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This annually updated exercise assesses one’s exposure to the rest of the world’s peoples. A series of worksheets require the respondents to check off the number and names of countries they have visited whether for business, family or tourism reasons, and the corresponding percentage of world population which each country represents. The summary of a group’s collective exposure to the world’s people will inevitably be the recognition that together they have seen much, even if individually some have seen little. The teaching note provides assignments and discussion questions which look at: why there is such a high variability in individual profiles; the implications of each profile for one’s business career; and, what it would take for the respondent to change his/her profile.<br><br>For marketers, it underscores the need to gather greater base knowledge about opportunities in 211 countries spread across 8 regions: Africa; North America and Caribbean; South America; Western Europe; Eastern Europe; Central Asia and Indian Subcontinent; Middle East; Asia Pacific.

Karin Vardaman, a lifelong conservationist now committed to protecting wolves in the American West, finds herself unexpectedly allied with the one of the species' most fervent opponents: cattle ranchers.

The founders of Braver Angels, an organization that uses family therapy principles to foster constructive dialogue between conservatives and liberals, consider how to improve its effectiveness and reach.

On October 25, 2018, in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dr. Jonathan Broomberg (CEO Discovery Health) and Dr. Craig Nossel (Head of Vitality Wellness) consider their dilemma of how to make Vitality Move more attractive to the lower-income market and increase the programme's uptake. Vitality Move is a wellness programme for the lower-income market, launched in 2017. It has a low membership uptake by the KeyCare benefit scheme members. The two leaders are faced with a challenge to devise ways to strategically target the lower-income group to improve employee productivity, decrease the burden of non-communicable diseases and influence positive lifestyle decisions. The case features the initiatives undertaken towards creating shared value.

In the summer of 2019, Mike Klingensmith, CEO of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Twin Cities metro region's largest newspaper, reviewed subscription trends and plans for future experimentation. The newspaper industry across the U.S. had suffered a steep decline for the previous several decades as digital offerings supplanted print subscriptions. Under Klingensmith's leadership, the Star Tribune had fared better than many papers, emerging from bankruptcy with a robust newsroom and with print profitable and digital growing. But given ongoing shifts in consumer media habits, flat EBITDA was still the best-case scenario that the Tribune could reach for. To meet this goal, Klingensmith and his team had put in place new digital offerings and had developed a number of creative additions to the print paper to offset subscription declines and print ad losses. Klingensmith believed that the plans they had put in place would allow the paper to survive in the new news landscape of the 21st century, but as he prepared to meet with the paper's owner, a local, family-owned holding company, he wondered how confident he could be in his forecasts.

Witnessing numerous lawsuits alleging that online platform companies misclassified workers as contractors when they were actually employees, Handy's founders faced a series of decisions. Handy was an online platform business that enabled customers to book appointments with cleaners at a convenient time and check the cleaner's ratings. Started in 2012 after the founders struggled to find trustworthy, affordable cleaning services while MBA students, by 2015, Handy enjoyed considerable success. Handy was one of the emerging platform companies in the gig economy that connected customers to service providers and sought to disrupt everything from transportation to grocery shopping to deliveries. Like many of these companies, Handy classified service providers as 1099 independent contractors, rather than hiring them as W-2 employees. Doing so often meant lower labor costs for companies and greater flexibility for workers. The companies' reliance on contractors was controversial. Workers, some argued, displayed all the marks of employees - they performed work that was integral to the companies' business and companies exercised control by telling them which jobs to accept and where and by using ratings systems to influence behavior. Facing two misclassification lawsuits of their own while still pushing toward profitability, Handy's founders must decide how to respond.

