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When a bomb explodes in a train station in Boston, the executive team of a financial services firm across the street is plunged into crisis mode. No one is prepared for the city's request to use the firm's lobby as a triage center and temporary morgue. The CEO's instinct is to say yes, but as his team debates the consequences--liability issues, the effect on traumatized employees--he realizes just how complicated a decision it is. Two experts comment on this fictional case study in R1003L and R1003Z. James J. Dunne III, senior managing principal at Sandler O'Neill + Partners, says that acting ethically is what saved his firm after 9/11. Leonard J. Marcus, founding codirector of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative, advises the CEO to do what will help employees bounce back the quickest.

The case describes the journey of Gilles Morel, the VP of Mars Central Europe, as he tries to build a culture of innovation within the organization. It becomes clear that the challenge is not simply about building the proper infrastructure and systems. it is also about getting people to commit to Mars' innovation agenda. How can Gilles Morel make innovation everyone's job?

Arup, an engineering firm, collaborated with PTW Architects and China Construction Design Institute to develop a design for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics Aquatics Center design competition. Their winning concept for the Water Cube combined elements of Chinese culture with innovative materials and sustainability requirements. The multidisciplinary and cross-company team, based in Sydney, Australia with counterparts in Beijing, faced project management challenges and cultural differences. The Water Cube became an iconic image during the Olympics and managers at Arup now wonder how to leverage the impact within the company.

The case describes the formation of Indus Towers, the largest telecom tower company in the world which has a joint venture created to build and manage the passive infrastructure of wireless telecom operators by bringing together three competitors in India's tough telecom market-Bharti AirteI, Vodafone Essar, and Idea Cellular-and merging their tower holdings. It focuses on the issue as to how do you collaborate with your competitors in setting up towers but engage in a brutal competition with them in the market place?

Living PlanIT is a start-up company that has developed a new, innovative business model for sustainable urbanization. This model reflects the software and technology backgrounds of its founders, Steve Lewis and Malcolm Hutchinson, and is in vivid contrast to other models for green or smart cities that are variations on a massive real estate development project. The main economic engine driving Living PlanIT's model is a partner channel strategy adopted from the high technology industry. The case shows how the Living PlanIT business model has evolved from the original vision of Lewis and Hutchinson to radically transform the construction industry to a go-to-market partnership model using the real estate as a "showroom" for evolving sustainable urban technology--a $3 trillion global market over the next 20 years. Living PlanIT is developing its first project, a new city called PlanIT Valley, outside of Porto, Portugal. The company has clarified its vision and is moving into the implementation phase, which involves fundraising, signing up channel partners, and negotiating various issues with the Portuguese government for its pilot project. Success in PlanIT Valley will translate into a strong market position as global population and demand for new cities increases, particularly in developing countries such as China and India.

This case examines Millennium's strategic and organizational responses to the rapid evolution of the biopharmaceutical industry. In the early 2000s, as Millennium's competitive advantage in early-stage research slipped away and its losses mounted, founder and CEO Mark Levin moved the firm downstream away from research and towards drug development and commercialization, while narrowing horizontal breadth from over a dozen therapeutic classes to just three. In 2005, Levin hired Deborah Dunsire from Novartis as CEO to lead Millennium's continuing transformation. Students are asked to put themselves in the shoes of incoming CEO Dunsire and to provide organizational recommendations to execute the new strategy.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has converted Dubai from a sleepy little coastal village into a world-class city, famous for its ambition, drive, and economic promise. He is the founder, part-owner, and visionary behind companies such as Emirates Airlines, a UAE-based airline serving over 100 destinations; Nakheel, the property developer that built a trilogy of man-made islands; and DP World, a leader in international marine terminal operations. Despite being surrounded by political instability in the Middle East, Sheikh Mohammed pursued capitalism and embraced Western culture while maintaining safety for millions of annual tourists. By 2010, Dubai had the world's tallest building, the most expensive hotel, and the largest shopping mall. But rapid development did not come without difficulties. While hundreds of thousands immigrated to help build the metropolis, labor conditions suffered and some local Emirati felt like they lost aspects of their cultural identity. Growth was rapid, infrastructure was weak, and the real estate bubble grew as the financial crisis loomed. To produce economic, social, and cultural prosperity for the people of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed had to balance his role as a business leader and a political ruler.

