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Social media success stories have highlighted the impact social media can have on companies'fortunes. Yet the authors argue that there is a significant opportunity that isn't being realized: utilizing social media to support innovation and new product development. Consultants and academics alike have touted social media as a vehicle for developing customer insights, accessing knowledge, cocreating ideas and concepts with users, and supporting new product launches. Yet despite this promise, the authors have found that the expected positive results are frequently not realized in practice. Although some companies have been able to use social media to develop new insights that lead to successful new products, many others simply do not know how to utilize social media for innovation. Some get distracted by the diversity of input and listen to the "wrong audience."Nevertheless, the authors believe that social media provides a game-changing opportunity for companies that learn how to develop clear strategies and objectives. Analyzing data on the social media practices of large global companies as they relate to new product development, the authors found that for the companies that jumped on the bandwagon and invested in social media initiatives without having a clear strategy, the right skills, or sufficient knowledge frequently did not achieve the results they were looking for. Those that utilized social media sources exclusively to search for technical information saw no improvements in new product development performance; in fact, the effect on performance for these companies was often negative (due to information overload and the complexity of processing such information). The companies that benefited the most from using social media for new product development were companies that used social media in every stage of the new product development processes; they built organizational processes and structures to support new product development activity.

Author Joshua S. Gans concedes that disruption is a possibility, but he contends that the link between disruption and failure may not be as strong as many managers believe. In particular, Gans argues that disruption can be averted. "Many businesses find ways of managing through it, and this can weaken any relationship between a disruptive event and the actual disruption,"he writes. The question, Gans says, is whether companies facing disruption are able to counter its effects. He describes three approaches to dealing with market entrants: beating them; joining them; and waiting them out. Beating Them: The first approach involves investing aggressively in new innovations after entrants bring them to market. Although Gans says managers may not know right away whether an entrant's innovation will become a threat, when the situation becomes clear, they must act to protect their market position. He uses the example of Microsoft Corp., which introduced its Internet Explorer in the mid-1990s to compete against Netscape Navigator, which at the time was the dominant product in the browser market. Microsoft created a new division dedicated to defusing the Netscape threat. Joining Them: The idea here is for established businesses to "wait and see"whether a market entrant's innovation improves and becomes a competitive threat. Then, instead of waging war, the existing player can acquire the entrant's business and its products, thereby averting disruption. When disruption is upon them, Gans explains, incumbents realize they will face stiffer competition in the future, so they have an incentive to neutralize the threat. But there are also advantages to disrupters in avoiding a long period of intense competition with an established incumbent. Waiting Them Out: Gans suggests that established players should assess what they have that entrants lack -- entrants rarely have every element of a value chain.

market share, net promoter score, the value of a "like,"customer lifetime value, and return on investment. They conducted interviews with marketers and administered formal surveys to managers. They found that popular marketing metrics are regularly misunderstood and misused. The authors'goal is to encourage appropriate and consistent use of popular marketing metrics. Market Share: If the aim is to maximize the returns to shareholders, the authors argue, increased market share offers no benefit unless it eventually generates profits. Still, in a survey the authors conducted, they found that more marketing managers prioritized maximizing market share than prioritized maximizing profitability. Although, they note, companies with superior products tend to have high market share and high profitability, this does not necessarily mean that increasing market share will increase profits. Using market share as a metric of success simply because other marketers do it can be counterproductive. Net Promoter Score: Companies in a variety of industries have embraced net promoter score as a way to monitor their customer service operations. One of NPS's strongest selling points, the authors write, is its simplicity: It's easy for managers and employees to understand the goal of having more promoters and fewer detractors. However, they note weaknesses in how the theory has been presented to managers. Value of a "Like"The authors caution that managers shouldn't automatically assume that differences in value between social media fans and nonfans are caused by social media marketing activity. When there are differences, managers need to investigate whether they existed prior to the social media marketing effort. Customer Lifetime Value: Marketers often use CLV to help them decide whom to target in acquisition campaigns.

