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In a new study, subjects chose to experience a higher electric shock immediately over waiting a while to experience a milder shock--indicating that dread may be a powerful negative force.

The president and CEO of the American Red Cross talks about changing its organizational structure, making processes more collaborative, and learning the power of emotion.

The executive director of the Global Solution Networks program at the Rotman School of Management calls on business leaders to engage with other sectors in addressing issues of sustainability, social justice, and public well-being.

An elaborately engraved Spanish stock certificate issued in 1758 could almost be a template for modern stock certificates. Here's the story that its iconography reveals about the royal trading company it came from.

The case may be used in the latter part of a core course on strategy, or in advanced or elective courses on strategy which deal with business models, or in courses on mergers and acquisitions. There is data in the case for students to do some modeling using spreadsheets to experiment with and evaluate alternative strategies and business models, especially in the context of the acquisition of Lee Enterprises. The context is especially challenging given the difficulties faced recently by so many newspapers, suggesting this is a problem for the industry as a whole and not just a problem for a single newspaper company. Through discussion of this case, students may be expected to expand their understanding of industry structure analysis and business model analysis, and also to examine in detail the financial implications of alternative strategies and business models using spreadsheets. This case demonstrates well the implications of specific strategies for the financials of a company.

Abstract: Fan Ye has opened a U.S. sales office for the company his father founded in China: Suns International, a manufacturer of electronic switches. While competition in China was based almost solely on cost, Fan knew this would not be enough to break into the U.S. market-particularly in Suns' industry, where the cost of failure was high. Consequently, he decided to obtain the certifications needed to ensure Suns' product would meet U.S. standards. This gamble paid off as Suns attracted OEM customers like Honeywell and Otis Elevator. A main issue and decision point in the case is triggered by Suns taking over the exclusive supply of foot switches to Grainger, a major electronics catalog. ProSwitch, a U.S.-based family business that lost the Grainger account to Suns, has asked to meet with Fan, presumably to talk about a possible cooperative relationship. Fan must now decide whether to compete or cooperate with ProSwitch and what approach to take in the meeting.

This supplements the "A" case. Joel Rose and Chris Rush decide to spin-off from School of One to found New Classrooms Innovation Partners. Rose and Rush navigate the strategic complexities of the spin-off process to make their mission-driven product a reality. The case explores the co-founders' decision to pursue either a for-profit or nonprofit structure and their strategy for scaling their product, Teach to One.

Success in business unquestionably requires some willingness to cooperate through having faith in others. The question is how much faith and in whom? Decades of scientific research show that people's accuracy in deciding if another can be trusted tends to be only slightly better than chance. But this isn't because trustworthiness is completely unpredictable. It's because the guidelines most of us use to make these predictions are flawed. We place too much emphasis on reputation and perceived confidence, ignoring the fact that human behavior is always sensitive to context and can often be better assessed by our own intuition. So when your company's money and resources are on the line, how can you do a better job of gauging trustworthiness and thereby improve your likelihood of success? This article draws on emerging research to show how trustworthiness works and offers four points to keep in mind the next time you're deciding whether or not to do business with a new partner: Integrity can vary, power does corrupt, confidence often masks incompetence, and it's OK to trust your gut.

Canadian Jet just launched a social media contest: The traveler who posts the most creative tweet using the hashtag #CanJetLuxury will win two round-trip tickets to any of the airline's destinations. The head of public relations conceived the campaign in an attempt to improve the airline's tarnished reputation. But within the first 24 hours of the contest, unhappy customers have hijacked the hashtag and are using it to air their complaints about the company's frequent delays and labor relations. Now the head of PR needs to decide whether to pull the contest, change the hashtag, or simply ignore the bashes. Some of her team members think the company should apologize as well. But for what, exactly? With expert commentary from Cynthia Soledad, the senior director of the KitchenAid brand and shared marketing services at Whirlpool, and Rick Wion, the director of social media at McDonald's.

The comic icon shares his thoughts on creativity, corporate humor, and how the team behind Monty Python made decisions.

