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Watson Children's Shelter (Watson) was a private, independent, charitable non-profit organization located in Missoula, MT, that provided emergency shelter to children. Watson was a licensed emergency care provider, offering a safe, nurturing environment for children who were victims of physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, or family crisis. Many of the children arriving at the shelter were severely emotionally disturbed or learning disabled. Other children arrived as victims of secondary abuse, coming from situations in which they observed domestic violence, substance or sexual abuse. Watson was founded in 1977 and had been under the leadership of Fran Albrecht since 1997. Albrecht had an excellent reputation as a leader and manager of this non-profit. It was June 2011 when Albrecht was deciding which of three alternatives to recommend to her Board of Directors, as Watson faced a tough operational situation. Watson and its Board had gone through a time-consuming due diligence process that led them to the decision to expand and build an additional facility. Within a year after the second facility was finished, placements of children had decreased dramatically; where Watson had been turning away approximately two children per week, it now had excess capacity in each facility and even had closed one facility part of the time. Albrecht's research into the decreased placements led her to a policy change by the main referring agency-it was now taking a "family preservation" approach rather than referring directly to an emergency provider such as Watson.It was a case of Albrecht and her Board having done lots of due diligence and then being blindsided by a decision made by an external constituent. She was concerned about the public perception and the impact on her organization and the Board members, as well as other stakeholders, including the children. She knew Watson had to adapt and act quickly, but she was not certain which alternative to take

County Line Markets (CLM) needed to consider expanding one of its existing sixty-seven Indiana based stores to form a superstore. The key capital investment trade-off decision facing CLM was whether to replace its existing store now with a new, larger superstore, or should they wait in the hope that additional information they might receive in the future would enhance the overall net present value (NPV) of the project. Ron Winston, CFO, was considering whether a real options approach should be used to help determine when and if the store should be converted to a superstore. This case focuses on CLM's evaluation of its downtown metro area location. Although the specific circumstances of each location were different, the analytical and judgmental issues facing CLM's management for the upgrade to a superstore were typical of the issues present at each location. The CLM store under evaluation is located in an area where the demographics, population, and competitive landscape have changed dramatically since the store was last remodeled. The chief financial officer (CFO) Ron Winston thinks that it is premature to invest substantial sums of money in some existing locations because they are still in a state of flux, and he feels it is better to wait until the market stabilizes before committing large amounts of funds to these markets. Jerry Williams, vice president of operations, thinks that CLM needs to invest in advance of market changes. Williams also believes that Winston is not considering competitive developments in his analysis; that is, the impact on the downtown metro area store if the competition moves to a superstore first.

The Vice President and General Manager of Northeast BMW, a family-owned car dealership, must determine what disciplinary actions to take against an employee who posted defamatory comments and photos to his Facebook page referencing two instances at the dealership. The first involved a launch event of the redesigned BMW 5 Series model for which the sales staff was dissatisfied with the quality of refreshments offered to potential customers. The employee also posted pictures and disparaging captions about an accident that occurred at the company's adjacent LandRover dealership later that week. The Vice President learned of the Facebook postings through phone calls from neighboring dealers.

On November 15, 1996, Stanford's Board of Trustees and the University of California (UC) Board of Regents voted to merge their two academic medical centers; on November 1, 1997, the merger became official. However, less than two years later, in October 1999, the merger came to an abrupt end. Was the merger an ill-conceived "snakebit venture" or a reasonable response to the environmental and economic pressures of the time that fell apart in its execution? Would the same ills have befallen Stanford and UCSF regardless of the merger?

Mr. J, the Manager of the Health Department in District X, South Africa, was hopeful that he could bring increased resources and better health to the area. District X, one of about 50 districts in 9 provinces in South Africa, was a largely rural area saddled with high levels of poverty, poor infrastructure, and high mortality rates; medical needs were high but almost half of the positions in the health department were unfilled, and turnover among staff was high. In South Africa, there was a push to improve primary care and to decentralize management to local levels in order to respond to local needs more effectively, but the processes for planning, reporting and budgeting were extremely complex and did not seem to support that goal. Mr. J wondered what additional skills he needed in order to work the system, and was also thinking about how the system itself could be improved.

