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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Consumer-centered product design is an emerging best practice in many industries, particularly those characterized by practical products that hold no emotional appeal; in which competition is based on increasingly less profitable attempts to cut cost or improve performance; in which once distinctive products are becoming commoditized; or in which there is little room left for product innovation. Among the best practitioners, design is understood to be a core activity, conferring competitive advantage by bringing to light the emotional meaning products and services have, or could have, for consumers and extracting the high value of such emotional connections. The authors discuss how companies such as Master Lock, Procter & Gamble, BMW, and Cambridge SoundWorks have employed design research--including the use of multidisciplinary teams and a variety of ethnographic and psychophysiological techniques--to build organizationwide identification with the customers' needs and aspirations, keeping everyone's eyes on the same prize.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. One of the most thoroughly studied questions in business is how, at budgeting time, large corporations should choose among investment opportunities. Why, then, are so many senior executives frustrated with the process and convinced that their companies' capital is not being invested as well as it could be? One reason is that even the best-designed systems can be trumped by the power of personality. It has become commonplace, in fact, for talented and charismatic managers to spin, manipulate, and otherwise cajole senior management into funding their business ideas--often in the face of numbers that would, on their own, dictate a negative decision. Having guided dozens of major corporations through the budgeting process and watched hundreds of presentations by line managers asking for capital, the authors have profiled five archetypes of bad behavior commonly used by managers to subvert decision-making standards and win resources. They also explain how senior managers can counteract such behavior and instill values that lead to better use of investment capital.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For the past couple of decades, companies have focused on creating strong leaders of business units and influential heads of functions--men and women responsible for achieving results in one corner of an organization. But they have not paid as much attention to a more important challenge: developing leaders who see the enterprise as a whole and act for its greater good. And that perspective has become increasingly necessary as companies seek to provide not just products but broad-based customer solutions. The author explores the three key questions that companies must answer to link strategy to leadership development: What are the key elements of the enterprise leader's job? Why is learning to lead at the enterprise level such a difficult challenge? And what can companies do to identify and develop enterprise leaders? He illustrates his points with examples from PricewaterhouseCoopers, Canada's RBC Financial Group, IBM, and others.

Known to Protestants as the "IRA Godfather of Godfathers" and to Catholics as a hero of the Irish Republican movement, Martin McGuinness is one of the most divisive figures in Northern Ireland. This case details McGuinness' meteoric rise through the ranks of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), his subsequent transition into electoral politics and, in the wake of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, his appointment to the post of Education Minister for Northern Ireland. HKS Case Number 1742.0

Known to Protestants as the "IRA Godfather of Godfathers" and to Catholics as a hero of the Irish Republican movement, Martin McGuinness is one of the most divisive figures in Northern Ireland. This case details McGuinness' meteoric rise through the ranks of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), his subsequent transition into electoral politics and, in the wake of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, his appointment to the post of Education Minister for Northern Ireland. HKS Case Number 1742.0

In November 1998, Steven Briggs was appointed CEO of the Novartis Agricultural Discovery Institute, Inc. (NADII), a new research institute created under the corporate umbrella of Novartis AG. NADII had a mandate to jump-start Novartis's basic research program in plant genomics, and Briggs was considering the latest research proposal terms offered by the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). Novartis was the finalist in an auction launched by the university in April 1998 to find a corporate partner with which it could establish a broad plant genomics research alliance. The arrangement was unprecedented and required a great deal of trust on the part of Novartis--trust that the Berkeley faculty could produce useful discoveries for the company's fledgling plant genomics initiative. On the surface it appeared that recent advances in the cost-intensive field of life sciences, combined with heated competition in the industry for leadership in biotechnology, had aligned the interests of the university and Novartis. Briggs was ready to approve the proposal. Before putting pen to paper, however, he considered the forces that had led to the historic agreement between Novartis and UC Berkeley, research findings, his firm's strategic choices, and academia's contribution to new discoveries.

In China, guanxi, or personal connections, can divide the loyalties of the sales and procurement people on which your company depends. If you're alert to its potential to cause mischief, you can head off relationships that could work against you.

Companies voluntarily reducing their greenhouse gases are helping to shape the governmental regulations that are coming soon. If you don't act now, you'll find your competitors will write the rules for you.

Social and professional networks are crucial to innovation. New research reveals that it takes just a few key players to catalyze the agglomeration of many small networks into larger ones and boost innovation across a whole region.

Nonprofits are putting hard numbers on the value of their brands, many of which consumers trust highly. Such organizations are hoping brand valuation will give them greater influence as they negotiate cobranding alliances with corporate partners.

Real-time information about things like network outages, product development, and customer satisfaction is available, but few executives capitalize on it. That's because they're not asking the right questions.

Successful Silicon Valley executive, Peter Levine, finds himself at a career crossroads, trying to decide between pursuing numerous options, including being a CEO of a growth company or a venture capitalist. Explores the different qualifications and goals required of an operating vs. an investing role, and items to consider for each type of career.

The case describes the successful growth and internationalization strategy of Belgian Creyf's interim business (temporary labour services) after initial internationalization debacles, which nearly bankrupted the original family company. It describes the "not me too" strategy of this player in an industry increasingly dominated by a few large European and even world players. It subsequently raises the strategic and organisational issues the group is facing in dealing with this increasingly large and international portfolio of businesses in a market that is showing signs of the worst economic downturns in many years.

Spreadsheet to (9-204-109). Download only.

Spreadsheet to (9-204-029). Selected case exhibits. Download only.

Abstract to follow.

In the seemingly never-ending revelations of corporate scandals that have been exposed since the fall of Enron, the media, politicians, and the general public have taken to characterizing such leaders as "bad people," even to the point of considering them evil. The rest of our leaders have become suspect, as corporate executives are tied for dead last with used car salesmen in terms of public trust. These overly simplistic notions of "good leaders" and "bad leaders" only serve to cloud our understanding of the nature of leadership in the business world and how good leaders can lose their way. Teaching Purpose: To outline how and why leaders lose their way.

In mid-2003, CEO Chris McCormick felt L.L. Bean was in a good position to begin to grow again. For nearly 90 years, the company sold clothing and gear for outdoor enthusiasts through its catalogs and a single retail store in Freeport, Maine. In the three decades prior to 1996, sales growth averaged nearly 20% per year. In 1995, sales hit $1 billion, but stagnated for the next six years--growing at less than 2% annually. The company responded with a structural reorganization and investment in its Internet sales channel. In 2002 and early 2003, McCormick led an effort to reduce overhead and improve its internal systems, including the elimination of 1,000 jobs--which reduced year-round headcount by nearly 15%. After these initiatives, the company remained profitable and enjoyed a strong balance sheet, but sales growth remained near zero. Most significantly, between 2000 and 2002, L.L. Bean opened three retail stores in shopping malls outside Maine. McCormick viewed these three stores as the first of a chain of stores that would form a new selling channel and enable L.L. Bean to grow. Early results from the three new stores were below expectations; L.L. Bean spent significant time examining its retail store activities in an attempt to learn where it could improve. As the company began to apply those lessons in the stores, performance picked up, fueling McCormick's optimism that L.L. Bean could grow with retail stores.

Analysis of an interview with Red Auerbach, HBR No. 87201. Alan M. Webber, who conducted the interview, probed for the lessons that Auerbach has learned from a long and productive career coaching and managing the Boston Celtics, a professional basketball team in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The HBR article is used as a surrogate for a customer interview, providing the "raw data" for an analysis technique known as the trademarked Language Processing (LP) methodology, developed by professor Shoji Shiba of Tsukuba University and the member companies of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Center for Quality of Management. Includes color exhibits.