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Alibaba Group (Alibaba) had grown from its founding in 1999, in an effort to help Chinese manufacturers and exporters reach global markets, to become a global leader in e-commerce, big data, and cloud technology. The company’s 2014 initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange had been the largest to date. The company’s founder and chairman, Jack Ma, had used the funds to globally expand Alibaba’s operations and its hold on diverse markets. Ma’s aim was to have Alibaba exist in three centuries and to not only generate profits but also improve lives and societies in China and beyond. How could Ma ensure long-term success for shareholders and prosperity for China and the world?

In 2015, Automaten Technik Baumann (ATB) was dismayed to learn that Volkswagen Financial Services had acquired a 92 per cent stake in Sunhill Technologies, one of Europe’s largest providers of mobile parking and ticketing solutions. ATB had focused on the production of parking meters for several decades, but was now seeing a threat to its existing business due to the rise of mobile parking providers. Consumers could now use their smartphone to pay for parking—making parking meters obsolete. Should ATB take the rise of new entrants seriously? Would ATB need to adjust its business model?

In early 2016, stock markets around the world plummeted, raising the threat of another major depression enveloping the world. In their struggle to recover from the post-2008 global recession, many nations had expanded their money supply and lowered interest rates, with the aim of stimulating both consumer spending and corporate investment. While some of this monetary expansion increased production and employment, much of it created bubbles in asset prices, especially in the prices of equities. Investors faced such low returns from bonds and other fixed-income assets that they poured their funds into equities, which increased price-earnings ratios to exceptional levels. This bubble in stock prices amplified the risks of a severe crash. What could—and should—governments do to avoid a significant stock market crash and a global depression?

Having built Publicis Groupe through acquisitions maintained as separate brands, CEO Maurice Lévy wanted to transform the advertising and marketing firm to an integrated digitally-ready enterprise to address industry changes. In early 2016, following a reorganization, he faced questions of how to change the culture and use digital capabilities more effectively than competitors. Lévy turned to millennials within the Groupe and technology entrepreneurs outside the Groupe for innovations in order to create platforms for clients rather than simply react to existing social media platforms. As he increasingly focused on a new generation, questions remained about who would succeed this CEO of 31 years.

Although a typical public company director might help hire a CEO a few times in a career, PE executives hire multiple CEOs each year. To tap this expertise, Jeffrey Cohn, of the executive search firm DHR International, and J.P. Flaum, of the consulting firm Green Peak Partners, surveyed and interviewed the managing partners of 32 private equity firms about their CEO search process. They drew five conclusions: (1) Experience is overrated; someone who can run with a new situation is often better than someone with years of industry experience. (2) Team-building skills are paramount. (3) Urgency outranks empathy; leaders need to be able to move decisively and without regrets. (4) Resilience is a must; in turnaround situations, leaders are likely to encounter some negative results. (5) Candor is also key; leaders must have the confidence to give their PE sponsors bad news quickly and honestly.

In 2011, four Canadian non-profit organizations have a mandate to prevent injuries and face similar and worsening problems. Each organization is spending an escalating amount of time fundraising to support its operations. Key stakeholders are expressing confusion because injury prevention is a crowded space and many non-profit organizations are seeking both dollars and partnerships. Most troubling, the four non-profit organizations are struggling to assess whether they are actually making a difference by preventing injuries and saving lives. The leaders of the four organizations must decide how to proceed — and whether the best solution is offered by collaborative or competitive strategies. Use role play supplements 9B15M122A.

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In April 2015, Bharti Airtel — India’s largest telecom provider and a leading global telecommunications company — launched Airtel Zero, an open marketing platform that would allow Airtel customers to access mobile applications with zero data charges. Application developers would pay Airtel to join the platform, but would in turn attract more users to their products. Immediately after its launch, Airtel Zero was subjected to severe criticism on the grounds that it violated the net neutrality principle, which advocated that content should be available to customers without any form of prioritization. Subsequently, in support of net neutrality, Flipkart — a prominent Indian e-commerce company — pulled out of the platform. Was Airtel Zero a potential threat to net neutrality? With the pending decision of the government of India on the regulatory framework for over-the-top (OTT) applications and services, would Airtel Zero stand out as a viable platform?

Companies today increasingly rely on teams that span many industries for radical innovation, especially to solve "wicked problems." So leaders have to understand how to promote collaboration when roles are uncertain, goals are shifting, expertise and organizational cultures are varied, and participants have clashing or even antagonistic perspectives. HBS professor Amy Edmondson has studied more than a dozen cross-industry innovation projects, among them the creation of a new city, a mango supply-chain transformation, and the design and construction of leading-edge buildings. She has identified the leadership practices that make successful cross-industry teams work: fostering an adaptable vision, promoting psychological safety, enabling knowledge sharing, and encouraging collaborative innovation. Though these practices are broadly familiar, their application within cross-industry teams calls for unique leadership approaches that combine flexibility, open-mindedness, humility, and fierce resolve.

Most leaders don't have the luxury of building their teams from scratch. Instead they're put in charge of an existing group, and they need guidance on the best way to take over and improve performance. Watkins, an expert on transitions, suggests a three-step approach: Assess. Act quickly to size up the personnel you've inherited, systematically gathering data from one-on-one chats, team meetings, and other sources. Reflect, too, on the business challenges you face, the kinds of people you want in various roles, and the degree to which they need to collaborate. Reshape. Adjust the makeup of the team by moving people to new positions, shifting their responsibilities, or replacing them. Make sure that everyone is aligned on goals and how to achieve them-you may need to change the team's stated direction. Consider also making changes in the way the team operates (reducing the frequency of meetings, for example, or creating new subteams). Then establish ground rules and processes to sustain desired behaviors, and revisit those periodically. Accelerate team development. Set your people up for some early wins. Initial successes will boost everyone's confidence and reinforce the value of your new operating model, thus paving the way for ongoing growth.

