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Austal, Ltd. was an Australian builder of high-speed passenger ferries. It had translated that expertise into a foothold in the defense market on the US Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program with an Alabama assembly facility. In January 2009 it had just completed the construction of its first LCS, but the global economic crisis put the company in a difficult position. Its commercial order book had dried up, yet it needed to preserve capabilities in its Australian workforce in now underutilized facilities near where its design capabilities were centered. Was this a short term problem, or had the commercial market changed forever? The (A) case examines possibilities that company might pursue to bridge the presumed gap until market conditions improve, and the (B) case recounts some of those choices. The case focuses on the question of the importance for Austal to maintain manufacturing close to its design center, and how will it do this as its center of gravity increasingly shifts to other regions?

Supplement for case 613025

Managers at Cabot Corporation are faced with deciding the future of its fuel cell program. The (A) case recounts the view of the business manager and the technical project lead, and the (B) case describes the perspective of a senior manager who is the head of the New Business Segment. Used in combination, the cases explore these very different perspectives, the different levels of subject matter expertise brought to the table by each team member, and they highlight the criteria and decision-making process used by the management of the company.

Supplement for case 613066

Supplement for case 712480. On the evening of March 11, 2011, Mayama Fumihiro, the Managing Director of Ishinomaki Kouwan Hospital knew that it would be a long, cold night. The 103 staff members and 162 patients and families were huddled on the top two floors of the four-story hospital, where they had gone to escape three tsunami waves that had destroyed the first floor and part of the second floor.

Supplement for case 712480. CEO Niinami Takeshi (HBS '91) stared out his corner office window as the Tokyo skyscrapers swayed and the concrete trembled. He was in the midst of the largest seismic event to hit Japan in recorded history. Lawson's managers understood earthquake response. They had prior experience from the earthquakes in Kobe (1995), and Chuetsu (2007).

CEO Kikawa of Yamato Transport gave orders to his managers right after the triple disaster hit the Tohoku region of Japan to do whatever it takes to save lives and not to worry about costs. He also felt that he had to confront the government to make donations to the affected district tax-free. He also wanted to donate 10 yen per Takkyubin package the company was delivering as relief money for Tohoku but was wondering how the shareholders would react to this proposal.

On October 11, 2006, Istithmar, a subsidiary of Dubai World, the flagship investment company of the government of Dubai, purchased the 270-room W Hotel in Union Square from Related Companies for $285 million. LEM Capital, a mid-sized private equity firm, subsequently became a junior player in the stack of funders for the property. When Istithmar defaulted on its loan to its primary lender in 2009, LEM's $20 million investment was at risk. This case asks students to review the actual loan and intercreditor agreements to determine what strategy might help LEM to preserve its investment.

On October 11, 2006, Istithmar, a subsidiary of Dubai World, the flagship investment company of the government of Dubai, purchased the 270-room W Hotel in Union Square from Related Companies for $285 million. LEM Capital, a mid-sized private equity firm, subsequently became a junior player in the stack of funders for the property. When Istithmar defaulted on its loan to its primary lender in 2009, LEM's $20 million investment was at risk. This case asks students to review the actual loan and intercreditor agreements to determine what strategy might help LEM to preserve its investment.

On October 11, 2006, Istithmar, a subsidiary of Dubai World, the flagship investment company of the government of Dubai, purchased the 270-room W Hotel in Union Square from Related Companies for $285 million. LEM Capital, a mid-sized private equity firm, subsequently became a junior player in the stack of funders for the property. When Istithmar defaulted on its loan to its primary lender in 2009, LEM's $20 million investment was at risk. This case asks students to review the actual loan and intercreditor agreements to determine what strategy might help LEM to preserve its investment.

On October 11, 2006, Istithmar, a subsidiary of Dubai World, the flagship investment company of the government of Dubai, purchased the 270-room W Hotel in Union Square from Related Companies for $285 million. LEM Capital, a mid-sized private equity firm, subsequently became a junior player in the stack of funders for the property. When Istithmar defaulted on its loan to its primary lender in 2009, LEM's $20 million investment was at risk. This case asks students to review the actual loan and intercreditor agreements to determine what strategy might help LEM to preserve its investment.

OSI, one of the world's largest suppliers of processed meats to McDonald's and other QSRs, was in the middle of a $400M expansion in China that included backward integration into poultry production. However, its current customers took only a portion of each bird produced and OSI had to develop a go-to-market strategy for the rest. The case describes the opportunities and challenges of operating in China and raises questions involving vertical integration, competitive positioning, corporate strategy, organizational design, marketing and branding, and the management of business and political risk.

The belief that leaders should find the "best" industries and move their company into them is misguided; in almost every case, a bigger opportunity lies in rising to the top of the industry you're in.

A potent mix of modern technology and new government policy is about to transform disclosure--and with it the workings of many parts of the economy, say Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago and Will Tucker of ideas42. Increasingly, government-owned data and private-company disclosures will be made available in machine-readable formats, spurring growth of new services the authors call "choice engines"--technologies that interpret this data. Choice engines have already made significant inroads in revolutionizing markets. Consider the travel industry and websites such as Expedia and Travelocity that allow customers to bypass travel agents and search for and purchase flights and hotels. And travel sites are just the beginning. Not sure whether you should buy a laptop now or wait until prices drop? Go to Decide.com. Worried that an unwanted subscription will automatically renew? Sign up for BillGuard, a service that monitors your bank and credit card statements and sends you alerts about recurring charges. Want to lower your household energy consumption? Check out your usage patterns through the industry-led Green Button initiative. Have a family member allergic to gluten? Get a choice engine to use your shopping history to analyze food purchases and highlight items to avoid. If this sounds too good--or scary--to be true, look at the history of GPS, the now-ubiquitous global positioning system. When the U.S. government ordered the military to stop scrambling select data from Department of Defense satellites, in 2000, making the data freely available to the public, entrepreneurs quickly took over. GPS innovation has been a disaster for companies that sell maps on paper, but for consumers and the economy as a whole, it's been a boon. According to recent estimates, GPS added $90 billion in value to the U.S. economy just in 2011. The rise of choice engines, say the authors, will have an even greater, more transformative effect on the economy and on consumers' lives.

