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Set in 2016, this case describes ING Bank's implementation of a radical new way of working using agile principles. ING's agile way of working has been written up in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and McKinsey Quarterly. This case provides a detailed account of how the new structure was developed and implemented. The case describes the process of change in ING Bank, from the aftermath of the global financial crisis to 2016. It provides background information on two change initiatives (Tango and Less is More) that simplified and rationalised the bank's activities, then it provides a detailed account of the major transformation that became known as RIO ("Redesign into Omnichannel"). It focuses on the choices made by Bart Schlatmann, COO of the Netherlands business, and his team - to pursue an omnichannel strategy (i.e. where all channels to market are linked together and managed seamlessly) and to build an organisation to support this strategy that drew inspiration from digital companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. The subsequent restructuring into "agile" teams was a groundbreaking move for a company in the rather conservative banking industry. The case provides lots of detail on how this new model works in practice. After 12 months 3,000 staff had embraced the culture of agile methodology. At the end of the case, Schlatmann had to consider two main questions: (1) How to balance the autonomy of tribes with alignment to the company's strategic objective; and (2) How to roll out agile to other parts of the ING.

Set in 2016, this case describes ING Bank's implementation of a radical new way of working using agile principles. ING's agile way of working has been written up in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and McKinsey Quarterly. This case provides a detailed account of how the new structure was developed and implemented. The case describes the process of change in ING Bank, from the aftermath of the global financial crisis to 2016. It provides background information on two change initiatives (Tango and Less is More) that simplified and rationalised the bank's activities, then it provides a detailed account of the major transformation that became known as RIO ("Redesign into Omnichannel"). It focuses on the choices made by Bart Schlatmann, COO of the Netherlands business, and his team - to pursue an omnichannel strategy (i.e. where all channels to market are linked together and managed seamlessly) and to build an organisation to support this strategy that drew inspiration from digital companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon.

This article develops a conceptual integration of the dynamic capabilities and ambidexterity perspectives in order to understand how firms adapt to discontinuous change. Based on three illustrative case studies, it demonstrates that it is not possible to identify a universal set of dynamic capabilities. Rather, the distinct set of capabilities required depends on which of three modes of adaptation (structural separation, behavioral integration, or sequential alternation) has been prioritized. This article contributes a contingency perspective to dynamic capability research and offers guidance to managers about the alternative approaches they could take when seeking to adapt to environmental discontinuities.

Although many companies claim to embrace failure as an integral part of the innovation process, near-zero tolerance for it blocks them from pursuing new ideas. Corporate budgeting, resource allocation, and risk control are all designed to promote predictability and efficiency, and even when people understand that they can and should fail, they do everything possible to avoid missteps. There's a way to resolve this conundrum, however: Increase your return on unsuccessful projects by rigorously extracting value from them, boosting their benefits while minimizing their downsides. In this article, two business school professors outline three steps you can take to improve your firm's return on failure. First, study projects that didn't pan out and document all the insights they offer about customers, markets, future trends, your organization, your operations, your team, and yourself. Second, magnify the impact of those lessons by spreading them across your company. Senior leaders should gather frequently to discuss their failures, and efforts to share lessons with all employees will build trust and goodwill and encourage future initiatives. Third, step back and do a corporatewide review of your pattern of failure, to ensure your overall approach is yielding all the benefits it should. If failure rates are too high, you may need to tighten up your systems, but low rates may signal a need to encourage more openness to risks. Mistakes are the inevitable consequence of trying something new. But they can also be a source of tremendous value in the form of learning if your firm has the right mindset.

This case traces the development of a live entertainment company, Sofar Sounds, from a conversation among three friends about their frustrations with live music events, through early success and now to a point where the CEO, Rafe Offer, has to make important decisions about its future growth. Sofar Sounds' business model is to organize small sized music gigs with unknown artists, trying to recapture the 'old days' of the intimacy and atmosphere of small venue music shows. It progressed from being a "hobby" in 2009, with occasional gigs in London and New York, to a venture-capital backed venture in 2016 with two hundred gigs a month across more than twenty countries. The case describes the challenges of rapid growth in today's digital economy, and it opens up important issues for debate about 'platform' business models, growth trajectories, balancing social and financial goals, and building the capabilities needed for long-term growth.

