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Why is it that effective business start-ups frequently grow into corporate giants, but effective new nonprofits rarely reach national scale? Because, say Harvard Business School's Kaplan and Grossman, the mechanisms and institutions that channel money and information between donors and nonprofits are underdeveloped. They don't provide reliable data on performance and don't hold organizations accountable for producing results. So inefficient nonprofits swallow up dollars that effective ones could use to serve more constituents. The good news is, that's beginning to change: A new generation of charitable foundations and intermediaries is measuring the impact of donations and targeting the highest-performing nonprofits. Taking a page from mutual funds and venture capital firms in the private sector, the new intermediaries conduct extensive due diligence on nonprofits and demand hard data on outcomes achieved. A few pioneers provide ongoing support, helping grantees develop action plans, detailed frameworks to measure impact, and strategic advice. If practices like these spread, we could soon see a social capital market that delivers real returns on donors' dollars.

Media entrepreneur Kramer looks at three French companies that use low-tech ways to better connect with customers. Luxury-goods maker Boucheron hosts intimate dinners with a small number of key customers; Nespresso's French subsidiary is making big investments in telephone call centers-despite the fact that most orders come through other channels-and training staff members to spend more time talking to customers; and Vente-Privee treats its key suppliers like customers, forging personal connections with them. Kramer argues that even in an era when so many companies are obsessed with social networking and trying to amass millions of followers on Twitter and Facebook, the deepest relationships between businesses and customers continue to be formed offline, where they are better able to engage in true dialogue.

When it comes to gaining buy-in for a new idea, we've been taught to focus on getting the idea right instead of on making sure people understand and support it. That, explains Kotter, has left us unprepared to deal with the attacks that can kill off even the most carefully developed concepts. In this edited interview, the leadership expert discusses various idea-killing attacks and offers some rules for responding to them. Whether you're working on a small deal with just a few players or a large-scale change effort in an organization of thousands, you're in the "murky land of human nature and group dynamics," Kotter says. People's anxieties and opinions color the way they react to new ideas. Kotter and Lorne Whitehead have identified four common ways that people shoot down ideas: fear-mongering, death by delay, confusion, and ridicule. Marginalizing the troublemakers might seem like the obvious response, but Kotter and Whitehead have found that people who were effective at gaining support for their ideas invited naysayers to critique their ideas and treated them with respect. They also communicated clearly and simply, never let the disagreement become personal, attended to the entire group instead of just to the most vocal critics, and prepared responses to a variety of potential attacks. Learning how to win buy-in for an idea is a basic life skill, Kotter says-one that is as relevant to a student working on a group project as it is to an executive in a business setting.

Michael Mack was a prototypical success story-after getting his Harvard MBA, he worked for a top-tier consulting firm and next made a move into entrepreneurship as the owner of a growing restaurant chain. Then, to his shock, his board fired him. That setback sent him on a personal journey that made him a much wiser leader.

The CEO of a watchband manufacturer based in Seoul is considering opening a factory in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), a South Korean manufacturing zone in North Korea. Such an operation is appealing on several counts: The costs of labor are low, capital risk is also low because of South Korean government guarantees, and the KIC, as the largest area of economic cooperation between the two Koreas, could be a step toward a unified peninsula. But there are substantial risks as well, concerning South Korean employees' safety, the treatment of North Korean workers by their government, the human rights situation generally in the North, and the uncertainties of dealing with a volatile regime. Are the potential economic benefits worth the human risks? And should politics and national pride factor into the decision? Two commentaries accompany the case, one from Youssef Nasr, a former senior executive in the HSBC Group, and one from Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group.

A four-time Grammy winner and UNAIDS goodwill ambassador talks about what drives her as an artist and an activist.

The CEO of a watchband manufacturer based in Seoul is considering opening a factory in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), a South Korean manufacturing zone in North Korea. Such an operation is appealing on several counts: The costs of labor are low, capital risk is also low because of South Korean government guarantees, and the KIC, as the largest area of economic cooperation between the two Koreas, could be a step toward a unified peninsula. But there are substantial risks as well, concerning South Korean employees' safety, the treatment of North Korean workers by their government, the human rights situation generally in the North, and the uncertainties of dealing with a volatile regime. Are the potential economic benefits worth the human risks? And should politics and national pride factor into the decision? Two experts comment on this fictional case study in products R1010P and R1010Z.

The CEO of a watchband manufacturer based in Seoul is considering opening a factory in the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), a South Korean manufacturing zone in North Korea. Such an operation is appealing on several counts: The costs of labor are low, capital risk is also low because of South Korean government guarantees, and the KIC, as the largest area of economic cooperation between the two Koreas, could be a step toward a unified peninsula. But there are substantial risks as well, concerning South Korean employees' safety, the treatment of North Korean workers by their government, the human rights situation generally in the North, and the uncertainties of dealing with a volatile regime. Are the potential economic benefits worth the human risks? And should politics and national pride factor into the decision? Two commentaries are attached to the case in R1010P and included in R1010Z, one from Youssef Nasr, a former senior executive in the HSBC Group, and one from Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group.

