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When a set of giant robotic arms developed for the International Space Station breaks down during a crisis, project manager Samantha Van Sant finds herself in the hot seat. Did her team compromise quality by pushing the contractors too hard on speed? How can she prevent future mishaps-should the arrangement with the contractors be renegotiated to include different incentives or more safeguards? Gary L. Moe, a director of McKinsey's Business Technology Office; Tom Quinly, president of aerospace contractor Curtiss-Wright Controls; and HBR readers weigh in on the speed-versus-quality quandary.

When a set of giant robotic arms developed for the International Space Station breaks down during a crisis, project manager Samantha Van Sant finds herself in the hot seat. Did her team compromise quality by pushing the contractors too hard on speed? How can she prevent future mishaps-should the arrangement with the contractors be renegotiated to include different incentives or more safeguards? Gary L. Moe, a director of McKinsey's Business Technology Office; Tom Quinly, president of aerospace contractor Curtiss-Wright Controls; and HBR readers weigh in on the speed-versus-quality quandary.

When a set of giant robotic arms developed for the International Space Station breaks down during a crisis, project manager Samantha Van Sant finds herself in the hot seat. Did her team compromise quality by pushing the contractors too hard on speed? How can she prevent future mishaps-should the arrangement with the contractors be renegotiated to include different incentives or more safeguards? Gary L. Moe, a director of McKinsey's Business Technology Office; Tom Quinly, president of aerospace contractor Curtiss-Wright Controls; and HBR readers weigh in on the speed-versus-quality quandary.

Efforts to bring clean water to Bangladesh by installing tube wells appeared to be a huge success, but over time they led to epic failures: widespread arsenic poisoning, a rise in crime and prostitution, a projected increase in diarrheal diseases as villagers resume using groundwater.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. After finding his guitar badly damaged by United Air Lines' baggage handling, and after enduring nine months of fruitless attempts to secure restitution from the company, an exhausted customer retaliated by posting a YouTube video about his misadventure. A year later, the video has become viral and generated more than 9 million hits. This musician's course of action is but one example of a bona fide movement, and not only is online public complaining becoming more prevalent, but this form of customer response could also be very costly for companies. So what can companies do to deal with online complainers? Based on their eight years of research, the authors summarize their understanding of this phenomenon and provide actionable recommendations. They organize their conclusions into a two-by-two matrix. First, the matrix's rows differentiate between (1) understanding complainers' motives and behaviors and (2) recommendations whereby offending companies may change those behaviors. Second, the matrix's columns distinguish between the before and after of the online complaints, as motives and behaviors change over time. The authors' recommendations highlight how companies can prevent, or at least reduce, online complaining, and how companies should respond after an online complaint happens anyway. In particular, they show that the best way to avoid the triggers of online complaining is to develop fair processes and a triage system for initial non-online complaints. Also, they show that companies should respond to online complaints as quickly as possible-in any case, no later than four weeks after the online complaint posting-and that the nature of the apology should depend on the type of customer involved.

To research the factors that affect the success of teams working on knowledge-intensive projects, the authors studied a companywide recognition program for project teams at a large multinational food company. Based on that research, the authors introduce the concept of the project network as an important tool for accomplishing knowledge-intensive work. Typically, project networks consist of a core set of team members who bring in noncore contributors (such as other company employees, suppliers, consultants or customers) from their personal networks to provide knowledge, information or feedback regarding the team's task. The project network thus takes advantage of both the project team as a whole and the personal networks of the members. The authors contrast finalist and nonfinalist project teams from the team recognition program at the food company. The empirical data the authors report indicate that, on average, there was no significant difference between the finalist and nonfinalist teams with respect to several project characteristics: resources, project membership or changes in the project. However, in one area there was a significant difference: The finalist project teams had more noncore contributors. After controlling for project characteristics, size of core project team and other factors related to participation, the number of noncore contributors was a positive and significant predictor of success, the researchers report. A project network can be helpful whenever any of the following conditions is present: The project scope is beyond the control and sphere of influence of the core team; the task is complex, and it is unclear whether or not there is an optimal solution; or some of the knowledge necessary to create a high-value outcome resides elsewhere. Managers can use a project's kickoff meeting to set norms and expectations that members of the project team have the option to look outside the team for possible solutions to complex problems.