Dr. Laurie Gianturco ("Dr. G."), Chief of Radiology at Baystate Health and President of the private imaging practice Radiology & Imaging, Inc. ("R&I"), and her partner for this project, Suzanne Hendery, VP of Marketing & Communications at Baystate Health, considered their new assignment. With Baystate leadership's full executive sponsorship and support, but no additional budget, they were tasked with consolidating two competing practices-one operated by R&I, the other by Baystate Medical Center-to form a new breast services center under the Baystate umbrella. The consolidation would simplify redundant Baystate-affiliated breast services offerings, making the system less confusing for patients and providers while giving Baystate the opportunity to offer more patient-centered services as well as reducing its operating costs and boosting revenues. They knew it would be a complicated project, involving two competing physician practice cultures, three clinical specialty orientations, the potential disruption of existing referral networks, and the merger of imaging services for healthy women along with treatment for women with breast cancer. Despite these challenges, they banded together to define a patient-driven culture, create an integrated program, and build a strong brand anchored by the new facility. Their goal was to gain a competitive advantage by developing a relationship-based approach that would exceed customer (patients and referring physicians) expectations for service. "The financial argument was the easy part," Dr. G reflected. "How to actually design a model of care is where we came to an impasse."

After extensive negotiation, Baystate Health (BH) and the private Radiology and Imaging (R&I) hammered out a clear business plan to consolidate their two practices in a new breast center in a new location. Despite a clear business plan, however, tensions among the two staffs remained high. Project leaders Dr. Gianturco and Suzanne Hendery carefully crafted an internal communication and implementation plan, detailed to the hour, and enlisted a consultant to help to unify the "warring factions." The consultant worked with Dr. G and Ms. Hendery to plan and hold a retreat with all of the stakeholders-clinicians, management, and staff-from all locations and from both legacy organizations, with the goals of constructing a new cultural blueprint and designing a new patient experience.

As CEO Rick Siegrist signed the paperwork to dissolve his three-year-old startup Cambria Health, he pondered what had gone wrong. He had started the company to provide a turnkey software and technical solution to health care organizations that wanted to introduce shared medical appointments to improve patient care. But after several successful beta sites, the company was not able to achieve sufficient traction to continue. After over a year of inactivity, he decided to officially "pull the plug." Rick had previously co-founded three successful healthcare software companies before starting Cambria Health. He wondered what was different with Cambria. Was it a failure related to the idea or vision? Was it the strategy or business model of the company? Execution? Other reasons? Rick knew that he and fellow entrepreneurs liked to talk a lot about their successes, but not much about their failures. Perhaps there was more to learn from those failures regarding future opportunities.

Modern business problems are ill-defined, ill-structured and require collective action in order to solve them. As a result, the authors argue, modern business problem solvers need to embrace Model-Based Problem Solving. They describe a new discipline that is nurtured by decades of scientific thinking and practice, with four components: model building, model testing, model calibration and model fusion. Key to the approach is recognizing-and addressing-the issues that arise whenever people work together. They provide advice for harnessing disagreement and turning it into productive and generative tension.

Our schools, their curricula and their governance structures are part of society's purpose-built knowledge infrastructure. The problem is, many of today's most successful leaders believe this infrastructure is not up for the job it was designed for: Bill Gates has said that our schools "cannot teach our kids what they need to know today." The authors argue that we will always face the challenge of matching our knowledge infrastructure with the skills we need tomorrow; and instead of constantly trying to fill that gap, our purpose should be to enable students to overcome the gap effectively themselves, throughout their lives.

Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs have exceled at demonstrating a highly valuable skill: spotting unmet market needs and figuring out how to serve them profitably. In short, they excel at anticipation. The authors describe three techniques for 'tuning in' to customer signals in order to better anticipate how tastes and needs are changing. They also describe the perils of 'tunnel vision' and provide three techniques for avoiding it.

Across industries, businesses are globalizing at a remarkable rate. However, the authors argue that there is a severe shortage of executives and managers who are capable of seizing all of the available opportunities. Based on their research at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, they define 'the Global Mindset' and its three components: Global Intellectual Capital, Global Psychological Capital and Global Social Capital. They then describe how to choose between finding people with this mindset or growing a global mindset, and the steps involved in each.

In a world of true meritocracy, every individual-regardless of gender-would be fairly rewarded for their contribution. The problem, according to the author, is that such meritocracy does not exist in most organizations. She argues that the procedures and 'frames of reference' in most firms devalue women's contributions and reinforce the privileges of dominant groups. If we want to make meritocracy a reality, she says, men and women alike must confront their biases towards women. She provides eight strategies for getting closer to a true meritocracy, including 'training anyone in an evaluative position to understand implicit bias' and 'examining systems and procedures for unintended bias'.

