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Giulia Ferrato, a recent MBA graduate, has developed a high-quality, lightweight titanium piton, a tool used in mountain climbing. She is currently contracting for the production of the pitons. At the time of the case, her sole customer has made an offer of significant guaranteed demand for a two-year period, and, almost simultaneously, she is presented the opportunity to take over the forge operation of her contract manufacturer. She is trying to decide what would happen to her business under such a scenario.

Giulia Ferrato, a recent MBA graduate, has developed a high quality piton, a tool used in mountain climbing. Owing to the security of a customer's offer to guarantee a significant level of demand for a two-year period, she agreed to take over the forge needed for production. She is now trying to decide whether or not to introduce a new product line, a wall hammer. Some of the current capacity can be used to make this product, but its manufacture would incur some new costs. A move away from offering only a single product line also raises the issue of cost allocations.

Giulia Ferrato, a recent MBA graduate, founded TenAlpina Tools to make and sell mountain climbing tools of her own design. While the fledgling company is growing and profitable, with overall profit margin about where Giulia had anticipated, she is having trouble understanding individual product-line gross margins and divergent market pressures on those margins. She has decided to explore the effects of the way in which she allocates costs.

This case chronicled the digital transformation of DBS Bank in seeking regional growth amidst a new digital era in the Asian banking industry. Led by its CEO, DBS invested heavily in technology and undertook radical changes to 'rewire' the entire enterprise for digital innovation. Key thrusts of its digital transformation strategy involved the revamp of its Technology and Operations organization, the development of scalable digital platforms, the leverage on technology to redesign the customer experience, and the internal incubation and external partnering in seeking new digital innovation. However, questions remain whether DBS has done enough to put digital at the heart of banking? What should be the next steps in their digital strategy? Where should the bank direct its technology investment dollars? How can DBS systematically assess the opportunities and threats of digital disruption in the banking industry and devise a set of possible strategic responses? How can DBS stay at the forefront of digital innovation to become the Asian Bank of Choice for the New Asia?

This case, an update on "Henkel: Building a Winning Culture (A)," describes Henkel's strong performance against its tough 2012 objectives, as well as the new objectives CEO Kasper Rorsted set for 2016.

In 2015, LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network, was experiencing explosive growth, and it needed to hire the very best people quickly to support and fuel that growth. This case discusses LinkedIn's hiring approach and details how the company used its own online recruiting products, such as LinkedIn Talent Solutions, to attract and retain talent. At the same time, the company was creating new recruiting models that put it at the forefront of modern recruiting. LinkedIn had done well so far in bringing in top talent. Nevertheless, as it rapidly scaled, the challenge was making sure the company could compete with other tech firms to attract enough highly skilled engineers. The case explains specific techniques that LinkedIn's recruiting team of over 100 people used to attract talented candidates for positions in engineering, sales, and other departments. Those techniques included: 1) replacing cold calling potential candidates with finding "warm connections" to them through their LinkedIn networks; 2) using a data-driven approach to identify the best candidates to pursue; and 3) developing personalized online relationships with top candidates. LinkedIn made internal hiring a priority. For external hires, the company focused heavily on recruiting passive candidates-people were who already gainfully employed and not necessarily looking for a new job. The case also discusses LinkedIn's employee value proposition, focusing on the extraordinary opportunities employees were given for "transformation" once they joined the LinkedIn team. These opportunities included personal advancement through a smooth path to change jobs within LinkedIn if they wished, as well as formal and informal programs designed for employees to pursue their passions-and share their experiences. "LinkedIn and Modern Recruiting (B)" goes into more detail about LinkedIn's data-driven approach, new recruitment innovations, and diversity scorecard.

This case picks up where "LinkedIn and Modern Recruiting (A)" left off, detailing the company's innovations in hiring practices, which included its highly effective use of LinkedIn profile and resume data. As part of these innovations, LinkedIn's talent acquisition team built a new recruiting model, called the Total Addressable Market (TAM) model. TAM took a page out of sales and marketing models by using data that users provided on LinkedIn, enabling the company to narrow, segment, and prioritize which potential candidates to commit recruiting resources toward. In addition, the case presents LinkedIn's diversity scorecard and efforts to date.

This 2015 case focuses on the evolution of Box's management practices as the company grew from a small start-up to an organization with over 1,000 employees in five major locations. The online file sharing and cloud content collaboration service company was founded in 2005, and a decade later it was valued at $2.4 billion. During that time, Box was evolving its approaches to and processes for hiring, compensation, promotions, and performance evaluations. A driving factor in its management practices was the need to attract and retain top-quality entrepreneurial employees. However, as the company pivoted strategy to focus more on the lucrative enterprise market, its management practices had to evolve to be able to attract and retain more experienced employees with specific expertise in that segment. Box found it need to address tensions that arose as the company grew, including the slower speed of promotions, the changing compensation mix (cash versus equity), and the changing company culture as more seasoned employees joined the Box team.

When researchers asked carpenters, roofers, and in-line skaters how to improve safety gear for all three activities, each group turned out to be significantly better at thinking of novel solutions for the fields other than its own. Studies like this one demonstrate the value of accessing expertise from "analogous fields"--areas that seem different on the surface but are similar on a deep structural level. This piece shows how to find the far-flung experts who can jump-start your search for breakthrough ideas. This reprint contains two additional Idea Watch articles. "Global Growth, Paltry Returns" describes new research showing that many international expansions fail to deliver consistent and sizable profits and that companies are often better off growing locally. "When to Forget the Rearview Mirror" examines a study of forecasts in the music business, showing that in creative, volatile fields, historical data often impairs people's ability to interpret contextual data and make sound predictions.

