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Even in our global, technology-fueled economy, the authors argue that the quality of a firm's relationships-with customers, employees and suppliers-continues to be the single-best predictor of long-term success. The most deeply-networked organizations-like Wikipedia, eBay and Airbnb-soften the line between customers and employees to offer a wide range of relationship options, from 'strictly transactional' to 'enthusiastic participation'. This blurring of roles also influences the organization on the inside, improving employee retention by creating an environment where open communication and personal agency are encouraged.

Rapid progress in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has pro¬voked intense debate about the implications of this trend for the modern workplace. Some see a driver of economic growth and boundless opportunities to improve living standards; while others see existential threats ranging from killer robots to widespread unemployment. The authors argue that employers face four choices when it comes to the automation of jobs: replace, automate, relieve or empower. They discuss the pros and cons of each, and the skills that will be most valuable in an increasingly automated work environment.

The CEO of Tangerine-formerly ING Direct Canada-describes his approach to leading and creating a disruptive business model in one of the most traditional industries: banking. In this wide-ranging interview, he explains how the culture he created embraces divergent views and encourages novel thinking. He also describes what happened when his firm was acquired by one of Canada's big banks (Scotiabank), and how the culture of disruptive innovation lives on at Tangerine.

Consumers of healthcare services throughout the world are imposing strong demands for efficiencies. At the same time, unconventional competition is arising from newly-converging technologies and services, creating a platform for transformative change in healthcare quality and access. The authors show how this disruption is challenging existing actors in the healthcare sector while at the same time, creating massive opportunities to create profitable businesses. More than ever, they argue, commercial players are at the centre of the opportunity to achieve a stronger balance of quality, cost and access to healthcare services.

The authors present research indicating that four key attributes are critical to a robust innovation strategy: an emphasis on speed; the use of technological platforms; well-run (and very often lean) R&D processes; and the systematic exploration of adjacent markets. They discuss how to accomplish each and present examples from the world's most innovative companies, including Zara, GE and W.L. Gore.

The author visited Afghanistan in 2003 as part of a U.S. delegation focused on improving the lives of women. Her idea was to start a business that would employ the women of that country to make a product she could sell in the United States. Some locally woven rugs caught her eye; she carried them back home and started looking for initial funding. She set up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and began working to construct an entirely new and socially responsible supply chain. ARZU's goal was to create a sustainable business model linking well-paying jobs to behaviors that over time would shift the cultural norm. The company negotiated a "social contract" with male heads of household that set conditions for women in the home to become its weavers: All children (including girls) must attend government school full-time, and all adult women must be "released" from the family compound to attend ARZU's literacy classes or for transport to medical clinics when pregnant. Once the business model was in place, recruiting weavers required an intensive, house-to-house outreach. But as word spread that the company would pay the local rate as a salary (rather than piecework) and that women could earn a bonus for highest-quality work, families sought to join the program. Today ARZU has a waiting list. All the company's weavers are now literate (whereas 90% of Afghan women remain illiterate), and 20% are putting a child through university. Working and earning money has developed their dignity and self-esteem, and the men of their villages have come to view them as capable human beings.

After a relatively quiet period following the end of the Cold War, geopolitics is back. With the United States displaying a reduced appetite for violent confrontation, there are now no world policemen, few effective "neighborhood watch" schemes, and a growing number of vigilante groups and countries eager to challenge the existing rules of the game. Companies cannot assume, in any region of the world, that the strategic status quo will be sustained by neat balances of power or unbreakable promises of foreign-policy assistance from superpower states. In this new reality, the most successful multinational companies will be those that make expertise in international affairs central to their operations, adopting what John Chipman, the chief executive of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, calls a corporate foreign policy. A corporate foreign policy has two components. "Geopolitical due diligence" involves the assessment of local, regional, and transnational risks facing a company. "Corporate diplomacy" aims to enhance a company's ability to operate internationally and to ensure its success in each particular country with which it is engaged. Chipman lays out the principles of geopolitical due diligence and corporate diplomacy and argues that their successful execution can be a new source of competitive advantage for multinational businesses in a time of increased geopolitical volatility.

What consumers truly value can be difficult to pin down and psychologically complicated. But universal building blocks of value do exist, creating opportunities for companies to improve their performance in existing markets or break into new markets. In the right combinations, the authors' analysis shows, those elements will pay off in stronger customer loyalty, greater consumer willingness to try a particular brand, and sustained revenue growth. Three decades of experience doing consumer research and observation for corporate clients led the authors-all with Bain & Company-to identify 30 "elements of value." Their model traces its conceptual roots to Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" and extends his insights by focusing on people as consumers: describing their behavior around products and services. They arrange the elements in a pyramid according to four kinds of needs, with "functional" at the bottom, followed by "emotional," "life changing," and then "social impact" at the peak. The authors provide real-world examples to demonstrate how companies have used the elements to grow revenue, refine product design to better meet customers' needs, identify where customers perceive strengths and weaknesses, and cross-sell services.