In July 2006, Barracuda became the largest investor in Tarco International. In a meeting with management, Barracuda's managing director advised that strong measures needed to be taken to improve operating performance. If management failed, Barracuda would force a sale of the company. In response, the board of Tarco hired FD, a leading financial communications consultancy specializing in strategic investor relations. The board asked FD to compile extensive research on the Tarco's shareholder base, investor perception of the company and management performance, predictive voting on potential proxy proposals, and tactics used by Barracuda in previous activist engagements. Armed with this data, the board had to decide what steps to take, if any, to keep Barracuda at bay and ensure that Tarco retained the support of its investors

This case is a follow up to CG20A, and explains the actions taken by Tarco in response to threat from activist investor Barracuda. The case explains how the company relied on an analysis of its shareholder base and predictive proxy voting to inform its decision.

Holdup, the danger that a party other than the one investing will capture some of the return from an investment, plays an important role in business decision making about firms' organizational and investment strategies. Oliver Williamson was among the first to identify the importance of holdup and investigate its consequences. Much of our understanding of holdup in strategy and in other areas of scholarship can be traced back to his contributions.

Spreadsheet for 3214

In 2003, in the midst of industry turmoil and company-specific challenges, Stefano Natella was named Global Head of Equity Research at Credit Suisse. Over a six-year period, Natella implemented and refined a new methodology for valuing equity research analysts, both individually and as a collective unit. Natella's system, known as the 'Scorecard' was also used as the basis for compensating, hiring, and promoting analysts. Over time, the Scorecard was refined to allow Credit Suisse to improve its customer service efforts in a way that maximized profitability for the firm.

Large-scale societal issues increasingly appear on the agenda of business leaders, including poverty, health, education, business-government relations, and the degradation of the environment. These problems are not entirely new, but the forces of globalization and the economic crisis have made them more visible and increase their urgency. They share several characteristics that signal the need for new kinds of societal leadership and academic scholarship. From the perspective of leadership, one common characteristic of these global problems is that they include both technical and political components. The political context surrounding any problem must be understood and managed, and a variety of institutions across sectors must be mobilized before technical solutions can be applied. Along similar lines, technical knowledge of solutions alone is not enough to scale successful demonstration projects that address these complex problems. That step involves resources and skills centered on forging appropriate systemic connections to effectively distribute solutions. Thus, these challenges cannot be dealt with by one profession or institution acting alone; indeed, effective action most often occurs at the intersections of professional and institutional fields. Holistic solutions, however, can be difficult to implement because of the complex interactions (or failures to interact) among many participants who deal with just one piece of an issue. Finally, solutions to these problems require concurrent actions at several system levels and/or among many stakeholders. This means that social capital as well as financial capital is required to forge relationships, influence opinion leaders and gatekeepers, and ensure cultural appropriateness.

EU Design is an increasingly important trim supplier for various companies in the apparel and fashion industry in both New York and Hong Kong. Since its establishment in 1999, the company has grown gradually, attracting more customers and employing more staff. By 2009, however, further growth has been obstructed by an informal management style, an inappropriate organizational structure and a simple incentive system that is suitable only for a small company. The situation has been worsened by the global financial crisis. With falling margins, there is a need for expanding the customer base and for staff to become more sales-oriented. With limited funds, EU Design's owner needs to decide how to transform the company and which management control systems to implement first.