Though the Apple logo is ubiquitous, 99 out of 100 people can't draw it from memory. The reason? Our brains don't burden us with information we don't think we'll need.

Charts that show a close correlation are often relying on a visual parlor trick. Tyler Vigen, a Harvard Law student, makes fun of them on his website.

Just before the celebration of the 2014 Chinese Lunar New Year, Tencent, the world's fourth largest Internet company, launched a mobile application for its popular WeChat platform: the Red Envelope. By clicking on a virtual red envelope icon, gifts of money could be sent to or received from friends and family to celebrate this special occasion. Combining a Chinese cultural tradition with modern social networks, this simple initiative soon became a major milestone in China's mobile market. It brought more than eight million users to Tencent's WeChat Payment platform in the first eight days after the New Year, helping the company break the barrier of mobile payment adoption among its vast user base and giving it a significant advantage in the country's competitive mobile payment market. This somewhat unexpected, record-making success, also made many companies rethink how to survive and thrive in China's rapidly growing technology sector.

Fishbay.in is an online store where Indian consumers can buy fish that is delivered to their home. Although the founder originally targeted individual consumers and households, he soon found that restaurants were also interested in buying fish online. Unlike individuals, restaurants were more concerned with quality than price and typically ordered larger quantities. The founder wonders whether he should stick to his original plan of targeting individual consumers or shift his focus to the restaurant business.

The chief executive officer of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) had the daunting task of sustaining a business that had suffered the tragic loss of two of its airliners in a span of just four months. Prior to this, a US$392 million loss, as well as the inability to compete with lower-cost carriers, had posed a great challenge to MAS. Management was planning to initiate a cost-cutting strategy to manage pricing and the competitive challenges of the aviation industry when these incidents shocked the world. The disasters greatly impacted customer confidence, as reflected in the company's declining booking rates and stock prices. With its reputation severely damaged, MAS was faced with many hard-hitting questions from various stakeholders about the airline's prospects. Many felt there was a need to transform the entire business model. The top executives pondered various options, including a rebrand of the airline, a new discounted pricing structure to build volume, a private equity infusion, a merger and filing for bankruptcy. Each option would have to be considered very carefully, as the changes made to the business would decide the future of MAS.

In September 2013, the managing director of Darling Kenya, a hair care product company headquartered in Nairobi, was pondering his next move. As a leader in the beauty hair care industry in Africa, the company needed to stay a step ahead of increasing competition from both local and multinational firms. With limited room to grow in the industry, he was looking at a set of alternatives to protect Darling's brand from losing market share. Which option would benefit the company the most: exploring new advertising channels, especially on the Internet and in social media; reinvigorating the brand with new packaging and higher quality; or entering the rural market through road shows?

Beaufort Solutions Inc. (Beaufort) was a very small technology company based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada that has been developing software solutions since 2003 for the rapidly changing and burgeoning digital photo industry. Beaufort's innovative technologies in the photo kiosk, web, and event photography market segments enabled the transformation of digital images into quality prints and gifts for consumers. The company's go-to-market strategy, in tandem with a substantial marketing partner, involved providing "big box" retail clients with a fully integrated digital photo solution that was intuitive for consumer use. A "lifestyle" company with a history of ups and downs due to events beyond its control, Beaufort had recently won the business of a significant strategic customer through the strength of their exceptional team and superior customer service. Building on this momentum, Beaufort was in the process of proving themselves to another, more substantial Canadian retailer, the success of which would change the company forever. In June 2011, Todd Hiscock, Beaufort's CEO, was pondering the consequences of success and wondering how much growth would best fit the company.

The Fídelló Cigar Cutter case highlights the introduction of a new-to-the-world product to a niche market with an elite target customer group. Chris Jones, the inventor of the Fídelló cigar cutter and managing partner of The Fídelló Company, spent nine years perfecting his product. After successfully test marketing a limited number of hand-assembled prototypes, Jones and his partners had funded the production of 5,000 units and were ready to launch the first new cigar cutter in more than thirty years to an uninformed public.

This case highlights entrepreneur Tom Wilson's dilemma: he must decide how to expand Springy Fields, his adult sport and recreation business. After the economic aftermath of 9/11 cost Tom his structural engineering job, he decided to turn his side business of running a spring and summer Ultimate Frisbee league into his full-time job. Over time, Tom's league grew substantially and he expanded into beach volleyball, soccer, flag football, and dodge ball. The Internet helped Tom remove the biggest expansion roadblock: the time required to complete administrative and customer-service tasks. Without the Internet, Tom doubted he could have achieved a fraction of the success he enjoyed between 2002 and 2010. Heading into the 2010 season, Tom realized he had plateaued and needed a new growth strategy. Each of the numerous options for expansion had its own unique set of financial risks and lifestyle implications. The case examines the myriad issues associated with developing a growth strategy that meets Tom's financial and lifestyle goals.

Sarah Brown, co-owner and manager of the Green Alliance (GA), a for-profit company developed to foster and promote corporate sustainability was concerned about the future of the relatively new venture. The economic recession had slowed growth drastically in the first months of 2010, and the GA had yet to break even. Andrew Kellar, Sarah, and a silent partner who had since exited the company, had started the Green Alliance (GA) in 2008 to develop a coalition of companies devoted to spreading the concept of sustainability through cooperative efforts. The companies which became members of the GA would receive a sustainability and "Green" audit and rating. Individuals who became members of the GA could receive discounts from the corporate members of the GA. The GA was limited to the Seacoast area of New Hampshire, as of early 2010. Both Sarah and Andrew felt that there were more opportunities for expansion in that area. Kellar also felt that the company could replicate the business model in other geographic areas. A question was left as to how to accomplish any expansion. Sarah also knew that some people might become competitors in other areas.