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As a boy, Bush watched "Emergency!" on television and was captivated by the romance and seeming magic of saving lives. As an adult, he found the reality of medicine to be very different: There wasn't much humanity in the way health care was actually delivered. Believing that he'd be daunted by the coursework required for a medical degree, he decided to take an entrepreneurial route to improving the system. His first sense of the opportunity came while he was driving an ambulance in New Orleans one summer during college. Some patients with chronic disease who couldn't afford their medicines would repeatedly call the ambulance to take them to a hospital where they could be stabilized. What if the ambulance itself were outfitted with treatments for the five most common chronic diseases and carried EMTs who were trained to use them? Those patients could be treated in place, at a radically lower cost than what the hospital would charge. That idea didn't work out, and Bush moved on to think about a network of maternity clinics. He and Todd Park drew up a business plan at Harvard Business School--one that was "unbelievably complicated to execute and very risky." But in the process of pursuing it, they created websites for the paperwork with rules that prevented mistakes. That was the seed for athenahealth, which today supports electronic medical records and a suite of services of practice management and care coordination, leaving doctors free to spend more time with their patients.

When the "Titanic" collided with an iceberg and sunk, only 705 of its 2,200 passengers and crew, floating in 16 lifeboats, were saved. Imagine how many more might have lived if crew members had thought of the iceberg as not just the cause of the disaster but a lifesaving solution. The iceberg rose high above the water and stretched nearly 400 feet in length. The lifeboats, or the "Titanic" itself, might have been able to pull close enough to the iceberg for people to scramble on. Regardless of whether this could actually have worked, it's an intriguing idea--yet surprisingly difficult to envision. That's because a cognitive bias called "functional fixedness" limits people to seeing objects only in the way in which they're traditionally used. In a nautical context, an iceberg is a hazard to be avoided; it's very hard to see it any other way. When it comes to innovation, businesses are constantly hampered by functional fixedness and other cognitive biases that cause people to overlook elegant solutions hidden in plain sight. We can overcome this bias--and similar biases about an object's design and purpose--by changing how we describe the object and how we think about its component parts. This article also presents techniques and tools to help managers think in innovative ways--a process the authors call "brainswarming"--about common business problems, whether it be conceiving new products, finding novel applications for existing products, or anticipating competitive threats.

You can't get very far in your career without taking new jobs, joining new organizations, transferring to new locations, and meeting and building relationships with new contacts. But surprisingly, many professionals stumble in these situations because they haven't mastered three basic yet critical getting-to-know-you skills: introducing themselves, remembering names, and asking questions. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to get better at them. In this article, a Babson professor who has spent 20 years counseling executives and MBAs offers tactics that will help you navigate new situations more confidently. For instance, introductions tend to go more smoothly if you've practiced your opening lines--and you know how to make the other person feel valued. Names are easier to remember if you repeat and rehearse them and link them to vivid mental images. And you're more likely to get the answers you need if you figure out the right person to approach--and the right time--and ask short, to-the-point questions. By paying attention and applying simple but practical strategies like these, you can set yourself up for success with new challenges.

Katie Couric talks about the difference between network news and digital news and between morning and evening shows.

The large-scale abandonment of property in inner-city Johannesburg had brought waves of crime, illegal building occupation and general disinvestment. The founder of Olitzki Property Holdings (OPH) saw that an improvement at a precinct level, through carefully constructed partnerships with government, other property owners, tenants and illegal residents, was the key to building a sustainable, inclusive and socially grounded entrepreneurial business. OPH identified and bought derelict or illegally occupied buildings, then renovated and leased them to a combination of blue-chip and start-up businesses. While there was no doubt that OPH was profit focused, the ability to see the important role of development was a cornerstone of its success. Could the company — and the city — expand and maintain that success?

