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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The surge of interest in big data has led to growing demand for analytics teams. Assembling such teams, however, is difficult. For one thing, many companies lack the in-house knowledge and experience needed to put together a world-class analytics team. What's more, the labor market for analytics professionals has grown increasingly tight. The shortage of analysts -particularly those capable of developing and leading world-class teams that can enable a company to create a competitive advantage from its data and analytics -is driving organizations to consider outsourcing their analytics activities. Analytics is the latest in a string of activities companies are outsourcing to business process organizations (BPOs). It draws heavily on mathematics and statistics knowledge, and many analytics-oriented BPOs have operations in India. Although some companies have world-class analytics capabilities in-house, the authors posed the question: Can an analytically naäve company "buy"world-class analytics functions by hiring outside experts? The authors studied both four multinational companies that used one or more offshore analytics BPOs and four analytics BPOs. Two of the client companies had skills that were judged to be "analytically superior"; the other two were judged to be "analytically challenged."The analytically challenged companies saw analytics BPOs as a way to obtain the resources and training needed to manage and execute their analytics and to gain quick access to important insights. By contrast, the analytically superior companies wanted to expand their internal analytic capabilities, in part because they wanted to preserve their ability to develop and protect intellectual property; they tended to use offshore BPOs to perform low-level analytics.

More than half of this year's survey respondents strongly agree that their organization needs to step up the use of analytics to make better business decisions -and that percentage rises to 87% if respondents who agree "somewhat"are included. This finding -that a majority of survey respondents agree strongly about the need to step up analytics use -holds true across a range of industries. Several forces, the authors argue, are helping spur managers'interest in analytics, including increased market complexity (for example, omnichannel retailing that encompasses both digital and brick-and-mortar channels) and the availability of better analytics tools and data. The authors report that some companies are sharing their data and analytics with business partners in order to meet strategic business objectives. For example, WellPoint, a U.S. health insurer based in Indianapolis, Indiana, is using analytics to help forge a payment model with physicians that rewards providers when they reduce overall health-care costs and enhance quality and health outcomes. Specifically, WellPoint is converting administrative claims and authorization data into useful information about populations of patients and sharing that information with physicians and their care teams. The survey data suggests that companies for which analytics has improved the ability to innovate are more likely to share data with partners and suppliers. Half of this year's survey respondents somewhat or strongly agree that analytics is helping their organization innovate -and 16% believe that strongly. Those survey respondents who strongly agree that analytics is helping their organization innovate are much more likely to say they collaborate with partners and suppliers through the use of analytics than respondents who don't think that analytics is helping their company innovate.

Together, the combination of description and advice provide a good primer for executives seeking a better understanding of this emerging era of sophisticated number-crunching. According to Siegel's estimate, we are adding 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day. Words have become data; the physical states of our machinery have become data; our physical locations have become data; and even our interactions with each other have become data. "Data can frequently be collected passively, without much effort or even awareness on the part of those being recorded. And because the cost of storage has fallen so much, it is easier to justify keeping data than discarding it,"observe Mayer-Schänberger and Cukier. Indeed, we are awash in information, but what does it all mean? In their book, Mayer-Schänberger and Cukier explain three new imperatives: 1. Use all the data, not just a sample. In the past, businesses did not have the economical means to capture, store and analyze all the data from their operations, so they had to settle for a sample of it. But now a company like Amazon can economically capture and store data from every single customer transaction. 2. Accept messiness. Inaccuracies in measurements are less harmful than they once were because they can often be smoothed over by the sheer quantity of data. In the authors'words, "more trumps better." 3. Embrace correlation. For many purposes, correlation is sufficient and people don't need to know causality. Quantifying the likelihood that a particular person will do something -whether it is defaulting on a loan, upgrading to a higher level of cable service or seeking another job -is at the heart of Siegel's Predictive Analytics. The author describes how quantitative techniques can be deployed to find valuable patterns in data, enabling companies to predict the likely behavior of customers, employees and others. Even a modest increase in the accuracy of predictions can often result in substantial savings.

As these examples illustrate, MSPs include some of the largest and fastest-growing businesses of the past decade. Why? Successful MSPs create enormous value by reducing search costs or transaction costs (or both) for participants. As a result, MSPs often occupy privileged positions in their respective industries; most other industry participants revolve around and depend on MSPs in important ways. This article begins with a description of how MSPs work and why they can erect such high barriers to entry for new participants. It then offers an analysis of four fundamental strategic decisions and associated trade-offs that set MSPs apart from other types of businesses and that every MSP entrepreneur and investor should carefully consider. These challenges are as follows: •the number of sides to bring on (deciding whether to bring on two or more); •design (ensuring the interests of the different platform sides are not in conflict with each other or the MSP); •pricing structures (determining which platform side or sides should be charged more, based on the groups'relative value from interacting with each other); and •governance rules (regulating the participation and activities undertaken by the various platform sides to ensure a high level of quality, or outsourcing that function to users through ratings systems).

