analysis to examine the feasibility of BTT. Bokil's lack of experience in politics as well his appealing to all political parties, provides an interesting background context for a rich case discussion.

Hemas Holding PLC (HHPLC) was a Colombo headquartered holding company. It had subsidiaries in a wide range of businesses. HHPLC was headed by Steven Enderby as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with Husein Esufally as Non-Executive Chairman. The professionally managed but family-controlled conglomerate, which was already one of the dominant private sector entities in Sri Lanka, was attempting to transform into a regional powerhouse in South Asia. The Esufally family held majority shares in HHPLC, and had members of the family on the HHPLC board. The family had also formed a Family Business Board (FBB) consisting of Murtaza Esufally, Abbas Esufally, Husein Esufally, and Imtiaz Esufally, to manage the relationship between the Esufally family and the HHPLC Board. The FBB was a device to ensure that the relationship between the larger family and the top management of HHPLC could be managed smoothly. The members of the FBB were proud of their journey so far. However, they wondered whether there could be further improvements in the mechanisms to ensure that the interests of all the stakeholders associated professionally with HHPLC were met, even as the interests of the current and future generations of the family were protected.

The case describes the journey of Rolocule, a mobile gaming company based out of Pune, India. An early entrant into the mobile gaming space, Rolocule's fortunes go through many ups and downs as the nascent mobile gaming industry experiments with various business models. Rolocule responds by being nimble and flexible, rapidly developing multiple games and pivoting as the industry changes. Product-market fit always seems within reach but each time, an external event derails the company's plans to scale. The case is positioned at a low-point in the company's journey where it must decide whether it wants to continue to play in the B2C gaming space or shift into the B2B space. The case provides rich material to discuss the challenges of building a venture in a rapidly evolving industry and analyze the consequences of adopting different business models.