New research shows that the way many organizations conduct innovation contests needs to be improved. The biggest takeaway: Leaders need to design their contests to match their organization’s hoped-for outcomes. Choices like the number of prizes and the identity of judges, for example, will affect the number and diversity of participants, the time they invest, and the quality of their ideas. Here’s how to choose among the possible approaches based on your organization’s goals.

Commercial Director Prado wonders how to leverage the loyalty card information to prepare the Fall 2008 budget. The case discusses the value of subjective and objective information for profit planning purposes. Spanish children's apparel retailer Neck & Neck uses loyalty card information for tactical purposes, such as promotional campaigns. Its management team is thinking about how to incorporate that information to the budgeting (profit planning) process. From an analytical standpoint the case looks at the surprising results of a mailing campaign that reveals the consequences of inadequate updating of the customer database. Also, the budgeting data in the case may be used to teach regression model selection and R-squared.