The Human Resources and Social Development Ministry (HRSD) was one of the largest and most important ministries in Saudi Arabia, with 22,000 employees serving more than 30 million customers and beneficiaries. The ministry consisted of four sectors - labor which served and regulated the private and non-profit sectors; civil service which served government entities and employees; social development which served disadvantaged groups; and shared services which served the three customer-facing sectors. The three customer-facing sectors had been separate ministries until they were merged, and still operated mostly in silos. A new minister appointed in 2018 determined that the ministry had to be transformed to allow it to play its part in meeting Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030 roles. He brought in Mohammed Al Jasser in 2019 as Assistant Minister for Shared Services to spearhead the transformation. Customer experience (CX) transformation was a key part of this. The case describes the initial phase of the ministry's CX transformation. It included creating a CX deputyship, putting CX strategy and governance in place, and carrying out pilot projects to address immediate problems and build support within the organization. The next phase of the CX transformation would be scaling up and implementing it across the ministry. The case discusses the challenges the ministry will face in this phase, including initiative fatigue, limited interest in improving CX, policy changes not aligned with CX, and fragmented service ownership. The case ends by mentioning two important issues for a successful CX transformation: Ensuring that the outsourcing of customer-facing activities, which was happening in parallel, supported this; and engineering a mindset and cultural shift among ministry officials. Although the first phase of the CX transformation had been successful, scaling up across the ministry would be challenging. How should Al Jasser and his team proceed to achieve this objective?

In 2019, two fatal plane crashes plunged Boeing in an unprecedented crisis, setting off a maelstrom of controversy about Boeing's corporate practices and the safety of the 737 MAX - the recently redesigned version of its most successful commercial jetliner. Within weeks, the MAX was grounded worldwide, and Boeing faced financial, legal, regulatory and reputational pressures. All while under intense media scrutiny and heightened safety concerns from the flying public. And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit the aviation industry, escalating the crisis into an existential threat to Boeing's commercial aviation business. Amid this perfect storm, Boeing executives faced one key question: How to restore Boeing's reputation as a leading aircraft manufacturer?

The natural experiment forced on the world by the coronavirus demonstrates that the academics and tech visionaries who have been talking since the 1980s about the possibilities of remote work were not exaggerating. After months of working remotely, we have all learned that most tasks are accomplished and most meetings go just fine without the office. But that, the authors warn, doesn't mean companies should suddenly abandon their workplaces. Going to the office, they argue, has never been just about work. And technology won't make socializing less dependent on direct interpersonal contact anytime soon. In this article they describe the important social functions of an office: It's where people build trust through personal interaction, learn the nuances of their job, and build and maintain organizational culture. And it's through random in-person encounters between people from different functions and cultures that many of the most innovative business ideas are born. The authors conclude by showing how design, technology, and management practices can be used to make tomorrow's offices more effective as social, learning, and innovation spaces.

The OCP Africa illustrates the challenges of entering a market challenged by unfavorable conditions for the target customer - be it infrastructure, access to market, access to finance, education, etc. while at the same time acknowledging the need to respect the environmental mistakes made in other parts of the world - namely unsustainable farming. This forces OCP Africa to pursue a non-traditional, innovative approach to entering the African continent with a partnership-based strategy. The case starts by showing the challenges of the fertilizer market within Africa and the challenges for the farmers to farm in a sustainable manner. It then illustrates how OCP Africa learned from its first experiences in piloting an ecosystem approach in order to align the interests of aggregators, off-takers, input providers, financial institutions and government agencies to allow farmers to learn about sustainable farming and at the same time achieve a higher level of welfare. Business models that leverage public-private and private-private partnerships for social and economic benefits are often discussed theoretically with limited examples of use cases. This case aims to demonstrate through the OCP Africa example, the challenges of establishing and sustaining such partnerships, while taking a stakeholder-centric approach to doing business.