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Alibaba is not a retailer in the traditional sense. It doesn't source or keep stock, and logistics services are carried out by third-party providers. Instead, Alibaba is what you get if you take all the functions associated with retail and coordinate them online into a sprawling, data-driven network of sellers, marketers, service providers, logistics companies, and manufacturers. Indeed, Alibaba does what Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Google, FedEx, all of the wholesalers, and a good portion of manufacturers in the U.S. do, with a healthy helping of financial services for garnish. Alibaba achieves this by leveraging the new technologies of network coordination and data intelligence. It harnesses the efforts of thousands of Chinese businesses to create an ecosystem that is faster, smarter, and more efficient than traditional business infrastructures. This is an emerging business model that Ming Zeng, the chair of Alibaba's Academic Council, calls smart business. Players in the ecosystem share data and apply machine-learning technology to identify and better fulfill consumer needs. This article provides a framework for transforming a company into a smart business.

Grit, a combination of passion and perseverance, predicts success in many demanding fields. A perfect example is health care, where the grit of individual doctors and nurses has saved many lives. But today providing superior care is so complex that no lone practitioner can do it all. Great care requires gritty teams that never stop striving for improvement and institutions that exhibit grit across entire systems of providers. In this article Duckworth, the author of the best seller Grit, and Lee, a clinician and health care leader, describe health care's new model of organizational grit. It begins with hiring people with grit--who love what they do, always want to get better, and are resilient in the face of setbacks. Their single-minded determination stems from a clear personal-goal hierarchy, in which shorter-term objectives support a top-level goal that gives direction to everything they do. To be gritty, organizations must have a similar clarity about priorities, and their top-level goal and their employees' must be aligned. If everyone is pursuing a separate passion, a culture won't be gritty. The gritty health care organizations the authors have seen (such as Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic) all make "putting patients first" their overarching goal and use it to guide every decision. They also work to cultivate grit by, for example, setting high expectations; offering the resources, support, and trust people need to keep learning and growing; and establishing strong social norms that promote their top-level goal. While the objectives of organizations in other sectors may differ, they can apply the principles the authors outline here to become gritty, too.

Companies often crimp profits by using discounts to attract price-sensitive customers and by failing to give high-end customers reasons to spend more. A multitiered offering can use a stripped-down product (the "Good" option) to attract new customers, the existing product ("Better") to keep current customers happy, and a feature-laden premium version ("Best") to increase spending by customers who want more. There's nothing new about this concept, of course--think of the different grades of fuel at any gas station and the varying packages marketed by cable TV providers, to name just two examples--yet many companies and industries have failed to embrace it. The author, a consultant who has helped many organizations adopt G-B-B pricing, presents a step-by-step guide to devising, testing, and launching the strategy. Key steps include identifying "fence" attributes that will prevent current customers from trading down from the existing offering; carefully choosing features and names to create clear differentiation and value; and setting prices using feedback from in-house experts and, when possible, drawing on conjoint analysis and other market research.

When we experience a setback at work, we tend to either become defensive and blame others, or berate ourselves. Neither response is helpful. Shirking responsibility by getting defensive may alleviate the sting of failure, but it comes at the expense of learning. Self-flagellation, on the other hand, may feel warranted in the moment, but it can lead to an inaccurately gloomy assessment of one's potential, which undermines personal development. Research shows that we should respond instead with self-compassion. People who do this tend to demonstrate three behaviors: First, they are kind rather than judgmental about their own failures and mistakes; second, they recognize that failures are a shared human experience; and third, they take a balanced approach to negative emotions when they stumble or fall short--they allow themselves to feel bad, but they don't let negative emotions take over. Self-compassion boosts performance by triggering the "growth mindset"--the belief that improvement is achievable through dedication and hard work. It also helps us connect with a more authentic self.

Although experts recommend eight hours of sleep a night, many of us don't get that. A recent study of leaders across the world found that 42% average six hours of shut-eye or less. Insufficient rest leads to poor judgment, lack of self-control, and impaired creativity. And the author's research shows that sleep-deprived bosses hurt their teams along with themselves: They are more likely to mistreat employees and create a workplace where people feel less engaged and may even behave less ethically. Fortunately, there are ways to get more and better rest. These include sticking to a regular bedtime and wake-up time; avoiding caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and screen time before bed; tracking your sleep patterns and adjusting your habits accordingly; getting treatment for sleep disorders; and napping during the workday. If you make sleep a priority, you'll probably be a more productive-and inspiring-leader.

Elena Pelc is the founder and CEO of 2 Proud Pups, a maker of all-natural dog care products. Sales are good, but revenues have plateaued at about $1 million annually. Plus she's pregnant with her first child. She must decide whether to sell the company--which would give her more time with her family and help her start-up grow--or hire a new CEO and continue to exert some control over its future. With commentary from Candace Leak, the founder and CEO of Loanables.com, and Todd Olson, a cofounder and the CEO of Pendo.

The host of "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central talks about getting that job, managing the transition, what he looks for in new hires, how he avoids burnout, and preparing to go onstage.

Elena Pelc is the founder and CEO of 2 Proud Pups, a maker of all-natural dog care products. Sales are good, but revenues have plateaued at about $1 million annually. Plus she's pregnant with her first child. She must decide whether to sell the company--which would give her more time with her family and help her start-up grow--or hire a new CEO and continue to exert some control over its future. With commentary from Candace Leak, the founder and CEO of Loanables.com, and Todd Olson, a cofounder and the CEO of Pendo.

