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In June 2015, Lee Pharma Limited, a small Indian pharmaceutical company, filed an application with the Indian Patent Office for a grant of a compulsory licence to manufacture the diabetes drug Saxagliptin on the grounds that the patented version of the drug had not been made available to the public at an affordable price. The granting of a compulsory licence was expected to make the drug more affordable for the general public, but it would also undermine the interests of the patentee, a Western multinational company. If the developed world imposed sanctions against India in retaliation for such a protectionist measure, the flow of trade and foreign capital into the country would be adversely affected. Should the patent office strictly enforce the patent regime, which would encourage higher foreign capital inflows in research and development in the Indian pharmaceutical industry and promote inventions and innovations in the country? Or should it grant the compulsory licence, thereby attaching greater weight to the welfare of India's general public?

In June 2015, Lee Pharma Limited, a small Indian pharmaceutical company, filed an application with the Indian Patent Office for a grant of a compulsory licence to manufacture the diabetes drug Saxagliptin on the grounds that the patented version of the drug had not been made available to the public at an affordable price. The granting of a compulsory licence was expected to make the drug more affordable for the general public, but it would also undermine the interests of the patentee, a Western multinational company. If the developed world imposed sanctions against India in retaliation for such a protectionist measure, the flow of trade and foreign capital into the country would be adversely affected. Should the patent office strictly enforce the patent regime, which would encourage higher foreign capital inflows in research and development in the Indian pharmaceutical industry and promote inventions and innovations in the country? Or should it grant the compulsory licence, thereby attaching greater weight to the welfare of India’s general public?

When it comes to attracting investments, Canada is a laggard despite being a trading nation with all the talent and tools required. The main reason is that few in Canada have tried to answer the why-invest-in-Canada question. With or without Canadians leading large corporations, investment decisions made in Detroit are not influenced by any special love for Canada; they’re based on business. In 2016, the argument for playing the incentive game is very strong, and Canada could end up being bypassed for new plant investments for an entire investment cycle. But Canada isn’t just losing the competition for new auto plants. While the Canadian economy still attracts a reasonable share of foreign direct investment, there has been a significant shift in the industrial composition of Canadian FDI inflows. Over the past 15 years, Canadian oil and gas FDI has grown four-fold, while there has only been modest growth in manufacturing investments. As a result of weak performance in new greenfield projects, staunch free-marketers now accept the need to play the incentive game. Ivey’s Lawrence Centre has developed three overarching recommendations to help Canada raise its investment-attraction game to the level of its best-practice competitors: 1. All governments involved should make a formal commitment to act in a coordinated fashion when engaged in investment attraction. 2. Government players should jointly develop an explicit business plan for investment attraction to guide all parties, with results judged by incremental tax revenue generated. 3. Canadian political leaders and senior government officials should become engaged in a sustained way in all stages of the investment attraction process.

Few business leaders will ever confront the challenge that Landsbankinn CEO Steinthór Pálsson faced in mid-2010, when he attempted to rebuild Iceland’s oldest full-service financial institution. After the nation’s banking industry collapsed two years prior, the government seized control of a greed-dominated sector. Excessive leverage and aggressive expansion, combined with inadequate risk management and, in some cases, criminal executive behaviour, brought the country near bankruptcy. Angry citizens protested against massive personal and corporate losses and change was demanded, especially at Landsbankinn. Over the past four years, Pálsson has systematically restructured Iceland’s oldest bank. In this interview, the change management expert discusses Landsbankinn’s restructuring strategy and why he took a significant pay cut to take on what appeared to be an impossible task. Pálsson opened up all senior management positions at the bank to internal and external competition and took out ads in major newspapers promising to restructure customer loans and improve governance. Despite bank employees facing threats and physical attacks, he preserved the bank’s brand. He emphasizes the importance of allowing debate among his senior team and says, “Good ideas are worth one point and a good plan is worth 10 points, but good execution is 100 points.”

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.

The ability to sense valuable strategic options and then to organize effectively and efficiently to embrace them is at the core of a company's dynamic capabilities. This article identifies and discusses a specific type of sensing that we call "generative sensing." Companies and executives that display generative sensing capabilities proactively generate hypotheses about observed events and then test these hypotheses to generate new data in a recursive process. Borrowing from design cognition research, we discuss the two microfoundations of these capabilities- framing and abduction - and provide examples of how they are embedded in companies to enhance option generation.

This special issue draws on a range of intellectual roots-ranging from financial economics to organization theory, to design theory, and to human cognition. The goal of this special issue is to bring scholars from different disciplines together with practitioners who have had success applying the framework so as to help other managers lead their organizations to higher levels of performance.