In early 2018, the chairman and chief executive officer of FOTILE, based in Ningbo, China, announced a change in the company’s mission statement from “Enable people to feel better about their homes” to “For the happiness of millions of families.” The previous year had seen impressive growth, with sales exceeding ¥10 billion. After only 22 years in operation, FOTILE had become a leading brand, comparable to such prestigious names as Siemens, in the high-end sector of kitchen appliances in China. More importantly FOTILE was hailed as a distinct enterprise, driven by a grand vision, a unique mission statement, and core values based on Confucianism. The FOTILE Confucian Way was embraced with enthusiasm by its employees and close business partners, and was broadly recognized by the Chinese business communities and the general public. However, the chairman understood that FOTILE was still a long way from being a great company, not only in terms of business success but also in transferring positive energy to society and helping people become morally admirable. Although he was deeply absorbed in FOTILE’s past achievements, he was also wondering about FOTILE’s future international expansion, to North America in particular. Would FOTILE’s products be competitive in North America? Would that continent adopt the FOTILE Confucian Way?

New research by the University of Cambridge's Yeun Joon Kim and his colleagues reveals that an employee's negative feedback helps people raise their game.

CEOs who are hired from outside the company tend to get far more attention, not to mention support with the transition to their new role, than CEOs promoted from the inside do. Leaders who come from within the firm, it's assumed, already know the organization, its strategy, and its management, so they should adjust easily to their new roles. But in reality, they face hurdles that are just as big, albeit different, from the ones outsider CEOs face. In their research and consulting work, the authors have identified insiders' five key challenges: operating in the shadow of their own past; making early decisions that surprise and disappoint supporters; overseeing former peers; pacing change; and managing the outgoing CEO. In this article, they draw on interviews with dozens of internally promoted executives to provide advice for navigating each of those issues. The result is a primer for leaders who step into the top job from within; the management teams, boards, and HR and communication departments that want to offer support; and even leaders lower down in the hierarchy who are dealing with succession issues.

PepsiCo is among the few global, established companies that have delivered superior financial performance while meeting the needs of all stakeholders. It has always invested for the long term and delivered results in the short term. The layer that author Indra Nooyi added, first as SVP for corporate strategy and then as CEO, was a focus on sustainability--defined here as satisfying multiple stakeholder interests to ensure the long-term viability of a company. Called Performance with Purpose (PwP), it is based on four pillars: delivering superior financial returns (financial sustainability); transforming the product portfolio by making more-healthful, more-nutritious foods and beverages while reducing the sugar, salt, and fat in PepsiCo products (human sustainability); limiting environmental impact by conserving water and reducing the company's carbon footprint and plastic waste (environmental sustainability); and lifting people up by offering new types of support to women and families inside the company and in the communities it serves (talent sustainability).

The author, chairman of JetBlue and an adjunct professor at Stanford, has fired plenty of people during his long career--and he's been fired himself. In this article he outlines an empathetic approach in which the manager recognizes that he or she played a role in the employee's failure to perform--and that this difficult conversation, which should not be outsourced to the HR department, is something a manager should strive to handle well. The person you're firing today could become a key contact at a supplier or a client tomorrow. Peterson offers specific steps--and mistakes to avoid--to help this tricky process go as smoothly as possible: (1) Don't wait for a "firing offense." (2) Do be willing to fire friends or family. (3) Don't surprise people. (4) Do prepare and practice. (5) Don't hand off the dirty work. (6) Do deliver the message immediately and clearly. (7) Don't overexplain the decision. (8) Do be human. (9) Don't shift the blame. (10) Do be generous.

A young social entrepreneur must decide whether to stick with her struggling start-up--a tomato paste company based entirely in Nigeria--or go to work for an investment group that funds small businesses in Africa. Where would she have the most impact? This fictional case study by Sophus A. Reinert features expert commentary by Acha Leke and Mira Mehta.

Dean Koontz is one of the world's most prolific and best-selling writers, with more than 120 novels to his name. During a difficult childhood, books were his refuge, so he has devoted his life--from 6:30 am to dinnertime, six days a week, for the past five decades--to creating fictional worlds across a range of genres for his devoted readers.