Canadian Jet just launched a social media contest: The traveler who posts the most creative tweet using the hashtag #CanJetLuxury will win two round-trip tickets to any of the airline's destinations. The head of public relations conceived the campaign in an attempt to improve the airline's tarnished reputation. But within the first 24 hours of the contest, unhappy customers have hijacked the hashtag and are using it to air their complaints about the company's frequent delays and labor relations. Now the head of PR needs to decide whether to pull the contest, change the hashtag, or simply ignore the bashes. Some of her team members think the company should apologize as well. But for what, exactly? With expert commentary from Cynthia Soledad, the senior director of the KitchenAid brand and shared marketing services at Whirlpool, and Rick Wion, the director of social media at McDonald's.

Canadian Jet just launched a social media contest: The traveler who posts the most creative tweet using the hashtag #CanJetLuxury will win two round-trip tickets to any of the airline's destinations. The head of public relations conceived the campaign in an attempt to improve the airline's tarnished reputation. But within the first 24 hours of the contest, unhappy customers have hijacked the hashtag and are using it to air their complaints about the company's frequent delays and labor relations. Now the head of PR needs to decide whether to pull the contest, change the hashtag, or simply ignore the bashes. Some of her team members think the company should apologize as well. But for what, exactly? With expert commentary from Cynthia Soledad, the senior director of the KitchenAid brand and shared marketing services at Whirlpool, and Rick Wion, the director of social media at McDonald's.

When Pinault stepped into the top job at Kering (formerly PPR), in 2003, he faced a key question: Should he leave things as they had been under his father, who had built a conglomerate of eclectic businesses, or take them in a new direction? He felt that the company should become more international, more growth oriented, and more profitable--and that it should build on its ownership of Gucci Group to create a strong position in the global luxury market. Kering began a series of acquisitions that included Alexander McQueen, Saint Laurent, and Bottega Veneta, and helped its brands develop their own retail store networks. It set out to pair creative directors--who retained a high degree of control--with strong and complementary CEOs. And it introduced operational synergies, coordinating sourcing and creating two product development centers. The transformation of the business has made the company much smaller but far more focused. Since 2003 its profits have risen by about 40%.

All companies claim that their strategies are customer driven. But when "customer" means any number of entities in a company's value chain--consumers, suppliers, retailers, even internal units like R&D--managers tend to lose focus, and their firms become vulnerable to competitors who have clearly defined who they serve and how. In this article, Robert Simons of Harvard Business School presents a framework that can help companies develop strategies that are truly customer-centric. The framework lays out four steps: (1) Identify the best primary customer for your business. This choice determines what resources and capabilities you invest in and how you organize your business. Amazon serves four very different types of customer (consumers, sellers, enterprises, and content providers), but it devotes the lion's share of its resources to pleasing consumers, even if that means sellers or content providers sometimes feel shortchanged. (2) Create processes to learn what your primary customer's values are. Data analytics, ethnographic research, and other methods can reveal needs and preferences that customers themselves may not be aware of. (3) Allocate resources accordingly, using one or more of the five business-model configurations: low price (Walmart), local value creation (Nestle), global standard of excellence (Microsoft), dedicated service relationship (IBM), or expert knowledge (Merck). (4) Build an interactive control process to monitor shifts in the assumptions that underlie your choices and prepare an action plan to respond.

Senior executives have discovered through hard experience that prospering at their level is a matter of carefully combining work and home so as not to lose themselves, their loved ones, or their foothold on success. To learn how they reconcile their professional and personal lives, the authors drew on five years' worth of interviews with almost 4,000 executives worldwide, conducted by students at Harvard Business School, and a survey of 82 executives in an HBS leadership course. Their stories and advice reflect five main themes: defining success for yourself, managing technology, building support networks at work and at home, traveling or relocating selectively, and collaborating with your partner. Some intriguing gender differences emerged in the survey data. For example, men still think of their family responsibilities in terms of breadwinning, whereas women often see theirs as role modeling for their children. And male executives tend to praise their partners for making positive contributions to their careers, whereas women praise theirs for not interfering. Executives of both sexes consider the tension between work and family to be primarily a women's problem, and most of them believe that one can't compete in the global marketplace while leading a "balanced" life. "Earnestly trying to focus," the authors conclude, "is what will see them through."

