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Companies shouldn't involve outside firms in their innovation efforts when product complexity is very low or high. When it's somewhere in the middle-that's another story.

Imitation is vastly underappreciated, says Oded Shenkar, a professor at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business. Nearly 98% of the value of innovations is captured by copycats. Look at McDonald's, Visa, and Wal-Mart, which all far outran the path breakers they followed. Successful imitation, however, requires as much discipline as innovation does. To improve their odds, imitators need to understand "true" imitation, develop the capabilities that enable its effective use, and learn to deploy the right strategies.

Benchmarking best practices allows enterprises to catch up with the competition, but it won't turn them into market leaders. Organizations become winners by spotting big opportunities and inventing next practices. Executives can unearth opportunities by identifying big problems that their companies will benefit by tackling. They must ask six questions: (1) Is the problem widely recognized? (2) Does it affect other industries? (3) Are radical innovations needed to tackle the problem? (4) Can tackling it change the industry's economics? (5) Will addressing the issue create a fresh source of competitive advantage? (6) Would tackling this problem prove to be a big opportunity for us?

Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants or rely on focus groups, a dozen people riffing on something they know little about, to set strategies. What companies won't do is experiment to find evidence of the right way forward. Why? One reason is that experiments require short-term sacrifices for long-term gains. Companies (and people) are notoriously bad at making those trade-offs. Another is that there's the false sense of security that heeding experts provides. When we pay consultants, we want an answer from them and not a proposal for what experiment to conduct. As human beings, we tend to value answers over questions because answers allow us to take action, while questions mean that we need to keep thinking to work things out.

British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser has very low corporate brand recognition-but its results speak volumes. In the past few years the company's growth has outperformed that of its competitors P&G, Unilever, and Colgate-even during the downturn. RB's CEO outlines what he thinks is the real reason for the company's strong performance: its unique culture of globe-trotting expats.

Tessera Technologies has been very successful developing technologies for the semiconductor and mobile device industry, and then licensing them broadly to manufacturers. In addition to licensing patents, it also supplies know-how to help manufacturers move into high volume production. But the changing environment for patent enforcement, in particular the use of injunctions post eBay v. MercExchange, has brought new challenges to the company's licensing model. "Patent holdouts," companies who chose to litigate rather than license, created pressure from existing licensees. Further, as the company advanced one of its newest technology developments, a cooling technology for portable devices, it had to contend with markets where there were not strong property rights regimes. Would the company be able to get paid for its innovations, or was its model doomed?

We refer to a model that uses mathematical programming to find an optimal quantity as an optimization model. Thus, an optimization model differs from an evaluation model in that it goes beyond simply evaluating the consequences of proposed alternatives: It actually identifies the "optimal" alternative. How does an optimization model accomplish this impressive task? In this age of readily available computing power and ever more user-friendly software, it is possible to build and use optimization models without a detailed understanding of the mathematics that underlie the answer to this question. To truly take advantage of this capability, however, it is necessary to have a basic understanding of some core concepts. The primary objective of this note is to introduce these concepts. This note is highly pragmatic; the companion note "The Mathematics of Optimization" (UV4309) explores more deeply the mathematical foundations of the concepts and is designed for the user with the motivation and mathematical background to further explore the topic.

This technical note provides a mostly nontechnical introduction to analytical probability distributions. The distributions covered are: uniform, triangular, normal, Poisson, exponential, lognormal, and binomial.

The case first describes the evolution of Cisco Systems of San Jose, California, from a narrowly-focused routing and switching equipment vendor, with a highly effective competitive strategy, into a diversified networking and IT giant. This growth was fuelled by many acquisitions, the rationale of which developed over time, in light of the growth opportunities and challenges which Cisco encountered. The events described in the case took place in early 2007, while Cisco was considering the acquisition of IronPort, a security software company. A decision to purchase IronPort would symbol a continual divergence from Cisco's old and famous acquisition strategy of acquiring young entrepreneurial firms, to complement its internal development efforts and become a one-stop-shop for its networking customers. This divergence started a few years earlier, with the acquisition of large firms like Linksys and Scientific Atlanta, labeled by Cisco's management as "platform" deals.

This case examines the potential purchase by a western bank of a sizeable share of a Chinese bank. Particular emphasis is on the macroeconomic environment of China, to include issues of risk for the investor related to valuation of the renminbi, the global financial crisis, China's increased trade prominence, commitment of the Chinese government to reform, the process, staging, and timing of financial reform, domestic social stability, and the Chinese economy's interdependence with the outside world.

