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Pirates on the virtual sea are supplying their illicit digital content and goods through cyberlockers and darknet markets. The deep web hosts darknet marketplaces selling a variety of wares, such as narcotics and weapons, and is testimony to the growth of illicit trade on the internet. The challenge of web sites that host digital content piracy is exacerbated through linkages to a variety of malware schemes that have created a lucrative crimeware economy. Digital thieves target unsuspecting consumers as digital bait to derive profits from a variety of malware schemes such as ransomware and malvertising. The hijacking of access to computers and their digital content in order to ransom them back to consumers or organizations is considered to be one of the leading threats of internet crime. Malvertising schemes are plaguing the internet advertising business-criminals are reaping profits by posting legitimate advertisements at content theft sites or using an army of botnets to fake advertising traffic. A variety of stratagems are evolving to curb this illicit trade, including fostering multi-lateral enforcement tactics, updating legislation to circumvent this type of crime on the internet, training digital savvy citizens, and creating private-sector remedies.

Historically, globalization has been synonymous with mega brands' expansion into international markets. However, changes in the marketing landscape-namely, growth of immigrant consumers, new and emerging branding strategies, and advancements in technology-have created a shift in the globalization paradigm, opening opportunities for small brands. Focusing on the growing number of Asian-American consumers, the authors develop a two-stage global market entry strategy for small brands entering the U.S. market. Specifically, the authors show how Asian brands can penetrate the U.S. market by serving Asian-American consumers or using them as a launchpad to reach the mainstream American consumers. The growth of small global brands signifies an important and exciting change in the branded marketplace currently dominated by Western brands.

In recent years, the number of harassment claims filed with the EEOC has declined overall, but this fact masks a frightening reality: though claims involving some types of harassment have declined, claims for other types of harassment-especially nontraditional forms of harassment-have actually increased. Therefore it remains necessary for employers to maintain a current anti-harassment program, which should consist of the following elements: (1) a clear anti-harassment policy; (2) an explicit statement of prohibited behaviors that can be considered harassment; (3) a complaint procedure that encourages employees to come forward with harassment complaints; (4) protections for complainants and witnesses against retaliation; (5) an investigative strategy that protects privacy interests of both the alleged victim and the accused offender and ensures confidentiality to the extent possible; (6) periodic management training and employee awareness programs that continue to communicate the organization's position on this issue; and (7) measures and processes to ensure prompt corrective action to stop ongoing harassment, and appropriate remedial and disciplinary actions for offenders. In this article, we provide best practice recommendations concerning each of these elements.

The phrase 'sharing economy' has grown to become an umbrella term for a wide range of nonownership forms of consumption activities such as swapping, bartering, trading, renting, sharing, and exchanging. In spite of such a wide spectrum of behaviors, there is limited practical knowledge about how individual sharing economy practices should be managed. Building on a framework that categorizes sharing economy practices based on their detailed characteristics, this article provides extensive recommendations to managers and practitioners. The article argues that each practice is a hybrid of sharing and exchange and provides several recommendations based on the nature of each practice's offering.

The number and value of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) continue to grow, with record increases in the U.S. and Asia Pacific in 2015. Yet, despite calls from academic literature for more consideration of the human and behavioral factors in such massive change, there remains an inordinate focus on the financial or quantitative aspects. We connect the newer streams of research with efficiency and growth imperatives via an illustrative analysis of ANZ New Zealand's horizontal merger with The National Bank of New Zealand. ANZ successfully completed a brand and technology merger by prioritizing the customer, addressing employees' socioeconomic concerns, providing enough time and resources to ensure efficiencies, and rebranding enriched customer services and revenues. The results were overwhelmingly positive and provide a useful template for how M&As should be executed in the future using a people-first approach.

Increasingly, firms are integrating environmental sustainability into their business strategies. Yet, sustainability is a complex topic and many firms need to form environmental partnerships to access additional resources-in the form of investments, technologies, expertise, public image, and/or political influence-to develop competitive advantage. Environmental partnership decisions are difficult, however, because they often need to reconcile multifaceted sustainability issues with multi-level, and potentially divergent, strategic goals. To meet their intended objectives, companies should carefully consider the type of environmental partnerships and partners that can best meet their needs. Based on a review of the literature, interviews with executives responsible for environmental partnerships, and publicly available data, we find firms engage in three main types of environmental partnerships: innovation-seeking, legitimacy-building, and policy-influencing. Each type of partnership benefits from different types of resources and partner choices. Herein, we describe the advantages of each type of environmental partnership and partners that may best support them. Given that many firms develop environmental partnership portfolios, managing multiple environmental partnerships simultaneously, we also discuss the implications of our research for environmental partnership portfolios.

