This case documents the origin and development of Together for Sustainability (TfS), a chemical industry initiative dedicated to raising sustainability standards throughout the industry's supply chains. In 2011, six Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) from some of the world's biggest chemical companies collaborated on a solution that would enable their companies to jointly advance supply chain sustainability-namely, eliminating adverse environmental, human rights, and labor impacts by suppliers. Towards this end, the six CPOs would build Together for Sustainability, a standalone non-profit organization that would coordinate the measurement of member companies and their suppliers' sustainability performance. Over the next decade, TfS scaled from 6 to 50 member companies. TfS has transformed the chemical industry by creating a template for collective action and setting new sustainability standards for supply chains. It must now decide what lies ahead and how it might go about achieving those goals. In 2024, TfS was at a critical juncture in its development. While TfS had earned a reputation as a leader in sustainability both within and outside the chemical industry, representatives from TfS member companies were now immersed in vigorous debates as to how to scale their initiative-and their impact-even further. Members were divided as to whether to expand their initiative into other industries or to remain focused on the chemical industry. Moreover, others were beginning to question whether TfS's non-profit model was truly the best medium for scale, or if a for-profit model would potentially be better suited to maximizing impact. What aspects of their initiative were specific to the chemical industry? What might translate to other industries?

In 2018, Ana Owczarzak was appointed to lead Google Ads' new innovation and accelerator team - the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL). The purpose of SAIL was to offer testing and incubation services for individuals within Google Ads who were developing new advertising products, services, and go-to-market strategies. When Ana began her new position, she inherited two programs that had been initiated in the core business but had stalled. After researching previous innovation endeavors within Google Ads, Ana and her team started establishing a team culture, procedures, methodology, and metrics to carry out rigorous and disciplined sales innovation across their globally dispersed team. Over the following two years, the SAIL team encountered and overcame numerous challenges related to vetting ideas, managing communication with internal and external stakeholders, adapting experiments with agility, and graduating programs into the core business. In 2020, SAIL received a $1 million budget and was expected to initiate two new innovation programs by Q3 2020. The SAIL team was in the process of developing a new idea-intake process when Ana was assigned to a six-month rotation in a new role. Soon after, COVID-19 began to upend economies across the globe, and some team members became concerned about SAIL's future. Prior to transitioning to her new position, Ana was determined that SAIL establish its intake process and had to select one of two proposals to implement.

In 2018, Ana Owczarzak was appointed to lead Google Ads' new innovation and accelerator team - the Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL). The purpose of SAIL was to offer testing and incubation services for individuals within Google Ads who were developing new advertising products, services, and go-to-market strategies. When Ana began her new position, she inherited two programs that had been initiated in the core business but had stalled. After researching previous innovation endeavors within Google Ads, Ana and her team started establishing a team culture, procedures, methodology, and metrics to carry out rigorous and disciplined sales innovation across their globally dispersed team. Over the following two years, the SAIL team encountered and overcame numerous challenges related to vetting ideas, managing communication with internal and external stakeholders, adapting experiments with agility, and graduating programs into the core business. In 2020, SAIL received a $1 million budget and was expected to initiate two new innovation programs by Q3 2020. The SAIL team was in the process of developing a new idea-intake process when Ana was assigned to a six-month rotation in a new role. Soon after, COVID-19 began to upend economies across the globe, and some team members became concerned about SAIL's future. Prior to transitioning to her new position, Ana was determined that SAIL establish its intake process and had to select one of two proposals to implement.

In January 2023, Raja Al Mazrouei became the Managing Director and Acting CEO of Etihad Credit Insurance (ECI) in Dubai, UAE. In her previous role as the Executive Vice President of the DIFC Fintech Hive, she successfully built and led an accelerator program for start-ups in the financial technology (fintech) sector in Dubai. The Fintech Hive has had successful partnerships with established banks like Emirates NBD and accelerated over 200 start-ups in the MENA region. Al Mazrouei and her team embraced recent technologies and evolved their business models to keep up with the global digital space. With Dubai's ambition to be one of the top ten metaverse economies by 2030, Al Mazrouei's last mandate as EVP of Fintech Hive was to strategize on how to deepen their partnerships and remain at the forefront of technology. She decided to focus on the metaverse with her long-standing partner, Emirates NBD. Although some questioned whether the metaverse would create value for those in the financial sector, this project kept Fintech Hive and Emirates NBD on the cutting edge. Together, they created a global accelerator program for metaverse start-ups to enhance customer experience, contributing to the country's agenda. It was clear to Al Mazrouei that building partnerships, like the one established with Emirates NBD, would continue to be critical for success in her new position. She was eager to collaborate with her new team and fulfill the country's ambitions by building the culture and capabilities required to embrace innovation and digital technology across the Dubai government and economy.