A young social entrepreneur must decide whether to stick with her struggling start-up--a tomato paste company based entirely in Nigeria--or go to work for an investment group that funds small businesses in Africa. Where would she have the most impact? This fictional case study by Sophus A. Reinert features expert commentary by Acha Leke and Mira Mehta.

A young social entrepreneur must decide whether to stick with her struggling start-up--a tomato paste company based entirely in Nigeria--or go to work for an investment group that funds small businesses in Africa. Where would she have the most impact? This fictional case study by Sophus A. Reinert features expert commentary by Acha Leke and Mira Mehta.

In 2014, Lindsay Jurist-Rosner (MBA '09) founded Wellthy, a B2C business that coordinates care for working professionals seeking help to support loved ones with chronic diseases or aging parents. With personal experience as a young professional providing care for her mother, Jurist-Rosner spotted an opportunity, given the long-term demographic trends in the United States. As she raised capital, built out a technology platform and recruited a team of care coordinators, Wellthy's growth remained slow until she piloted a B2B product with the Hearst Company. Jurist-Rosner wondered whether Wellthy should fully pivot from B2C to B2B, how fast she should ramp up the recruitment of care coordinators, and as she looked to raise another round of capital, whether she should position Wellthy as a B Corporation delivering social impact alongside commercial returns.

In March 2019, entrepreneur Greg Pahl was contemplating the next steps for Medicine Hat Meat Traders; the past year was the company’s best in terms of beef jerky sales. Should Pahl keep the business running at its current state while focusing on streamlining the operations to realize some additional profits? Should he consider a partial expansion that would allow for a potential increase in sales? Or should he build or lease a new facility that would allow production to be tailored for current use and future expansion while also adding new product lines? Was there another option that Pahl had not yet identified? What were the risks and benefits of each of the options, and how could they influence Pahl’s decision?

In June 2016, Mohammad Arif, the director of Student Biryani, seemed depressed about the all-time low performance of the franchise in Canada. Hard work and persistence not only enabled the company to become Pakistan's first and largest Pakistani food chain but also to establish a presence in global markets such as Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Oman, and Australia. But the all-time low performance of the Canadian outlet had put severe pressure on Arif because the brand image was at risk. Arif convened an urgent meeting with the management team. The meeting continued for three hours, but members seemed divided and the meeting was adjourned for the next day. Arif needed to find the causes of the problem and how to cope with them.

The Kamoriongo Poultry Co-operative consisted of 10 families who were involved in poultry farming in Nandi County, in the North Rift Valley of Kenya. The purpose of the co-operative was to pool savings to help individual families pay for tuition when their children came of age. Because of heavy rains during the region’s rainy season, many of the co-operative’s chickens were contracting waterborne illnesses that made them incapable of producing eggs. In order to keep up with demand from the wholesaler who bought from them once a week, the farmers had to find a way to keep their chickens healthy and to produce enough eggs to increase profits. In 2018, to combat this problem, the co-operative was considering purchasing either a new hen shelter or a commercial incubator. With a continuing decrease in egg production, the farmers needed to evaluate each alternative, determine how to finance these investments, and prepare both short- and long-term plans for sustaining their business.

The Kamoriongo Poultry Co-operative consisted of 10 families who were involved in poultry farming in Nandi County, in the North Rift Valley of Kenya. The purpose of the co-operative was to pool savings to help individual families pay for tuition when their children came of age. Because of heavy rains during the region's rainy season, many of the co-operative's chickens were contracting waterborne illnesses that made them incapable of producing eggs. In order to keep up with demand from the wholesaler who bought from them once a week, the farmers had to find a way to keep their chickens healthy and to produce enough eggs to increase profits. In 2018, to combat this problem, the co-operative was considering purchasing either a new hen shelter or a commercial incubator. With a continuing decrease in egg production, the farmers needed to evaluate each alternative, determine how to finance these investments, and prepare both short- and long-term plans for sustaining their business.