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In 2005, when Souq.com was founded, the Middle East had tremendous potential for e-commerce: Its total population was more than 350 million, half of whom were younger than 25. But the region was highly fragmented in terms of laws and customs, logistics, and payment infrastructure. Mouchawar tells how Souq grew from auction website to B2C-only business by enabling alternative payment methods and managing delivery in a region where basic logistics systems were still evolving. The largest e-commerce provider in the Middle East today, Souq operates in seven countries representing more than 135 million people--and it was recently acquired by Amazon.

By assigning people to multiple teams at once, organizations can make more-efficient use of time and brainpower and do a better job of solving complex problems and sharing knowledge across groups. But competing priorities and other conflicts can make it hard for teams with overlapping membership to stay on track. Group cohesion often suffers, and people serving on several teams concurrently may experience burnout. Through extensive research and consulting, the authors have identified several ways that both team and organizational leaders can reduce the costs of multiteaming and better capitalize on its advantages. Team leaders should launch the team well to establish trust and familiarity, map every member's skills, carefully manage time across teams, and boost motivation by emphasizing opportunities to learn. Organizational leaders should focus on mapping and analyzing patterns of team overlap, promoting knowledge flows among teams, and buffering teams against shocks. All this represents a significant investment of time and effort. But organizations pay a much higher price when they neglect the costs of multiteaming in hot pursuit of its benefits.

Numerous studies show that close to two-thirds of U.S. employees are bored, detached, or jaded and ready to sabotage plans, projects, and other people. Why so much unhappiness among professionals who have the capacity to shape their work lives? The author highlights three of the most common reasons--ambition, doing what's expected of us, and overwork--which seem productive on the surface but are harmful when taken to the extreme. To break free of these "happiness traps," you first have to accept that you deserve happiness at work. Then you can use your emotional intelligence--particularly emotional self-awareness, emotional self-control, and organizational awareness--to understand which trap has ensnared you. Finally, you must actively seek meaning and purpose in day-to-day activities, foster hope in yourself and others, and build friendships at work.

In the fast-moving digital world, even experts have a hard time assessing new ideas. Case in point: At Bing a small headline change an employee proposed was deemed a low priority and shelved for months until one engineer decided to do a quick online controlled experiment--an A/B test--to try it out. The test showed that the change increased revenue by an astonishing 12%. It ended up being the best revenue-generating idea Bing ever had, worth $100 million. That experience illustrates why it's critical to adopt an "experiment with everything" approach, say Kohavi, the head of the Analysis & Experimentation team at Microsoft, and Thomke, an HBS professor. In this article they describe how to properly design and execute A/B and other controlled tests, ensure their integrity, interpret results, and avoid pitfalls. They argue that if a company sets up the right infrastructure and software, it will be able to evaluate ideas not only for improving websites but also for new business models, products, strategies, and marketing campaigns--all relatively inexpensively. This will help it find the right path forward, especially when answers aren't obvious or people have conflicting opinions.

A small number of digital superpowers--Alibaba, Amazon, Microsoft, and others--have become "hub firms" because they control access to billions of mobile customers coveted by all kinds of product and service providers. These hubs drive increasing returns to scale and claim a disproportionate share of the value being created in the global economy. The authors argue that the hub economy will continue to spread across more industries, concentrating more power in the hands of a few. As an example, they take an in-depth look at the auto industry and how Apple and Alphabet/Google are poised to become the main beneficiaries as cars turn into digitally connected spaces for work, entertainment, and shopping. As hubs proliferate and expand their reach, the danger is that they will exacerbate economic inequality and threaten social stability. It is thus incumbent on all stakeholders--traditional companies, start-ups, institutions, and communities--to make certain changes in the ways they do business. Moreover, hub firms themselves must lead responsibly for the good of all, not just creating and capturing value but doing more to sustain other players in the ecosystem.

Consumers increasingly expect brands to have a social purpose beyond mere functional benefits. As a result, companies are taking social stands in very visible ways. For example, TOMS's one-for-one program donates shoes and other goods for every product the company sells. Such programs can benefit society and the brand, but they may fizzle or actually harm the company if they're not carefully managed. (Recall Starbucks's widely mocked Race Together campaign.) Marketing professors Vila and Bharadwaj have developed an approach they call "competing on social purpose," which ties a brand's most ambitious social aspirations to its most pressing growth needs. An effective strategy creates value by strengthening a brand's key attributes or building new adjacencies. At the same time, it mitigates the risk of negative associations and threats to stakeholder acceptance. In order to create value for all stakeholders--customers, the company, shareholders, and society at large--managers must integrate considered acts of generosity with the strategic pursuit of brand goals.