The idea that 'less is often more' is thousands of years old, but the author describes how powerful it is in a modern business setting. He provides three key principles that can be applied in any organization: what isn't there often trumps what is; the simplest rules create the most effective experience; and limiting information engages the imagination. In the end, he shows that by focusing on what to ignore, what to leave out and what not to do, workplace decisions become exponentially simpler.

In order to master Big Data, businesses must put aside much of what they know about 'working with data' and adopt new mindsets, technologies and capabilities. The authors, all from the Boston Consulting Group, describe the key capabilities required in three areas: data usage, the data engine itself and the data ecosystem. By following their guidelines, they argue, companies can realize the full potential of Big Data faster than they might think-and more importantly, faster than their competitors.

Governments around the world are under unprecedented pressure to identify more cost-effective ways to deliver their services and produce better societal outcomes. As a result, they have begun to embrace approaches to innovation favoured by the private sector, including Design Thinking. With its customer-centric approach, Design Thinking encourages what the authors call 'citizen-centred design'. They provide a tool kit for policy makers and implementers alike that aims to tackle everything from tactical issues (i.e. getting a repeat prescription) to wider problems, such as supporting people in managing their health.

Most people define 'genius' as a person with a towering IQ; but the author argues that a genius is "anyone who turns insight into innovation, and in the process, changes our view of the world." He provides 10 time-tested principles to ignite an endless cycle of creative growth, including 'Feel before you think', 'See what's not there' and 'wish for what you want'. In the end, he shows that true innovation is an act of protest: a rebellion against rules that, in some cases, have hardened into laws. The job of the innovator, he says, is to defy those laws in the quest for creative solutions.

In this wide-ranging interview, one of the world's leading business psychologists describes the value of becoming a 'first-class Noticer'. Doing so, he argues, enables one to avoid the perils of 'inattentional blindness', 'motivated blindness' and 'bounded awareness'-all of which are pervasive in modern organizations, he says. He also defines 'leadership-driven noticing', why it is such a vital skill, and the ways in which it is absent on many corporate boards and in the auditing industry.

In his youth Chambers had no interest in technology--until an IBM recruiter suggested that he think of it as a tool for helping customers transform their businesses. Then stints at IBM and Wang taught him that even great companies are imperiled if they miss a market transition, such as the shift from mainframe computers to minicomputers or from minicomputers to PCs. In the 20 years since he became Cisco's CEO, a whole series of transitions have occurred in the kinds of technology companies rely on and in how organizations consume solutions. Anticipating those transitions and getting ahead of them has driven Cisco's evolution from routers and switches to mobile and video technology to application-centric infrastructure and cloud computing. The company has three ways to adapt: (1) If it sees a shift early enough, it develops the new technology in-house, as part of the traditional R&D process. In addition, its Entrepreneurs in Residence program financially supports and mentors early-stage entrepreneurs working in areas where Cisco sees huge potential, such as big data analytics and enterprise security. (2) It may make an acquisition--as it has done 174 times. (3) It may use a "spin-in," assembling some engineers and developers to work on a specific project outside the company, as if they were at a start-up. "You have to be bold," Chambers writes. And you need "a resilient culture with an appetite for change."

The use of 3-D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, has moved well beyond prototyping, rapid tooling, trinkets, and toys. Companies such as GE, Lockheed Martin, and BMW are switching to it for industrial production at scale. More companies will follow as the range of printable materials continues to expand. Already available are basic plastics, photosensitive resins, ceramics, cement, glass, numerous metals, thermoplastic composites (some infused with carbon nanotubes and fibers), and even stem cells. In this article the author makes the case that additive manufacturing will gain ground quickly given advantages including greater flexibility, fewer assembly steps and other cost savings, and enhanced product design possibilities. Managers, he writes, should now be engaging with strategic questions on three levels: (1) Sellers of tangible products should ask how their offerings could be improved, whether by themselves or by competitors. (2) Industrial enterprises should revisit their operations to determine what network of supply chain assets and what mix of old and new processes will be optimal. (3) Leaders must consider the strategic implications as whole commercial ecosystems begin to form around the new realities of 3-D printing. Many of the biggest players already in the business of additive manufacturing are vying to develop the platforms on which other companies will build and connect. Platform owners will be powerful because production itself is likely to become commoditized over time. Those facilitating connections in the digital ecosystem will sit in the middle of a tremendous volume of industrial transactions, collecting and selling valuable information.