Jim Reynolds Jr. founded Loop Capital in 1997 as an investment bank specializing in bond sales for municipalities. Ten years later, with thirteen offices and almost 100 employees, Loop Capital was a national company and had brokered more than $800 billion of underwritings in equity, tax-exempt, and taxable fixed income markets. In the process of building its municipal finance and equity trading businesses, Loop Capital had developed close relationships with a number of government officials, large institutional money managers, and corporate executives. These customers began asking Loop Capital for help with other financial services, leading the firm to build corporate finance, tax-exempt, and taxable fixed-income platforms so it could offer a wider array of investment services. Municipal and corporate finance as well as equity, taxable, and tax-exempt trading were generating positive cash flow. In a field where failures were frequent, Loop Capital was thriving, and Reynolds saw great but untapped potential in the company's future. Over the past several years, Loop Capital had served as financial advisor to several municipalities that wanted to lease or sell public assets such as airports, toll roads, and seaports. Now he confronted several intriguing questions: Should he launch a $700 million infrastructure fund to invest in the types of deals the firm had helped structure? Did it make sense to invest in order to staff, market, and support the start-up of this new fund? If the fund was launched, should Loop Capital commit to the 1% investment likely to be required as the fund's general partner?

Rufus Rivers, managing director and co-head of mezzanine investing at The Carlyle Group, is reviewing two employment offers he recently received. One came from RLJ Equity Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area. The other came via Glocap Search, a New York-based executive search firm specializing in placing top private equity executives in premier venture capital roles. The Glocap recruiter had told Rivers that he had been selected as the leading candidate for a position with an established Boston-area venture capital firm that had several exciting investment prospects. In the next few days, Rivers needs to consider his personal and professional interests and make a decision: Should he go to Washington, go to Boston, or stay put-and on what terms?

The case discusses the operational, strategic, and financial turnaround at Solo Cup, a manufacturer of disposable dining wares. Solo Cup's troubles were compounded by the acquisition of a larger rival, Sweetheart Company, which had its own problems and presented issues of merger integration that management could not solve. David Garfield, a managing director at turnaround consulting firm Alix Partners, must first recognize Solo Cup's core competencies in order to determine the appropriate change in strategic course, strip out the assets that no longer support the operations necessary for that strategy, and monetize them in order to rationalize its balance sheet. This case teaches that a three-pronged approach will invariably produce greater results than any one-dimensional turnaround.

HP sells configure-to-order products. With millions of part combinations going into an order, the challenge is deciding which parts to keep in the portfolio to balance costs with revenues. The case explains how one would approach this problem before product introduction, but focuses on managing the existing portfolio.

Global Connect, a major telecommunications service provider, partners with national cable providers to bundle media and telecom services offered through voice over Internet protocol (VoIP). Global Connect provides the VoIP physical infrastructure that enables cable providers to offer VoIP phone service to their end customers. VoIP cable services are growing at a faster rate than anticipated, leaving Global Connect incapable of meeting contractual agreements with the cable partners and preventing them from capturing substantial VoIP market opportunities. Students are asked to improve the configuration of work at this service organization by identifying the types of waste in the current process. Process improvements use lean tools and their impact is quantified using time and capacity analysis.

This case was awarded first place in the INFORMS 2011 case competition. A seasoned Internet retailing entrepreneur considers starting a national floral delivery service to compete with the major U.S. players. Decisions include whether to open a production facility in a single city and begin to deliver there? Which strategy should he use to decide-a premium or a discounted strategy? Ideal for MBA and undergraduate students in decision analysis modules or courses, this case offers an optional student spreadsheet useful for considering different strategies and calculating the resulting net present value of the opportunity. A B case with a spreadsheet is also available.

How to replicate a 'one of' social entrepreneurship effort: To cure blindness, Seva took the Aravind Eye Hospital & scaled it up to 100 hospitals globally.

Smart Union Group (Holdings) Limited was engaged in the manufacturing of recreational and educational toys and equipment for OEMs such as Mattel, Hasbro, and Megablocks. The company's manufacturing facilities were located in Guangdong Province, China, while the majority of the company's sales were made in the U.S. and Europe. The company went public in September 2006 with an IPO listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which netted HK$55 million. From 2003 to 2007, the company's sales revenues increased from HK$479 million to over HK$953 million. The company's rapid growth was financed by issuing equity and obtaining short-term bank loans. In 2007, Smart Union invested in a silver mine in Fujian Province to offset the impact of price increases in commodities used in production, and to expand its operational scope. At the end of 2007, the company's short-term bank debt of HK$240 million needed to be repaid or refinanced.

Spreadsheet Supplement for Product #UV2565

Emergia wants to keep its customers happy with its contact center service, but the margins on the help desk contract are dangerously low. Can Miguel Neira, the COO, increase margins while preserving the customer relationship?

Gazelle has pioneered a reCommerce intermediation model: it buys used electronics from consumers and resells them on eBay or to wholesalers. Going forward, its two main strategic challenges are: 1) deciding how much to rely on partnerships with large retailers for growth; 2) deciding whether to continue as a "merchant," i.e., buying and reselling goods (and thereby taking inventory risk), or to transform itself into a "two-sided platform" connecting sellers and buyers without taking inventory risk.

The Taj Hotels, Palaces, and Resorts introduced a new brand architecture to counter lack of differentiation and confused positioning of its mixed bag of brands. After launching an economy and an upscale brand, it dithered over the launch of its upper upscale and luxury brands. The case illustrates the marketing and organizational challenges of a hybrid brand extension strategy that lies in between a 'house of brands' and a 'branded house'.