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For years, Walmart's unrivaled customer research capabilities helped it dominate retailing. Then along came the internet, and Walmart suddenly found itself playing catchup to e-commerce pioneers like Amazon. In 2014 the board appointed Doug McMillon as CEO and gave him an imperative: Bring Walmart into the future--without sacrificing its longtime strengths. McMillon, who began his career unloading trucks at a neighborhood Walmart, respects tradition but is impatient for change. In this interview with HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius, he describes the ups and downs of transforming America's largest company. Going digital is a top priority--which is why Walmart recently paid $3 billion to acquire e-tailer Jet.com. But the company also wants to strengthen the in-store experience. "The reality," notes McMillon, "is that customers want everything"--low prices, convenience, and seamless interactions online and in person. In this new world, all employees, including those on the sales floor, will need to be tech savvy. And the management team can no longer make strategic decisions on an annual or even quarterly basis; "strategy is happening on a much faster cycle time," says the CEO.

In many industries today--including aerospace, electronics, chemicals, software, global construction, global investment and commercial banking, and international manufacturing--even simple product or service innovations can become complicated, because so many companies now operate in ecosystems made up of powerful and highly interconnected stakeholders. That means you can't focus exclusively on the customer and yourself: You need value propositions that stakeholders in your ecosystem can also buy into, which vastly complicates the process of identifying innovation opportunities. The authors have developed a tool-based ideation process that a major pharmaceutical company has rolled out worldwide. They describe the six steps in the process: (1) Identify key stakeholders and their most pressing needs; (2) outline stakeholder consumption chains; (3) categorize features of the current offer and build offer profiles; (4) create growth opportunity profiles; (5) map stakeholder tensions; and (6) choose your best opportunity.

Brands spend billions of dollars a year on lavish efforts to establish and maintain a social media presence. But do those campaigns actually increase revenue? New research provides an answer to this question, which has vexed marketers ever since social media burst upon the scene. In a series of experiments, the researchers tested four increasingly interactive ways in which Facebook might affect customers' behavior. First, they explored whether liking a brand--passively following it--makes people more likely to purchase it. Second, they examined whether people's likes affect their friends' purchasing. Third, they looked at whether liking affects things other than purchasing (for example, whether it can persuade people to engage in healthful behaviors). And fourth, they tested whether boosting likes by paying to have branded content displayed in followers' news feeds increases the chances of meaningful behavior change. The results were clear: Merely liking a brand neither increases purchasing nor spurs friends to purchase more. Supporting likes with branded content, however, can prompt meaningful behavior change.

B2B customers are deeply uncertain and stressed. With virtually infinite information available on any solution, a swelling raft of stakeholders involved in each purchase, and an ever-expanding array of options, customers are increasingly overwhelmed and often more paralyzed than empowered. The authors' solution, developed through work with hundreds of sales organizations globally, is a proactive, take-charge prescriptive approach that sweeps away obstacles and guides customers through decision making. Companies that have mastered prescriptive selling share a set of practices: They work to understand customers' purchase journeys; identify significant customer challenges at each buying stage; arm their sellers with tools to help overcome each challenge; and track customers' purchase progress so that they can intervene to keep the process on track.

Companies must reorganize periodically to keep pace with changes in market conditions. But executives grapple with conflicting advice about whether, when, and how to do so. The term "reorganization" encompasses two distinct change processes: restructuring and reconfiguration. Each delivers value if pursued in the right way. "Restructuring" involves changing the structures around which resources and activities are grouped and coordinated--for example, function, business line, customer segment, technology platform, geography, or a matrixed combination of these. "Reconfiguration" involves adding, splitting, transferring, combining, or dissolving business units without modifying the company's underlying structure. The goals for both tend to be the same: to boost innovation and, ultimately, financial performance. But the authors' research shows that success is almost always situational. In this article, they offer four guidelines to help companies decide which type to pursue when, how to space their reorgs, what should be reorganized, and what else needs to change in the process.

Early-stage research is expensive, risky, and unpredictable--so corporations generally shy away from it, leaving many opportunities unexplored. They could revitalize their research operations by adopting the approach taken by Bob Langer, a chemical engineer whose lab at MIT is one of the most productive and profitable research facilities in the world. HBR senior editor Steven Prokesch reports in depth on Langer Lab's proven formula for accelerating the pace of discoveries and getting them into the world as products. It includes: (1) a focus on high-impact projects--ones that could make a major difference to society; (2) a process for crossing the proverbial "valley of death" between research and commercial development; (3) methods for facilitating multidisciplinary collaboration; (4) ways to make the constant turnover of researchers and the limited duration of project funding a plus; and (5) a leadership style that balances freedom and support. By drawing on the Langer Lab values and model, companies could make the world a better place--and make lots of money in the process.

If your company is undergoing a merger or acquisition, you're apt to feel anxious. Roughly 30% of employees are deemed redundant when firms in the same industry merge. But you needn't dread the outcome, say the authors, who draw on their experience as academics and consultants. They've found that employees usually reap great rewards if they embrace the M&A process as a chance for introspection and growth. Your first step should be to figure out where you stand. The authors recommend conducting a SWOT analysis: Assess your strengths and weaknesses and the opportunities and threats that the deal presents. Then get involved in the integration effort--in a way that lets you showcase or sharpen your skills. Executing transition plans, innovating, and collaborating with new colleagues are all postmerger opportunities for personal growth. If you prove adept, you will be well positioned for success in the hybrid organization--or at another company. The authors suggest specific questions to ask yourself as you take stock of the situation. They provide tips on how to make sure you have a role in the integration work. And they present brief case studies of four professionals who followed the recommended approach and emerged from their companies' M&A deals as "winners."

