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For the past decade, Indian outsourcing firms have talked about “moving up the value chain” as a way of enhancing their service offerings, protecting their outsourcing dominance, and increasing their opportunities for profitability. These long-term moves have important implications for client firms, since they imply a shift in how client firms and business leaders engage with these outsourcers. While Indian outsourcers have prepared for this shift, it seems that many business leaders on the client side have not. This article explains the different meanings of “moving up the value chain” for Indian firms, as well as their sophisticated knowledge management and IT expertise. It reveals what can be learned from Indian outsourcers who have successfully equipped their businesses for high value-chain work, such as their use of social media.

The need for effective business leaders in India is as intense as it is elsewhere. But the path that Indian firms take to develop effective leaders is considerably different from the path followed by North American firms. Indian managers are fixated on profits, yet if top Indian firms are to depend on leadership development organizations, then these organizations must promote research and teaching in six key areas, including developing and retaining talent, developing strong fiscal management, and cross-enterprise strategy formulation.

It is common for Canadian retailers to receive blame for in-store prices that are higher than in the United States. However, retailers have little control over higher prices. This article explains the causes of these higher prices, such as foreign-owned companies’ expectations of higher margins in Canada, as well as higher costs of doing business in Canada. It also provides recommendations for ways to keep shoppers in Canada.

India’s business prowess has been influenced by the ability of its entrepreneurs to innovate. But if the ability to recognize an opportunity to innovate is to become part of the national business culture, then changes in non-business domains must be made. This article details the history of innovation in India, the nature of innovation for low cost, and India’s gradual embracing of innovation, as well as obstacles to innovation such as company hierarchies and societal stratification.

Cross-business collaboration, a powerful tool for overcoming the challenges of mergers and acquisitions, has the greatest impact on three areas: expanded due diligence, merger intent, and integration. This article details these areas and posits that the success rate for mergers and acquisitions could increase considerably if managers from two merging companies jointly developed a picture of what the combined organization should look like one year later.

It was once unthinkable that international aid would be as intensely scrutinized as it is today. But academics have concluded that the very problems that international aid was supposed to cure still exist, despite the resources that have been channelled to developing countries. This article discusses the types of international aid as well as misguided development approaches — such as single-solution approaches. It then details the best practices in international development, including conducting a forensic analysis of development indicators and managing the transition to local ownership.

Divergent views exist on how to define innovation and measure success in innovation. However, this article contends simply that “innovation is the process of change that creates and grows wealth.” Accordingly, the purpose and key success metric of innovation is the creation of wealth. After examining various perspectives on innovation and justifying this view, this article shows how net cash flow is the best metric of wealth creation. It concludes with two notable innovation failures, involving wind turbines and electric cars.

For small firms, partnering with a multinational corporation (MNC) provides great opportunities and great challenges. Conventional partnering approaches are unlikely to succeed, and firms must use less orthodox strategies. In particular, start-ups can employ three strategies for success: forming, consolidating, and extending MNC relationships. 1) Forming MNC relationships entails fathoming the larger company, targeting the right individuals, and not reaching out blindly. Early experiences with an MNC can have profound effects on the relationship forged. 2) Consolidating MNC relationships involves ensuring a strategic fit and increasing the odds of the relationship leveraging the best of the start-up and the MNC. It requires focus and goal orientation and, frequently, mid-course changes in direction, including dropping the relationship. 3) Extending MNC relationships entails recognizing the potential for conflict and balancing cooperation and competition. It requires shrewdness, and the recognition that aligning closely with an MNC may lead over time to overlapping goals and offerings.<br><br>In illustrating these strategies, this article offers various examples, such as the success of Mango Technologies in engaging with Qualcomm. Qualcomm was actually the third MNC that Mango reached out to, and the relationship was successful because Mango devoted itself to the technology front while Qualcomm negotiated bureaucracy. In another example, Lixter leveraged BizSpark One, an MNC partnering initiative run out of Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus. Here, a small firm took advantage of Microsoft’s partnering initiative through being proactive and getting noticed early on.

Researchers agree that between 40 and 70 per cent of mergers fail, yet there is a lack of practical advice for identifying and integrating knowledge that is dispersed through a merged organization. The Knowledge Jam is a process, set of disciplines, and culture that seeks to surface and translate knowledge into productive work in a merged organization. This article explains how knowledge fragmentation is a key impediment to a merged firm, and breaks down leaders’ under-investment in identifying and transferring the knowledge that is dispersed throughout two merged firms. It then details the five steps of Knowledge Jam, as well as its three disciplines — facilitation, conversation, and translation.

The Stratford Festival was already one of the world’s best-known and successful drama festivals — though probably one of the most homogenous with regard to its audiences and playbill. When in 2005 the executive and board needed an integrated plan for diversity and inclusion, they hired a consulting firm that utilized The Six Cylinders Model to attract families, people under 35, non-Caucasians, and immigrants. This article explains how the festival incorporated each of the cylinders: 1) leadership & governance, 2) products and services, 3) human capital, 4) work environment, 5) marketing, and 6) stakeholder connections.