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In this 2013 report, new research by MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group looks at companies that "walk the talk"in addressing significant sustainability concerns. So-called "Walkers"focus heavily on five fronts: sustainability strategy, business case, measurement, business model innovation and leadership commitment. For them, addressing significant sustainability issues has become a core strategic imperative and a way to mitigate threats and identify new opportunities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. What does it take to transform an organization before a crisis hits? How can leaders initiate major transformations proactively? The key often lies in strategic renewal - a set of practices that can guide leaders into a new era of innovation by building strategy, experimentation and execution into the day-to-day fabric of the organization. It's not easy: leaders find it much easier to resist change than to embrace it.

Hindustan Unilever Ltd. can trace its current-day profitable business operations in its Doom Dooma factory in the conflict-ridden northeastern state of Assam (India) to its proactive corporate responsibility initiatives since the start of its operations. A spurt in sales in the personal care segment has led the company to consider capacity expansion. The company needs to decide whether to continue to invest in Assam despite three challenges: operational risks posed by the area's continuing insurgency, the possibility of labour disruptions and the imminent discontinuance of fiscal incentives.

The management of Germany's Brainlab AG, a leading provider of software-driven oncology and surgery solutions, needs to evaluate strategic options for proceeding without an exclusive hardware partner in its most profitable business segment.

Oktoberfest, an annual festival held in Munich (Germany) for more than 200 years, has grown in recent decades into a hugely popular event that attracts 7 million visitors annually, a large proportion of which are foreign. In fact, Oktoberfest's global appeal is so strong that hundreds of copycat Oktoberfest events exist in cities as diverse as Cincinnati (U.S.), Bangalore (India), Beijing (China), and Blumenau (Brazil). The case provides information about the economic value Oktoberfest generates for its main players: the city of Munich, the breweries, the souvenir and merchandise stands, and the firms that provide rides. It then asks whether there are unexploited opportunities to capture more value from Oktoberfest globally.

The Kenyan government's announcement of a new 10 percent tax in March 2013 threatened the future prospects of M-Pesa, Safaricom's mobile money transfer service, which had revolutionized the way money moved in Kenya. The new tax would be levied on all cash transfers but was largely targeted at M-Pesa, which controlled around 80 percent of the cash transfer market. In response to the new tax, Safaricom, the mobile communications market leader, announced a 10 percent price increase. The case presents the structure Safaricom established in order to develop a mobile money transfer service in Kenya. As a concept, M-Pesa was unprecedented in Kenya: prospective customers had to get comfortable with the idea that a mobile communications company could provide a payment system, that transactions could be initiated through a mobile phone, and that nonbank outlets could provide cash-in/cash-out services. Even when the concept was accepted, however, customers needed a convenient network of agents to handle transactions, and stores needed to see demand from customers in order to be motivated to become agent outlets. Thus, in order to grow, M-Pesa needed to aggressively pursue and acquire both customers and agents in this two-sided market.

Tetra Pak, the world's largest manufacturer of aseptic packaging materials, is a typical market leader that faces growing challengers around the world and runs the risk of becoming embroiled in antitrust cases. Greatview Aseptic Packaging Company Limited ("Greatview") is an exemplary Chinese national champion that penetrates into developed markets, which are usually saturated with only a few key players. The case describes how Greatview emerged and challenged Tetra Pak, which set industry standards largely by using the tying and bundling strategy and the innovation and patent strategy. Since 2003, Greatview has actively influenced the Chinese government to establish and enforce an antitrust law, which supports the company as it positions itself as the best alternative to Tetra Pak for reducing customers' single-supplier risks and costs. In 2011, Greatview announced the building of its first overseas plant, in Germany, to penetrate into Tetra Pak's home market of Western Europe-the world's largest market for aseptic packaging. In 2013, although Greatview announced ambitious factory expansion plans, its challenges overseas are huge. Meanwhile, Tetra Pak realized that its European patent was not able to protect its historic innovation, aseptic technology, from being imitated. Even more complicated, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, China's market regulator, launched a national investigation against Tetra Pak, accusing it of misusing its dominant position to limit competition. Both companies need to devise their next competitive moves.

Those who study "data smart" companies believe that we've already lived through two eras in the use of analytics--we might think of them as "before big data" and "after big data"--and are entering a third. It represents a far-reaching resolve to apply powerful data gathering and analysis not just to a company's operations but also to its customer services and products. This strategic change in focus means a new role for analytics. Companies will need to recognize a host of related challenges and respond with new capabilities, positions, and priorities. Requirements will include: multiple types of data, often combined; a new set of management options; faster technologies and methods of analysis; embedded analytics; data discovery; cross-disciplinary data teams; chief analytics officers; prescriptive analytics; analytics on an industrial scale; and new ways of deciding and managing. These new capabilities can't be developed using old models for how analytics supported the business. The big data model was a huge step forward, but it will not provide advantage for much longer. Companies must once again fundamentally rethink how the analysis of data can create value for themselves and their customers.

