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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many industrial companies are trying to profit from open innovation, which involves actively collaborating with external partners throughout the innovation process. Many companies now acquire technology from external sources in order to strengthen and speed up their internal innovation processes -an approach the authors call inbound open innovation. Companies also increasingly transfer some of their own proprietary technology to other companies by means such as licensing -an approach known as outbound open innovation. The researchers studied the role of employee attitudes in open innovation through a large-scale benchmarking study of German industrial companies. The authors conclude that employee attitudes that favor internal innovation often impede the successful implementation of open innovation strategies. But the researchers found that a group of companies that pursue both inbound and outbound open innovation achieved the highest average return on sales. However, the companies that pursued traditional closed innovation strategies had a higher average return on sales than the group of companies that transfer their own technology to others but don't acquire much technology from external sources. These findings, the authors note, suggest that a focus only on outbound innovation may be dangerous, as a company risks transferring its "crown jewels." The authors note that the results of their study underscore the need to change employee attitudes if managers aim to implement open innovation strategies; managers, they note, need to communicate their open innovation strategies to employees, have executive champions for them and devise suitable incentives and organizational structures to encourage open innovation.

All hiring managers want to hire the "right" person for each position. Only half succeed. The other half end in failure, impeding direct projects as well as indirectly eroding revenue, EBITDA, and company valuation. Given such high stakes, managers should be clear on what it will take for a candidate to succeed in a given job, and be disciplined in hiring a person who fits the bill. This note outlines the process of finding and vetting candidates for success.

As a second generation business leader, Chairman Dhanin Chearavanont took over the family agribusiness company and built it to become a major diversified conglomerate in Thailand and expanded the business in SE Asia and China. While growing the business, he and his brothers created a holding company to both maintain and separate the interests of the family with the growing business units. As a third and possibly fourth generation of Chearavanonts enter the company, how has Chairman Dhanin created a business culture that maintains the closeness of a family business with the strategic vision, innovations, and transparency of a professionally run company -- especially given the fact that many business units are public companies? This case seeks to outline the balance of a family business with the needs of a growing and competitive international conglomerate.

This case describes the experience of Anne Riley, a 28 year old private equity analyst, who was laid off in 2008. The case explores the emotions she felt throughout the process and how she handled the experience.

U.S. health care costs currently exceed 17% of GDP and continue to rise. One fundamental reason that providers are unable to reverse the trend is that they don't understand what it costs to deliver patient care or how those costs compare with outcomes. To put it bluntly, few health care providers measure the actual costs for treating a given patient with a given medical condition over a full cycle of care, or compare the costs they incur with the outcomes they achieve. What isn't measured cannot be managed or improved, and this is all too true in health care, where poor costing systems mean that effective and efficient providers go unrewarded, and inefficient ones have little incentive to improve. But all this can be remedied by exploring the concept of value in health care and carefully measuring costs. This article describes a new way to analyze costs that uses patients and their conditions-not organizational units or narrow diagnostic treatment groups-as the fundamental unit of analysis for measuring costs and outcomes. The new approach, called time-driven activity-based costing, is currently being implemented in pilots at the Head and Neck Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the Cleft Lip and Palate Program at Children's Hospital in Boston, and units performing knee replacements at Schon Klinik in Germany and Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston. As providers and payors better understand costs, they will be positioned to achieve a true "bending of the cost curve" from within the system, not in response to top-down mandates. Accurate costing also unlocks a whole cascade of opportunities, such as process improvement, better organization of care, and new reimbursement approaches that will accelerate the pace of innovation and value creation.

Everybody knows that an empowered team enhances everyone's performance, including the manager's. Vlachoutsicos, of the Athens University of Economics and Business, argues that the vital, particular ingredient in buoying employees is fostering a sense of mutual dependence, or "mutuality," every time you interact with subordinates. He offers six lessons in achieving mutuality: (1) Be modest. Specifically, avoid talking about your track record and instead focus on your people's present needs, (2) Listen seriously-and show it. Don't assume that folks recognize how attentive you are. Make sure the outward signs reflect it, (3) Invite disagreement. But deliver the invitation artfully so that people really do pipe up, (4) Focus the agenda. Don't let discussion run amok in the name of openness. Streamline it so that the progress is palpable to all participants, (5) Don't try to have all the answers. See yourself more as a catalyst for problem solving than as a problem solver per se, and (6) Don't insist that a decision must be made. Give the decision-making process time to breathe, even if that sometimes means delaying a conclusion. The author richly illustrates each of these lessons with a compelling story from his lifelong experience.