Although many articles discuss customer journey mapping (CJM), both academics and practitioners still question the best ways to model the consumer decision journey. We contend that most customer journey maps are critically flawed. They assume all customers of a particular organization experience the same organizational touchpoints and view these touchpoints as equally important. Furthermore, management lacks an understanding of how to use CJM as a cross-functional, strategic tool that promotes service innovation. This article proposes a solution to the unwieldy complexity of CJM by linking customer research to the CJM process and by showing managers how to develop a customer journey map that improves a customer's experience at each touchpoint. Using the case of an actual retail mall, we show that common CJM assumptions about the equal importance of all touchpoints are fundamentally wrong, and how easy it is for retail managers and strategic planners to make incorrect judgements about customer experience. This article demonstrates through a case study how customer research helped a mall's strategic management team understand which touchpoints were more or less critical to customer experience. It also shows key strategic initiatives at each touchpoint, resulting in cross-functional input aimed to advance service innovation at the mall.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. South Africa's Nedbank is a leader in its market - but to stay in that position, it needed to identify new ways to serve its existing business clientele as well as attract new customers. Its solution: use the extensive transaction data the bank collects to help customers improve their service.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Organizations across the business spectrum are awakening to the transformative power of data and analytics. They are also coming to grips with the daunting difficulty of the task that lies before them. It's tough enough for many organizations to catalog and categorize the data at their disposal and devise the rules and processes for using it. It's even tougher to translate that data into tangible value. But it's not impossible, and many organizations, in both the private and public sectors, are learning how.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Emerging markets such as China and India have become the growth drivers of corporate research and development initiatives from all around the world. Although there is growing evidence that Chinese companies are shifting their innovation focus from cost saving to knowledge-based research, the view by many in the West remains that companies based in emerging markets are not ready to take over the role of leading innovators from their Western competitors. As a result, Chinese multinationals have been at a competitive disadvantage, particularly in strategic technology industries. What can Chinese multinationals do to overcome Western barriers to entry in strategically important technology industries in which "Made in China" or "Designed in China" are viewed as negatives? What dynamic innovation capabilities - or, put another way, what culturally specific processes - should companies focus on to gain acceptance in the competitive global marketplace? To answer these questions, the author studied Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., the Chinese telecommunications company that has recently made significant inroads in Europe's mature and strategically important telecommunications industry, making it a potential role model for companies in China and other parts of Asia hoping to make a similar transition. In Europe, the author notes, Huawei has typically relied on the same strategy it used to build its market position in China. It has (1) offered customized technologies that meet the practical needs and resource constraints of target customers; (2) built customer loyalty by enhancing practical innovation with longer-term joint innovation partnerships; and (3) enlisted the support of governments, universities, and other industry stakeholders by customizing further innovation investments to their priorities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. For large global companies, forging effective partnerships with high-potential startups is easier said than done. The very traits that make such startups potentially complementary as partners also make it difficult for large companies to engage with them in the first place. Multinational corporations often struggle even to identify promising potential startup partners; startups, for their part, find it difficult to identify and reach the relevant decision makers within the often-confusing hierarchies of gigantic multinational companies. The challenge, for both sides, is all the more vexing in emerging markets. Furthermore, most academic studies of the challenges that large companies and entrepreneurial ventures face in partnering - and the solutions the studies suggest - focus on mature markets, such as the United States and Europe. Far less is known about how multinational corporations should engage with startups in emerging markets such as China and India. To understand how multinational companies have partnered successfully with startups in emerging markets, the authors undertook a study in three major emerging market economies: India, China, and South Africa. Their research uncovered four key factors, and they suggest a strategy for addressing each factor. The first key factor, the authors say, is the immaturity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Specifically, most emerging markets are afflicted by constraints and "voids" in their institutions. The authors recommend that multinational companies address this factor through programs that compensate for the immaturity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and they provide examples such as an IBM Corp. program that provides training, mentoring, and events for startups in China.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Blockchain technology has the potential to transform how businesses are organized and managed. It allows companies to eliminate transaction costs and use outside resources as easily as internal resources. The implications for areas such as accounting, contract negotiation and enforcement, sales and marketing, and capital investment are myriad. Companies should start exploring how this technology could impact their industry and processes.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. As companies recognize how important a digital strategy has become, they find themselves torn between different strategic options. The first decision is to choose between a customer engagement or a digital solutions strategy. Which to pursue depends on existing capabilities and competitive direction - but companies should avoid trying to do both.