Narrow-mindedness holds back many organizations in their efforts to turn global presence into a real source of competitive advantage. In this article, the authors explore the manifestations and costs associated with what they call the "headquarters knows best"syndrome, as well as ways companies can address the problem. Many of the things companies have done are fairly predictable, such as decentralizing global responsibilities, changing the reporting relationships, internationalizing senior management, and creating cross-national teams. At Irdeto B.V., a Dutch developer of security software for digital media, the remedy was more extreme: It elected to create two headquarters, one in the Netherlands and the other in China. While this was expensive -and something the CEO's successor ultimately did away with in 2015 -the decision to operate out of dual headquarters helped the company realign its focus, and it had significant positive effects on Irdeto's performance. The authors argue that many corporate executives aren't aware that the "headquarters knows best"syndrome exists. Typically, top executives interact with executives from the subsidiaries that are closest to headquarters (in terms of geography, economic development, and culture); the executives'frame of reference is based on subsidiary managers who benefit from ample attention, autonomy, or influence. Executives from peripheral subsidiaries are the ones who are most likely to be affected and least likely to be heard. In addition, the value of missed opportunities and lost talent is hard to assess, and headquarters executives can easily invoke contextual factors (such as competition for labor) to explain problems. They can also try to pin blame on the local entities. After establishing its dual headquarters in 2007, the authors note, Irdeto saw measurable improvements on four fronts: increased top management attention, greater subsidiary contributions, richer lateral exchanges,

This case focuses on the Unilever Foundry, a platform for Unilever to engage with start-ups and entrepreneurs, providing them with access to Unilever's brands as a means of enabling their growth while bringing innovative technology back to the company. The case provides a brief description of Unilever's evolution from the mid-1990s to 2016, focusing on its various attempts to make the business more innovative and agile. With the arrival of Paul Polman as CEO and his "sustainable living plan", the impetus to innovate was once again very high and a number of initiatives were launched to help the company move beyond its traditional ways of working. In May 2014 the Foundry was launched to create commercial opportunities by connecting Unilever businesses with start-ups. Through a licensing mechanism, the start-up would make its technology available to Unilever to bring innovation to its brand or get the rights to use a Unilever brand within certain guidelines. The Foundry was essentially a platform for collaboration. The case explores how the Foundry functioned and evolved both within Unilever and in the collaborations with external start-ups. By December 2015 its leader, Jeremy Basset, had a team of seven people and operated in several locations across the world. The case closes with various issues facing Jeremy - whether to raise greater awareness of the Foundry within Unilever; how to scale it to make a difference within the huge organisation that was Unilever; and ultimately, where to go from here?

This case traces the rise and rise of Amazon.com, the second company after Apple to hit a trillion dollar market cap. The growth of Amazon is described, from its origins back in 1995 through to 2016. The case intentionally provides a lot of detail on specific new products and services created over this twenty year period, and how many of these were highly risky bets, and some were failures. For example: there is a discussion of how Amazon survived the original dotcom bubble bursting by deliberately reducing investment and showing a profit for the first time; the origins of Amazon Prime, Amazon marketplace, the Kindle, Amazon Web Services, and Amazon video are all described with enough detail for students to ask, why did they do this? What was the bigger purpose behind these moves? The case also talks about Amazon's management principles and organization culture. For example, one of Bezos's guiding principles was to "obsess over customers" - meaning always seeking out ways to improve the quality of their buying experience and offering additional services and products to meet their evolving needs. There is also a discussion of the "always day one" culture, the "willingness to be misunderstood" and the style of leadership Bezos exhibits.

Innovative management ideas that bubble up in other companies pose a perennial quandary for leaders: Should you attempt to borrow new ideas, and if so, which ones and how? Even the most promising practices can be disastrous if they're transplanted into the wrong company, writes Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School. Broadly speaking, there are two ways to borrow from innovative companies, he argues. The first, observe and apply, is the most commonly used approach for adopting new management ideas. It can and does work well, but only under limited sets of circumstances: when the observed practice easily stands alone or involves just a small constellation of supporting behaviors (think of GE's well-regarded succession-planning process) and when a company's management model or way of thinking is very similar to the originator's (think of two software firms that both use the Agile development approach). The second method is to extract a management practice's essential principle--its underlying logic--and ask a series of questions to determine if it is right for your firm, including: How is your company different from the originating firm? Are the goals of the practice important to your organization? Many management innovations are launched with great fanfare, only to fade in popularity. With careful analysis, you can avoid falling prey to this hype cycle. And even if it turns out that a borrowed idea isn't right for you, the analysis will help you better understand your own management models and sharpen your practices.

