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You have a great idea--a product tweak that will save your company money, a process change to increase your team's productivity, or a plan for heading off a looming crisis. There's just one snag: You're not sure how to approach your boss about it, or worse, you've tried and failed to get the attention of higher-ups. According to the author's research, two factors are key to a successful pitch: having the confidence to make your suggestion and knowing how to frame it to get the best reception from your boss. The key, the author says, is to understand the psychology of higher-ups--to get inside their heads. Doing so can help you recognize what tips the scales in your favor--and identify the (rare) instances when it's best to try to go around or above them. Here's how.

Three years ago, Marjorie Rodriguez founded a company with the goal of supporting the LGBTQ+ community through employment opportunities. Now she needs to decide whether to expand the business, which would require bringing in non-transgender salespeople. That wasn't her original vision for the firm--but would it allow her to have a bigger impact? This fictional case study by Sandeep Puri features expert commentary by Fran Dunaway and Khadijah Tribble.

Four new books on diversity, equity, and inclusion outline how we can move from good intentions to actual change.

The actor, director, and entrepreneur on making choices and taking risks.

Three years ago, Marjorie Rodriguez founded a company with the goal of supporting the LGBTQ+ community through employment opportunities. Now she needs to decide whether to expand the business, which would require bringing in non-transgender salespeople. That wasn't her original vision for the firm--but would it allow her to have a bigger impact? This fictional case study by Sandeep Puri features expert commentary by Fran Dunaway and Khadijah Tribble.

Three years ago, Marjorie Rodriguez founded a company with the goal of supporting the LGBTQ+ community through employment opportunities. Now she needs to decide whether to expand the business, which would require bringing in non-transgender salespeople. That wasn't her original vision for the firm--but would it allow her to have a bigger impact? This fictional case study by Sandeep Puri features expert commentary by Fran Dunaway and Khadijah Tribble.

All innovation begins with the imagination. But before your imagination can be harnessed, it must be ignited. In an excerpt from their book of the same title, the authors argue that three things spark the imagination: accidents, anomalies and analogies. However, for any of these types of surprises to impact us, our minds must be prepared, and that means improving our abilities in three areas: noticing; comprehending; and interpreting. They describe how to develop and improve upon each skill, along the way explaining the importance of paying attention to our frustrations, how to draw analogies and how to immerse ourselves in new worldviews.

Goal-based mission and vision statements have been around for decades and are widely accepted as a required practice for corporations. But as the post-pandemic economy takes shape, that definition of purpose has expanded significantly. The author argues that duty-based purpose - anchored in explicit values -has become critical for organizations to thrive. She describes the three pillars of duty-based purpose: values, social service and stewardship, providing rich examples. She then explains how to marry the goal and duty-based aspects of an organization's purpose. In a world where viruses can paralyze economies, climate change ravages communities, and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, she makes it clear that this expanded conception of purpose must become a foundational aspect of every organization.

We have entered a new era for business in which sustaining competitive advantage requires companies to transform their business models for sustainability. As a result, leaders need a systemic understanding of sustainability challenges-and how their companies can play a part in addressing them. The authors-current and former senior consultants at Boston Consulting Group-introduce the concept of Sustainable Business Model Innovation (SBMI) and the four steps required to achieve it: Expand the business canvas; innovate for resilience; link to drivers of value; and scale the initiative. Many examples of companies large (3M, BASF, PepsiCo) and small (Ajinomoto, Indigo AG, Veolia) that have achieved SBMI are provided throughout. In the end, the authors show that it is not only possible-but increasingly critical-to create social and business value with one business model.

As the world begins to emerge from the global pandemic, a majority of consumers have reimagined their values and purpose. According to research from Accenture, they have made a consequential shift to focusing on what matters most for them in life - and their motivations for buying are, accordingly, meaningfully different. The author, a senior executive at Accenture, shares the firm's findings and shows that these changes reveal an enormous new 'white space' in which brands must differentiate themselves anew in order to survive. He describes four steps to attracting the Reimagined Consumer: eengineer; rethink; reimagine and recalibrate. He makes it clear that evolving their business model is not a choice for organizations, it is an imperative: Consumers will leave brands that don't recognize their new priorities-and will pay more for those that do.

Pre-pandemic, leaders were having lots of conversations about innovation, disruption and digital transformation. But existential challenges over the past two years have forced that conversation to become much broader. In a wide ranging interview, renowned leadership and professional development expert Herminia Ibarra argues that responding to a global pandemic, an environmental crisis and the quest for racial equity demands that leaders shift from being 'know-it-alls' to being 'learn-it-alls'. She describes the five skills requires to thrive in the post-pandemic environment: cross-cutting, collaboration, coaching, culture-shaping and connecting. She also describes how critical it is to foster psychological safety on a team and warns that authenticity-for leaders and their employees-should never be used as an excuse to remain the same over time.

Innovation plays a pivotal role in shaping the economic fabric of nations. In particular, market-creating innovations - which create new markets by democratizing access to previously-exclusive products - have been a vital force for generating prosperity in wealthy countries, and are integral for building a prosperous future for emerging economies. The authors, from the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, argue that in order to create new markets for people who have traditionally been unable to purchase certain products due to barriers such as cost and access, organizations not only need to develop a product that meets these customers' needs, they must also develop a way to get it to them. Having researched 100 companies in 30 countries that created markets between 1706 and 2018, they share six key strategies that enable market creation.