A summer intern student at 3M Health Care must analyze the health care division’s logistics systems and report her findings to the vice president of 3M Health Care Markets. The vice president is most interested in the recommendations for the proposed changes to the existing method of distributing products to Canadian hospitals. This case provides sufficient information for students to assess the quantitative and qualitative issues relating to direct distribution versus maintaining a current supply chain structure of using value-added resellers.

When David Wang took over as the CEO of SMIC, he knew that if he was to capitalize on the company's strategic location in the China market, he would have to transform the company mindset and its operating structure from its roots in the manufacturing of DRAMs to the service orientation that was necessary to support the customer promise of being a foundry. This meant transforming from a high volume continuous flow manufacturer of commodities chips to a job shop structure that focused on custom manufacturing services. This entailed more than rearranging the manufacturing lines, it meant a dramatic shift in the company culture. Wang also had to ensure the firm's ability to offer the most advanced process technologies. Having fallen behind in previous generations, his predecessor had chosen to license process technology from IBM. Now he faced the question of whether his rapidly changing and maturing organization had the ability to go it alone on future process technology development, or whether it still had to depend on IBM, at least for the time being.

This case describes the innovative business model of Better Place Inc., an electric vehicle company. The key challenges in operating the business model are explained and data is provided to help compute the costs, benefits, net profitability and economies of scale that it offers.

It supplements case UV5946

QuikTrip, a large convenience store chain with over 500 stores, was known for its outstanding labor practices and fast, reliable, and friendly customer service. In November 2010, the CEO Chet Cadieux, had to decide how many new locations to open when QuikTrip entered a new market in North Carolina in 2011. Historically, QuikTrip had entered new markets slowly, opening 10 to 12 stores per year. And this slow growth worked well with its "people-first" strategy. For North Carolina, Cadieux was weighing the option of opening new stores at twice the normal pace. About half of employees in these new stores would come from saturated markets where there were few promotion opportunities. Hence, his growth would fulfill QuikTrip's purpose: "provide an opportunity for employees to grow and succeed." But Cadieux was concerned that fast growth might compromise QuikTrip's operations that depended on high performance employees.

This case focuses on Solutions Care Association (SCA) — a nonprofit health care organization established in 2000 that quickly became a leader in environmental stewardship and social responsibility. With headquarters in Nevada, United States, the company had a strong mission and socially responsible culture, which helped attract talent and launch social and environmental initiatives. Despite its numerous achievements and awards, however, there was limited awareness internally and externally about these initiatives and their impact on business and society. In addition, the company did not have a comprehensive way to track and report these achievements. As an emerging leader of the integrated health care plan in the United States, Solutions Care Association had both the responsibility and the opportunity to be a model of what American health care should look like. With growing concerns over and scrutiny of the health care industry, there was no better time for Solutions Care Association to continue to strengthen its leadership position in addressing key social and environmental problems, such as providing affordable health care, reducing climate change impacts, phasing out toxic chemicals and creating a safe, culturally sensitive, and supportive environment for employees, patients, and suppliers.

Risking becoming the target of a hostile takeover or being cornered as a small regional player in the global beer industry, the Danish brewery Carlsberg decided in the early 2000s to expand into rapidly growing emerging markets to pursue new arenas of growth. By 2008, this strategy had paid off, and Carlsberg was positioned among the five largest breweries in the world. In the Russian market — one of the fastest-growing markets in the world — Carlsberg had become the market leader. In China — the world’s largest beer market in terms of size and population — the company had achieved a 55 per cent market share in Western China, and operated 20 brewery plants with approximately 5,000 employees. The ambitious acquisition strategy applied in emerging markets had become essential to Carlsberg’s business in relation to future growth and profits. Accordingly, the case focuses on Carlsberg’s entry into China, which started as a commercial failure in the eastern part of the country, but subsequently developed successfully in the west.