What's important in product development, the authors say, isn't just following the right steps -- it's how the work is done. Until organizations fundamentally view people as central and leaders act accordingly, the risk of development process improvement efforts not actually improving anything is frighteningly high. In practice, the authors contend, most companies invest very little in people development in comparison to other investments they make. The underlying concepts of lean product development have been around since the 1980s, the authors note, when an MIT study found that Japanese automotive companies followed practices that were profoundly different from those of other auto manufacturers. In new product development, lean is about advancing the skills of individuals through technical training and methods of collaboration so that each developer is able to design, develop, and deliver better products and services. Companies can promote individual mastery, in the authors'view, by asking three questions: (1) What do we need to learn about our customers, products, and production processes to design better products? (2) How do we learn this? (3) And what kinds of organizational structures and routines will best support learning? The authors outline several steps companies should take to advance the development of their people. These include making technical mastery an expectation and building it into the reward system and how people work every day, and developing standards and using them.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For more than a decade, multinational enterprises from developed countries have moved a substantial part of their R&D activity to emerging markets such as India and China. The location of R&D in developing countries was initially driven largely by the availability of skilled personnel at low cost. At first, these R&D centers in emerging markets operated primarily as extended arms of R&D in the home country, executing well-defined projects under close supervision from headquarters. However, the dynamics of multinationals'R&D centers are rapidly changing. Emerging markets are new growth drivers of the global economy, and their unique bundle of opportunities and challenges can be a wellspring of innovation for a multinational company. Simultaneously, many R&D centers in emerging markets have evolved to accumulate advanced technical capabilities, leading their employees to clamor for higher-value-added work and to seek responsibility for a complete product or technology. Given these trends, R&D subsidiaries in emerging markets are uniquely positioned to play an important role in multinational companies'innovation strategy. However, this thinking is often at odds with the dominant innovation mindset, structures, and processes within multinational companies based in developed countries. This article advances a framework that can be used by managers in multinational companies to support the key decisions on innovating for emerging markets. The framework is based on learnings gleaned from the successful development of the ASR 901 aggregation services routers, a product family that was conceptualized and developed by Cisco's India R&D center for emerging-market customers but was also adopted by global customers.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Too often, great products fail because customers do not recognize the value that they create. Although we now have ample insight into how customers evaluate new products, many companies focus primarily on creating value -- without enough regard to how customers recognize innovations and evaluate new products. There are only two ways consumers can collect information, the author notes: They can search, or they can infer. Knowing when consumers will search or infer will help you determine which of your innovations customers will recognize. The Internet has had a profound impact on the way customers evaluate many products. First, it has lowered the cost of search by making information more accessible. Second, the Internet has broadened what is searchable by including customer reviews as well as product features on standard spec sheets. To ensure that customers will recognize the value your products offer, the author recommends focusing on three questions: Are customers motivated to search? Are they able to search effectively? What cues will customers use to infer value?

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Not long ago, companies had to rely in large part on surveys and focus groups to understand what customers liked and didn't like about their products. In recent years, social media and online ratings have given businesses new ways to learn about customers'opinions about their products. Today, however, some of the products themselves -- at least those devices that are part of the connected world of the Internet of Things -- are starting to provide unprecedented levels of information that can be used to improve both the products and the customer experience. In particular, information from connected devices offers companies three tremendously important core pieces of contextual information that were previously unavailable: where the products are being used, how they are being used, and which customers are using them at any given time. Going forward, the authors expect that companies that manufacture smart, connected products will have an advantage in the market. For instance, a company does not have to wait until a customer calls with a complaint to know that a product connected to the Internet of Things is not working correctly; the product has already communicated the information. With this advance knowledge, the company can report an issue to a customer and seek to address it before it becomes a bigger problem. This service call could also turn into a sales call if the company adds a new feature that gives the product additional capabilities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. GE has bet big on the Industrial Internet - the convergence of industrial machines, data, and the Internet. The company is putting sensors on gas turbines, jet engines, and other machines; connecting them to the cloud; and analyzing the resulting flow of data. The goal: identify ways to improve machine productivity and reliability. This MIT Sloan Management Review case study looks at how this traditional manufacturer is remaking itself into a modern digital business.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The 2016 Data & Analytics Report by MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS finds that analytics is now a mainstream idea, but not a mainstream practice. Few companies have a strategic plan for analytics or are executing a strategy for what they hope to achieve with analytics. Organizations achieving the greatest benefits from analytics ensure the right data is being captured, and blend information and experience in making decisions.

