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Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are among the least mature and most vulnerable in terms of their cybersecurity risk and resilience. In this article, we describe a methodology developed using the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) as a starting point. The NIST CSF does not meet all the needs of the SME IT leader, but it offers a solid foundation for a useful evaluation and recommendation methodology. We propose an SME cybersecurity evaluation tool (CET) that consists of a 35-question online survey to be completed by IT leaders to self-rate their maturity within the five NIST framework categories: identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. We outline this approach to cybersecurity risk management before discussing its effectiveness and implications for practitioners.

Crowdfunding has proliferated over the past decade, creating various platforms on which new entrepreneurs signal their value to potential backers in order to attract funding. The boons of crowdfunding have blinded both practitioners and scholars alike, leaving potential negative unintended consequences underexplored. Copycats, for example, are a potential problem for crowdfunding ventures. In this article, we examine the consequences of signaling to these ill-intentioned, opportunistic audiences on crowdfunding platforms and propose a solution to aid novice entrepreneurs in making a more informed decision on platform selection. Specifically, we provide guidance on when to select an open, semi-open, or closed crowdfunding platform to reduce the impact of copycats. We conclude with prescriptive advice to novice entrepreneurs.

Globalization, advances in technology, and shifting consumer preferences affect almost everyone. Because of pressures from the external environment, organizations face rapid and constant change. The nature of work has been complicated; it is difficult for individuals to achieve much on their own. Consequently, organizations rely heavily on expert, innovative work teams. These highly evolved teams do not develop overnight; rather, they evolve and develop in stages, and the team's leadership must change over time. In this article, we present the building blocks of team innovation, outline the internal processes that lie at the core of innovative performance, and provide critical leadership strategies for each stage of team development. We conclude with implications for developing leaders with the capabilities to nurture and build innovative teams.

Challenging business threats and opportunities abound, yet few Renaissance men/women exist to help organizations move forward creatively in response to these challenges. Too much information exists today for a true rebirth to happen. However, self-perpetuating, quasi-renaissance managers might assimilate patterns of thinking and behavior into their professional/personal lives that ultimately make them more intersectional and innovative. Specifically, we point to five habits and three methods managers can implement to lower associative barriers and enhance intersectionality. We then introduce a culling process that helps managers find the few highly creative ideas from larger batches of mediocre ideas, thus enabling enhanced creativity.

Service that falls below customer expectations is framed as a service failure. While many researchers have investigated service failures, they have tended to focus on large service failures. This is likely because large failures are more noticeable by firms and more likely to prompt customer complaints than small failures. However, we argue that smaller service failures can cause as much damage as larger failures, and in some cases even more. We introduce the concept of service microfailures, which we define as instances when a customer's expectations go unmet in some small way. While minor in isolation, repeated service microfailures that go unnoticed and unrecovered can compound in effect and drive customer defection. For this reason, we propose that service microfailures are a potentially much larger managerial problem than they may appear on the surface. In this article, we conceptualize microfailures as a distinct form of service failure and outline the mechanism through which they cause damage. We then develop a multifaceted approach through which managers can detect, repair, and prevent service microfailures.

Organizations are becoming increasingly mindful of their purpose, clarifying their raison d'etre and fulfilling their economic, social, governance, ethical, and environmental responsibilities. One of the drivers for this behavior is stakeholders' interest in purpose-driven organizations committed to creating positive value in society. However, less is known about these stakeholders: who they are, why they care, and how organizations can adapt in response. In this article, we use the theoretical framework of hypermodernity to propose that a specific type of stakeholders, identified as hypermodern individuals, may care about purpose-led, responsible organizations. This article highlights five characteristics of these individuals that may explain why they care, including their desire to contribute to a humane and caring world and their love for experiential consumption. Furthermore, we offer recommendations for managers on how to create actionable strategies to implement and communicate purpose and corporate social responsibility to this stakeholder group.

Verge Capital was a social finance organization in London, Ontario, that connected local aspiring entrepreneurs with funds that would support initiatives with societal or environmental missions that benefited local communities. In 2019, the social finance manager at Verge Capital had to recommend one of two social impact business proposals that the organization should fund a CA$30,000 loan to. The two options were (1) Sri Lankan Foods, which operated a Sri Lankan restaurant, a catering business, and a granola production facility that provided short-term employment opportunities for newcomers to Canada, and (2) Material Impact, which collected and resold used textbooks to fund donations of books and learning materials to South American universities. While both businesses aligned with Verge Capital's mandate, the social finance manager needed to choose just one. He wondered how sustainable the businesses were and what criteria Verge Capital should consider before investing.

