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The CEO of a Toronto-based toy company is trying to decide whom to hire for a critical position in its Asia division. He has two strong candidates: a Chinese-American woman with little on-the-ground experience in Asia, and a white Texas-born man who has spent his entire career in Hong Kong and is fluent in Mandarin. The company's board expects the CEO to prioritize diversity. This fictional case study by David S. Lee features expert commentary by Daisy Auger-Dominguez and Yuting Wang.

A renowned corporate transformation expert describes the key elements of his Rapid Transformation Framework, which has been embraced by the likes of Amazon, Intel and President Barak Obama. In a wide-ranging interview, he argues that the biggest obstacle to change in any organization is mindset - both the leadership mindset and the mindset of employees. Transformation cannot succeed, he argues, without engaging company insiders and focusing on two things: inside-out alignment (i.e. having the mission resonate with insiders) and outside-in alignment (being completely obsessed with your customers.) Once embraced these principles make change incredibly empowering, not something to be feared, he says. That's because they promote growth - for both individuals and organizations.

Most people believe that business competition takes place between companies: Boeing vs. Airbus; GM vs. Toyota; and Amazon vs. Google. But the author argues that there is a better way to think about competition: It happens at the front line more so than at head office. Customers choose between products and services that hold the potential to meet their needs; and they have a limited amount of concern for who brings that product or service to their front line-let alone the layers between the product on the shelf and where and by whom it is made. He discusses four outcomes that must be addressed in every business strategy today, including 'the layers you should drop' and 'the products and services you should add.' In the end he provides a strong argument for proactively structuring corporate strategy from the front line back.

A great transformation of human life is underway that will soon determine everything from how we treat disease to how we nourish ourselves and fight climate change. That according to the authors, who describe possible scenarios for incorporating biological innovation into organizations. If they pan out, the resulting impacts will be world-changing indeed: beating cancer, embracing biofuels at scale and the end of traditional meat farming, to name a few. And the scenarios they describe, they say, are only the tip of the iceberg.

Leadership is increasingly challenging in the Digital Age. Technologies have accelerated the blurring of boundaries between work and home as well as the boundary between shareholders and stakeholders. And within these blurred boundaries, leadership is further complicated by 'context collapse': The near impossibility in a social media era of credibly managing separate identities with colleagues, family and friends. The authors provide a roadmap for navigating these challenges and share principles for governing online behaviour and addressing context collapse.

Due to technological change, leaders and the organizations they run have no choice but to embrace perpetual transformation. In this environment, evolving the business model is an ongoing process that demands close attention to the customer and their 'jobs to be done'. Traditionally, start-ups have focused on this via Lean Start-up Methodology; but today, every organization must adopt this focus. The author, a Silicon Valley veteran, describes a new framework-the Jobs-to-be-Done Market Definition Canvas, which makes needs discovery faster-and reliably leads to market success.

While few people think about it, underlying every application of computers in organizations today is math, calculated using binary digits or 'bits.' The original computers of the 1950s could perform about 465 multiplications per second, and today's computers are billions of times faster. However, there is an important class of arithmetic problems that remain out of reach for classical computers: Large-scale 'combinatorics' calculations. Combinatorics problems ask the question, 'How many ways can this set of objects be combined?' Such problems can also ask whether a certain combination is possible, or what combinations of objects are 'best' by some defined metric. The authors argue that a surprising number of practical organizational problems can be viewed as combinatorics problems and describe how fields from finance to chemical engineering and cybersecurity will be impacted by the emergence of quantum computers.

In light of the current challenges the world faces, every one of us must be prepared to take action amidst uncertainty. The author-Executive Director of the Stanford d.school-argues that tools from the realm of Design offer methods for dealing with an ever-changing world. She shows that thinking and learning like a designer can be tremendously Powerful, but that in today's world, success is never about a single approach or moment of insight. She shares three methods that will help leaders thrive in this challenging environment-and shape the world for the better: stakeholder mapping, engaging your inner ethicist, and the Futures Wheel. All are intended to create lively conversations, much like the diverse voices every organization needs.

In recent years, leaders have had to tackle global challenges that even the most forward-thinking among them could never have fathomed. As a result, organizations once resistant to change have had no choice but to transform. Based on Accenture research, the author argues that six signals stand out as being essential to the future success of organizations. All present opportunities - and incentives - to embrace change and find new ways to grow and evolve.

The sales of various drug products for AstraZeneca, a multinational pharmaceutical company, have been greatly impacted by the volume-based procurement resulting from the medical reform in China. Meanwhile, the Covid-19 epidemic has catapulted the internet pharmaceutical industry into rapid development. When crises are intermingled with opportunities, AstraZeneca attempted to establish Yiliyili.com, an internet medical service platform, by leveraging its offline resources. Chen Hua, the CEO of Yiliyili.com, has 14 years of experience in pharmaceutical e-commerce and has set up an innovative "doctors-to-pharmaceuticals" model in contrast to the mainstream that runs otherwise. This model was created through collaboration with doctors from contracted offline hospitals who were engaged online. The goal was to establish a stable and active group of doctor users while providing them with empowerment and supporting services. The objective was to replicate existing doctor-patient relationships in an online setting. Meanwhile, it has extended services in physical medical and pharmaceutical products to value-additive services such as case management and compliance-related services for patients. It has also extended the provision of prescription drugs other than essential drugs at non-public offline hospitals according to patients' needs to enhance its marketing abilities for such drugs. Furthermore, it has used its marketing capacity for prescription drugs to establish cooperation with other medical appliance manufacturers to form an integrated marketing platform through which it could average down its fixed costs for maintaining a huge marketing team while better-utilizing marketing capacities. Can Yiliyili.com gain a competitive edge over its traditional competitors by implementing a service-heavy strategy and utilizing its offline strengths to outperform its online advantages? Will it be able to establish itself as a top-notch provider of exceptional and cost-effective

In 2014, Merrick Pet Care saw an opportunity to enter the oral pet care category by introducing dental brushes for dogs. Although its close connections with retailers allowed the company to place the product on the shelves, the product sales were lackluster, and the initial entry was deemed unsuccessful. The brand had to decide whether or not to continue devoting resources to the oral pet care category. If the answer was yes, the company had to find out how to succeed in the face of the initial unsuccessful launch.

