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Though it's been over a decade since the first wave of post-Enron governance reforms, boards are still failing to provide strong oversight and strategic support for management's efforts to create long-term value. Consider these damning results from a recent McKinsey survey: A mere 34% of directors believe that the boards they serve on fully comprehend their companies' strategies, and just 16% think that their boards have a strong understanding of the dynamics of their firms' industries. Another survey asked directors and C-suite executives where the greatest pressure to deliver short-term results came from. The most frequent response? Boards. In this article the global managing director of McKinsey and the CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board propose measures to strengthen boards and encourage their members to focus more on long-term opportunities and strategy. Companies can start by recruiting independent thinkers and people with the right expertise as directors, fostering high-quality strategic conversations, and instituting key nonfinancial metrics. Engaging deeply with major long-term shareholders, especially about growth strategies, would also alleviate a lot of the pressure to maximize short-term results. And board compensation needs to be rethought: Directors should be paid more (but serve on fewer boards), and the mix of rewards should be retooled to emphasize long-term performance.

All too often, when we think we're projecting a certain image to others, they perceive us very differently. This happens in part because people tend to make judgments unconsciously and automatically, influenced by various biases. But research from social psychologists can help us understand the flaws in human perception and make sure we're judged fairly. According to the author, someone meeting you for the first time--or reassessing you later--is likely to be viewing you through various lenses: the "trust lens," to decide if you are friend or foe, the "power lens," to assess your usefulness, and the "ego lens," to confirm a sense of superiority. Halvorson suggests specific ways you can use this information to put your best foot forward. To be trusted, project warmth and competence. To appeal to someone more powerful, demonstrate your instrumentality in reaching his or her goals. And to be seen positively through another person's ego lens, be modest and inclusive. If you need to overcome a bad impression, you can complement these strategies with others that will make people want to revise their opinions of you. By thinking strategically about how we all form our impressions, you'll find it much easier to come across as you intend and be seen in a favorable light.

A publisher with a history of aiming at ignored or underserved markets is about to launch a series of micro e-books whose central character, El Diablo, is a gangster with a flamboyant lifestyle. The target audience is young men of the inner city. A prominent member of the Institute for African-Americans in the Media objects--loudly. The publisher's head of marketing and new product development must decide whether projected profits from the series outweigh the likely backlash and possible risk to the company's reputation. Expert commentary comes from John Morayniss, CEO of Entertainment One Television, and Michelle Rice, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing at TV One.

The Australian-born industrial designer likes to have direct access to clients' CEOs and needs to shut himself away for his creative work. His extensive travels have taught him that "design is a borderless occupation."

A publisher with a history of aiming at ignored or underserved markets is about to launch a series of micro e-books whose central character, El Diablo, is a gangster with a flamboyant lifestyle. The target audience is young men of the inner city. A prominent member of the Institute for African-Americans in the Media objects--loudly. The publisher's head of marketing and new product development must decide whether projected profits from the series outweigh the likely backlash and possible risk to the company's reputation. Expert commentary comes from John Morayniss, CEO of Entertainment One Television, and Michelle Rice, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing at TV One.

A publisher with a history of aiming at ignored or underserved markets is about to launch a series of micro e-books whose central character, El Diablo, is a gangster with a flamboyant lifestyle. The target audience is young men of the inner city. A prominent member of the Institute for African-Americans in the Media objects--loudly. The publisher's head of marketing and new product development must decide whether projected profits from the series outweigh the likely backlash and possible risk to the company's reputation. Expert commentary comes from John Morayniss, CEO of Entertainment One Television, and Michelle Rice, executive vice president of affiliate sales and marketing at TV One.

Just a few years after its 2005 opening, Georgia Aquarium faced a challenge common to all experience-based businesses: After an initial rush of traffic, attendance declines as the novelty wears off. So the facility brought in V. Kumar, a Georgia State University expert on marketing research and customer engagement, who used data analysis and marketing models to identify and acquire the most-valuable future customers. Kumar's team found the top zip codes of visitors and high-spending season-pass holders and then targeted media spending at residents in zip codes with similar demographics. The big payoff in increased attendance and revenue shows that marketing science can be a potent tool for other experienced-based businesses too. This reprint contains two additional Idea Watch articles. "The Downside of Discounts" provides a visual analysis of the frequency and extent of B2B discounts and the speed with which they erode the average price for all customers. "How Government Assistance Drives Start-Ups" describes several studies showing that public subsidies and insurance prompt more people to start companies.