For decades, businesses have sought competitive advantage in "upstream" activities related to making new products--building bigger factories, finding cheaper raw materials, improving efficiency, and so on. But those easily copied sources of advantage are being irreversibly eroded, and advantage increasingly lies "downstream"--in the marketplace. Today the strategic question that drives business is not "What else can we make?" but "What else can we do for our customers?" This new center of gravity demands a rethink of long-standing strategy principles: First, the sources and locus of competitive advantage now lie outside the firm, and advantage is accumulative--rather than eroding over time as competitors catch up, it grows with experience and knowledge. Second, it's no longer about having the better product but about how you position yourself in the market and which companies you choose to compete against. Third, the pace of change in markets is now driven by shifts in customers' purchase criteria rather than by improvements in products or technology.

Conglomerates once dominated the U.S. business world. But by the 1980s, they'd been laid low by poor performance, inspiring the belief that focused corporations created more shareholder value. Today conglomerates are largely considered dinosaurs--except, that is, in emerging markets, where diversified business groups, comprising numerous unrelated enterprises, are flourishing. The authors, who studied Indian business groups for five years, believe that the key to these organizations' success is their structure. Unlike corporate divisions, a group's affiliate companies are legally independent. That allows them to raise capital, set strategies, and create incentives more effectively. Affiliates don't report directly to the leaders of the business group but are overseen by the group center, a management layer in the group chairperson's office. It coordinates the identity work that unites and inspires affiliates' employees, and helps affiliates spot and seize opportunities, share resources and talent, and collaborate on strategic activities. Business groups using this model are not only profitable; they also outperform other companies in their markets.

Companies in developing countries are often so focused on chasing growth that they fail to invest in improving their innovation, operations, and brand management. So despite enormous reach and revenues in the billions, they're unprepared when demand growth slows and competition from increasingly savvy developed-world multinationals intensifies. The once high-flying Chinese automakers BYD and Chery have landed hard. In contrast, another automaker, Great Wall, and the appliance maker Haier have won early competitive advantage. In their efforts to compete, emerging-market companies should consider four stages: (1) Seize the moment and invest in the basics, such as payroll, finance, factory operations, and employee management. (2) Build strength by learning (through licensing or contract manufacturing, for example) from established companies. (3) Scale and consolidate, keeping product lines and markets relatively narrow. (4) Move up and out, with a strong portfolio of brands, innovation capabilities, advanced technology, marketing, and sales.

COFCO was China's sole legitimate window for agricultural foreign trade before 1987. The reform of China's foreign trade system beginning in 1987 cost COFCO its monopoly position. Subsequently, the SOE giant capitalized on its foreign trade expertise to strategically move upstream in the food industrial chain. Additionally, COFCO made investments in unrelated areas. These unrelated diversification activities were stopped by the new Chairman Ning Gaoning, appointed in 2004. He cared greatly about the innate logic for future mergers and acquisitions. The company, under his leadership, focused on its weaknesses and strengths, to identify a focused overall strategy. He brought the "whole industry chain" concept to COFCO with three clear goals in mind: 1) to shape "farmland to table" food processing to assure customers of safe, high-quality food, 2) to unite COFCO's segmented business units, and enable them to gain competitive edge over local companies 3) to increase the company's strength to compete with global food companies. The case depicts COFCO's historical transformations, identifies its mergers and acquisitions since 2005 and shows its financing history. Information is provided about several domestic and overseas competitors to illustrate COFCO's role in a larger China environment. It is not only a market player but also a main force in China's pillar industry and the only domestic food company that can rival global food companies in China's domestic market.

Citi Hong Kong ("Citi HK") achieves good results in community engagement with its US$1.5 million annual spending. From a quantitative perspective, its team of less than 5,000 employees performed 23,867 volunteer hours in 2012. During the company's 2012 Global Community Day, 250 of its clients and over 4,000 Citi staff, including their family members and friends participated in volunteer work. In addition, over 36% or over 1,800 of the company's staff chose to participate in the company's Rainbow Day in 2012, through which they donated a lump sum to a charitable organization in exchange for an additional annual leave. From a qualitative perspective, the Hope Development Accounts ("HDA") program, a multi-year program that Citi HK has facilitated and supported since 2007, is among the first few, if not the first, programs that attempt to use asset-building approach for poverty-alleviation in the city. The success of the program hinges on the long-term participation of the volunteers of Citi HK; their contributions mean that Citi HK's support goes beyond monetary terms-the general and financial education offered and the coaching and guidance given are critical in empowering the program participants. How does Citi HK achieve these good results in community engagement with a contained budget? And what roles do its staff play? What does the company do to enable such a high level of staff participation?

Foxconn's management seemed keenly aware of the company's need to reposition its business. While its revenues increased almost uninterruptedly over the previous decade, its net income margin had decreased over this time frame. Should Foxconn double down on manufacturing or make attempts to leverage its current advantages into new kinds of business, such as becoming an original design manufacturer ("ODM")?

In 1995, Paul Shipman, CEO of Redhook Ale Brewery, and his management team prepared to enter uncharted territory by taking their craft-brewing operation public in the United States. Although there already were massive large-batch breweries that were profitable, publicly traded firms, Redhook was different: it embodied the ethos and grassroots beginnings of the microbrew movement. Still Shipman wondered about the potential of the craft-brewing industry segment.

This document provides a step-by-step guide to the sequence of tasks involved in the strategy development process including the eight activities necessary for strategic planning.