The authors argue that strategy can be defined and created using a simple framework that entails answering five questions - the same five questions, no matter the type, size or context of the organization.

All day long, we are creating frames for what we see, hear, and experience, and those frames both inform and limit the way we think. In most cases, we don't even consider these frames-we just assume we are looking at the world with the proper set of lenses. The author shows how mastering the ability to reframe problems can unlock a vast array of solutions to problems big and small.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. New markets and new possibilities for expansion and acquisition make the global competitive landscape more dynamic, creating both threats and opportunities. The task of the global strategist involves not only identifying where to leverage a company's existing strengths but also how to enhance and renew its capabilities. The authors argue that the risks of global expansion can be greatly reduced by taking a systematic approach to the decision-making process about entering a new country. They conclude that the experience of many global companies suggests that expensive mistakes are often made when companies don't ask certain key questions before they make such internationalization decisions. By better understanding the nature of their own competitive advantages and how those advantages might fit into or be augmented by a new market, companies can greatly improve their chances of success. The authors illustrate their argument by drawing on the examples of companies such as CEMEX, Telefänica, Accor, Wal-Mart and IKEA. The authors propose two tests for the global strategist, one to use when a company is considering replicating a successful strategy in a new country, and the other to use when a company is seeking to acquire a new capability in a new market.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. These days, 3-D printing is much in the news. Also known as "additive manufacturing"or "rapid prototyping,"3-D printing is the printing of solid, physical 3-D objects. Unlike machining processes, which are subtractive in nature, 3-D printing systems join together raw materials to form an object. Some see 3-D printing and related technologies as having transformative implications. "Just as the Web democratized innovation in bits, a new class of 'Äòrapid prototyping'technologies, from 3-D printers to laser cutters, is democratizing innovation in atoms,"Wired magazine's longtime editor-in-chief, Chris Anderson, stated in his new book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution. "A new digital revolution is coming, this time in fabrication,"MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld wrote in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs. But in addition to 3-D printing's technological implications, recent evolutions in 3-D printing offer important management lessons for executives about the changing face of technological innovation -and what that means for businesses. In this article, the authors examine the rapid emergence of a movement called open-source 3-D printing and how it fits into a general trend toward open-source innovation by collaborative online communities. They then discuss how existing companies can respond to -and sometimes benefit from -open-source innovation if it occurs in their industry.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Too often, conventional approaches to organizational transformation resemble the Big Bang theory. Change occurs all at once, on a large scale, and often in response to crisis. Yet we know from a great deal of experience that Big Bang transformation attempts often fail, fostering employee discontent and producing mediocre solutions with little lasting impact. Instead of undertaking a risky, large-scale makeover, organizations can seed transformation by collectively uncovering "everyday disconnects"-the disparities between our expectations about how work is carried out and how it is actually is. The discovery of such disconnects encourages people to think about how the work might be done differently. Continuously pursuing these smaller-scale changes -and then weaving them together -offers a practical middle path between large-scale transformation and smallscale pilot projects that run the risk of producing too little too late. The author has found that organizations take three approaches to discovery that are both particularly effective for uncovering everyday disconnects in the organization's work and seeding transformation from the bottom up. These techniques can be used together. The three techniques are: 1. Work Discovery Instead of assuming that you know how work is designed, examine it firsthand as it is actually conducted. Determine how to turn the (inevitable) surprises you uncover into assets. 2. Better Practices Instead of simply adopting the best practices of other organizations, screen the way work gets done in your organization through those best practices to generate new ideas. In other words, use best practices to generate even better practices. 3. Test Training Instead of locking down standard operating procedures during training, experiment with other, potentially better possibilities for changing the way the work will get done. Use training for testing these possibilities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. It's difficult to start a venture that gains traction with paying customers, but it's even harder to grow beyond certain levels of sales. Why? The authors point out that, as ventures grow, their complexity increases. Not only are there more "moving parts,"but interdependencies are more difficult to manage. The original business model must deal with new products or markets. Early leadership behaviors that worked in establishing the business are often not adequate to manage and grow it. SG&A (selling, general and administrative) costs often accelerate faster than revenues. The result: Each year thousands of promising ventures are either forced to go out of business or operate in small niches because they are unable to scale their sales activities. The authors illustrate with the example of a real company in the payroll services business. After a period of rapid growth, "BusinessProcessingCo."saw its revenue growth stall and the SG&A burden become untenable. The company had a costly ad hoc process for evaluating opportunities, forecasting and business development initiatives. The leadership team was unable to define its core customers. As the authors explain, different customers come with different transaction costs for the seller. This affects "upstream"capacity utilization in two respects: the product mix of the selling company (what kind of capacity is utilized) and how capacity is utilized (for example, production lines in manufacturing and the types of people and skills in a service business). The selection of customers also affects "downstream"after-sale economics and organizational requirements. The article discusses the importance of customer selection and how intelligent opportunity management can help companies scale their selling initiatives. It concludes with a general framework for helping executives analyze sales productivity and pipeline value.