Student spreadsheet supplement to case W20583

Student spreadsheet to case UV8100

Karen Bruck, Corporate Sales Director at MercadoLibre, Latin America's largest e-commerce platform, needs to make a decision about one of her managers, who, while analytically savvy, has an approach that does not fit in with the company's culture.

Irfhan Rawji (MBA 2004) launched MobSquad in October 2018 to help American tech start-ups retain hard-to-find talent, many of whom struggled with U.S. work visa issues, such as software engineers with experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning, or data science. MobSquad also helped companies fill open roles by tapping into its database of pre-vetted foreign tech workers. While there was growing demand for these specialists, the talent supply in the U.S. was relatively constrained and American companies often filled positions with foreign-born workers using a temporary visa called the H-1B. However, U.S. President Donald Trump temporarily suspended immigration in June 2020, including foreign workers on an H-1B visa during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rawji contemplated what kind of impact this would have on MobSquad and the tech industry in Canada. There was already evidence that a growing number of foreign tech workers were choosing Canada over the U.S. due to Trump's immigration policies. Now Rawji suspected that Trump's latest move would further accelerate this trend, and he wanted MobSquad to be ready to help companies and workers who had been counting on the H-1B.

On May 4, 2020, a press release from Boston, Massachusetts, announced the launch of Oxygen Esports (Oxygen), a new organization that hoped to dominate the rising esports scene in New England. Oxygen was created from a merger between Helix eSports (Helix), an owner and operator of gaming and virtual reality (VR) outlets throughout the United States, and Team Genji, an esports organization with two lines of business: esports teams competing in Hearthstone and Magic: The Gathering Arena; and a talent analytics and scouting business called Genji Insights. The new entity also acquired professional rosters from Team Reciprocity and in the free agent market, positioning Oxygen to compete in six top esports. William Collis (HBS MBA, 2011), co-founder of Team Genji and Genji Insights, had played a key role in formulating Oxygen's strategy prior to launch. Collis had decided not to compete in leagues with a "hard franchise" model, where teams paid the game publishers a large up-front sum for permanent league status. Instead, Oxygen would join leagues where teams often paid little or no upfront fees for similar benefits, and where publishers exerted less control over the leagues. Moreover, Collis was focused on building regional, rather than global, teams. Did this make sense? What else might Oxygen do in pursuit of their mission "to build a sustainable esports ecosystem for gamers of every skill level"?

A consultant experienced in developing predictive models for his clients to improve business operations, Everett Blake, was working with the Richardson Eye Care and Surgery Center (RECSC), which wanted to explore ways to improve its no-show rate, classifying a "no-show" as an appointment not kept without 24-hours' notice. After running variables through an XGBoost model, Blake's company had identified predictive variables, which included age and gender. However, Blake was uncomfortable with these two variables, fearing that, if they were used to identify potential no-shows (and consequently not get follow-up calls about their appointments in the future), this could be considered discriminatory and might lead to a different quality of care for different groups of patients. With this in mind, Blake had to decide what his recommendation to RECSC should be.

In 2018, Toyota Tsusho South Pacific Holdings, the leading automotive company in the South Pacific, was celebrating its 20th anniversary. The company, which operated a network of 27 dealerships through subsidiary companies in seven island nations, had been through a number of dramatic changes since its origins in the 19th century, and its Brisbane, Australia, office had transitioned from its early role as a corporate head office with 15 employees to become the regional headquarters for Toyota Tsusho Corporation, one of 17 major Toyota Group companies. In early July 2018, a new managing director was selected. Among his many duties, he would need to review the steps taken to date in transforming the Brisbane office and determine the appropriate steps to take in the future. Were any changes were required in the relationship between the regional headquarters and the island subsidiaries?