Most companies struggle with setting executive performance targets. From 2006 to 2014, almost all of the 1,000 largest U.S. firms completely changed their CEOs' performance metrics at least once, and almost 60% changed them multiple times. The problems with such targets are well known: They often encourage managers to sacrifice a firm's long-term health or to manipulate their numbers in order to make their bonuses. What companies need is an incentive structure that makes it easier to meet targets by creating real value than by gaming the system. New research analyzing data from more than 900 firms over 15 years suggests companies can create one by following these four principles: Use multiple metrics; increase payouts at a constant rate; reward relative performance; and include nonfinancial targets.

Private philanthropists have helped propel some of the most important social-impact success stories of the past century: Virtually eradicating polio globally. Ending apartheid in South Africa. Creating a universal 911 service in the United States. These efforts have transformed or saved hundreds of millions of lives. That we take them for granted now makes them no less astonishing: They were the inconceivable moon shots of their day before they were inevitable success stories in retrospect. Today's donors aspire to similarly audacious outcomes, but despite having written big checks for years, many aren't seeing transformative results. A study of 15 breakthrough initiatives, ranging from broad access to end-of-life hospice care to the widespread use of a lifesaving oral rehydration solution in Bangladesh, revealed five shared elements that may help philanthropists improve the odds of swing-for-the-fences success. Effective initiatives: Build a shared understanding of the problem and its ecosystem; set concrete and compelling "winnable milestones"; design approaches that work at massive scale; drive demand; and embrace course corrections.

Business schools teach MBA students that you can't compete on the basis of management processes because they're easily copied. Operational effectiveness is table stakes in the competitive universe, according to the strategists. But data from a decade-long research project involving 12,000 firms challenges that thinking. The study examined how well companies performed 18 core management practices. It found vast differences in how they execute basic tasks like setting targets, running operations, and grooming talent, and that those differences matter: Firms with strong managerial processes do significantly better on high-level metrics such as profitability, growth, and productivity. What's more, the differences in process quality persist over time, suggesting that competent management is not easy to imitate. In this article the authors review the findings of the research and explore what prevents executives from investing in management capabilities, arguing that such investments are a powerful way to become more competitive.

The idea that management is a hard science, which MBA programs have promoted for the past six decades, has become even more entrenched in the era of big data. But a scientific approach has its limits, say Martin, the coauthor of the best-seller "Playing to Win," and consultant Golsby-Smith. In fact, overreliance on scientific analysis tends to narrow strategic options and shut down innovation. That's because it's designed to understand natural phenomena that cannot be changed. It's not an effective way to evaluate possibilities--things that do not yet exist. The two authors offer an alternative approach to strategy making and innovation that relies on imagination, experimentation, and communication. To make decisions about what could be, managers should devise narratives about possible futures, using the storytelling tools first proposed by Aristotle (who ironically also originated the scientific method). If executives then hypothesize what would have to be true for those narratives to happen and validate their hypotheses through prototyping, they can determine which narrative has the most compelling chance of success.

Two decades ago the psychologists Robert and Joyce Hogan created an inventory of 11 qualities, ranging from excitable to dutiful, that when taken to the extreme, resemble the most common personality disorders. Subsequent profiling of millions of employees, managers, and leaders reveals that most people display at least three of these "dark side" traits, and about 40% score high enough on one or two to put them at risk for career disruption. For example, being excitable may help you display passion and enthusiasm to coworkers and subordinates, but it can also make you volatile and unpredictable. Having a deeply skeptical, cynical outlook makes it hard to build trust. And diligence, in excess, can morph into procrastination and obsessive perfectionism. The author discusses the individual traits and suggests how to manage them, which involves identifying the ones that trip you up, modifying some of your behaviors, and continuing to adjust in response to critical feedback. In the process, you can greatly enhance your reputation, your career, and your leadership potential.

The new CMO of an extreme-race company is on the hook to come up with a way to further monetize the underexploited brand while also fixing customer pain points related to the registration process. She and the COO propose a premium membership that allows die-hard fans to buy early access to race registration, but tests on social media reveal strong animosity toward the program among some racers. Should the company pull the plug or move forward, potentially upsetting the company's most loyal customers? This fictional case study features expert commentary by Michael Bolingbroke and Huib van Bockel.

The TV host and former football star on leading people and making the leap to a successful second act.

The new CMO of an extreme-race company is on the hook to come up with a way to further monetize the underexploited brand while also fixing customer pain points related to the registration process. She and the COO propose a premium membership that allows die-hard fans to buy early access to race registration, but tests on social media reveal strong animosity toward the program among some racers. Should the company pull the plug or move forward, potentially upsetting the company's most loyal customers? This fictional case study features expert commentary by Michael Bolingbroke and Huib van Bockel.