Vendedy was the world's first mobile network connecting global travellers to local street markets. Inspired by the emergence of the sharing economy, Vendedy's founder and chief executive officer had always been passionate about uniting social and economic empowerment with entrepreneurial development. A complex platform linking street vendors in some of the world's poorest countries to travellers seeking authentic tourism experiences and souvenirs, Vendedy's founder faced numerous challenges. Where should the venture's focus be? How quickly should she try to roll out the platform, and across how many countries? How was she going to recruit a full-time team for Vendedy? Could the company succeed in transforming how global travellers accessed the products and stories of street vendors around the world?

Vendedy was the world’s first mobile network connecting global travellers to local street markets. Inspired by the emergence of the sharing economy, Vendedy’s founder and chief executive officer had always been passionate about uniting social and economic empowerment with entrepreneurial development. A complex platform linking street vendors in some of the world’s poorest countries to travellers seeking authentic tourism experiences and souvenirs, Vendedy’s founder faced numerous challenges. Where should the venture’s focus be? How quickly should she try to roll out the platform, and across how many countries? How was she going to recruit a full-time team for Vendedy? Could the company succeed in transforming how global travellers accessed the products and stories of street vendors around the world?

In March 2015, consulting firm MacPhie & Company was at a crossroads. Founded in 2004 in Toronto, Ontario, the company offered consulting services related to strategy development, marketing and communications, reputation management, and branding. MacPhie & Company maintained an entrepreneurial culture that fostered innovation and continual learning, while ensuring that all client projects followed the MacPhie Way.” Although MacPhie & Company had been financially successful over the years, it had struggled with growth, so the company’s founder set a goal of growing MacPhie & Company to at least 20 consultants by 2020. He knew that in order to do that, he would need to consider all facets of the business: revenue generation to support a larger model; ensuring consistent profit margins; appropriate client mix; the services that were offered; teachable methodologies and consulting processes; effective organizational structure and human resources; geographic locations; and the employment of awareness-building efforts. After more than a decade, it was time to be bold and push MacPhie & Company to the next level. With the goal set, the challenge was how to get to the desired level of growth and then to sustain that level of growth once it had been reached.

In March 2015, consulting firm MacPhie & Company was at a crossroads. Founded in 2004 in Toronto, Ontario, the company offered consulting services related to strategy development, marketing and communications, reputation management, and branding. MacPhie & Company maintained an entrepreneurial culture that fostered innovation and continual learning, while ensuring that all client projects followed the "MacPhie Way." Although MacPhie & Company had been financially successful over the years, it had struggled with growth, so the company's founder set a goal of growing MacPhie & Company to at least 20 consultants by 2020. He knew that in order to do that, he would need to consider all facets of the business: revenue generation to support a larger model; ensuring consistent profit margins; appropriate client mix; the services that were offered; teachable methodologies and consulting processes; effective organizational structure and human resources; geographic locations; and the employment of awareness-building efforts. After more than a decade, it was time to be bold and push MacPhie & Company to the next level. With the goal set, the challenge was how to get to the desired level of growth and then to sustain that level of growth once it had been reached.

Bonnier News was Sweden's leading media group and a paragon in the nation's cultural, economic, and political circles. It was one of six divisions of Bonnier AB, a company founded by Gerhard Bonnier in 1804 that remained wholly owned by the Bonnier family, with 8,000 employees and operations in 15 countries. Bonnier News, which published three major papers in Stockholm, Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Industri, and Expressen and the southern Swedish daily Sydsvenskan, faced a major transition in the spring of 2016 as CEO Gunilla Herlitz prepared to retire. Herlitz's tenure had coincided with momentous upheavals in the newspaper industry, the rise of the digital era, and a period of unending change at Bonnier AB. Indeed, when Herlitz assumed her position, Bonnier was "a company in a financial crisis" struggling to adapt to the constantly changing media and advertising environment. In 2009, its flagship paper Dagens Nyheter lost more than 100 million Swedish kronor (SEK), or 10,780,985 euros (€). However, by 2010, just one year after Herlitz became its editor and CEO, the paper was already showing a healthy profit of 143 million SEK (€15,400,217). By 2014, five years into Herlitz's tenure, DN was again winning awards. Herlitz went on to apply many of the same tactics to the Bonnier News business area and its properties. This case explores the transformation of Bonnier News under Herlitz and considers the overall strategy of its newspapers and the strategic development of its business model going forward.