A new study suggests that rats integrate information more effectively than humans do.

The pioneers of the United States' first credit agencies, in the mid-nineteenth century, understood that modern commerce required a new kind of foundation.

Sarah would soon graduate from Stanford GSB, and had received entry-level job offers from a number of wealth management firms. A tech-savvy Millennial, she wanted a career that would provide both intellectual challenges and a healthy work/life balance. She had five job lucrative offers to evaluate, and needed to weigh her options carefully. This case describes a hypothetical scenario of a student deciding which wealth management firm is the best fit for her interests, work style, and long-term career goals. The case provides a comprehensive overview of five distinctly different types of wealth management firms, with business models ranging from a traditional private bank with portfolio teams that sold the bank's products to clients, to an investment firm that delivered institutional-quality management to private clients, to a new venture using a technology-driven model designed to replace individual advisers entirely. The business model and fee structure of each type of firm are discussed in detail, along with additional insights into how the firms operate.

Meizhou Dongpo is a large catering group in China. On June 6, 1996, the first Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant was opened in Beijing. The enterprise entered the stage of rapid development in 2000, and set up Beijing Meizhou Restaurant Management Co., Ltd. In June 2003 the business mainly covers restaurant management, catering services, food processing and sales, with its headquarters in Beijing including logistics center and central kitchen. By the end of 2013, Meizhou Dongpo Group covered six business types. Meizhou Dongpo Group has annual operating revenue of over RMB 1.8 billion, accumulative consumers of over 20 million persons-times and more than 8,000 employees. This case focuses on the starting-up process of Meizhou Dongpo Group by Wang Gang. Meizhou Dongpo has grown from a small restaurant into one of top 100 catering companies in China. This simple and arduous entrepreneurship story has been happening over the past decade in the highly competitive traditional catering industry. High technology, well-educated talent, employed manager, brand-new business model and financial support from bank or venture capital institutions cannot be found in the entrepreneurship history of Meizhou Dongpo. The case is a good attempt to analyze how did Wang Gang create and rule a catering empire by his unique leadership?

Since the establishment of the first Meizhou Dongpo Restaurant in Beijing in 1996, Wang Gang and his wife Liang Di have opened more than 100 chain restaurants in China and foreign countries, and set up the group headquarters, logistics center, R&D center and central kitchen. Meizhou Dongpo has grown into one of the most stable large catering enterprises in China. The enterprise entered the stage of rapid development in 2000. Meizhou Dongpo Group has annual operating revenue of over RMB 1.8 billion, accumulative consumers of over 20 million persons-times and more than 8,000 employees. Meizhou Dongpo has transformed its small-restaurant operation model at beginning into present operation model of large catering group chain. Wang Gang believed Meizhou Dongpo must take the path of standardization to become a large-scale Chinese cuisine chain enterprise. Standardized management has always been the most important development strategy at Meizhou Dongpo. Wang Gang accelerated the standardized management of Meizhou Dongpo after 2000, realizing production and processing standardization, management standardization and service standardization. The year 2013 was important to Meizhou Dongpo. On December 18, 2013, Meizhou Dongpo Beverly Restaurant in Los Angeles was opened, and "Wangjiadu" series products of Meizhou Dongpo were also sold at various supermarkets in the U.S., marking a step of internationalization taken by Meizhou Dongpo. Regular chain, standardization strategy and international development are priorities of this case.