Having operated for two years in the Texas market, the company is confronting a variety of difficulties. The case looks at the organization issues of reporting relationships, control systems, and staffing.

Many marketing officers struggle to identify the return on investment of social media activities. This article calls for marketers to reassess how they view social media; this includes having specific metrics related to volume, customer attitudes, qualitative measures, and modeling. After examining marketing analytics’ historical focus on product sales rather than customers, the article details social analytical models for smart system planning, which could become a new way for companies to understand their ability to plan, forecast, and measure the effectiveness of their marketing investments.

The need to develop leadership succession plans is of key importance, yet most companies lack them. This article offers reasons for this failing, including CEOs’ resistance to facing their own mortality, and board members being too concerned about job security to broach the topic. It also examines company outsiders versus insiders in leadership succession and shares lessons from top-performing companies. Finally, it offers five key steps for firms to follow in avoiding a crisis in leadership succession, including giving prospective leaders the opportunity to meet with the board of directors, encouraging differences of opinion, and ensuring that the CEO recognizes the importance of leadership succession.

In a world of widely distributed knowledge, the emergence of Open Innovation means that firms cannot afford to rely only on their own research, but should buy or license processes from other firms. Further, they should allow unused internal inventions to be taken outside the company through licensing and spin-offs. This article, by the scholar who coined the term Open Innovation, chronicles the history of innovation from the 1960s to the new millennium, when Open Innovation arose. It offers predictions for the future of innovation, such as that innovation management will become more collaborative and that business model innovation will become as important as technological innovation.

Recent events such as the global financial crisis and the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have undermined confidence in the ethics of business institutions. Instilling company values is more important than ever, yet a values-driven culture cannot be created with rules and mission statements alone. This article, in seeking an approach to ethics and compliance that engages both employees and leaders, proposes a five-step Giving Voice to Values (GVV) approach that includes reframing key questions in conflict situations, pre-scripting responses to value conflicts, and peer coaching.

Many managers believe that the acquisition and application of knowledge from external sources will have a clear impact on firm performance and innovation, yet little research exists that helps managers determine the impact of that knowledge. This article seeks to examine whether the use of external knowledge delivers the competitive advantage often claimed. It explains that the outcome of using external knowledge sources may not be positive, and is dependent on a firm’s strategies and capabilities. The authors use a study of the fifteen largest firms in the semiconductor industry to reinforce their arguments.

Embracing neuroleadership — the art of synchronizing the science of the brain with leadership behaviours — offers promise for a leader effecting real change within an organization. Neuroleadership helps in understanding the impact that emotions and behaviours have on our successes and failures. This article discusses the value of neuroleadership, the AGES-learning model (attention, generation, emotions, and spacing), and how to build neuroleadership into organizational learning and development.

Although innovation investments are the right strategy for the long term, it is rare that CEOs increase their innovation budget while the effects of a recession persist. This article suggests that the solution to this dilemma lies not in changing the level of innovation spending, but in rethinking the type of innovation investment made. Given their potential benefits in a recessionary environment, it is important to understand three non-mainstream approaches to innovation. Cost innovation involves creative ways of re-engineering products or processes to eliminate elements that do not add value (e.g. many Chinese firms). Application innovation means creating a new application for an existing product or technology (e.g. the sandwich). Business model innovation entails redesign of a business model to create more value for customers (e.g. low-cost airlines). The authors’ extensive research with Chinese companies has yielded four guidelines for pursuing a broad innovation agenda: start from the market; simplify, don’t complicate; play the beggar, not the duke; and go for immediate impact.

After decades as a CEO and years as the Dean of the Richard Ivey School of Business, business students and other aspiring leaders often ask me what inspired me to become a leader. Was there a moment in my career when I decided that I was going to become the CEO? Did I have a boss who encouraged me or a role model that I wanted to follow? Did I have a plan - a clear path forward early on my career?

In October 2008, the president of Millbrook Estate Homes Ltd. is trying to determine if his firm should take on a new development called Whistle Hill Estates. Millbrook began as a builder of modest homes on a large scale, but the Whistle Hill opportunity would involve developing high-end custom homes.<br><br><br><br>The president’s decision will have a significant effect on Millbrook’s future strategy. Millbrook can stay within its comfort zone and continue building large numbers of entry-level or mid-level homes, purchasing supplies in bulk, and negotiating volume discounts with the trades, or the company can choose to move into the high-end custom home segment, in which it will have to manage more complex designs, source custom materials, and provide a greater level of customer service to clients. In the second option, Millbrook has the opportunity to earn higher profits per house built. If the president wants Millbrook to expand into the custom home segment, he needs to consider what changes will be necessary to position the Whistle Hill opportunity for success.