The CFO of a global construction company disagrees with his CEO (and good friend) about the advantages of self-managed teams--particularly because lack of proper oversight of the Russia office resulted in a financial scandal several years earlier. With commentary from the senior partner at PwC in the Netherlands and a former CEO of Randstad, a global staffing and recruiting firm.

The famous Duke University basketball coach discusses his four-decade career, how he recruits and disciplines his players, the difference between college basketball and Olympic basketball, and how he views retirement.

The CFO of a global construction company disagrees with his CEO (and good friend) about the advantages of self-managed teams--particularly because lack of proper oversight of the Russia office resulted in a financial scandal several years earlier. With commentary from the senior partner at PwC in the Netherlands and a former CEO of Randstad, a global staffing and recruiting firm.

The CFO of a global construction company disagrees with his CEO (and good friend) about the advantages of self-managed teams--particularly because lack of proper oversight of the Russia office resulted in a financial scandal several years earlier. With commentary from the senior partner at PwC in the Netherlands and a former CEO of Randstad, a global staffing and recruiting firm.

Student spreadsheet for case UV7464.

Gujarat Automotive Corporation Limited (GACL) was an Indian manufacturing company that made bus bodies. The firm was a subsidiary of Tata Motors Limited, from which it received most of its orders. Under the leadership of its latest managing director, GACL had emerged from tumultuous times, and became profitable again by focusing on productivity and cost-cutting measures. However, the company's board felt that these improvements came at the cost of employee satisfaction. Accordingly, on the board's insistence, GACL instituted an inquiry into employee satisfaction levels. The results of the survey were somewhat better than expected, but the managing director wondered whether the survey was enough. How could he turn the survey results into concrete actions for GACL? Could he do so without compromising productivity?

As a small-scale hospital located in the city of Faridabad in northern India, Drishti Eye Center (Drishti) had recently expanded its operations by diversifying into pharmaceutical sales. The founder and managing director of the hospital soon faced conflict among the members of his sales force when a young sales representative received a poor performance evaluation, which he viewed as unfair. In response to this situation, the salesman decided to join a union, a move that was completely unprecedented at Drishti. Facing a high-performing team that now found itself operating in a hostile environment, the hospital's director had to decide how best to manage the conflict.

New research conducted with restaurant listings on Yelp found that establishments given prime position atop search results did get better results. Still, there's an important caveat. "The value Yelp ads seem to provide is in surfacing brands to customers," the researchers point out. That isn't to say that well-known companies should never use search ads; however, they should bear in mind that the ads work best when alerting customers to aspects of the brand that they're not already aware of.

When researchers compared daily data from the S&P 500 index with daily environmental data from Lower Manhattan, they discovered a connection between poor air quality and diminished stock performance.

Bollore Logistics Canada is an international freight forwarder based in Saint-Laurent, Quebec and part of the transportation and logistics division of the Bollore Group, a French multinational headed by the Bollore family. Freight forwarders provide their clients with transport solutions by coordinating the modes of transportation used, customs clearance and documentation, port handling, and supervision of all shipping aspects. This case features Marc Gagnon, a new recruit in the sea freight export department of Bollore Logistics Canada, who has to respond to calls from three clients. The three have asked about different shipments and transactions (transport of mining equipment to New Caledonia, pharmaceutical products to Chile, and circus show materials to Greece). Each client request involves international maritime shipping calling for the choice of a specific Incoterm (version 2020, as defined by the International Chamber of Commerce) and the corresponding estimate. For each of the three situations, the characteristics of the buyer and seller are described, along with their respective business objectives, their relationship, the merchandise and the destination. The three cases are presented in increasing order of difficulty.

In this article, we consider crowdsourcing from the consumer perspective. Specifically, we examine the identity value (i.e., sense of self) that consumers accrue by participating in creative crowds. How can managers structure crowdsourcing initiatives to maximize value for participants through identity creation and expression? We strive to answer this question first by examining the different types of crowdsourcing initiatives from a value co-creation perspective. Then, we evaluate how consumers construct identities through consumption and review the literature on identity theory. Finally, we link the identity type-personal, extended, or social-to the management of crowdsourcing ventures and offer suggestions for practitioners.

Civic challenges such as urban mobility and energy problems offer new corporate innovation opportunities. However, such challenges are wicked and difficult to tame. They require novel solutions that account for and integrate contradictory perspectives within the local innovation ecosystem of firms, governments, and citizens. This article presents a successful civic innovation crowdsourcing project case study, in which multinational firm Bombardier encouraged a global civic crowd to co-create visionary solutions to the challenge of future mobility in crowded cities around the world. Bombardier recruited a global crowd of 900 individuals and facilitated the citizen development of more than 215 solutions of unique firm value. We explore the process and outcome of this crowdsourcing project and derive actionable design principles for a three-phased civic innovation crowdsourcing process including: (1) crowd construction, (2) crowd knowledge acquisition, and (3) crowd knowledge assimilation. This process enables the crowd to integrate members' diverse and contradictory knowledge proactively at both the team and individual levels. Additionally, the crowd is able to balance extension of existing local solutions and exploration of path-breaking technologies and solution concepts.