This case continues the story of the evolution of GE's business initiatives Africa. Between November 2010 and March 2011 several significant structural changes and leadership appointments were announced at GE, which reflected the company's commitment to global growth in all its regions outside the U.S., including its business in sub-Saharan Africa. In November 2010, John Rice, vice chairman of GE and president and CEO of GE Technology Infrastructure, was named vice chairman of GE and president and CEO of Global Growth and Operations (GGO). In this new role, Rice was based in Hong Kong and in charge of GE's growth in regions outside the U.S. In March 2011, Jay Ireland, a 31-year GE veteran and corporate officer, was appointed president and CEO for GE Africa, effective April 15, reporting to Rice. Additionally, three senior executives were appointed to Ireland's team: Lazarus Angbazo was promoted from president and CEO, sub-Saharan Africa, to president and CEO, GE West, East & Central Africa and Africa commercial leader; Thomas Konditi, a native of Kenya, rejoined GE as CFO for Global Growth and Operations, GE Africa; and Tamla Oates-Forney was promoted from human resources leader for sub-Saharan Africa, GE Energy, to senior human resources manager, GE Africa. While many were optimistic about GE's future in Africa, several issues still needed to be considered.

This case profiles the evolution of Sodexo's diversity initiative. Diversity became a key priority for Sodexo, North America in 2001 after a class-action lawsuit was filed and certified in Washington, D.C. against Sodexo Marriot Services, Inc., the food services division that Sodexo had merged with in 1998. In 2002, Dr. Rohini Anand was hired by Michel Landel, CEO of Sodexo, North America. Soon thereafter, Anand was instated as chief diversity officer for Sodexo, North America. Anand and Landel worked with several executives to develop and implement systems that were conducive to a diversity strategy. The team started to build the human resource processes that would address many of the concerns in the lawsuit: training systems, selection systems, and a career posting center. By 2010, Sodexo, North America was continuing to gain traction on its diversity strategy, and a global diversity initiative for the group was underway. In addition, the company had developed diversity priorities focused on five different dimensions of difference from a global perspective: gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, disabilities, and age. However, more work still needed to be done to engage employees around the world in the company's diversity initiatives.

In 2003 Harry Pearson and James Daye established - along with three other equity partners - a boutique investment banking firm with an entrepreneurial, informal office culture that delivered high quality customer service. In so doing, they offered a streamlined compensation plan that, in their view, would directly and fairly reward their employees' performance. However, as the firm grew, some members of their staff sought a more transparent process by which to measure their progress and the associated financial benefits - as well as the possibility to acquire equity in the firm. What compensation scheme would allow Pearson and Daye to reward their valued employees without losing sight of their initial goals? And how much would the five original partners consider diluting their holdings?

When ISS, a large shareholder advisory group, recommended a "no" vote on Jeff Immelt's award of 2 million stock options in April 2011, GE's compensation committee had to decide whether to rescind or amend the award or ignore the ISS recommendation. Was Immelt's 2010 pay in line with his performance? How would shareholders vote on the advisory "say on pay" ballot question at GE's annual meeting in April?

In 2010, Foxconn Technology Group, the largest and fastest growing multinational company in the Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) industry, came under public scrutiny after a string of employee suicides reached the international press. Although the company was Taiwanese, it operated primarily in mainland China, becoming one of China's biggest exporters. It had 800,000 employees, over 400,000 of whom lived at Longhua Science and Technology Park in the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen. It was this Science and Technology Park - essentially a company town - which brought Foxconn under international scrutiny in 2010 after 14 employees committed suicide there and three others attempted to do so. The (A) case describes the challenges that Foxconn faced after the suicides took place at its plants. Institutional features of the labor market structure of China are presented. The response of Foxconn's management is described and the associated implications for Foxconn's stock price are discussed.

This case deals with the challenges faced at L'Oseraie, a nursing home located in the north-east of France. The director of L'Oseraie was faced with a number of issues and questions: - How to improve the employee motivation and engagement further as the absenteeism episode seemed to have added fuel to the fire? - How to find the time to implement a real strategy at the nursing home, as tackling too many day-to-day issues was time-consuming? - How to create a real service-oriented approach among the employees? - In order to address the issue of lack of healthcare staff in France, would it be possible to source talent abroad (from new EU members in Eastern Europe, or from the French-speaking countries of North Africa, for instance)? - What suggestions could be put forward before the new general manager for implementation in order to overcome the various challenges facing the organization and to completely turn around its functioning and performance?

Can you have both respect and power? Having researched hundreds of corporate leaders, the authors conclude that it's hard to gain both: Fair managers are often perceived as less powerful than others (less in control of resources, less able to reward and punish) and this may hurt their odds of gaining certain key, contentious leadership roles. But companies would benefit by placing more value on fairness: Studies show that the success of change initiatives depends largely on fair implementation.

Despite recent progress creating more-welcoming environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees, fully 48% of LGBT respondents surveyed report remaining "closeted" at work. Research shows that they are less likely than "out" workers to be promoted and more likely to leave their job within three years. For talent managers, creating a hospitable climate for all workers should be a key goal.

