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The huge growth of information technology (IT) and information technology enabled services (TIES) businesses in India and, in particular, in Hyderabad, led to the establishment of Indian and multi-national companies. With large numbers of employees and thousands of square feet of office space, these companies recognized that maintaining their premises was not part of their core competence and outsourced their housekeeping requirements, thus creating a new industry. A single mother who was unable to make ends meet on her salary as the principal of a catering college grabbed a tiny opportunity to provide cleaning services at the Oracle office in the Cyber Towers at Hyderabad and, over 10 years, built up Golden Star into the third-largest housekeeping services provider in the city, with over 2,000 employees. While maintaining her strong personal ethical values, she built a young, professional team and maintained high standards of professionalism and quality of service. The case is set at the time when she is faced with the typical dilemmas of organic growth: to take on allied functions of office management, such as maintenance of electrical and mechanical equipment - a growing trend in the industry; to expand geographically to manage the offices of her clients in several cities; or to make a huge amount of money by simply selling the business she had built from scratch.

This article suggests that the time is approaching when organizations will need chief creative officers instead of chief executive officers, and chief collaboration officers instead of chief operating officers. Managers are given practical steps on how to become a chief creative officer, and how to transform an organization into one capable of unleashing the power of self-organizing swarms. It also outlines the four types of knowledge workers — artists, scientists, teachers, and managers — and discusses the Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs) seminar.

Due to their conservative nature, excessive aversion to risk, and strong reluctance to venture outside their comfort zone, Canadian businesses are being held back from seizing enormous opportunities in Asia. The article questions whether Canadians care about this failing and argues that Canadian business leaders must set their sights higher. It also offers steps on how to close the knowledge gaps that stop Canadian businesses from succeeding in Asia, including diversification of boards and corporate management teams, and awareness of expatriate management problems.

Imitators are often so successful that they push innovators out of business. Innovation has a well-established argument based on higher sales and growth, lower costs, and the transformation of a firm’s capabilities, yet imitators enjoy many of the same benefits. In fact, an imitator’s overall costs are estimated at 60 to 75 per cent lower. Generic drug makers, for example, not only leverage the investments of original developers but also save billions of dollars and decades of effort. With the benefit of hindsight, imitators capitalize on the shortcomings of early offerings. They choose what to adopt, singling out profitable opportunities, and are less likely to be complacent than innovators. However, even in an age of imitation ushered in by factors like globalization and outsourcing, business scholars have failed to recognize imitation as a complex endeavour that requires rare and valuable capabilities. <br><br>Crucially, imitation and innovation are not opposites. Though the capabilities to imitate share much with the capacity to innovate, innovators do not adopt them because of the stigma of imitation. This has prevented many firms from becoming “imovators,” able to fuse innovation and imitation. Good innovators and imitators both adapt imported elements or systems, combine different knowledge bases, and identify and leverage “spillovers.” Innovators are better at producing effective barriers to imitation, as much as imitators are experts at finding ways to overcome those barriers. In combining these two skill sets, firms can reap the benefits of innovation.

This article presents the Dynamic Capabilities Framework, which gives a prominent intellectual infrastructure for both theoretical and applied analyses of strategic management and other issues facing business makers. The popular management theory outlined here discusses the growing importance of intangible assets, the differences between intangible and physical assets, and the three clusters of activities and adjustments that define dynamic capabilities — sensing, seizing, and transforming — as illustrated with the example of various Apple products.

Bring up the topic of innovation and often the conversation will soon revolve around a cool, new gadget or an exciting start-up company with a revolutionary idea.-- If the talk is about the challenge of innovation, it usually focuses on developing something new, original and radically different. -- As the Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity points out in its recent report, innovation has now become synonymous with invention, when invention is just part of the process of innovation.

For the companies that accept how time operates on their target markets and customers, time scarcity and attention scarcity will provide one of the best paths for innovation in the future. This article, by a former HP executive, examines how time spent shopping has remained constant over the past decades, even while the number of products has increased. It also discusses the Time-Value Framework and five modes of Time-Value Innovation, including Time Magnets and Time Slicing.

Many companies have embraced open innovation and not met success. But some of these companies are unfit for open innovation because they lack the capabilities needed to promote and leverage internal and external collaboration. These authors describe three innovation strategies — need seeker, technology driver, and market reader — and four steps for establishing open innovation. The article concludes with an interview with the chief technology officer of 3M, one of the world’s most innovative companies.