This is part of a case series. The case focuses on how a senior executive assesses the opportunity to drive innovation in his division. Jim Slater, Managing Director of Costa Enterprises, is thinking about a management consultant's offer to build the next generation coffee machine for his division. The company's business model has historically been built on incremental improvements, but this proposal would involve a 'step change' in how new products are developed. Costa Enterprises rolls out self-service vending machines ('concessions') that deliver quality coffee to customers in areas not served by premium high street cafes. The proposal Slater is considering is to build the next generation concession. However, handing over control of such an important, venture to an outsider seems like a significant risk for Slater to take.

More hours in the day. It's one thing everyone wants, and yet it's impossible to attain. But what if you could free up significant time--maybe as much as 20% of your workday--to focus on the responsibilities that really matter? The authors have spent the past three years studying the productivity of knowledge workers and discovered that they spend, on average, 41% of their time on activities that offer little personal satisfaction and could be handled competently by others. On the basis of their research, the authors have come up with a process to help knowledge workers make themselves more productive. It involves thinking consciously about how they spend their time, deciding which tasks matter most to them and their organizations, and dropping or creatively outsourcing the rest. The tasks to be dropped are sorted into quick kills (things you can stop doing now, without any negative effects), off-load opportunities (work that can be delegated with minimal effort), and long-term redesign (work that needs to be reconceived or restructured). Once the tasks are disposed of, the freed-up time is spent focusing on more-important work. When 15 executives tried this, they were able to reduce desk work by an average of six hours per week and meetings by two hours per week. They filled the time with value-added tasks like coaching and strategizing.

Supplement to case LBS178

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article.

The case describes Nokia's spectacular rise and fall, shedding light on the combination of external factors and internal decisions that resulted in the company's handset business being sold to Microsoft in 2010. During the successful period of growth (roughly 1990 through to 2006), Nokia's focus on design and functionality gained it a worldwide reputation. It was acknowledged as the first smartphone manufacturer. Through the early-mid 2000s it was the undisputed leader in the global mobile phone business. The case traces the first signs of trouble and the company's subsequent decline over the period 2005 to 2010. Pressure in the early 2000s from low-end competitors led to early signs of problems. Then of course the game changed in 2007 with Apple's iPhone and a year later with phones powered by Google's Android operating system from HTC, Samsung and others. Nokia was initially dismissive of these new offerings but its proprietary OS, Symbian, was ageing badly and its App store (Ovi) was no match for Apple's. In September 2010 it was announced that American Stephen Elop, formerly of Microsoft, would become CEO. Not long afterwards a partnership with Microsoft was signed which subsequently led to Nokia's handset business being sold to Microsoft.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Historically, most managers equated innovation primarily with the development of new products and new technologies. But increasingly, innovation is seen as applying to the development of new service offerings, business models, pricing plans and routes to market, as well as new management practices. There is now a greater recognition that novel ideas can transform any part of the value chain -and that products and services represent just the tip of the innovation iceberg. This shift of focus has implications for who "owns"innovation. It used to be the preserve of a select band of employees -be they designers, engineers or scientists -whose responsibility it was to generate and pursue new ideas, often in a separate location. But increasingly, innovation has come to be seen as the responsibility of the entire organization. For many large companies, in fact, the new imperative is to view innovation as an "all the time, everywhere"capability that harnesses the skills and imagination of employees at all levels. Making innovation everyone's job is intuitively appealing but very hard to achieve, but many companies have tried -and nearly all believe that's it's critical to continue trying. To understand these challenges, and to identify the innovation practices that work, the authors spent three years studying the process of innovation in 13 global companies. Many of the standard arguments for how to encourage innovation in large organizations were confirmed, but some surprises were uncovered as well. In this article the authors focus on the key insights that emerged from their research, organized around five persistent "myths"that continue to haunt the innovation efforts of many companies. The five myths are: (1) The Eureka Moment; (2) Built It and They Will Come; (3) Open Innovation Is the Future; (4) Pay Is Paramount; and, (5) Bottom Up Innovation Is Best.