The large-scale abandonment of property in inner-city Johannesburg had brought waves of crime, illegal building occupation and general disinvestment. The founder of Olitzki Property Holdings (OPH) saw that an improvement at a precinct level, through carefully constructed partnerships with government, other property owners, tenants and illegal residents, was the key to building a sustainable, inclusive and socially grounded entrepreneurial business. OPH identified and bought derelict or illegally occupied buildings, then renovated and leased them to a combination of blue-chip and start-up businesses. While there was no doubt that OPH was profit focused, the ability to see the important role of development was a cornerstone of its success. Could the company - and the city - expand and maintain that success?

Capitalizing on low-cost manufacturing in China, Bally Wedding Dress Company (Bally) had grown quickly by exporting inexpensive wedding dresses to customers in Western countries. However, due to a rise in labour costs, currency appreciation, and increased prices of raw materials, the low-cost advantage in the manufacturing industry had by 2014 been seriously eroded. Competition had intensified together with a shortage in qualified labour. As both the sales volume and turnover decreased, Bally had to consider how to survive. The crisis that it faced represented a common issue for many Chinese manufacturing enterprises.

Capitalizing on low-cost manufacturing in China, Bally Wedding Dress Company (Bally) had grown quickly by exporting inexpensive wedding dresses to customers in Western countries. However, due to a rise in labour costs, currency appreciation, and increased prices of raw materials, the low-cost advantage in the manufacturing industry had by 2014 been seriously eroded. Competition had intensified together with a shortage in qualified labour. As both the sales volume and turnover decreased, Bally had to consider how to survive. The crisis that it faced represented a common issue for many Chinese manufacturing enterprises.

A successful business executive and avid sailor had been thinking about new solutions to an old problem: safely transporting oil products. In late June 2014, the Canadian government had just approved a pipeline to carry bitumen from Alberta to the British Columbia coast. The immediate reaction from First Nations and environmental groups was extremely negative. Against this backdrop, the executive had put forward a radical proposal to refine the bitumen in British Columbia before shipping it across the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, he would need a $10 billion loan guarantee from the federal government. In the short term, he needed $150 million to undertake a feasibility study. What, he wondered, was the best way to proceed?

A successful business executive and avid sailor had been thinking about new solutions to an old problem: safely transporting oil products. In late June 2014, the Canadian government had just approved a pipeline to carry bitumen from Alberta to the British Columbia coast. The immediate reaction from First Nations and environmental groups was extremely negative. Against this backdrop, the executive had put forward a radical proposal to refine the bitumen in British Columbia before shipping it across the Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, he would need a $10 billion loan guarantee from the federal government. In the short term, he needed $150 million to undertake a feasibility study. What, he wondered, was the best way to proceed?

By the summer of 2015, Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd. of Bangalore, India, had become a significant player in the Indian e-commerce industry. The company started its online operations with an inventory model, focusing on books, but expanded to a marketplace model with music, movies and mobile phones. Its fashion retail portal Myntra, acquired in 2014, closed its website operations on May 1, 2015, and moved to an app-only platform to take advantage of the increasing use of smartphones by the Indian population for Internet searches and purchases. Although it experienced some initial losses, the parent company announced in July that it would also be moving to an app-only platform in September, becoming the first e-commerce company in the world to adopt this strategy on such a scale. Will this innovative move lead to further success and become a game changer for the industry or is it a step taken too soon into a future trend?

By the summer of 2015, Flipkart Online Services Pvt. Ltd. of Bangalore, India, had become a significant player in the Indian e-commerce industry. The company started its online operations with an inventory model, focusing on books, but expanded to a marketplace model with music, movies and mobile phones. Its fashion retail portal Myntra, acquired in 2014, closed its website operations on May 1, 2015, and moved to an app-only platform to take advantage of the increasing use of smartphones by the Indian population for Internet searches and purchases. Although it experienced some initial losses, the parent company announced in July that it would also be moving to an app-only platform in September, becoming the first e-commerce company in the world to adopt this strategy on such a scale. Will this innovative move lead to further success and become a game changer for the industry or is it a step taken too soon into a future trend?