In January 2010, John Fahey, president, CEO, and chairman of the board of trustees' executive committee of the Washington, D.C.-based National Geographic Society (NGS), must decide how best to organize the 121-year old mission-driven organization for a world of accelerating digital convergence and decreasing magazine sales. Historically a proponent of evolutionary change, he is considering a radical move: creating a senior management position responsible for e-commerce to coordinate web-based offerings and outreach across the Society's various departments, transition NGS from its many disparate and independent direct mail efforts to a more integrated and strategic e-commerce strategy, and leverage the NGS relationship with its members-currently defined as magazine subscribers, since a subscription comes with Society membership. Putting the final touches on the position and its reporting arrangements has led to significant debate within the organization, and Fahey is torn about how to proceed.

The five-case UFIDA series is about China's largest supplier of management/ERP software, its 20-year evolution, and current strategic challenges. The (A) case is the cornerstone of the series. It introduces the company's history, strategic turning points, current market position and competition. It is a standalone case that may be used in a strategy course. It may also be used to highlight the interaction between strategic competitors within an industry. In this situation, subsequent classes would be devoted to the Kingdee and Beyondsoft cases. It may be paired with the UFIDA (B) case to add a focus on people and their values. It may be used in an accounting and control course, paired with the UFIDA (C) case, to illustrate the evolution of planning and budgeting systems. It may be used in a finance course, accompanied by the UFIDA (D) case, which highlights the critical role of capital markets and finance in a growing company. Finally, it can be used in an international course with the UFIDA (E) case to focus on the special international expansion issues of a Chinese firm.

This case highlights the leadership, cultural and organizational structure dimensions of UFIDA. The case begins with Founder/Chairman Wang Wenjing's rags-to-riches story. Then UFIDA's senior and middle management of different backgrounds talk about their leader, Chairman Wang Wenjing. They voice their opinions on Wang Wenjing's leadership style, UFIDA's corporate culture and vision. This case complements the UFIDA (A) case which looks at the organization as a whole, while the (B) case focuses on the people and their values. From different angles, students can feel Chairman Wang Wenjing's management style and his personal impact on UFIDA. The company, over 20 years, has been a successful management software provider in China (its biggest domestic provider.) At the core, the key question is, "Can Chairman Wang Wenjing's leadership style, UFIDA's culture 2.0 and organizational structure, together sustain UFIDA's future growth and goal accomplishment?"

In 2004, China's largest management software provider UFIDA began internationalization. In the subsequent 6 years, UFIDA entered Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and other overseas Asian markets. Nonetheless, UFIDA's overseas business footprint was still very limited, with overseas revenue only accounting for 0.43% of UFIDA's total sales in 2009. In the later part of 2009, UFIDA outlined their new Three-Year Plan for 2010-2012. In this Plan, internationalization was a focal point of the UFIDA strategy. In the coming 3 years, UFIDA would drastically increase the proportion of revenues from overseas sales, reaching 10% within 5 years, and 25% within 10 years. This case study highlights UFIDA's launch of their 2010 - 2012 internationalization strategy.

Millions of vehicles recalled due to quality problems, multiple lawsuits, government investigations, and a very public apology from the company’s president have seriously damaged Toyota’s once-unassailable reputation. What do these problems say about the famed Toyota Production System? What will these problems and the wider economic crisis bring for the country’s automotive industry more generally? These authors recently visited Toyota and a number of automotive systems suppliers in Japan. Their observations and assessments of how the industry will fare in the years ahead are the basis for this article, which details the internationalization of the Japanese motor industry, the increasing use of temporary workers at motor plants, compensation systems, and lifetime employment.

Although not all firms invest in sustainability, firms that do have happier customers, employees, and investors and are no worse off financially. These authors met with some of the leading practitioners of sustainability and identified how organizations can start building sustainability into everything from supply chain activities to HR practices. After defining business sustainability and explaining the process for identifying the top reasons why businesses aren’t more sustainable, the article details these reasons — such as confusion over how to measure sustainability, and lack of incentive from governments — and remarks on the approaching paradigm in which society and business are no longer separate.

Chinese companies are not the standard setters when it comes to corporate social responsibility. But contrary to many published reports, they are implementing and following best practices, some of which Western companies have been using for some time. This article offers an up-to-date assessment of the successes and frustrations of corporate social responsibility in China. In doing so, it examines the country’s governmental and industrial forces, as well as pressures from communities, media, civil society, and unions.

Yves Doz is Professor of Strategic Management and the Timken Chaired Professor of Global Technology and Innovation at INSEAD, and Visiting Professor at the Helsinki School of Economics. He was Dean of Executive Education (1998-2002) and Associate Dean for Research and Development (1990-1995) at INSEAD. He has also taught at the Harvard Business School, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Seoul National University, and Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. <br><br>This interview touches on globalization, Chinese and Korean companies, the decline in U.S. business influence, and innovation.