Over the years, as teams have grown more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic, collaboration has become more complex. But though teams face new challenges, their success still depends on a core set of fundamentals. As J. Richard Hackman, who began researching teams in the 1970s, discovered, what matters most isn't the personalities or behavior of the team members; it's whether a team has a compelling direction, a strong structure, and a supportive context. In their own research, Haas and Mortensen have found that teams need those three "enabling conditions" now more than ever. But their work also revealed that today's teams are especially prone to two corrosive problems: "us versus them" thinking and incomplete information. Overcoming those pitfalls requires a new enabling condition: a shared mindset. This article details what team leaders should do to establish the four foundations for success. For instance, to promote a shared mindset, leaders should foster a common identity and common understanding among team members, with techniques such as "structured unstructured time." The authors also describe how to evaluate a team's effectiveness, providing an assessment leaders can take to see what's working and where there's room for improvement.

Too often, teams struggle to collaborate effectively because of destructive conflict within the group. While respectful differences of opinion can yield positive change, a perceived incompatibility between how different people think or act can have a serious impact on productivity and work culture. Based on team dynamics research as well as their personal experience working with executive teams, the authors propose a new approach for leaders to proactively address conflict in the workplace and lay the foundation for effective collaboration. Before tackling any specific work issue, they suggest that team leaders facilitate conversations about how people look, act, speak, think, and feel, in order to build a shared understanding of the process - rather than the content - of the team's work.

People today are under intense pressure to be "ideal workers"-totally committed to their jobs and always on call. But after interviewing hundreds of professionals in many fields, the authors have concluded that selfless dedication to work is often unnecessary and harmful. It has dysfunctional consequences not only for individuals but also for their organizations. The authors discuss three typical strategies for coping with demanding workplaces, and the risks associated with each: Accepting involves prioritizing the job above all else and remaining available 24/7. Because accepters fail to cultivate outside interests, they're often slow to recover from professional setbacks. And they may be too focused on their own responsibilities to mentor others-a drawback for their organizations. Passing involves portraying oneself as an ideal worker while quietly pursuing a life beyond the office. But passers may feel isolated from their colleagues because they are hiding parts of themselves, and their perpetuation of the ideal-worker myth keeps the pressure on everyone. Revealing involves openly embracing nonwork commitments. Revealers may unwittingly put their careers at risk, however, and bosses who penalize them may drive away talent. So how can organizations build a healthier-and more productive-culture? Managers can act as role models by leading multifaceted lives themselves. They can reward employees for the quality and results of their work rather than the time put into it. And they can enforce reasonable work hours, require vacations, and take other steps to protect employees' personal lives.

Not long ago, the ability to create smart data visualizations (or dataviz) was a nice-to-have skill for design- and data-minded managers. But now it's a must-have skill for all managers, because it's often the only way to make sense of the work they do. Decision making increasingly relies on data, which arrives with such overwhelming velocity, and in such volume, that some level of abstraction is crucial. Thanks to the internet and a growing number of affordable tools, visualization is accessible for everyone--but that convenience can lead to charts that are merely adequate or even ineffective. By answering just two questions, Berinato writes, you can set yourself up to succeed: "Is the information conceptual or data-driven?" and "Am I declaring something or exploring something?" He leads readers through a simple process of identifying which of the four types of visualization they might use to achieve their goals most effectively: idea illustration, idea generation, visual discovery, or everyday dataviz. This article is adapted from the author's just-published book, "Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations."

With longevity increasing and thousands of Baby Boomers turning 65 every day, the face of retirement is changing. Interviews with executives and managers conducted by the authors show that very few people now follow the tradition of ditching the job and embracing a life of leisure in their midsixties. This article describes the different paths being taken and offers four principles that will help you navigate your late-career journey: (1) Prepare to go off-script. Careers end in many ways--often unpredictably. Most of us will have little control over our exit, so we must be ready to adapt. (2) Find your metaphor. Do you see retirement as liberation from the grind, the loss of your professional identity, or a chance for transformation? The language that resonates most with you can signal your best way forward. (3) Create a new deal. Many are stepping back gradually or staying on at their firms with redesigned schedules and responsibilities or as contractors. Explore the possibilities. (4) Make a difference. Shelving your expertise at retirement no longer makes sense. The new model is to apply your talents to improve your community and the world.

The renowned cellist on collaboration, risk taking, and childhood fame.

Bayou Side Hospital (BSH) is a critical access hospital in rural Louisiana that has offered labor and delivery services to its community since its beginning. However, the viability of this department and the hospital could be threatened by the changing healthcare reimbursement structure brought about by the Affordable Care Act. The decision to discontinue obstetric services would impact BSH's bottom line, but it may also complicate the hospital's relationship with its community and compromise its mission statement. The case will give insight into the complex ethical nature of hospital decision making and the way in which community reciprocity affects rural organizations. The instructor's manual offers a quantitative financial analysis and a qualitative discussion and review of literature on mission statements and community embeddedness. Further, the instructor's manual provides learning objectives, student preparation questions, and an outline for class discussion of the case.

David Lee is a highly motivated individual who overcame some setbacks in his life to rise through the ranks quickly, and at the age of 27, became the country manager of the NZ Foods' representative office in Singapore. However, Lee soon begins to encounter problems upon stepping up to his new role.