Set in 2014, this case study examines the development and ongoing transition to value- and outcomes-based commissioning for diabetes care across North Central London (NCL). With the aim of improving health outcomes among their local populations, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) in NCL set out to tranform the delivery and funding of services. This involves incentivize providers to deliver on specific health outcomes that are important to patients via an integrated platform encompassing multiple entry points - primary, secondary, social care and community services.

RevenueWorks tells the story of Mike Sutherland and how he grew the search fund company he acquired from $5 million to over $150 million in revenue. After growing the company with debt and returning dividends to investors through leveraged recapitalizations with private equity investors, Sutherland had to decide the best course to gain liquidity for his existing investors who were eager to see a return on their investment. He had to decide whether to sell the company to a strategic acquirer (at a lower valuation), take on another private equity investor, or IPO the company in the public markets.

In January 2009, when Paul Polman was appointed CEO of Unilever, he inherited a company in long-term decline at the beginning of a major global financial crisis. As the first outsider ever recruited to lead the company, Polman lost little time in challenging the existing strategy and organization. But the biggest change he made was to introduce the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP), a commitment that placed three "sustainability" goals at the core of the company's strategy: to help 1 billion people improve their health, to halve the environmental footprint of making and using Unilever products, and to enhance the livlihood of those in its value chain. The case describes how the new CEO then had to convince skeptical internal and external stakeholders why a struggling company in a tough competitive environment should embrace such bold nonfinancial goals. It then follows how he translated his radically different vision into strategies and priorities that could be implemented by a global company with 170,000 employees. In the process, the case explores how Unilever's top team had to adapt and adjust is structures, systems, processes, people and culture in order to implement USLP. The case concludes as Polman and and his top team face some key decisions in 2015. Should they double down on their original 2020 US LP objectives? Should they scale back in the face of some strong economic headwinds? Or should they pivot to a new transformational strategic agenda?

In 2011 the World Bank and others were concerned that cities all over the developing world were losing their battle with increasing traffic congestion in part because they lacked institutions that had the authority and the capacity to promote public transportation in an integrated fashion. Lagos was one of the few major cities in the developing world to have a metropolitan area public transportation authority with broad powers, independent resources and a staff of international quality. The Lagos Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority (LAMATA) had some early successes but other agencies were expanding their roles raising the question as to how LAMATA's success could be maintained and replicated. Case number 2052.0

Two Valmont Industries (an international leader in infrastructure products and services) colleagues, Robert (Bob) Meaney and Richard Berkland hoped to improve the lives of small and medium-sized farmers in the developing world through modern irrigation technology. In October 2015, they had already launched three pilot projects in Africa, each with a unique model of engaging local and global actors around center pivot irrigation technology. They were eager to understand the impact each model had on agricultural yields, water resource management, and farmer income, to create a model adaptable to different regions around the world.

After the Irish pharmacy industry’s deregulation, large competitors entered the market, upsetting small private players like single shop outlets and independent chains. While some of the new competitors implemented sophisticated technologies, others announced price cuts of up to 31 per cent on drugs. Not only did market shares for small players shrink, but the recession, changes in payment structures, government spending cuts and decreased consumer loyalty further reduced pharmacies’ profit margins. Many private pharmacists had observed that other pharmacies in Ireland and in the United States had successfully adopted connected health technologies (CHTs) to improve their performance. In order to compete against powerful multinational retail pharmacies, private pharmacists needed to analyze their business models and make any necessary alterations as soon as possible. Should they reinforce their current business models or try to innovate? Did they have the capabilities to develop CHTs and would these investments prove worthwhile?

In early June 2013, the executive director of Art Feeds, which provided therapeutic art and creative education to school children to help them achieve mental and emotional well-being, needed to make a recommendation to her board about whether to expand the current operations in Joplin, Missouri, to Moore, Oklahoma, after a devastating tornado in Moore. She needed to determine whether the organization had the resources required to expand successfully. If the executive director recommended expansion, she also needed to recommend the method that Art Feeds should use, i.e., disseminating the Art Feeds concept, using an affiliation model, or branching.