The new CMO of an extreme-race company is on the hook to come up with a way to further monetize the underexploited brand while also fixing customer pain points related to the registration process. She and the COO propose a premium membership that allows die-hard fans to buy early access to race registration, but tests on social media reveal strong animosity toward the program among some racers. Should the company pull the plug or move forward, potentially upsetting the company's most loyal customers? This fictional case study features expert commentary by Michael Bolingbroke and Huib van Bockel.

In May 2012, the director of human resources at Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited was involved in negotiating a long-term collective agreement between management and the unions at the large public-sector oil corporation in India. The negotiations had begun in 2009 and were stalled largely because of wage issues. Due to time-bound promotions and open-ended pay ranges, workers' salaries had spiralled out of control. When economic conditions changed from an administered price mechanism with government subsidies to one in which the corporation was expected to compete with national and multinational private-sector companies, the issue of high operating costs had to be addressed. After 13 rounds of discussions, there was still no agreement. The management team needed to decide which of the issues originally identified were essential for resolution and which were only desirable. The team also had to decide how to approach the negotiation in order to secure agreement from the unions.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product W17585.

The case intends to introduce the reader to a disruption in the Indian FMCG industry. A single new entrant, Patanjali entered the FMCG industry in 2006, combating incumbents and attacking them on all fronts. Within a short span of time, it was able to produce results and exceed industry expectations. The case starts with the evolution story of Dabur, the world's largest Ayurvedic and natural healthcare company. It indicates the major milestones of the company and how it has been able to combat all sorts of threats but retain the top spot in many of the segments it operates in, over the years. The case then discusses a potential threat to Dabur from the new entrant, Patanjali. Building on its Ayurveda brand, Patanjali launched a foray of FMCG products and, drastically reduced prices. Using the power of a Yoga guru that made the product so widely accepted among the Indian masses, Patanjali is threatening every FMCG giant in the country. The case then goes on to depict how Patanjali seems to have gone on a direct frontal attack against all existing big players. The case is written from the perspective of Dabur to understand the nature of competition it faces from Patanjali.

"What are the nuances that link brand positioning, brand associations and brand equity related aspects of a brand performing successfully in the market?" especially in an emerging market such as India is a question that triggers many approaches among academics and practitioners. Head &Shoulders brand from Procter and Gamble is a multinational brand that had grown rapidly in the Indian context after displacing a well-entrenched brand of shampoo. The brand's effective positioning had struck a chord with consumers and had sustained its success over a period of time. With several competitive brands entering the well-advertised category of shampoos, the brand manager for Head &Shoulders felt that its positioning though effective cannot last forever and wanted to find out if the brand's positioning could be strengthened. Besides the analysis of thr regular brand positioning strategies, the company felt that a study on consumer behavior could provide useful pointers to the alternatives of brand positioning with respect to Head &Shoulders when studied with its competitive brands. The results of the study provided interesting but challenging results that made brand repositioning more complex than what the brand manager had assessed. The case study highlights the importance of consumer behavior when brands decide to reposition themselves in a dynamic environment. Furthermore, the case also draws on the implications of brand positioning and consumer behavior on the qualitative dimensions of brand equity.

Parvesh Dabuka, Head of Marketing, Paper Boat brand of soft drink was thinking about the success of the niche brand that was positioned on nostalgia and ethnic taste. This thought had two aspects, one that was not uncommon and the other a different manner of looking at brand positioning. As a brand manager of a successful brand, like any other brand manager, he was concerned about sustaining the success of the brand: he had also thought that he should look at the brand positioning of Paper Boat through the lens of consumer behavior aspects. There were a number of questions in his mind: Was the success of Paper Boat because of its ethnic and nostalgic positioning or was it because of the novelty of picking up a different proposition. Both were different aspects. The novelty of brand positioning may wean off after sometime if consumers are not committed to the brand for what it stands for. Given the rapid strides made by the competitors of Paper Boat, would consumers be more interested in the functional benefits of the brand? Do consumers experience the brand (Paper Boat) based on its ingredients? Was Paper Boat associated with consumers at the level of their self-concept? Parvesh knew that he was getting at the positioning of Paper Boat through several aspects of how consumers expressed their behavior and at the same time wondered if a category such as soft drinks generally associated with fun and frolic may appeal to the consumers on anything other than nutritive benefits or fun? Further, if consumers wanted a new association with Paper Boat, how can the brand steer away from its existing associations toward a new set of associations? He seemed to have an endless array of thoughts linked to brand positioning and repositioning. The case study explores several contemporary aspects of consumer behavior in the backdrop of the usual brand positioning efforts.