When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, digital technologies were on the rise, and innovation needed to become a strategic imperative at the company. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global innovation lab network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In 2018, Ken Moore, a former innovation leader at Citigroup, became Mastercard Labs' new leader. By then, Mastercard had made significant progress on its journey of cultural and digital transformation, but the company had to continue to think and act differently in order to compete and thrive in the fast-changing digital world. Moore's task was to evolve Mastercard Labs so that it could continue delivering value to Mastercard.

In late 2021, Mastercard CEO Michael Miebach and Chairman and former CEO Ajaypal "Ajay" Banga considered how Mastercard could best position itself for continued success in the years to come. Since Mastercard's initial public offering in 2006, the company had grown and transformed, driven in part by a core strategy of "Grow-Diversify-Build" and vision of a "World Beyond Cash." During Banga's recent tenure as CEO, Mastercard had invested in creating a strong culture, recruiting top talent, driving innovation, partnering with would-be competitors, and launching new services. Now, with Miebach at the helm as Mastercard's CEO, the payments landscape was experiencing increasing democratization of the banking system, the rise of blockchain and cryptocurrency, and increasing nationalism, among other shifts. Miebach and Banga needed to identify the most pressing threats and opportunities in the ever-evolving payments landscape and determine how to take advantage of them. As they looked ahead, they asked themselves: Was Mastercard well positioned for the next 10 years?

When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company's competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard's new vision of a "World Beyond Cash" distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify customers and employees, and Build new businesses that reinforce Mastercard's core capabilities. With digital technologies on the rise, Banga knew that innovation would need to become a strategic imperative. Yet, in a 2010 survey, Mastercard's 7,000 employees ranked "innovation" as the 26th most important factor for the future of Mastercard in a list of 27. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global R&D network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In December 2017, Lyons is stepping down from his role as Chief Innovation Officer and reflecting on the path ahead for Mastercard and its Labs.

When Ajaypal (Ajay) Banga became the CEO of Mastercard in 2010, he shifted the company's competitive focus from card networks to cash itself. Mastercard's new vision of a "World Beyond Cash" distilled into a three-pronged framework: Grow the core business, Diversify customers and employees, and Build new businesses that reinforce Mastercard's core capabilities. With digital technologies on the rise, Banga knew that innovation would need to become a strategic imperative. Yet, in a 2010 survey, Mastercard's 7,000 employees ranked "innovation" as the 26th most important factor for the future of Mastercard in a list of 27. Banga tasked Garry Lyons, who had joined Mastercard through the 2009 acquisition of Orbiscom, with infusing innovation into Mastercard's culture. With a significant incremental investment, and free reign to spend it as he pleased, Lyons created Mastercard Labs-a global R&D network that became a catalytic force for change at the company. In December 2017, Lyons is stepping down from his role as Chief Innovation Officer and reflecting on the path ahead for Mastercard and its Labs.

In 2006, the Cleveland Clinic and Mubadala Investment Company partnered with a bold ambition to deliver world class healthcare in the United Arab Emirates. In 2015, after nearly a decade of planning and construction, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi opened its doors. By 2017, the hospital had proven it could deliver Cleveland Clinic-quality care 7,000 miles away from its main campus. Dr. Rakesh Suri, Chief of Staff at the time, became Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi's Chief Executive Officer; his mandate was to grow the hospital into one of the most innovative academic medical centers in the world, while marching toward financial sustainability. As a newer hospital, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi endured its share of growing pains as it worked to cultivate a culture of innovation and take full advantage of its information technology and business intelligence capabilities. By 2019, there were so many innovation initiatives underway that the executive team was considering whether to implement a Priority Index to foster a more coordinated approach to innovation.