HBR asked top management thinkers to share what they were resolved to accomplish in 2011. Here are their answers: Joseph E. Stiglitz will be crafting a new postcrisis paradigm for macroeconomics whereby rational individuals interact with imperfect and asymmetric information. Herminia Ibarra will be looking for hard evidence of how "soft" leadership creates value. Eric Schmidt will be planning to scale mobile technology by developing fast networks and providing low-cost smartphones in the poorest parts of the world. Michael Porter will be using modern cost accounting to uncover-and lower-the real costs of health care. Vijay Govindarajan will be trying to prototype a $300 house to replace the world's poorest slums, provide healthy living, and foster education. Dan Ariely will be investigating consumers' distaste for genetically modified salmon, synthetic pharmaceuticals, and other products that aren't "natural." Laura D. Tyson will be promoting the establishment of a national infrastructure investment bank. Esther Duflo will be striving to increase full immunization in poor areas of India. Clay Shirky will be studying how to design internet platforms that foster civility. Klaus Schwab will be undertaking to create a Risk Response Network through which decision makers around the world can pool knowledge about the risks they face. Jack Ma will be working to instill a strong set of values in his 19,000 young employees and to help clean up China's environment. Thomas H. Davenport will be researching big judgment calls that turned out well and how organizations arrived at them. A.G. Lafley will be proselytizing to make company boards take leadership succession seriously. Eleven additional contributors to the Agenda, along with special audio and video features, can be found at hbr.org/2011-agenda.

Many philanthropists have big ambitions, but even the richest individuals and largest foundations don't have enough money to end poverty, reverse climate change, or cure cancer. And many donors impose substantial costs on their grantees by, for instance, becoming excessively involved in program design or imposing burdensome reporting requirements. To achieve breakthroughs, donors need a multiplier effect-an approach that delivers many dollars' worth of impact for each dollar invested. In short, they need an investment model. To develop a sound model for philanthropy, donors must understand the methods of change that breakthrough results require. These include building robust nonprofit organizations, modifying public policy, establishing intermediaries, and facilitating research. The Draper Richards Foundation, for example, helps direct-service nonprofits build their capacity and capabilities; the James Irvine Foundation created an intermediary organization to improve high school education in California. Donors must also understand how they can best support those efforts-through the roles they play, the resources they devote, and the relationships they develop. Michael J. Fox, for instance, has used his celebrity and credibility in his foundation's efforts to cure Parkinson's disease. Developing a clear investment model doesn't have to be complicated or expensive, just deliberate. Without one, donors risk adding little value and imposing steep costs.

Having diagnosed the situation, he made overdue investments in systems and brought in new blood from outside, instilling new discipline, capabilities and operational efficiencies. Over five years, he managed to transform this seat-of-the-pants operation into a much more robust company, while at the same time continuing to deliver solid financial results. He also repositioned the company for growth in markets where there was little serious competition. These were considerable accomplishments for which he gained belated recognition. Yet, there were nagging concerns throughout his tenure: doubts from analysts about where he was taking the company; criticism from former executives that he was killing the entrepreneurial culture; question marks over the morale of store employees; complaints about customer service; and public disapproval for his expanding remuneration package. These issues came to a head in his sixth year in the job and specifically at a badly misjudged annual meeting with shareholders. Ultimately, he stopped listening to dissenting voices, and made a dreadful blunder - from which his reputation never quite recovered. Learning objectives: The case covers four key leadership issues: 1) The complexity of leading a large company - and the 3 critical roles required of leaders - as strategists, architects and mobilizers. 2) The difficulty of transforming a successful organization - and how to make the case for change in such a company. 3) The need to manage one's own competencies - and the dangers of carrying certain strengths too far: e.g. when does demanding become intimidating and when does self-confidence become stubbornness? 4) The need to manage oneself over time - particularly in terms of maintaining one's ability to listen, as well as coping with disappointment and coping with criticism.

Swiss German Tobacco plans to introduce a new tobacco brand in the Czech Republic. The company has been operating in the country until 2007, when a currency crisis has taken the country out of a euro peg, and into a dollarization of the economy. The new brand is to be labeled "Matrix", as a glamour product targeted to a sophisticated segment, and competing with already established Kent Nanotek, manufactured by British American Tobacco. The question of whether to introduce the brand or not boils down to a valuation exercise, where the major inputs are: the expected demand for the product, driven by population growth; the prospects for tobacco in the country; and technical requirements in production and distribution. Participants are confronted sequentially with these challenges. Learning objectives: This is acapital budgeting and investment selection case, a comprehensive exercise of a Tobacco firm that designs a new brand, which is to be introduced in the market. It is a good illustration of the Free Cash Flow technique, used here for investment appraisal throughout a series of seven challenges.