The case focuses on key decisions facing a startup venture BuyHive, that is on the cusp of disintermediating the sourcing business with a new business model. There are a few core issues such as (1) identifying the pros and cons of raising capital from strategic investors who can open doors to large pools of small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) that can be attracted to the platform versus financial investors who typically only bring in the capital, (2) how to monetize the data that the company can access from the platform users, and (3) how to address some of the issues that are central to platforms such as platform disintermediation, network switching, bridging, and multi-homing. The founders have to specifically consider ways in which they can increase scale and stickiness with respect to the platform users as well as its sourcing specialists. The platform was an outcome of radically rethinking the way value was being delivered to buyers seeking to identify manufacturers who could supply to the specifications that the buyers had developed. The giant global sourcing companies and platforms such as Alibaba, Made-in-China, Global Sources among others had typically focused on creating value for the suppliers (manufacturers and their representatives or intermediaries). BuyHive seeks to turn the attention on buyers as their core focus and create a buyer-centric platform. The company has to make decisions on identifying the right type of investors, engineering the platform to create greater buyer value, improve stickiness of the platform, and adopt AI-based algorithms in bringing sourcing experts on board.

The case tells the story of El Ordeño, an Ecuadorian company competing in the dairy sector, whose central purpose is to help small ranchers in the country's Andean (mountainous) region rise out of poverty. To do this, it designed a business model in which they were included as shareholders, received fair payment for their milk and avoid intermediaries by creating their own distribution centers. To better communicate the social impact of this enterprise, and provide more transparency to its supply chain, the company decided to build a blockchain solution, the first of its kind in Ecuador and Latin America. In January 2021, after almost two years since launching the initiative, senior management has to make a decision: Should El Ordeño strengthen or abandon the blockchain technology.

This case revolves around Framberry Congelados S.A. (Framberry), an Osorno, Chile-based, privately held frozen berries produce wholesaler. Framberry was severely affected by the ongoing Covid pandemic that was expected to last for another three to five years. The pandemic directly or indirectly affected every aspect of Framberry's operations and threatened the company's survival unless an effective crisis management plan was formulated and successfully implemented. Framberry's Zonal Manager, Mr. Claudio Tapia, was tasked with designing and executing a comprehensive plan to navigate the company through the complex situation it faced.

This case discusses the launch of a marketing campaign titled "The Barbershop Girls of India" created by Gillette India, a Procter and Gamble company (P&G). Gillette India had been highlighting social issues for many years. Their "Gillette soldier for women" campaign, launched in 2013, is just one example. But this time, they took addressing social issues up a notch by addressing gender stereotypes in Indian society through their "The Barbershop Girls of India" campaign. The case outlines the company's prior efforts in social media platforms leading to the launch of the "The Barbershop Girls of India." The case encourages students to analyze how companies choose social issues to address through their marketing communication campaigns, as well as how marketing communications may be integrated with corporate goals and brand identity. The case concludes with questions about the future of the Gillette India brand, and what type of marketing efforts it should follow in the future.

Exhibits for case TB0658.

Toyota's supply chain, long admired as an industry benchmark for efficiency and effectiveness, was unable to supply critical parts to replenish inventory in its plants pursuant to the global chip shortages that resulted from the general disruption created by the Covid-19 pandemic. During the first quarter of 2021, the delta variant of the virus was spreading across the globe. Southeast Asia, where Toyota sourced many auto components, was particularly hard hit. As demand for automobiles was surging during the second half of 2021, a critical shortage of microchips forced Toyota and other automakers to shut down some of their assembly lines. Set against this backdrop, the case focuses on options that firms might pursue in preparing for black swan events such as Covid-19.

Luisa Mazinter, the CMO of TymeBank in South Africa, was tasked in August 2019 with maintaining the country's first digital bank's rate of customer acquisitions, while increasing the account usage of their existing customers. Six months after the launch, TymeBank had been described as one of the fastest-growing digital banks in the world. Although the brand launch had been successful across a number of measures, Mazinter knew that maintaining this momentum in the coming year would present additional challenges. The dominant major banks were responding by reducing their fees, promoting new digital services and aggressively targeting TymeBank's target market. New entrants also presented a looming threat. The case requires students to identify Mazinter's marketing choices, analyze the emerging market environment, competitive positioning, and existing integrated marketing communications campaign, propose an appropriate allocation of marketing spend for September to December 2019, and recommend how TymeBank needed to evolve its marketing activities into 2020.

In December 2019, Throwback Brewery, a small brewery and farm-to-table restaurant in New Hampshire, had many things working in its favor: a loyal customer base, a strong culture and long-tenured Team Leaders who had helped to make the brewery the success it had become. At the same time, Throwback Brewery struggled with internal issues such as pay disparity among its employees and a lack of effective communication between the owners Nicole and Annette and their employees. To address these issues and keep the company on a growth trajectory, Nicole and Annette wondered if a more formal talent management system was needed to assess staff performance. In hopes of improving upon the company's shortcomings and aligning Throwback Brewery for continued growth and success, Nicole and Annette consider talent management options including a personnel performance appraisal process.