Groupe Park Avenue (GPA) owns a large group of automotive dealers in Montreal, Canada. The business's origins go back to Norm D. Hébert, who purchased an underperforming Chevrolet dealer on Park Avenue in downtown Montreal in 1959. His son Norman Jr. joined GPA in 1980, when it was still a single dealership. Now, thirty-five years later, GPA owns 20 car dealerships and must adapt to an ever-evolving landscape. Historically "mom and pop" shops, dealerships are increasingly acquired by regional dealer groups such as GPA and by public companies. Indeed, AutoCanada, a Canadian public company, has just purchased a BMW and a MINI dealer in the Montreal market, the first time a consolidator has stepped onto GPA's home turf. Meanwhile, GPA is also changing, with Norman Jr.'s son having recently joined the business. This case, which centres on the interaction between enterprise growth and family ownership, examines the strategic challenges and ownership transition issues facing GPA.

Many companies want to raise their level of customer service--but how? The typical response is to rewrite frontline employees' scripts and conduct pilot projects. Those tactics may be fine for a company whose service operation is functioning reasonably well. But if the operation is badly broken, or the industry is being disrupted and customers suddenly have many more choices, argue Singapore-based researchers and consultants Jochen Wirtz and Ron Kaufman, deeper cultural change may be needed. On the basis of 25 years of work with global customer service operations, the researchers recommend jettisoning four conventional practices, singly or in combination: (1) Don't start with customer-facing employees. Instead, make sure they're getting the right support. (2) Don't focus on specific skills or scripts. Educate people more generally about what "service excellence" means. (3) Don't pilot changes. Go company-wide to create momentum fast. (4) Don't worry about traditional metrics, such as share of wallet and NPS. Track the number of new value-adding actions put into practice. For companies looking to differentiate on service, these strategies can make the difference between slow, fleeting progress and rapid, sustainable success.

New research reveals that when people don't examine the ethical practices of the companies making the products they buy, they feel hostile toward consumers who do.

The case, "Shivani Carriers Pvt. Ltd.: Managing Employee Motivation at the Bottom of the Pyramid", has been designed to teach students about the basic principles of employee motivation. The case is also a representative example of the problems faced by small and medium-sized businesses in employee acquisition, motivation, and retention, especially at junior levels i.e. entry-level operational and front-line roles.

Aravind Eye Care System (AECS) had a dream run on the growth path, providing affordable, quality eye care to its patients by building on economies of scale and developing a cross-subsidisation model for financial sustainability. The organisation's mission was 'to eliminate needless blindness' However, emerging demographics and disease profile question the sustainability of the approach taken by the organisation, especially as the organisational strategy, systems and processes were designed for cataract patients. With the increasing proportion of non-cataract patients, top management needs to assess the impact of the'changing patient' on various dimensions of the business model of AECS.

This case deals with several types of uncertainties faced by project team in an oil company north east in India. These challenges and uncertainties are in the areas drawing approval, supply chain, critical equipment availability, soll type, control room, soil type, employee availability, environmental clearances, safety and wildlife clearances. This project demonstrates the ownership issues, why it is difficult to complete a project on time in the Northeast of India or why public sector project gets delayed.

National Innovation Foundation (NIF) was a partner organization of the Honey Bee Network (HBN), which was a networked organization of individuals, innovators, farmers, scholars, academicians, policy makers, entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The HBN worked to create a network of grassroot innovators and acknowledged him/her by protecting the IPR of the innovator. It is a Government organization, and hence works under bureaucratic setup. However, it works with non-government organizations as well as, individuals and therefore, should be very flexible. NIF desires to get a web-based information system developed. The challenge are multi-fold: selection the appropriate platform (ERP, Best-of-the-breed, or customized solution), technology (content management systems, frameworks versus coding), software development methodology (classic waterfall model or agile), process (on project basis or work and time based contract). The case helps to compare various alternatives on the above issues. This would achieve their objective. The project team had to take decisions on a number of crucial aspects like deciding which software development methodology and what approach to follow which would suit the unique requirements of the organization. NIF was a dynamic organization and their requirements kept changing. How to determine a pricing policy was another major concern for the project team.