Sasken, a communication software company based in India, provides research and development support to leading wireless device vendors from its offshore centres in India in an intellectual property-oriented product and services space. Sasken has faced a number of challenges in building an advanced multimedia player for high-end mobile handsets for the Japanese market. The Japanese market is one of the most advanced in the mobile services it offers, and is well ahead of the rest of the world in terms of handset functions and features. Located in an offshore centre far away from the target market, in a country where the mobile industry is still evolving, the Sasken project team faced a number of challenges in building a technology-intensive product according to its client's specific requirements. With high client expectations and norms regarding quality, completeness of the product and timeliness of delivery, the Sasken project manager had to successfully manage evolving technical requirements for the product from the company's offshore centre in Bangalore. Sasken's project team also had to cope with unavailability of tools and platforms, with communication and co-ordination challenges, and with cultural differences that were typical of offshore product development. This case illustrates how having clarity on product features, following a suitable process orientation, adhering to quality and timeline expectations, effectively dealing with a distributed team setup, and managing cross-cultural issues are important pre-requisites for success in offshore software development.

In the biotech world, the 18-year-old Munich-based company MorphoSys was a rarity: it was profitable. The company achieved this profitability not by developing and selling its own drugs, but by licensing access to its proprietary library of human antibodies. Recently, the company decided to deviate from this model, and attempt to develop its own proprietary products. The case allows analysis of "license vs. vertically integrate" business model decisions, and can be used to teach principles of business model design and the functioning of markets for know-how.

Information technology is reshaping relationships between companies and customers, often bringing benefits to both. The unfettered use of technology, however, can erode customer care. For a company to care for customers, its managers and front-line employees must listen empathetically to what they have to say. But a rash of 'innovations' aimed primarily at reducing costs has made many companies opaque to their customers, who are-as a consequence-inadequately served and increasingly frustrated. Equally damaging is the resulting estrangement of employees from customers, a separation that dampens the empathy upon which true care for customers depends. As a number of innovative companies have shown, though, technology need not necessarily sour relations between businesses and those they serve. Indeed, technology can actually enrich them if senior managers (1) affirm their commitment to active, empathetic involvement with customers; (2) understand the ways in which current procedures and systems mediate interactions with customers; and (3) promote the deployment of social networks and other technologies to help customers tell their stories, and to enable workers and managers alike to hear them. Only when employees can step into their customers' shoes can companies add authenticity to the claim: "We care for you."

Man-made and natural disasters are becoming increasingly common in today's world. Among other entities, companies should be concerned because these impact organizational survival, disrupting the lives and functioning of employees, suppliers, customers, and organizational infrastructure. If the present trend continues, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is on track to declare 30% more disasters in 2010 than in 2009. Organizational disasters are crises in the extreme. While the crisis management literature provides a useful foundation for planning for internal organizational threats, it does not adequately address larger external threats brought about by disasters. With this gap in mind, we herein present a framework for planning for man-made or natural disasters: continuity of operations planning (COOP). Continuity of operations planning is a tool that aids organizations in staying in business under extreme circumstances. Although continuity of operations planning is not an entirely new practice, many small and medium-sized firms are reluctant to engage in this type of planning. To highlight the value of the process, this article provides examples of organizational disasters, alongside a simplified method for developing an effective continuity of operations plan.

In 2009, many thought Crocs was "dead." The C case presents exhibits that illustrate the company's recovery.

This case describes the strategic internationalization options of a Taiwan-based digital music service provider, KKBOX.com. KKBOX was the first independent profitable digital music service provider in the world, with several factors having contributed to its profitability. While KKBOX looked for growth, service internationalization made it increase its involvement in international operations through adapting its strategy, resources, and structure. The CEO of KKBOX needed to decide between global growth through a content-based path, a technology platform path, or a new service path. Though there were good reasons to pursue each, it was vital to prioritize them to understand what was negotiable and what was core when going across borders to build a sustainable and strong KKBOX brand.

Taiwan-based memory manufacturer Power Quotient International Co. Ltd. (PQI) had an established system for selecting, assessing, and managing suppliers. A scoring system that assessed suppliers in areas ranging from technical expertise to service quality and responsiveness made it easy for management to spot suppliers' strengths and weaknesses and to decide whether to keep a supplier at arm's length or to cultivate a strong relationship with the supplier. PQI had just completed its biannual evaluation of suppliers, of which several required further investigation. These suppliers had received only average scores despite strong performance both technically and commercially. Meanwhile, the management wondered whether sharing its assessment results openly with suppliers might help improve its relationships with them.