The case describes the founding, development, and scaling of Antler, an early-stage investment platform that invests in entrepreneurs pre-team and, in many cases, even pre-idea. The case explores the economics of venture capital investing at such an early stage and the various challenges and opportunities to build a platform that not only systematically selects the right founders, but also allows them to build teams and access resources needed to succeed. The case allows for a detailed look at these issues through the lens of two founding teams that were selected for Antler's early-stage investment programs but have very different assessed quantitative and qualitative factors that may impact their future success. Through analyzing these two opportunities for Antler, important issues are surfaced in how to combine analytics with human judgment as Antler's senior leadership looks to scale their investment platform both in terms of number of founding teams and across multiple countries.

In May 2021, Claire Reid, the founder of social enterprise start-up Reel Gardening, spoke about her ambitious ten-year plan to help secure nutritious food for impoverished people in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. Reel Gardening produced and sold a paper strip packed with seeds and fertilizer. Although the company had grown significantly, it had to manage the dual mission of social contribution and financial sustainability. The company had to determine whether expansion would shift it away from its social mission. Should Reid pursue an ambitious growth strategy, or should she keep the company small, grow it slowly, and focus on the larger social impact? Going forward, how should the company manage its growth, both strategically and financially?

On January 4, 2021, Mike Patriquin was contemplating the tumultuous year of 2020 and the impact it had had on operations at Hell's Basement Brewery (HBB), the first brewery to open in Medicine Hat, Alberta, since the early 1900s. Recent events both within and outside the brewery had affected his business. Management had recently restructured financially after buying out some of the original partners, and the remaining owners and management were still dealing with the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The brewery had also had some unexpected media coverage. Patriquin was considering the next steps for HBB given the volatile nature of the industry in these unprecedented times.

Dr. Jay Jayson, an orthodontist, had recently completed renovating the waiting area of his office and now needed to decide whether he should also renovate the treatment areas. He considered the advantages and disadvantages of his current clinic setup: he thought that the reception environment was comfortable, and that the patients felt confident in the treatment and process, but he was concerned about the impact on patients of any delays in care. He also realized that he had one new patient consultation room that could be pulled into service as a treatment chair. Would hiring more registered dental assistants help him treat more patients? Was there another way to see more patients without renovating the office?

Fast Retailing Co. Ltd.'s UNIQLO brand (UNIQLO) was planning to relaunch +J, its collaboration with the legendary high-end designer Jil Sander in the fall of 2020; however, the COVID-19 pandemic began in March of that year, causing many consumers to spend less on clothes and more on essentials. Just like the first launch of the +J collection in 2009, this launch would once again happen during a global recession. The affordable street fashion brand faced a challenging decision regarding whether to reintroduce the higher-priced collaboration brand amidst this unprecedented situation.

"Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The case identifies six distinct phases in the evolution of women's opportunities and barriers as well as attitudes toward professional women. It explores when and how concepts like equal pay for equal work, sexual harassment, female leadership, and the 'mommy track' influenced organizational approaches to hiring and promoting women. Ultimately, it accounts for tremendous progress made in women's status in the workplace but notes that gender parity has not yet been achieved. What will it take for gender gaps to close as the 21st century continues?

This case is the first of a three-part series that follows the managerial, strategic, and communication decisions of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) or Clean India Mission, the flagship program of the Government of India to eliminate the practice of open defecation (i.e., not using a toilet) from 2014 to 2019. As of 2014, 550 million people in India practiced open defecation. This problem posed a massive public health hazard and economic drag for the country. Written from an insider's perspective, the cases center on the decisions made by a new Secretary of India's Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, who was hired to implement the SBM - focused on changing the behaviour of over 500 million people from open defecation to the usage of toilets. Case A sets the stage for addressing open defecation in rural India and discusses the human resources and strategic challenges to implementing SBM from the vantage point of the new Secretary. It ends with strategic dilemmas related to what the new SBM team should do once they had sized up the challenges to eliminating open defecation by 2019. The case provides an opportunity to deliberate the managerial and strategic decisions of a globally relevant public behaviour change and rural infrastructure development program as well as different forms of public sector implementation in the Indian context.

This case is the first of a three-part series that follows the managerial, strategic, and communication decisions of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) or Clean India Mission, the flagship program of the Government of India to eliminate the practice of open defecation (i.e., not using a toilet) from 2014 to 2019. As of 2014, 550 million people in India practiced open defecation. This problem posed a massive public health hazard and economic drag for the country. Written from an insider's perspective, the cases center on the decisions made by a new Secretary of India's Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, who was hired to implement the SBM - focused on changing the behaviour of over 500 million people from open defecation to the usage of toilets. Case B discusses the start-up challenges for SBM, including implementation in India's complex federal system, workplace culture, and the deep-rooted behaviour of open defecation in rural India and the managerial and communication strategies formulated to address them. The case concludes by framing the difficulties and challenges faced by the mission as it got scaled up.