Souche had just celebrated its first anniversary in 2014 as a business in China’s used car market. After more than a year of strenuous effort, Souche had achieved considerable objectives. The company’s website had been providing information on used cars for six months, and its physical store had opened in Beijing around the same time. The store’s monthly sales had increased dramatically from 30 cars in the first month to over 231 cars in December 2013, ranking second among used car dealers nationwide. The management team had every reason to feel proud. The company’s founder had been optimizing the operational model for greater efficiency in the previous six months, but it suddenly dawned on him that there was a bottleneck in the latest business model. Was the company on the wrong path? After rejecting yet another business model, what would Souche do next?

This note describes a method for adjusting uncertain future cash flows into a present certain equivalent. The use of net present value (NPV) to adjust a stream of future known cash flows into a single-value equivalent adjusted for the time value of money is common practice. The use of simulation to produce a risk profile of NPV values is also now common. While the expected net present value (ENPV) is often used to convert a risk profile of uncertain NPVs into a single-value equivalent, this approach ignores risk and the decision maker's attitude toward risk. Simply put, a 50% probability of receiving an NPV of $1 million is not as attractive as a 100% chance of receiving an NPV of $500,000. The general logarithmic utility model (GLUM) constructs a single certain equivalent from a risk profile (i.e., a "risk-adjusted NPV") which goes beyond ENPV to incorporate risk aversion into the decision-making criterion. The simplicity and many attractive properties of the GLUM prompt us to suggest it as more attractive than other ways to adjust an NPV risk profile for risk.

In 2014, the food and grocery industry in India experienced a surge in the online grocery market. Before that time, existing e-business players had largely avoided the online grocery market because of its complex logistics requirements and issues related to last-mile delivery, or reaching customers in remote areas. The rise of online grocery businesses raised concerns for brick-and-mortar stores, especially local kirana stores (corner stores), about becoming redundant in the future. With limited or no technology adoption, these kirana stores had no way of going online. Grofers came to the rescue of these local stores with a mobile commerce (m-commerce) model for groceries that promised on-demand delivery within 90 minutes. However, with very low margins in the grocery business compared to lifestyle products, in addition to last-mile delivery and returns complexities, it remained to be seen whether Grofers would be able to carve out a niche in the grocery industry with its innovative model. Considering the low entry barriers and the easily replicable business model, how viable and sustainable was an m-commerce business like Grofers?

Over its 30-year history, Onex Corporation, a Canadian investment firm, had derived much of its success from the private equity sector. It did so by acquiring attractive portfolio companies, adding value to them by improving their financial and operational performance, and then selling them several years later at an attractive return. However, given the market conditions in 2015, Onex Corporation faced difficulty in successfully acquiring target companies, which was further exacerbated by the large amounts of cash on its balance sheet. As a result, the firm was forced to actively seek growth in other sectors, primarily credit-oriented investment strategies. Given Onex Corporation’s growth targets, the chief executive officer and his management team needed to reconsider the lines of business their company should be involved in. How could they effectively position the company’s corporate structure, internal processes, and expertise to take advantage of credit-oriented investment strategies?

Curling was officially included in the Winter Olympic Games in 1998. Since then, it spread beyond its home in Canada and northern Europe to many other countries, including China. As a new player, the Chinese Curling Association managed to elevate its national teams to achieve world elite status and be widely admired by its international counterparts for being so successful with fewer than 300 curlers and only a 10-year history. In 2014, the Chinese Curling Association needed to develop a strategic approach to grow curling in China in a healthy and sustainable way.

Shanghai Toex Trading Co., Ltd. (TOEX) was a Chinese pet grooming equipment maker. In 2014, after years of operating internationally solely through third-party distribution channels, TOEX opened a new sales and logistics centre in Dallas, Texas to boost TOEX’s business in the United States. The new centre was also meant to be a model for future expansions to other countries. With more than a decade of industry experience, TOEX's founder believed that succeeding in the United States was critically important for the company’s future. However, he was not sure how to execute a successful international growth strategy and how to best leverage the new U.S. logistics centre.

In the late 1990s, home-based hospital care started to be introduced in the United States and worldwide. This initiative seemed to lower costs, improve quality of care, and have a generally positive impact on patients. In early March 2014, the director of performance improvement at a major U.S. hospital was asked to develop a proposal, including a business case and an outline of a pilot program, for a version of home-based hospital care for the hospital's patients. The director was expected to present his proposal at the monthly session of the health system leadership team on April 30, 2014. He knew that his proposal would have to take into account various factors such as location, medical condition coverage, patient eligibility, the critical data that needed to be collected, the appropriate means of data collection, and the length that the pilot study would need to last. He also knew that his proposal would have to include projected costs and the potential benefits of such a program -- the program had to make financial sense.