Elena Pelc is the founder and CEO of 2 Proud Pups, a maker of all-natural dog care products. Sales are good, but revenues have plateaued at about $1 million annually. Plus she's pregnant with her first child. She must decide whether to sell the company--which would give her more time with her family and help her start-up grow--or hire a new CEO and continue to exert some control over its future. With commentary from Candace Leak, the founder and CEO of Loanables.com, and Todd Olson, a cofounder and the CEO of Pendo.

Best-selling author and regular on the Thinkers50 ranking of the world's most influential management thinkers, Daniel Pink discusses why timing is everything. He describes the bi-modal pattern that we all experience each day; the effects of these 'peaks' and 'troughs' on an organization; and why beginnings, mid-points and ends are so important to us. He then provides some practical advice for leaders that incorporates these lessons.

The authors argue that a thriving environment for innovation contains eight characteristics, and that assessing them properly sets the stage for a start-up to flourish. After describing the eight characteristics, they use them to compare Toronto with Silicon Valley as a location for start-ups to thrive. In the end, they show that ignoring the eight factors may lead founders to pick the wrong location, resulting in difficulty attracting the necessary funding, talent, suppliers, partnerships and customers.

Leadership pioneer Peter Drucker once said, "You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first." The authors agree, and they argue that more specifically, leadership starts with your mind. They explain four principles that every leader should know about their mind: You do not control your mind; you are not rational; your mind creates your reality; and you are not your thoughts. The then show how embracing these principles and being mindful leads you on the road to self-awareness, resulting in happiness and strong leadership.

At some point in their careers, most-if not all-executives aspire to become the CEO of their organization. And why not? These individuals tend to be highly ambitious. However, as with most things in life, aspiration is one thing, and execution is another. The author, who has worked closely with CEOs for 30 years as a board director, describes what it takes to be a CEO today. He shows that any would-be CEO must develop four particular 'directional' skills: upwards, downwards, outwards and outside-in, which enable him/her to be a Chief Relationship Officer, Chief Strategic Officer, Chief Communications Officer and Chief External Officer for the organization.

The power of a company with leaders who inspire at every level up and down the organization is hard to overstate. These are the companies that consistently pull off innovative or heroic feats in business because so many of the people who work there are motivated to make them happen. The authors-consultants at Bain and Co.-describe their five-year research study, which uncovered 33 distinct and tangible attributes that are statistically significant in creating inspiration in others. The good news: Having just four of these attributes is sufficient to make someone highly inspiring.

The author, a senior partner with the Boston Consulting Group, set out to answer the question, 'Is strategy still relevant?' He found that not only is it relevant, but doing things in a differentiated way is more important than ever. The trick is to figure out three characteristics of the environment you operate within: unpredictability, malleability and harshness. Ranking a business on these factors leads to one of five strategic approaches: classic strategy; adaptive strategy; the visionary approach; the shaping approach; or strategic renewal. In the end he shows that you can generate value by engaging with each opportunity with the right framing and awareness.

Research indicates that 40 per cent of Americans report feeling anxious during the work day. On the one hand, anxiety can conjure up distressing thoughts and have detrimental effects on performance; but on the other, anxiety can drive actions and have positive effects on performance. The authors set out to create a theory of workplace anxiety that reconciles the positive and negative effects of anxiety, covering dispositional anxiety, situational anxiety, job characteristics and more. Their findings have important implications for personnel selection practices, promotions, goal-setting initiatives and work-life integration programs.

Anti-bias training is extremely popular in Silicon Valley, where tech titans like Facebook and Google mandate it, but a similar trend is on the rise among Fortune 500 corporations. To help root out bias, the authors developed ACE, a framework that codifies employee potential and can be used to analyze bias in assessments of potential. They describe the six elements of the ACE model and go on to provide a three-part strategy for uprooting bias in every organization.

A young, college-aged entrepreneur seeks to launch a business around a set of interactive video games she has designed to help teens experiencing severe anxiety. She considers three possible business models, each of which targets a different customer segment with distinct value propositions, while remaining true to her vision of supporting teens with anxiety disorders. After doing basic research on each, she feels unsure which business model to pursue, and what her next steps should be. The case allows students to examine the process through which entrepreneurs develop and evaluate business models, while also highlighting a critical problem for many start up entrepreneurs - the need for focus. As students determine their recommendations for next steps, they come to understand the importance of the kind of disciplined research entrepreneurs must undertake to test the hypotheses embedded within their incipient business models.

In the fall of 2016, the Pleasant Ridge Habitat for Humanity Second Chance Home Supply (SCHS) store added an assistant manager in order to expand the hours the store was open and increase the store's presence on social media. The store, which sold donated building materials and some household items, was operated to generate funds for the organization's core mission of building homes for those in need in the local area. The case is set in July of 2017. The organization's executive director and the store's manager and assistant manager have reviewed the store's financial performance and discovered that both the store's sales and contribution to the organization have declined over the past year despite being open significantly longer hours. Students are placed in the shoes of the store's managers and must wrestle with why sales and contribution have declined and what they should do in response.

Student spreadsheet for case NA0554