In 2006, the Cleveland Clinic and Mubadala Investment Company partnered with a bold ambition to deliver world class healthcare in the United Arab Emirates. In 2015, after nearly a decade of planning and construction, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi opened its doors. By 2017, the hospital had proven it could deliver Cleveland Clinic-quality care 7,000 miles away from its main campus. Dr. Rakesh Suri, Chief of Staff at the time, became Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi's Chief Executive Officer; his mandate was to grow the hospital into one of the most innovative academic medical centers in the world, while marching toward financial sustainability. As a newer hospital, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi endured its share of growing pains as it worked to cultivate a culture of innovation and take full advantage of its information technology and business intelligence capabilities. By 2019, there were so many innovation initiatives underway that the executive team was considering whether to implement a Priority Index to foster a more coordinated approach to innovation.

As COVID-19 began to take lives, destroy healthcare systems, and shut down economies across the globe, Dr. Rakesh Suri, Chief Executive Officer of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and his executive team adapted their leadership to instill the new levels of agility and innovation required for the hospital to meet the demands of the pandemic. Collaboration across their local ecosystem and the broader Cleveland Clinic enterprise was paramount. In the midst of the pandemic, Dr. Suri confronted his toughest leadership challenge yet-having to lead the hospital from travel-related quarantine. Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi's business plan, staffing plan, supply procurement, budget, and key performance indicators (KPIs) had gone out the window. In addition, the U.A.E. government had restricted all travel to and from the U.A.E., so Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi had become the only center in the country for a range of emergency procedures. The executive team was now considering how to reformulate their performance scorecards to reflect how the hospital's mix of services would have to evolve as a result of the pandemic and its aftermath. Dr. Suri was due to discuss the new metrics with his team upon his return to the hospital from quarantine.

Despite their embrace of agile methods, many firms striving to innovate are struggling to produce breakthrough ideas. A key culprit, according to the authors, is an outdated, inefficient approach to decision-making. Today's discovery-driven innovation processes involve an unprecedented number of choices, from which ideas to pursue to countless decisions about how to conduct experiments, what data to collect, and so on. But these choices are often made too slowly and informed by obsolete information and narrow perspectives. To align their decision-making processes with agile approaches, businesses need to include diverse (customer, local, data-informed, and outside) points of view; clarify decision rights; match the cadence of decisions to the pace of learning; and encourage candid conflict in service of a better experience for the end customer. Only then will all that rapid experimentation pay off. The article suggests best practices for these interventions, drawing on the story of the transformation at Pfizer's Global Clinical Supply, which would go on to play a critical role supporting the rapid development of the pharma giant's Covid vaccine.

In 2016, Nicole M. Jones was hired to lead The Hangar, Delta Air Lines' new innovation center in Atlanta, Georgia. Delta's leadership had intended for The Hangar to catalyze a new approach to innovation at the company. After conducting three months of research on existing corporate innovation lab and accelerator models, Jones learned that most fail to scale impact across the core business. Drawing on her learnings, she established the values, strategy, and methodology for The Hangar to ensure just the opposite. Over the next three years, Jones and The Hangar's diverse team of design thinkers, technologists, and strategists brought together partners from Delta's core business and Atlanta's start-up and academic communities to execute a number of breakthrough innovations. After Delta's debut at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, Jones was invited to share her experience of setting up a corporate innovation lab with a consortium of innovation leaders. In preparation, she and her team are conducting a post-mortem of their three-year journey and reflecting on the lessons learned from one of their earliest projects-a Biometric Boarding Pass prototype they executed with CLEAR, a biometrics identity start-up.