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create offerings that people truly want to buy, firms instead need to home in on the job the customer is trying to get done. Some jobs are little (pass the time); some are big (find a more fulfilling career). When we buy a product, we essentially "hire" it to help us do a job. If it does the job well, we hire it again. If it does a crummy job, we "fire" it and look for something else to solve the problem. Jobs are multifaceted. They're never simply about function; they have powerful social and emotional dimensions. And the circumstances in which customers try to do them are more critical than any buyer characteristics. Consider the experiences of condo developers targeting retirees who wanted to downsize their homes. Sales were weak until the developers realized their business was not construction but transitioning lives. Instead of adding more features to the condos, they created services assisting buyers with the move and with their decisions about what to keep and to discard. Sales took off. The key to successful innovation is identifying jobs that are poorly performed in customers' lives and then designing products, experiences, and processes around those jobs.

The most successful companies don't just have good products and strong distribution systems-they have a deep understanding of customers. That naturally requires lots of marketing data, but the authors say it also takes an "insights engine"-a set of structures, people, and processes that can translate data into actionable strategy. How do high-performing organizations achieve this kind of customer centricity? Extensive research by the lead author's firm indicates that seven operational characteristics are critical for a superior insights and analytics group: It must be adept at synthesizing data, independent from other functions, integrally involved in business planning, collaborative, willing to experiment with new technologies and programs, future oriented, and active in strategic decision making. In addition, the people who are part of the insights engine share three key traits: They have a whole-brain mindset (they think creatively as well as analytically), they focus on business growth, and they are effective at getting their messages across with engaging storytelling rather than dry recitations of data. The authors discuss each characteristic in turn, using the consumer goods giant Unilever as a case study. Unilever's Consumer Markets and Insights group, the epitome of a powerful insights engine, has helped the company generate impressive revenue and sales growth.

In legal disputes, contested insurance claims, and similarly adversarial negotiations, one party is likely to open with an inflated claim or a lowball offer. And if the other side's position is unreasonable, it may make little sense to be reasonable yourself. But if everyone routinely came to a dispute with a realistic starting position, the offers would be more or less aligned, and any negotiation that followed would most likely be relatively civil, speedy, and fair. How can a negotiator who wants to be fair from the start ensure that his or her counterpart will be reasonable as well? The authors propose the "final-offer arbitration" challenge, which leverages an approach first applied in labor negotiations in the 1960s. You can employ this tactic by opening with a demonstrably fair offer and then--if the other party is unreasonable--extending a challenge to take the competing offers to an arbitrator who must choose one or the other rather than a compromise between them (the usual outcome of conventional arbitration). The authors describe how AIG used the approach and how other companies can begin to adopt it.

High-end professional services firms, unlike product companies, traditionally experience only linear revenue growth. That's because selling more services means adding more professionals, which limits profit margins. However, savvy providers of consulting, legal, accounting, and other services are using technology to their benefit. They are automating certain routine aspects of their work to essentially "productize" those tasks. By combining those products with human attention to matters requiring more knowledge or judgment, they can give clients better service at a lower cost. This article provides a guide to product development for professional services firms. The author describes the three key stages of the process: (1) To "discover potential products," identify opportunities for automation by looking for patterns in your services and zeroing in on the tasks that are performed frequently and require little knowledge. (2) To "develop products," use algorithms and artificial intelligence to create "smart" tools to handle high-volume, low-sophistication tasks. (3) To "monetize your products," stop charging for time and materials, and shift first to transaction-based pricing and then to an outcome-based model. In conjunction with this process, it's important to create a cross-functional team that focuses on product development. And take the long view--you'll have to invest time and money before you reap the benefits of embedding products in services.

Executives with scandal-tainted companies on their resumes pay a penalty on the job market, even if they clearly had nothing to do with the trouble. Because the scandal effect is lasting, a company you left long ago could have an impact on your current and future job mobility, not to mention your compensation. Overall, executives who suffer from the effect are paid nearly 4% less than their peers. You can't control this risk, the authors write, but you can and should plan for it. They offer three steps to help you survive a corporate scandal. (1) Be forthright. Transparency and full disclosure are key to overcoming the stigma. Executive recruiters, who do due diligence on candidates, can help you create a full, clear, and succinct narrative for hiring managers. (2) "Borrow" reputation and legitimacy from others in your network, establishing innocence by association. Executive search firms can also act as references and sponsors. (3) Take a "rehab job," one at which you so clearly excel that it creates a persuasive story to compete with the scandal narrative.