This case presents the history and recent governance challenges of Carvajal, S.A., a Colombia-based, family-owned, billion-dollar-plus holding company that had offered printing-related (e.g., Yellow Pages, notebooks) and other products and services across and beyond South America for more than a century. Specifically, the case details the company's state of affairs in early 2011, a time by which Carvajal's flagship businesses had matured rapidly with the emergence of digital technology and diminished demand for paper/print-based products. Though profits and growth remained positive, Carvajal's leaders knew that upholding the business's legacy of returns, dividends for all family members, and extensive philanthropy would take significant strategy and execution. Compounding the strategy issues, Carvajal faced these market challenges with new leadership: the first non-family CEO since the company's inception. Well-established Colombian executive Ricardo Obregon had been hired in 2008 over two family candidates to lead the business. Obregon was to oversee a complex governance network that included a holding company with seven operating companies, their management and respective boards, a family council, and 280 members (including spouses) of a shareholding family in its sixth generation. Carvajal's business and family leaders had to face market issues and decisions that included the possibility of taking public the operating companies and/or the holding company while maintaining the business's long traditions of unity, respect, strong ethics, and philanthropy. That meant optimizing several crucial relationships: between the family and the new CEO; between the family and the board; between the operating companies and the holding company; and between members of the large Carvajal family, many of whom now resided outside of Colombia and Latin America.

This note describes the history of Argentina agriculture and how it has been affected by government policies and new technologies.

The Broadway Angels investment group represents one of the few women-run angel groups in Silicon Valley. The group was founded by some of the most illustrious investors and operators with the mission to generate strong returns to members and inspire women in tech and investing. The case begins during the April 2014 investment meeting of the Broadway Angels. The members are evaluating an investment in Other Machine Co (OMC) and contemplating the structure of the angel group. Through the lens of these two key decisions, the case illustrates the factors that impact the angel fund's success and its ability to support entrepreneurs.

A new managing director of Microsoft South Africa was appointed in 2007 at a low point in Microsoft South Africa's dominance of the software industry. He set out to address the issues by focusing on four pillars: people (employees), partnerships, revenue and local relevance. The latter included regulatory compliance requirements regarding social transformation and meeting the stringent Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment codes. The managing director knew that targets had to be met in order to build the relationship with head office and that once this was in place, it would be easier to manage the requests that were to come related to local relevance.

Two groups of orthopedic surgeons form a joint venture with a community hospital to establish Hoag Orthopedic Institute, a for-profit hospital and two ambulatory service centers. By controlling and integrating all aspects of the patients' medical treatment, the physicians deliver superior outcomes, which they communicate with an annual public outcomes report. They also introduce bundled payment contracts with three insurers for orthopedic surgeries, and join a multi-hospital study for applying time-driven activity-based costing to identify process improvement and cost reduction opportunities. The case concludes with HOI leaders examining several options for expansion and growth.

Codecademy, an open-platform, online community for learning computer programming, launched in 2011. By 2014, the company had raised a total of $12.5 million in funding and was, on many fronts, an overwhelming success. However, there were still no revenues. The founders decided it was time to experiment with different monetization strategies before deciding on a way forward. Although they wanted to avoid being prematurely pressured into decisions that went against their open-platform philosophy, they also knew that in order to fulfill their mission to democratize education, they had to eventually build a revenue-generating business. But what business model should they pursue and what monetization experiments should they run?

Yantra Harvest Energy Private Limited (YHEPL), an energy service company, has sought a term loan of INR100 million to fund its growth and expansion. The Small Industries Development Bank of India, though convinced of the company's credit worthiness, is concerned about the fact the loan will be used to create assets at the premises of YHEPL's clients and YHEPL has mortgaged all its existing assets to the Urban Cooperative Bank towards working capital. Considering the nature of YHEPL's cash flow and other issues, the bank wants to design an appropriate financing product and determine whether or not financing energy efficiency projects like YHEPL's is a good business strategy.

In 2014, the owner of a family business that includes two fast-food restaurants, a highway restaurant and a catering services operation located in Pune, India, is confident that his business is at the cusp of taking off on a path that will make it significantly larger in scale. He is evaluating three alternatives: setting up a chain of small restaurants with a central kitchen facility, creating a couple of large restaurants similar to those that he has at present or investing in new highway restaurants. He also must consider whether he is ready to expand to other cities in India or globally and whether to develop family-owned land, buy new property or lease facilities for his planned ventures. He needs to come up with a strategy that best meets the needs of a changing business environment and also leverages his company's existing resources and capabilities. Before the next management meeting, he must decide what to do, in what sequence to take up the opportunities available, how to go about operationalizing the plan and also what design fallback options can be designed in case things go wrong.