This case is the third installment in a series about the 10-year cultural and digital transformation of Pfizer's Global Clinical Supply organization. In 2011, Michael Ku became Pfizer's Vice President of Global Clinical Supply (GCS) after the company had undergone three large-scale mergers and acquisitions. Ku and his new leadership team set out to build a proactive, end-to-end, digital and physical clinical supply chain. It took three years to get the cultural foundation in place, another three to overhaul GCS's legacy systems and develop its digital capabilities, and another three to instill a culture of innovation. By 2020, GCS had made significant progress toward becoming the agile, innovative organization necessary to support Pfizer's new strategy to focus exclusively on developing innovative medicines and vaccines. GCS was just beginning to pilot a new 24-hour, 5 day a week workforce model with a new team in Manila when COVID-19 struck. The organization found itself on the front lines having to supply Pfizer's vaccine candidate and investigational antiviral studies, while also ensuring continuity of clinical supply to hundreds of other trials across the globe. Because of the 10 years GCS had spent on their cultural and digital transformation, they were ready to rise to the challenge and help Pfizer deliver a COVID-19 vaccine in record time. In August 2021, Ku and his leadership team are preparing to make a number of major changes to GCS in preparation for a new era of scale, agility, and innovation.

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not access high quality education or healthcare. They believed that with a faster, cheaper mode of transportation, they could democratize the world's resources-bring the right people or resources together to the right places at the right time. Although teleportation was still the "stuff of science-fiction," teleporting human consciousness and skills to remote locations through robots was not. Their vision was to build an "avatar service platform"-a global infrastructure of general-purpose avatar robots that humans could rent, like Uber or AirBnB, to perform surgery, defuse a bomb, visit elderly grandparents, attend school, or vacation in distant physical environments. In Akira and Kevin's eyes, ANA was in the mobility business, not just the airline business. They influenced senior management to invest $22 million to fund the ANA AVATAR XPRIZE and, with ANA's support, built a global avatar ecosystem of technologists, start-ups, corporates, non-profits, and government, including the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. As they worked to advance the technology and regulatory landscape, they also generated demand for avatar services-for that, they needed to change the mindset of the general public. By 2020, the "ANA AVATAR" program, as they called it, had made significant progress, and Akira and Kevin initiated the process to spin out of ANA, and launch a start-up, "avatarin." Then, COVID-19 upended reality. The years they thought it would take to create widespread demand for avatar-enabled telepresence had evaporated. Now, the question was, how should they deploy their start-up team to meet the humanitarian need, investor, and partner expectations?

In 2016, Akira Fukabori and Kevin Kajitani, aeronautical engineers at All Nippon Airways Co., Ltd., began to wonder why, in a world of accelerating globalization and digital connectivity, those who lived in far-remote villages or impoverished urban areas could not access high quality education or healthcare. They believed that with a faster, cheaper mode of transportation, they could democratize the world's resources-bring the right people or resources together to the right places at the right time. Although teleportation was still the "stuff of science-fiction," teleporting human consciousness and skills to remote locations through robots was not. Their vision was to build an "avatar service platform"-a global infrastructure of general-purpose avatar robots that humans could rent, like Uber or AirBnB, to perform surgery, defuse a bomb, visit elderly grandparents, attend school, or vacation in distant physical environments. In Akira and Kevin's eyes, ANA was in the mobility business, not just the airline business. They influenced senior management to invest $22 million to fund the ANA AVATAR XPRIZE and, with ANA's support, built a global avatar ecosystem of technologists, start-ups, corporates, non-profits, and government, including the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. As they worked to advance the technology and regulatory landscape, they also generated demand for avatar services-for that, they needed to change the mindset of the general public. By 2020, the "ANA AVATAR" program, as they called it, had made significant progress, and Akira and Kevin initiated the process to spin out of ANA, and launch a start-up, "avatarin." Then, COVID-19 upended reality. The years they thought it would take to create widespread demand for avatar-enabled telepresence had evaporated. Now, the question was, how should they deploy their start-up team to meet the humanitarian need, investor, and partner expectations?