The toughest calls managers have to make come in situations when they have worked hard to gather the facts and have done the best analysis they can, but they still don't know what to do. Then judgment--a fusion of thinking, feelings, experience, imagination, and character--becomes critical. The author offers five practical questions to improve your odds of making sound judgments: (1) What are the net, net consequences of all my options? (2) What are my core obligations? (3) What will work in the world as it is? (4) Who are we? (5) What can I live with? All five questions must be answered, according to the author: "Each question is an important voice in the centuries-long conversation about what counts as a sound decision regarding a hard problem with high stakes for other people." If you work through these questions, you'll know that you've approached the problem in the right way--not just as a good manager but as a thoughtful human being.

When star salesperson Elizabeth starts dating Brad, the CFO of her company, she has high hopes for the relationship. She doesn't report to him, so there's no conflict there, and he's a smart, interesting guy. But when he dumps her for another coworker and flaunts the new relationship, Elizabeth finds herself in what now feels like a hostile workplace. Her boss tells her to "get over it," but she's not sure she can. Commentators Karen Firestone, author of "Even the Odds: Sensible Risk-Taking in Business, Investing and Life," and Wendi S. Lazar, partner of the employment law firm Outten & Golden, weigh in on whether Elizabeth should stay in her lucrative job or call back the headhunters who've been pursuing her and move on.

The NASCAR champion discusses the importance of teamwork at the racetrack, how technology has affected his sport, and what will determine when he retires.

When star salesperson Elizabeth starts dating Brad, the CFO of her company, she has high hopes for the relationship. She doesn't report to him, so there's no conflict there, and he's a smart, interesting guy. But when he dumps her for another coworker and flaunts the new relationship, Elizabeth finds herself in what now feels like a hostile workplace. Her boss tells her to "get over it," but she's not sure she can. Commentators Karen Firestone, author of "Even the Odds: Sensible Risk-Taking in Business, Investing and Life," and Wendi S. Lazar, partner of the employment law firm Outten & Golden, weigh in on whether Elizabeth should stay in her lucrative job or call back the headhunters who've been pursuing her and move on.

When star salesperson Elizabeth starts dating Brad, the CFO of her company, she has high hopes for the relationship. She doesn't report to him, so there's no conflict there, and he's a smart, interesting guy. But when he dumps her for another coworker and flaunts the new relationship, Elizabeth finds herself in what now feels like a hostile workplace. Her boss tells her to "get over it," but she's not sure she can. Commentators Karen Firestone, author of "Even the Odds: Sensible Risk-Taking in Business, Investing and Life," and Wendi S. Lazar, partner of the employment law firm Outten & Golden, weigh in on whether Elizabeth should stay in her lucrative job or call back the headhunters who've been pursuing her and move on.

Set in 2016, this case describes ING Bank's implementation of a radical new way of working using agile principles. ING's agile way of working has been written up in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and McKinsey Quarterly. This case provides a detailed account of how the new structure was developed and implemented. The case describes the process of change in ING Bank, from the aftermath of the global financial crisis to 2016. It provides background information on two change initiatives (Tango and Less is More) that simplified and rationalised the bank's activities, then it provides a detailed account of the major transformation that became known as RIO ("Redesign into Omnichannel"). It focuses on the choices made by Bart Schlatmann, COO of the Netherlands business, and his team - to pursue an omnichannel strategy (i.e. where all channels to market are linked together and managed seamlessly) and to build an organisation to support this strategy that drew inspiration from digital companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. The subsequent restructuring into "agile" teams was a groundbreaking move for a company in the rather conservative banking industry. The case provides lots of detail on how this new model works in practice. After 12 months 3,000 staff had embraced the culture of agile methodology. At the end of the case, Schlatmann had to consider two main questions: (1) How to balance the autonomy of tribes with alignment to the company's strategic objective; and (2) How to roll out agile to other parts of the ING.

Set in 2016, this case describes ING Bank's implementation of a radical new way of working using agile principles. ING's agile way of working has been written up in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and McKinsey Quarterly. This case provides a detailed account of how the new structure was developed and implemented. The case describes the process of change in ING Bank, from the aftermath of the global financial crisis to 2016. It provides background information on two change initiatives (Tango and Less is More) that simplified and rationalised the bank's activities, then it provides a detailed account of the major transformation that became known as RIO ("Redesign into Omnichannel"). It focuses on the choices made by Bart Schlatmann, COO of the Netherlands business, and his team - to pursue an omnichannel strategy (i.e. where all channels to market are linked together and managed seamlessly) and to build an organisation to support this strategy that drew inspiration from digital companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon.