CEO Francesco Starace is considering what is next for Enel SpA, one of world's largest energy companies. From 2014 to 2022, he has wrought a dramatic transformation at Enel, restructuring the company's business units; redeploying senior talent across functions and geographies; instigating a digital transformation; initiating a shift from Enel generating energy primarily sourced from thermal (or brown) sources (reliant on fossil fuels), to a leading provider of renewable energy. He has launched Enel X, an incubator for new products and services built on electrification, which is steadily overtaking Enel's own retail sales. He has introduced an Office of Innovability as a way to inject a culture of sustainable thinking across the company. Now he faces a possible third term as CEO. What is next for Enel and Starace?
Deloitte Consulting's General Manager Balaji Bondili, head of Pixel, considers how best to grow Deloitte Consulting's use of open (on-demand) talent, as consulting companies and their clients face transformative change in the way client engagements and projects get done. Pixel, started in 2014, helps facilitate open (or on-demand) talent and crowdsourcing for Deloitte Consulting client engagements, to access specific, difficult-to-find expertise, collaborate to develop new products and/or insights, and to design, build, and test new digital assets. Bondili has found some avid users-and evangelists-of Pixel's services among Deloitte Consulting's principals, however uptake across the broader organization has been slow, and in some pockets has met with deep resistance.
In 2017, Tomer Zvulun, the CEO and artistic director of The Atlanta Opera, was considering next steps. Zvulun had adapted quickly to the new, dual role of chief executive and artistic director, although there had been a steep learning curve. As he gained traction, the Opera's profile as an up and coming arts organization also grew. However, there was still much to be done if Zvulun wanted the Opera to be ranked among the best in the country. Should Zvulun should hire a chief operating officer to help manage day-to-day operations, and if so, should he focus his search on internal or external candidates? More broadly, Zvulun wondered how could he best balance his significant personal, professional, and organizational aspirations?
Leaders face a multitude of strategic paradoxes--contradictory pressures that are too often viewed as "either/or" choices. There are "innovation paradoxes," in which the pursuit of new offerings and processes conflicts with the mandate to sustain the tried and true. There are "globalization paradoxes," which involve tensions between local imperatives and boundary-crossing integration. And there are "obligation paradoxes," when the goal of maximizing profits for shareholders clashes with the desire to generate benefits for a broader group of stakeholders. The authors argue that organizational success depends on simultaneously addressing such conflicting demands, not choosing between them. Leaders need to become comfortable with multiple truths and inconsistency. They need to assume that resources are ample rather than scarce. And they need to embrace change instead of seeking stability. All of this will help organizations reach a state of dynamic equilibrium, wherein paradoxes don't impede progress--they spur it. And the way to tap the potential of paradox is to both separate and connect opposing forces: Managers must pull apart the organization's goals and value each of them individually, while also finding linkages and synergies across goals.
Jeff Davis, director of Space Life Sciences Directorate at NASA, has been working for several years to raise awareness amongst scientists and researchers in his organizations of the benefits of open innovation as a successful and efficient way to collaborate on difficult research problems regarding health and space travel. Despite a number of initiatives, SLSD members have been skeptical about incorporating the approach into their day-to-day research and work, and have resisted Davis's and his strategy team's efforts. The (A) case outlines these efforts and the organization members' reactions. The (B) case details what Davis and the SLSD strategy team learned, and how they adapted their efforts to successfully incorporate open innovation as one of many tools used in collaborative research at NASA.
Jeff Davis, director of Space Life Sciences Directorate at NASA, has been working for several years to raise awareness amongst scientists and researchers in his organizations of the benefits of open innovation as a successful and efficient way to collaborate on difficult research problems regarding health and space travel. Despite a number of initiatives, SLSD members have been skeptical about incorporating the approach into their day-to-day research and work, and have resisted Davis's and his strategy team's efforts. The (A) case outlines these efforts and the organization members' reactions. The (B) case details what Davis and the SLSD strategy team learned, and how they adapted their efforts to successfully incorporate open innovation as one of many tools used in collaborative research at NASA.
This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. What does it take to transform an organization before a crisis hits? How can leaders initiate major transformations proactively? The key often lies in strategic renewal - a set of practices that can guide leaders into a new era of innovation by building strategy, experimentation and execution into the day-to-day fabric of the organization. It's not easy: leaders find it much easier to resist change than to embrace it.
Josef Felder, CEO of Zurich Airport, faces several crises as he tries to transform the Airport from a slow-moving, conflict-ridden, government-owned entity into a privatized, world-class airport.
The case examines smartphone maker HTC's 2006 decision to become a branded company. The case focuses on the cultural and organizational shifts HTC underwent to successfully make the transition from an ODM, founded in 1997, to a leading branded manufacturer (7% market share of smartphones in 2010), with the adoption of the tagline: "Quietly Brilliant." Significant challenges considered in the case include: transitioning HTC from a Taiwanese to a global firm, developing and maintaining a functioning global structure, building a sales and marketing force, and finding the right cultural balance between eastern and western capabilities.
In 2005, Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of Zensar, a Pune, India-based software company, and his senior management team are considering consolidating staff and resources at the firms. Natarajan proposes an additional, possible controversial business unit to the proposed new structure. The additional unit would explore new markets for the firm's promising innovation-Solution BluePrint (SBP). While he knew that some on his team would resist his proposal, he was eager to get the new technology into the field, and felt he had the right manager to lead the proposed group. Natarajan felt sure a group dedicated to SBP led by one of the firm's most respected technologists would help spur adoption.
After Proposing a fourth business unit to help grow the market for zensar's innovative technology, to be led by Dilip Ittyera, CEO Natarajan adopted a new organizational structure focused on industry verticals.
Dynamic capabilities have been proposed as a useful way to understand how organizations are able to adapt to changes in technology and markets. Organizational ambidexterity, the ability of senior managers to seize opportunities through the orchestration and integration of existing assets to overcome inertia and path dependence, is a core dynamic capability. While promising, research on dynamic capabilities and ambidexterity has not yet been able to specify the specific mechanisms through which senior managers are actually able to reallocate resources and reconfigure assets to simultaneously explore and exploit. Using interviews and qualitative case studies from thirteen organizations, this article explores the actions senior managers took to implement ambidextrous designs and identify which ones helped or hindered them in their attempts. A set of interrelated choices of organization design and senior team process determine which attempts to build ambidextrous organizations are successful.
Although most managers publicly acknowledge the need to explore new businesses and markets, the claims of established businesses on company resources almost always come first, especially when times are hard. When top teams allow the tension between core and speculative units to play out at lower levels of management, innovation loses out. At best, leaders of core business units dismiss innovation initiatives as irrelevancies. At worst, they see the new businesses as threats to the firm's core identity and values. Many CEOs take a backseat in debates over resources, ceding much of their power to middle managers, and the company ends up as a collection of feudal baronies. This is a recipe for long-term failure, say the authors. Their research of 12 top management teams at major companies suggests that firms thrive only when senior teams lead ambidextrously-when they foster a state of constant creative conflict between the old and the new. Successful CEOs first develop a broad, forward-looking strategic aspiration that sets ambitious targets both for innovation and core business growth. They then hold the tension between innovation unit demands and core business demands at the very top of the organization. And finally they embrace inconsistency, allowing themselves the latitude to pursue multiple and often conflicting agendas.
This case discusses the issue of leading change at the business banking division of Nedbank, a prominent South African bank, between 2005 and 2009. (This timeframe, beginning just 11 years after Apartheid's end, covers Ingrid Johnson's leadership of this division during a period of significant change within Nedbank and South Africa). One of the oldest banks in South Africa, Nedbank merged with another South African bank in 2002. Troubles financing the acquisition and several ill-advised bets in the market caused Nedbank's market value to plummet and led to the ouster of the bank's senior leadership. The business banking division was one of Nedbank's largest business units with 2000+ staff. For many years, it had been a consistently profitable but underperforming division, and had yet to fully implement a strategic restructuring when Johnson takes over in 2005. Johnson's mandate is to instill a high performance culture, which she determines requires overhauling the division's culture, formal organization, critical tasks, and people. The class discussion focuses on what Johnson did to lead the change effort, what worked, what did not, and what more she needs to do. The case and associated video nicely describe Ingrid's leadership style shifting from a chartered accountant to a more seasoned leader. The video shows Ingrid interacting with AMP participants. Ingrid describes what she did in Business Banking, how she executed those changes, what she learned about leading large system change, and what she learned about herself as a leader.