The case describes the journey of Gilles Morel, the VP of Mars Central Europe, as he tries to build a culture of innovation within the organization. It becomes clear that the challenge is not simply about building the proper infrastructure and systems. it is also about getting people to commit to Mars' innovation agenda. How can Gilles Morel make innovation everyone's job?

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. One could argue that "what business are we really in" is the most important question a leader can ask about his company. But perhaps right up there with the classic Peter Drucker interrogatory is this one: What is your business model? So argue the authors, who correctly point out that firms searching for forms of competitive advantage -- sources of distinctiveness that are enduring, hard to copy and valuable in the marketplace -- should take a look at their management model. That is, they should examine the choices made by the top executives in how they define objectives, motivate efforts, coordinate activities and allocate resources. How they define the work of management, in other words. Not only do the authors provide a framework for this discussion -- dividing companies' business models into four possible choices -- but they supply a list of questions leaders can ask to determine which management model may be right for their company. Clearly, when it comes to management models, one size does not fit all. And it is equally obvious that even similar-size companies in the same industry may choose differing models, depending on their own particular circumstances. While the model they choose is of extreme importance, so, too, is the process they follow--and the thinking they use--to select it.

A number of small enterprises are affected-often in dramatic ways-by the increasing presence of MNCs in their home markets. Small enterprise often find themselves facing a very difficult set of choices as they consider whether and how they should engage with the MNCs. This article critically evaluates the strategies smaller enterprises are adopting in a globalizing world. The most effective strategy for globalization is through partnerships with local MNC subsidiaries-in their own backyard-which can then be leveraged to generate opportunities on a global scale. This analysis particularly emphasizes the need for small enterprises to use to their advantage the points of difference (i.e., asymmetry) between them and the MNCs with whom they partner.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For executives running global companies, the challenge of keeping abreast of events in markets around the world is mind-boggling. The problem is not a lack of information--it is having the time and energy to process the information. How should executives prioritize their time to ensure that it is focused on the countries and subsidiaries that need the attention? Which markets should they emphasize, and which ones can they allow to fall off their radar screen? Researches executive attention at global companies for five years, interviewing 50 executives at 30 corporations--including ABB, Dun & Bradstreet, Nestle, and Sara Lee--and finds that executives end up prioritizing a handful of markets at the expense of the others, but they don't always select the most promising ones. Because executive attention is so limited, executives tend to focus on the home market or on "hot" markets, always at the expense of other opportunities. Examines the nature of executive attention and identifies mechanisms by which subsidiary companies attract attention from the top executives. Although attention can be harmful as well as helpful, focuses on the positive aspects, three elements in particular: support, in terms of how headquarters executives interact with and help subsidiary managers achieve their goals; visibility, in terms of the public statements headquarters executives make about how the subsidiary is doing; and relative standing, in terms of the subsidiary's perceived status vis-a-vis other subsidiaries in the organization.

The challenges of coming up with fresh ideas and realizing profits from them are different for every company. One firm may excel at finding good ideas but have weak systems for bringing them to market. Another organization may have a terrific process for funding and rolling out new products and services but a shortage of concepts to develop. In this article, Hansen and Birkinshaw caution executives against using the latest and greatest innovation approaches and tools without understanding the unique deficiencies in their companies' innovation systems. They offer a framework for evaluating innovation performance: the innovation value chain. It comprises the three main phases of innovation (idea generation, conversion, and diffusion) as well as the critical activities performed during those phases (looking for ideas inside your unit; looking for them in other units; looking for them externally; selecting ideas; funding them; and promoting and spreading ideas companywide). Using this framework, managers get an end-to-end view of their innovation efforts. They can pinpoint their weakest links and tailor innovation best practices appropriately to strengthen those links. Companies typically succumb to one of three broad "weakest-link" scenarios. They are idea poor, conversion poor, or diffusion poor. The article looks at the ways smart companies--including Intuit, P&G, Sara Lee, Shell, and Siemens--modify the best innovation practices and apply them to address those organizations' individual needs and flaws. The authors warn that adopting the chain-based view of innovation requires new measures of what can be delivered by each link in the chain. The approach also entails new roles for employees--"external scouts" and "internal evangelists," for example. Indeed, in their search for new hires, companies should seek out those candidates who can help address particular weaknesses in the innovation value chain.