The three-case series is about how a medium-sized Taiwanese company approached competition with 3M in global markets. The series covers a 14-year period. The A case starts in 1994, when 3M decides to launch a lawsuit against companies (including Hopax) selling repositionable notes that compete with 3M's highly successful Post-It notes in the United States. How should Hopax respond? The B case explains that, unlike the other players, Hopax decides to fight in court. Staples, Hopax's largest customer in the United States, decides to cancel its contract. What should Hopax do now? The C case recounts the events that follow until 2008 and explains how the company applies principles of "judo strategy" to become the second largest supplier of repositionable notes in the world. The series allows students to explore options to smaller innovative companies as they try to compete in global markets with large, resource-rich, players who do not hesitate to use courts to try to eliminate their smaller competitors.

This supplement to Hopax (A), product number 910M04, explains that, unlike the other players, Hopax decides to fight in court after Staples, Hopax's largest customer in the United States, decides to cancel its contract.

This supplement to Hopax (A), product number 910M04, recounts the events that followed until 2008 and explains how the company applied principles of "judo strategy" to become the second largest supplier of repositionable notes in the world.

The three-case series is about how a medium-sized Taiwanese company approached competition with 3M in global markets. The series covers a 14-year period. The A case starts in 1994, when 3M decides to launch a lawsuit against companies (including Hopax) selling repositionable notes that compete with 3M's highly successful Post-It notes in the United States. How should Hopax respond? The B case explains that, unlike the other players, Hopax decides to fight in court. Staples, Hopax's largest customer in the United States, decides to cancel its contract. What should Hopax do now? The C case recounts the events that follow until 2008 and explains how the company applies principles of judo strategy to become the second largest supplier of repositionable notes in the world. The series allows students to explore options to smaller innovative companies as they try to compete in global markets with large, resource-rich, players who do not hesitate to use courts to try to eliminate their smaller competitors.

This supplement to Hopax (A), product number 9B10M004, explains that, unlike the other players, Hopax decides to fight in court after Staples, Hopax's largest customer in the United States, decides to cancel its contract.

This supplement to Hopax (A), product number 9B10M004, recounts the events that followed until 2008 and explains how the company applied principles of judo strategy to become the second largest supplier of repositionable notes in the world.

Twitter has become an incredibly popular micro-blogging service since its launch in 2006. Its founders have ambitious plans for the service, and are backed by hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital funding, which values the company at $3.7 billion in 2011. Twitter seems to attract a diverse audience of users, such as political organizers looking to disseminate information to their followers; businesses looking to reach out, in real time, to potential customers; and social users. The company charges consumers nothing for its service. By 2011, competitors have emerged, some of whom are financially strong. It remains unclear - at least to some observers - whether the company will ever make money from its service.

Joel Klein took over the NYC Department of Education in 2002 and radically transformed the strategy and organization remarkably with improvements in performance. Day 2 focuses on Klein as a strategist, organization builder and driver of performance. Supplementary homework video provides Klein's thoughts on how one brings about change in a difficult public arena.

By 2009, China's exports had increased dramatically from $250 billion in 2000 to a projected $1,500 billion in 2009. This enormous growth of exports severely damaged competing businesses in the advanced nations, particularly the United States and Europe. China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 guaranteed China's right to export to these nations, but at the same time the WTO required China to adhere to certain rules that sought to support fair trade and create a level playing field. Several broad subjects each gave rise to a series of trade disputes: the protection of intellectual property, health and safety concerns about China's products, labour and environmental standards, China's manipulation of their currency, and costs and prices determined by the government rather than free markets. This case examines each set of trade disputes and China's attempts to resolve them. Many disputes were embedded in cultural practices and ideological positions and so they might not disappear quickly. Shortcomings in China's legal and judicial system hampered enforcement. In addition, many rested on the government's desire to protect the interests of Chinese businesses and their employees, and so China might alter its practices only if confronted with credible retalitory threats. China's central government experienced the principal-agent problem where its wishes and decisions could be ignored by local governments and firms. Meanwhile, changes in industry structure within the advanced nations were altering the negotiation positions of Western governments. The case examines the WTO dispute resolution procedures and enforcement mechanisms that have been directed at China's trade disputes.

In 2009 several companies were competing in the UK for a share of the fast-growing online grocery market, using two different business approaches. Ocado, a purely online grocer operated out of a dedicated distribution center. The company was founded by three former investment bankers in early 2000. By 2009 Ocado had grown from its original three founders to over 3,000 employees and was just about to become profitable. It faced competition from Tesco.com, the biggest online grocer in the world. Tesco, the UK's leading supermarket chain, had started an internet add-on to its regular business and used existing supermarkets to run its online operations. Learning objectives: This case compares Ocado and Tesco.com business models from a consumer proposition, operational efficiency, profitability and sustainability point of view. Participants will be challenged to think about the challenges online grocers face to meet shoppers' expectations, how operational choices impact the consumer proposition and what opportunities both companies have to further grow their business.