This case presents a situation faced by Tony Douglas, CEO of Etihad Airways, a government-owned, full-service airline. It is February 6, 2020, and Douglas is reviewing the progress he has made in turning Etihad around and charting a direction for its future. The key strategic options are: 1) Contracting and turning Etihad into a regional airline, 2) reshaping Etihad as a low-cost carrier (LCC), or 3) continuing to operate Etihad as a full-service, internationally-focused airline. Additionally, the company could form an alliance with its closest competitor, Emirates Airline. Created in 2003 with a mandate to operate "safely, commercially, and profitably," Etihad positioned itself as a luxurious airline and pursued aggressive internationalization and growth. It was the second national airline in United Arab Emirates (UAE) after Dubai's Emirates Airline. Etihad's initial strategy was directed by CEO James Hogan, and while the company was profitable for many years, it began incurring losses in 2016. The case provides quantitative and qualitative information to enable students to evaluate Etihad's strategy and performance and make recommendations for its future. This case was the third place winner in WDI Publishing's MENA Case Writing Competition "Doing Business in the Middle East North Africa Region," sponsored by Michigan Ross Executive Education.

This case examines the unique challenges faced by ridesharing company Careem as a business operating in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. The case presents issues related to Careem's growth options after it was acquired by Uber. Protagonist Mudassir Sheikha, Careem co-founder and chief executive officer, has two goals as he decides the company's future direction: 1) providing solutions benefiting Careem's customers, employees, and drivers, and 2) managing a profitable company. The terms of the Uber acquisition dictate Careem will continue to operate as a separate entity, and Sheikha must present Careem's forward-looking strategy to all relevant stakeholders in two weeks. The case addresses issues specific to the MENA region and how they differ from those in the West. Students will examine the opportunities and threats created for Careem in the wake of the Uber acquisition. This case was the first place winner in WDI Publishing's MENA Case Writing Competition "Doing Business in the Middle East North Africa Region," sponsored by Michigan Ross Executive Education.

This case describes how consultant Margaret Huebner successfully updated the human resources (HR) function for the emergent Port of Salalah in the Sultanate of Oman in the early 2000s. The Port was at a promising stage of development when Huebner arrived and aspired to grow into a world-class shipping hub and employer of choice for Oman. However, its HR procedures were barely existent. The Port needed to hire hundreds of new employees, and its rapid growth was outpacing its compensation structure, job design, and communications system. The case provides an overview of the Port's business and workforce and then details the contextual features of the organization and nation, including the country's Omanization efforts to hire and retain local employees in key leadership positions and the role of women in the workforce. The strategic, business-oriented approach Huebner employed can serve as an example of how expatriates can affect organizational change while being respectful of local culture. How can Huebner exit her consulting role while ensuring the programs she built continued to thrive? What key points of concern must she address in terms of continuity and local acceptance? Which programs are most critical for the Port to maintain the organizational changes Huebner helped induce? This case was the second place winner in WDI Publishing's MENA Case Writing Competition "Doing Business in the Middle East North Africa Region," sponsored by Michigan Ross Executive Education.

By May 2014, the bakery of French pastry chef Dominique Ansel had successfully been in operation for two and a half years. During this time, the bakery had gained numerous accolades for its most viral invention-the Cronut, a hybrid between a donut and a croissant. Moving forward, there were opportunities for Ansel's company to expand beyond its current size and location in New York City. Ansel's first option was to raise prices. Because the Cronut sold out every day before noon, the bakery was severely undersupplying the market, which had a huge demand. Ansel's second option was to commercialize the Cronut. Perhaps it would be better to license the recipe to a major coffee chain, which could bring his invention to millions of people. Lastly, Ansel could expand his brand internationally to Asia or Europe. Could Ansel achieve any of these changes without compromising quality over quantity?

Resist pressure from shareholders and others who seek short-term gains. Instead, build compacts with employees, communities, investors, and other stakeholders that will create long-term shareholder value, benefitting all parties.

Hyflux Ltd., a Singapore Exchange (SGX) listed sustainable water and energy solutions company, declared losses for the first time since its listing more than a decade ago, and expressed its inability to service its debt and pay distribution to holders of its perpetual capital securities and perpetual preference shares. These investors were in a state of shock and disbelief when barely 5 months later, in May 2018, Hyflux suspended the trading of its shares on SGX and opted for a court-supervised debt reorganisation process. Where had Hyflux, the erstwhile poster child of Singapore's innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities, erred?