For nearly four decades, Langer's research on mindfulness has influenced thinking across a range of fields, from behavioral economics to positive psychology. It demonstrates that by paying attention to what's going on around us, instead of operating on autopilot, we can reduce stress, unlock creativity, and boost performance. "Mindfulness is the essence of engagement," Langer says. "And it's energy-begetting, not energy- consuming." It enables people to recognize and take advantage of opportunities when they arise and to avert risk. Furthermore, Langer says, "You like people better, and people like you better, because you're less evaluative. You're more charismatic." In this interview, she discusses the link between mindfulness and innovation, why mindfulness makes one less judgmental about others, what managers can do to become more mindful, and more.

In an HBR article in January 2005, Cappelli and Hamori compared leaders in the top 10 roles at each of the Fortune 100 companies in 1980 with those in 2001. Among their findings were a sharp decline in the number of senior executives who had spent their entire careers with one company, and a corresponding uptick in rapidly advancing young executives who spent less time with any one employer. In this article they and Bonet extend that analysis to 2011. Perhaps the most noteworthy changes they've found are demographic. For example, the percentage of executive women has risen quite a bit. But the 2008 recession caused some interesting developments: Financial institutions are bringing in more senior executives from outside than they did a decade ago; leaders have been hesitant to leave their organizations for new opportunities; and companies have held on to even underperforming executives to maintain stability. Generously illustrated with graphics, this article profiles today's leaders in four areas--career trajectory, education, diversity, and hierarchy within the senior ranks.

When "BeerCo" found its pub sales falling, market research and competitive analysis provided no help. So it sent out a team of social anthropologists to investigate. The resulting data, including field notes, photographs, and videos, yielded insights that prompted the company to revamp its promotional materials and training methods. Sales rebounded within two years and are still growing. BeerCo's story shows how the emerging approach of "sensemaking" can illuminate customers' true needs and facilitate successful transformations of product development, organizational culture, and corporate strategy. Rooted in the human sciences--anthropology, sociology, political science, and philosophy--sensemaking is a five-step process. Companies must: (1) Reframe the problem, focusing on the customer's experience of the product and the market. (2) Collect raw, firsthand data. (3) Find patterns in the data. (4) Generate new insights. (5) Translate those insights into initiatives. Sensemaking can help solve some of the toughest business problems and enables leaders to think creatively about what business they're really in.

In B2B markets, suppliers of nonstrategic products and services tend to assume they have only two options for landing sales: stressing their offerings' unique characteristics and competing on price. The problem is, the features touted often don't matter to purchasing managers, and neither do price concessions. How, then, do you win their business? The authors' research with 46 companies points to a solution: After meeting the customer's basic specs within an acceptable price range, give the purchasing manager "a justifier"--an extra that provides obvious value to the business. A car-leasing company, for instance, might offer the option to cancel a number of contracts without penalty, or a delivery service might print customers' logos on their envelopes. The justifier provides a clear-cut reason to select one supplier over others and breaks the tie among the finalists on the short list. To uncover justifiers, you should explore how customers use your offerings, learn about their priorities and those of their customers, and look at ways to integrate your offerings with other suppliers'. The right justifier can win you more business--and even help you launch a new one.

In the past 10 years, under pressure from shareholders, stock exchanges, and state and federal governments, corporate boards have changed dramatically. For example, regulations require that a majority of directors be independent; independent directors regularly meet in executive session without the CEO; shareholders can review decisions by the compensation committee; and directors are required to attend meetings more often. But externally driven reforms have proved rather ineffectual when it comes to improving boards' managerial oversight. The authors interviewed two dozen directors from the boards they most admire and coupled the directors' insights with their own broad experience leading, serving on, and counseling boards. They present some striking innovations in four main categories: strategy and talent oversight, board composition, the quality of board discussions, and the board's relationship with the CEO. These innovations can help boards dramatically improve the governance of their enterprises.