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A young engineer at a major Quebec construction company realizes that, over time, he has placed himself in a tricky legal and ethical position: at the request of his immediate superior, a man he respects and to whom he feels indebted, he has repeatedly falsified cost estimates for the public works projects his company is bidding on. The young man thinks about what he should do and the potential impact of his decision on his career and loved ones.

"Inconspicuous consumption"--elite consumers' affinity for discreet rather than traditionally branded luxuries--has become a global phenomenon. Work by researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London and elsewhere has identified two best practices that can help companies get out in front of the trend. Firms can redesign offerings to be less conspicuous; Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Tesla, and Audi, for example, have begun downsizing or even hiding their logos, while Tiffany has dropped the spelled-out brand name from its fashion jewelry line in favor of a simple "T." Companies can also rebrand around experience, artistry, or utility. For instance, Daimler still markets the Mercedes line in China but has also launched the subtler, all-electric Denza brand there; the hotel chain Jumeirah markets the unique qualities of each of its properties. This reprint contains three additional Idea Watch articles. "The Sorry State of Nonprofit Boards" is a visual presentation of survey results from nearly 1,000 nonprofit directors. Among the findings are that directors lack critical skills, boards lack formal processes, and upheaval is common. "What Your Firm Can Learn from Coworking Spaces" looks at new research showing that people thrive in shared office spaces, and why. "CEO Pay Can Drive Consumers' Decisions" describes experiments showing that people are more willing to buy from companies with CEO-to-worker pay ratios close to what they deem is fair.

We've long sensed that spending time in green landscapes soothes and restores us. Now new research reveals that people benefit from simply looking at nature--for remarkably short periods of time.

A viral video is every marketer's dream. Social viewers--people who watch shared content rather than videos they've found by browsing--are far more likely to buy a product and recommend it to others. But it remains a mystery to most companies why some videos catch fire and others just sputter out. Unruly, a marketing technology company, offers an answer. Its analysis of 430 billion video views and 100,000 consumer data points reveals the two most powerful drivers of viral success: psychological response (how the content makes you feel) and social motivation (why you want to share it).

This article identifies three types of traps that can emerge when implementing workplace flexibility-altered work-life dynamics, reduced fairness perceptions, and weakened organizational culture-and provides core lessons for managers seeking a balanced flexibility approach. First, managers must become flex-savvy to understand the variation that exists in flexibility practices to align implementation with the workforce and organizational context. Second, implementing flexibility must not be treated as an accommodation but as a broader systemic organizational change empowering individuals and teams. The article provides a Worksmart case to highlight how to avoid traps and implement balanced workplace flexibility across multiple stakeholder interests.

Consumer product returns in the United States are approaching three-hundred billion dollars annually. In the majority of cases, the returned products are perfectly functional convenience returns. Managers have a multi-billion dollar profit opportunity to reuse the products by strategically employing remanufacturing. Yet, remanufacturing has multiple barriers that must be understood and addressed. This article addresses several key managerial issues regarding remanufactured consumer products. First, will consumers buy remanufactured products? Second, will the green consumer segment desire remanufactured products? Third, will remanufactured product sales cannibalize new product sales? Finally, this article provides guidance regarding pricing and cannibalization mitigation strategies.

Two related trends characterize the recent past: value propositions are migrating from the physical to the informational, and value creation is shifting from firms to consumers. These two trends meet in the phenomenon of " consumer generated intellectual property" (CGIP). This article addresses the question: " How should firms manage the intellectual property that their customers create?" It explores how CGIP presents important dilemmas for managers and argues that consumers' intellectual property should not be leveraged at the expense of their emotional property. It integrates these perspectives into a diagnostic framework and discusses eight strategies for firms to manage CGIP.

Technology has transformed individuals from mere consumers of products to empowered participants in value co-creation. While numerous firms experiment with involving a crowd in value creation, few companies turn crowdsourcing projects into thriving platforms with a powerful business model. To address this challenge, this article analyzes successful platforms to identify patterns of effective crowdsourcing-based business models. The results provide guidance for managers who need to create new (or adapt existing) business models.

The automobile industry' s high costs of entry, economies of scale, and network effects from distribution, fueling, and service lead many to conclude that new entrants have no chance. Tesla Motors has overcome many barriers to pioneer electric cars. Starting with partnerships and a minimum viable product, Tesla is working to innovate and scale up. Tesla now produces a top-selling luxury car and has a market capitalization twice that of Fiat Chrysler and half that of General Motors or Ford. Tesla has shown that a startup can enter and disrupt the status quo in one of the most established industries.

The purpose of the Manizales-Mas case is to show the inner workings of the first three years of a comprehensive economic development project that uses entrepreneurship-extraordinary company growth -as the driving wedge. The BEEP project started in 2010 with a contact by the general director, Ana Maria Gonzales, of the Luker Foundation, a non-profit foundation established by the local Restrepo family that owns Casa Luker, which had focused on education promotion since its inception in 1995. Gonzales approached Babson and BEEP, who together conducted a two-month pilot. Between 2010 and 2012 Gonzales worked hard to coalesce a group of funders and stakeholders to back the project, both financially and in terms of non-financial involvement. Having created a consensus among 11 local organizations, Gonzales then negotiated the project with Babson, yielding numerous conflicts and misunderstandings. Marcela Escobar was hired in late 2011 as project team leader, and conducted the project from that time onward, during Phases 2-3. The case takes place as Phase 3 is transitioning to Phase 4, with several acute problems, such as conflict among the stakeholders and an important staff member, the director of communications, who has just announced her resignation.