Innovation is the key to success in the history of Honda Motor Group (Honda). In July 2007, Guangzhou Honda's Research and Development Co. Ltd. (GHRD) was established. It was the first multinational auto company to develop a R&D facilities with the technological capabilities to produce a completely new car from the ground up. While Honda Motor in Japan would provide technological support, the core technologies would be owned solely by Guangzhou Honda. This arrangement differed from the traditional R&D management in Honda, which, despite the existence of R&D centers around the globe, used to retain its core technologies at its R&D center in Japan. This case shows the motives, new opportunities and challenges behind business model innovation.

Hong Kong Disneyland has been struggling with lower-than-expected attendance rates for almost three years since its opening. Factors such as small size, inconvenient location, lack of unique features, insufficient appeal to adults and missing Chinese elements have been cited as possible causes. The Walt Disney Company and its joint-venture partner, the Hong Kong government, are negotiating about injecting extra capital to expand the park in order to attract more visitors. For a successful turnaround, the management has to figure out what went wrong in the first place. This case explores the possible reasons for the park's lackluster performance. It also covers the park's positioning and product offerings, the remedial actions taken by the company, an analysis of the market dynamics for both local and overseas visitors, and the competition faced by the park. The launch strategies and performance of Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland Park in Paris are included in the case for comparison. This case was used in the 2nd McKinsey/HSBC Business Case Competition.

This case illustrates HUL's conflict resolution and people development policies using a 'Leading from the middle' example. The story centers around the challenges faced by an HR manager at a factory who must meet organizational objectives, while handling multiple trade unions that are resisting change as well as having conflicts amongst themselves.

It's not what you say; it's how you say it, and MIT professor Sandy Pentland has the data to prove it. He has created ingenious devices that record the social signals people send-their tone of voice, length of conversation, gesticulation, proximity to others, and the like. In short, the devices allow Pentland to measure subjects' charisma. Armed with that information, he can predict who will prevail in competitive business situations, such as business plan contests or salary negotiations, without even knowing what they have to say. In this article, he explains his studies to HBR.

For the past 33 years, Prahalad, a professor of strategy at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, has ended all his MBA and executive education courses with an exhortation: Managers must remember that they are the custodians of society's most powerful institutions, and as such they must hold themselves to a higher standard. They must strive to achieve success with responsibility. He offers 11 specific pieces of advice intended to spur his listeners to reexamine their values before plunging into everyday routines. Among them are 1) Display a commitment to learning and developing yourself. 2) Put personal performance in perspective. 3) Realize the importance of loyalty to organization, profession, community, society, and, above all, family.

Ask any CEO who has overseen a corporate transformation what should have been handled differently, and you are likely to get this answer: "We should have - and could have - moved faster." Such executives have a long list of regrets: They wish they had unified the leadership team right away. They wish they had quickly drummed up support for the new vision. They wish they hadn't waited so long to test their assumptions and refine their key initiatives. And they wish they had generated visible returns early on. Transformation launches must be bold and rapid to succeed. Yet embedded in most organizations are six kinds of "speed brakes" that can slow things down to a grinding pace. During business-as-usual periods, these brakes may be irritating, but their effects on performance are reasonably benign. When a bold transformation is required, however, any one of them can derail the larger effort. To accelerate transformations, managers need to release each of the following brakes, in this order. Speed Brake #1: Cautious management culture-To address this problem, compel all executives to confront reality and agree on ground rules for working together. Speed Brake #2: Business-as-usual management process-Run a no-slack launch on a parallel track with other systems; secure early, visible victories. Speed Brake #3: Initiative gridlock-Limit the company to three or four initiatives. Speed Brake #4: Recalcitrant executives-Compress launch to quickly engage key executives and to identify and confront those not on board. Speed Brake #5: Disengaged employees-Rapidly cascade the changes to all employees to boost engagement. Speed Brake #6: Loss of focus during execution-Anticipate and defuse postlaunch blues, midcourse overconfidence, and the presumption of perpetual motion.