How do you reduce headcount when almost everyone gets the same scores on performance reviews? HR vice president Nils Ekdahl confronts that question at Circale Corporation, a fictional electronic-components distributor that has just completed a series of acquisitions. Ekdahl wants to make the personnel cuts objectively, but the company's new performance-review system yields disappointing results: On a five-point scale, virtually every employee gets a 4 or 5 on each dimension. So Ekdahl instructs managers to redo the evaluations, tells them they're not allowed to give just 4s and 5s, and requires an average score of 3 across each manager's direct reports. This time the scores indeed average 3, but they are nearly all 3s. Grade compression at the top of the scale has merely shifted to the middle. Should Ekdahl initiate yet another round of performance reviews or make do with the data he has? The authors of this fictionalized case are Brian J. Hall and Andrew Wasynczuk, both of Harvard Business School. Expert commentary comes from John Berisford, currently of The McGraw-Hill Companies and formerly of Pepsi Beverages, and from Stephen P. Kaufman, currently of Harvard Business School and formerly of Arrow Electronics (the company whose performance-review system was the seed for this case). HBR's readers also weigh in.

How do you reduce headcount when almost everyone gets the same scores on performance reviews? HR vice president Nils Ekdahl confronts that question at Circale Corporation, a fictional electronic-components distributor that has just completed a series of acquisitions. Ekdahl wants to make the personnel cuts objectively, but the company's new performance-review system yields disappointing results: On a five-point scale, virtually every employee gets a 4 or 5 on each dimension. So Ekdahl instructs managers to redo the evaluations, tells them they're not allowed to give just 4s and 5s, and requires an average score of 3 across each manager's direct reports. This time the scores indeed average 3, but they are nearly all 3s. Grade compression at the top of the scale has merely shifted to the middle. Should Ekdahl initiate yet another round of performance reviews or make do with the data he has? The authors of this fictionalized case are Brian J. Hall and Andrew Wasynczuk, both of Harvard Business School. Expert commentary comes from John Berisford, currently of The McGraw-Hill Companies and formerly of Pepsi Beverages, and from Stephen P. Kaufman, currently of Harvard Business School and formerly of Arrow Electronics (the company whose performance-review system was the seed for this case). HBR's readers also weigh in.

How do you reduce headcount when almost everyone gets the same scores on performance reviews? HR vice president Nils Ekdahl confronts that question at Circale Corporation, a fictional electronic-components distributor that has just completed a series of acquisitions. Ekdahl wants to make the personnel cuts objectively, but the company's new performance-review system yields disappointing results: On a five-point scale, virtually every employee gets a 4 or 5 on each dimension. So Ekdahl instructs managers to redo the evaluations, tells them they're not allowed to give just 4s and 5s, and requires an average score of 3 across each manager's direct reports. This time the scores indeed average 3, but they are nearly all 3s. Grade compression at the top of the scale has merely shifted to the middle. Should Ekdahl initiate yet another round of performance reviews or make do with the data he has? The authors of this fictionalized case are Brian J. Hall and Andrew Wasynczuk, both of Harvard Business School. Expert commentary comes from John Berisford, currently of The McGraw-Hill Companies and formerly of Pepsi Beverages, and from Stephen P. Kaufman, currently of Harvard Business School and formerly of Arrow Electronics (the company whose performance-review system was the seed for this case). HBR's readers also weigh in.

The Arck Systems series of cases describes the dilemmas faced by a senior sales manager in determining a sales compensation plan at an enterprise software company. The existing compensation plan is aggressive and highly rewards "star" performers. The cases track a series of changes the manager makes to the sales compensation plan in response to negative and unintended consequences of the existing system. The cases illustrate the tradeoffs inherent in incentive plans (even outside of sales environments) and presents a framework for the design and management of incentive systems. It also is useful in addressing employee response to incentive system change.

A growing body of research shows that end users-customers, clients, patients, and others who benefit from a company's offerings-can be important allies for leaders. By serving as tangible proof of the consequences and purpose of employees' efforts, end users motivate people to work harder, smarter, and more effectively. In his research, the author invited a scholarship recipient to spend five minutes visiting with university fundraising callers, who generally had no contact with the beneficiaries of their efforts. One month later, callers showed, on average, 142% increases in weekly time spent on the phone and 171% increases in money raised. Leaders are not lone heroes who must rally their employees to do great things. They need partners who can enhance the meaning employees derive from their jobs. End users can inspire workers by demonstrating the impact of their efforts, showing appreciation for their work, and eliciting employees' empathy for them. To outsource inspiration effectively, leaders must identify end users (both past and present), collect their stories, introduce them to employees across the organization, and recognize workers' impact on customers' lives.

As technology has transformed the workplace and organizations have downsized, companies have sharply reduced the ranks of administrative assistants. But many firms have gone too far. In their zeal for cutting administrative expenses, numerous organizations now count on highly paid middle and upper managers to arrange their own travel, file expense reports, and schedule meetings. Some companies may see a type of egalitarianism in this assistant-less structure-believing that when workers see the boss loading paper into the copy machine, it creates a "we're all in this together" spirit. But as a management practice, that approach rarely makes economic sense. Generally speaking, work should be delegated to the lowest-cost employee who can do it well. Yet while companies seem to have embraced that logic by outsourcing work to vendors or to operations abroad, they ignore it back at headquarters. In this article, Duncan, a longtime recruiter of C-suite executive assistants, argues that a good assistant is a crucial productivity booster for a busy executive-one that offers a solid ROI if he or she is deployed correctly.