In 2011, Michael Ku became Pfizer's Vice President of Global Clinical Supply (GCS) after the company had undergone three large-scale mergers and acquisitions. As Ku and his new leadership team set out to build a proactive, end-to-end, digital and physical clinical supply chain, they put in place a "Patients First" culture, developed their digital capabilities, and built out their global footprint. By 2019, GCS had made significant progress toward becoming the agile, innovative organization necessary to support Pfizer's new ambition to focus exclusively on developing innovative medicines and vaccines. Ku and his leadership team felt the time had come to implement a new cross-functional decision-making hub. They also decided to pilot a 24-hour, 5 day a week workforce model with a team of clinical pharmacists in Manila. Just as they were beginning to onboard their first hires, COVID-19 struck. GCS found itself on the front lines, having to supply Pfizer's vaccine candidate and investigational antiviral studies, while also ensuring continuity of clinical supply to hundreds of other trials across the globe. By July 2020, the five-person Manila team-all of which had been on-boarded virtually-had come to play a critical role in GCS's productivity. With Phase 3 of the vaccine candidate trial looming, Ku and his leadership team had decided to double the size of the Manila team by the end of 2020. The question was, who would lead the team?

In 2005, Vineet Nayar, the former CEO and Vice Chairman of HCL Technologies, and his wife, Anupama Nayar, committed $100 million of their personal wealth to found Sampark Foundation-a grant-making philanthropy with a mission to transform learning outcomes for 20 million children in rural government schools by 2025. By 2013, it was clear that Sampark was never going to reach 20 million children by writing grants. Vineet stepped out of the corporate world and over the next six years, applied the lessons he learned about leading change at HCL to transform Sampark into a "disruptive design shop" that leveraged frugal innovation and a "Teachers First" model of change to revolutionize India's primary education system. By 2019, at $1 per child per annum, Sampark's 130 employees had touched the lives of over 7 million students and 200,000 teachers across 90,000 public schools-unprecedented scale in the Indian education context and evidence that their "Teachers First" strategy was working. Demand for Sampark's program was growing rapidly and Vineet now had the opportunity to reach 50 million children. Vineet had always believed in the transformative power of technology and had to determine whether Sampark could transition to a "Digital First" model.

In 2005, Vineet Nayar, the former CEO and Vice Chairman of HCL Technologies, and his wife, Anupama Nayar, committed $100 million of their personal wealth to found Sampark Foundation - a grant-making philanthropy with a mission to transform learning outcomes for 20 million children in rural government schools by 2025. By 2013, it was clear that Sampark was never going to reach 20 million children by writing grants. Vineet stepped out of the corporate world and over the next six years, applied the lessons he learned about leading change at HCL to transform Sampark into a "disruptive design shop" that leveraged frugal innovation and a "Teachers First" model of change to revolutionize India's primary education system. By 2019, at $1 per child per annum, Sampark's 130 employees had touched the lives of over 7 million students and 200,000 teachers across 90,000 public schools - unprecedented scale in the Indian education context and evidence that their "Teachers First" strategy was working. Demand for Sampark's program was growing rapidly and Vineet now had the opportunity to reach 50 million children. Vineet had always believed in the transformative power of technology and had to determine whether Sampark could transition to a "Digital First" model.

When Kathy Fish, Procter & Gamble's Chief Research, Development & Innovation Officer, and a 40-year company veteran, stepped into her role in 2014, she was concerned that the world's leading consumer packaged goods company had lost its capability to produce a steady stream of disruptive innovations. This, coupled with intensifying competition from more agile, digitally-savvy direct-to-consumer companies, convinced Fish that P&G needed to renew its value proposition. She believed it was essential that all 100,000 employees see innovation as their job, and that all aspects of the consumer experience-not only the product itself-be "irresistibly superior." But making this change would require wholesale transformation, which was challenging because P&G's business units had decision-making rights for their businesses. Thus, when she launched GrowthWorks, an initiative to bring lean innovation to scale at P&G, Fish designed it to be business unit-led and corporately-supported. Fish and her team tackled challenges as they emerged along the way, such as the need to adapt career systems. Fish took a "pull" versus "push" approach and it caught on like "wildfire," eventually producing a portfolio of over 130 projects, and momentum that led P&G to headline the Consumer Electronics Show for the first time. While progress indicators were strong, the business units still struggled to incubate innovations, and Fish feared that unless P&G's overall innovation performance management and reward systems changed, the new approach to innovation would not take hold in a sustainable way. Fish grapples with whether to take a more "push" approach and add innovation metrics to the business unit presidents' annual scorecards, which typically focused on short term deliverables.