This case deals with steps taken by NTPC in construction and project management in 500 MW power plant. The project have several innovative ways of managing challenges, in land acquisition, design, implementation, contract worker management, enforcement of safety rules, managing regulation iand in team building in leadership. A suitable case for site management, it shows in spite of being a public sector undertaking, how the project was constructed in record time of 42 months.

The three cases (Case A: JSW Steel's Ispat Acquisition: The Opportunity; Case B: JSW Steel's Ispat Acqusition: The Setback & Case C: JSW Steel's Ispat Acquisition: The Turnaround Strategy) describe the business situation leading to acquisition of Ispat by JSW, the acquirer company's failure to realize synergies post-acquisition, and the subsequent turnaround initiatives to salvage the situation. In 2010, JSW Steel, a 14 mtpa Indian steel company acquired Ispat Steel with annual production capacity of 3 mtpa. The acquisition was part of JSW's multipronged strategy to realize its aspiration of being a 40 mtpa firm. At the time of acquisition, Ispat had huge debts, a long pipeline of unfinished projects, high production costs and unpredictable cash flows. Its main plant, Dolvi was shutdown for 45 days. However, the plant also had numerous advantages. It was located near the seashore and was technologically very advanced. Case A describes the events leading to acquisition of Ispat by JSW. It captures the facts, opinions and inferences around the acquisition decision, which were used as inputs in the due diligence process to assess synergies between JSW and Ispat. The case describes the economic, competitive, and industry factors prevailing in 2010 when JSW was thinking of acquiring Ispat.

The three cases (Case A: JSW Steel's Ispat Acquisition: The Opportunity; Case B: JSW Steel's Ispat Acqusition: The Setback & Case C: JSW Steel's Ispat Acquisition: The Turnaround Strategy) describe the business situation leading to acquisition of Ispat by JSW, the acquirer company's failure to realize synergies post-acquisition, and the subsequent turnaround initiatives to salvage the situation. In 2010, JSW Steel, a 14 mtpa Indian steel company acquired Ispat Steel with annual production capacity of 3 mtpa. The acquisition was part of JSW's multipronged strategy to realize its aspiration of being a 40 mtpa firm. At the time of acquisition, Ispat had huge debts, a long pipeline of unfinished projects, high production costs and unpredictable cash flows. Its main plant, Dolvi was shutdown for 45 days. However, the plant also had numerous advantages. It was located near the seashore and was technologically very advanced. Case A describes the events leading to acquisition of Ispat by JSW. It captures the facts, opinions and inferences around the acquisition decision, which were used as inputs in the due diligence process to assess synergies between JSW and Ispat. The case describes the economic, competitive, and industry factors prevailing in 2010 when JSW was thinking of acquiring Ispat.

The three cases (Case A: JSW Steel's Ispat Acquisition: The Opportunity; Case B: JSW Steel's Ispat Acqusition: The Setback & Case C: JSW Steel's Ispat Acquisition: The Turnaround Strategy) describe the business situation leading to acquisition of Ispat by JSW, the acquirer company's failure to realize synergies post-acquisition, and the subsequent turnaround initiatives to salvage the situation. In 2010, JSW Steel, a 14 mtpa Indian steel company acquired Ispat Steel with annual production capacity of 3 mtpa. The acquisition was part of JSW's multipronged strategy to realize its aspiration of being a 40 mtpa firm. At the time of acquisition, Ispat had huge debts, a long pipeline of unfinished projects, high production costs and unpredictable cash flows. Its main plant, Dolvi was shutdown for 45 days. However, the plant also had numerous advantages. It was located near the seashore and was technologically very advanced. Case A describes the events leading to acquisition of Ispat by JSW. It captures the facts, opinions and inferences around the acquisition decision, which were used as inputs in the due diligence process to assess synergies between JSW and Ispat. The case describes the economic, competitive, and industry factors prevailing in 2010 when JSW was thinking of acquiring Ispat.