M-Changa was one of the fastest-growing fundraising platforms in Kenya, allowing Kenyans to use text messages on their mobile phones to send, receive, and track donated funds as well as solicit donations from family and friends. The young cofounders, Kyai Mullei and David Mark, had grown the company quickly by leveraging partnerships with large banks, mobile money operators, and NGOs. By April 2015, M-Changa had a team of five people serving 25,000 users. Now, it stood at a crossroads. M-Changa's board members had expressed concern that its multitude of partnerships may have spread the company too thin. The board urged Mullei and Mark to focus on the partnerships that would reap the most value for the company in the long run. Should M-Changa pursue partnerships with mobile money operators and banks that made it possible for users to transfer money conveniently and at a low cost, or instead focus on partners that allowed M-Changa to test new customer segments and increase sales? In addition, there was an estimated US$7 billion fundraising market across East Africa, so Mullei was tempted to test neighboring markets. Students will step into the shoes of Kyai Mullei as he and his team refine their partnership strategy at a crucial point in time for the venture.

To make sound business decisions, managers must be comfortable with the concepts of correlation and causation. This background note provides an overview of correlation and causation using examples and explains why the former does not imply the latter. It also describes several methods for gaining insights into causal relations, including randomized experiments, panel data, matching, and regression discontinuity. The note is intended for a general audience and does not require advanced statistics knowledge.

At the half-anniversary of the pro-democracy civil disobedience movement "Occupy Central with Love and Peace" on March 28, 2015, Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying was contemplating the future direction of Hong Kong. Did Hong Kong need universal suffrage, or were its greater challenges economic? After 40 years of remarkable growth, Hong Kong's long-held laissez faire philosophy seemed increasingly inconsistent with its young electorate, which was finding its voice in public debate. With inequality rising in Hong Kong, and the finance and real estate industries playing the dominant role in the economy, many in the territory wondered whether its unique economic model was threatened, or should be changed.

In 2012, Sanofi, a French pharmaceutical company, was considering forming a joint venture with the American soft drinks giant Coca-Cola to develop and commercialize a new line of beauty drinks, "Beautific," which would provide health and beauty benefits to consumers. Rumours about the partnership in the press had been met with anger from Sanofi's employees and skepticism from market analysts. It was unclear whether the initiative made sense from a strategic point of view for Sanofi. How different was the initiative from similar past projects that had been met with reluctance by consumers? What were the implications of internal dissent within Sanofi? Venturing into the beauty drinks business might signal a shift by Sanofi away from research and development-driven drugs. Would association with Coca-Cola, a company often decried for contributing to poor health, help or damage the reputation of a pharmaceutical company like Sanofi?

After a 26 year partnership in the Indian two-wheeler industry, Hero and Honda parted ways. Honda had now become one of Hero's main competitors. The case covers the reasons for the split, the challenges faced by Hero and the strategic initiatives it had to use to overcome these challenges. After the split, rebranding and re-positioning itself as a stand-alone brand was of primary importance to Hero MotoCorp. To ensure that Hero MotoCorp continued its association with the Indian consumers, it underwent a series of transition phases. With ever rising competition, Hero was putting all of its efforts into ensuring that it overcame each roadblock and maintained its number one position in the Indian two-wheeler market, but were the strategies producing results?

The race to lightweighting is well underway with the introduction of the aluminum body Ford F150. Raj Reddy, vice president of strategy for global rolled products at Alcoa, one of the biggest aluminum manufacturers in the world, knows, however, that the competition in the aluminum market will get stiffer with the introduction of more stringent CAFE standards. The company could look to newer bonding technologies and customization of services for its prized clients like Ford to diversify or invest in R&D to increase the ductility and strength of its core products. Students are asked to find strategies to define and boost Alcoa's value proposition.

Supplements the (A) case.

Marcus Crosby, President of Cilkray Graphics, convened an emergency meeting with Cilkray's senior managers in order to respond to an unexpected development. Cilkray sold three lines of specialized graphics processing units (GPUs). Each line targeted a segment of the professional market for Hosted Virtual Desktops (HVDs). Grovex, Cilkray's key competitor, had just announced the impending launch of the GSpeed, a new GPU. It said that the GSpeed would exceed the performance of competitive products, including Cilkray's most advanced product line, the CP3000. Industry rumors suggested that the GSpeed's price would be 20% to 30% below that of the CP3000. Crosby and his team saw two options. Cilkray could drop the CP3000's price immediately. It could also delay its planned release of its new CK300, scheduled for December 2013, in order to make its products more competitive. Crosby and his team had to decide what Cilkray should do next.