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Companies have yet to apply analytics to human resources - but that's about to change. And lessons learned in applying analytics to customer-focused areas can help avoid mistakes in strategic workforce decisions.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Multinational companies have invested heavily in emerging economies - over $3 trillion since 1998, by one estimate. Many of these companies, however, have not adapted their products and operations sufficiently to succeed in these markets, and returns have often been mediocre. Even when managers think they are performing well in emerging markets, they often are not because they have set low expectations. Adapting products and operations requires obtaining and using good market intelligence, which is difficult in emerging markets due to the paucity and unreliability of information. Another factor is the wide heterogeneity of emerging markets compared to developed markets. A third common problem is a lack of shared responsibility for market intelligence between headquarters and country managers, so market intelligence that is collected either is dismissed as not credible or is not updated often enough to keep pace with the rate of change in emerging markets. The authors argue that companies can overcome these difficulties by (1) treating market intelligence as a strategic asset; (2) organizing differently for market intelligence in emerging markets; and (3) using a wide range of sources and methods for market intelligence in emerging markets. They also recommend that market intelligence be organized as a shared responsibility between the corporate office and emerging-market business executives, with shared decision rights and shared resources. The article includes examples illustrating how companies such as Wrigley, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble obtain market intelligence in emerging markets.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. When faced with an emerging technology, many companies have trouble responding - not because they don't recognize how it impacts their business, but because they have difficulty managing the uncertainty around the new technology's competitive viability. And when the technology significantly disrupts the company's existing business, it can create structural impediments to pursuing opportunities.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. The current corporate sustainability movement is unsustainable, the authors argue. Not because companies are pursuing the wrong goals - but because they are going about them the wrong way. Never before have companies been more conscious of the need to run their businesses in an environmentally, socially, and economically responsible fashion. Yet never before have theory and practice been wider apart. When it comes to practicing and not just preaching sustainability, many companies struggle and most flounder in developing and implementing a sustainable business model. Many executives know and feel the importance of making their businesses sustainable. But many of them can't make the transformation occur. Worse still, many don't even know they're failing. Based on their experience and observations, the authors identify key roadblocks to embedding sustainable business models and offer a roadmap to circumvent them. According to the authors, companies need to recognize that sustainability is not just another change initiative. Change-management initiatives are usually driven by some external factors or by lack of internal performance and are typically directed at increasing profitability and shareholder value. Sustainability, on the other hand, is about people and planet as well, not just profit. Sustainability involves creating value for all stakeholders in the ecosystem and viewing profits as a consequence of such value creation. Sustainability also requires a business to look at its entire value chain. A company's sustainability initiative, the authors argue, should be led by the CEO and should become a priority for the board. Business executives should also strive to attract the support of the company's middle management.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. The global appetite for Korean entertainment - movies, TV shows, and music videos - has exploded in recent years. For non-Korean-speaking viewers, subtitles are crucial to the experience. Enter Viki Inc., a company that hosts content for streaming and provides subtitles and closed captions. Viki both eliminates language barriers and introduces the content to an otherwise unserved audience. Traditionally, subtitles are created by a bilingual translator hired by the producer or broadcaster. But the process is expensive and slow to scale. To overcome these challenges, Viki developed a business model leveraging a community of more than 150,000 volunteers. This model allows Viki to crowdsource subtitles for Asian content in numerous languages. Viki rewards volunteers with gamified badges, the ability to view videos not otherwise available in their region, early access to new shows, and an advertising-free, high-definition experience of the content. The combination of rapidly increasing internet video adoption rates and a greater appetite for foreign content - both in Asia and globally - has become a big opportunity for Viki, which was acquired by Tokyo-based Rakuten Inc. for a reported price of $200 million in 2013. The authors argue that Viki's story exemplifies a larger trend playing out in Asia. They see Viki as an archetype of a new generation of companies leveraging business model innovation to drive growth in Asia. But to understand this type of business model innovation in its proper context, it's important to understand Viki's forerunners. The authors describe two distinct, yet overlapping, waves of business innovation from emerging markets in Asia in recent years: one decades old and still going, and another that is newer and includes companies like Viki.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. More than 2 billion people worldwide are users of social media, making it a logical platform for companies seeking to attract potential employees and engage consumers with their brands. In addition to sharing information on brand activities through official social media pages or accounts, employees share brand-related information, make comments endorsing the organization's brand, and display behaviors that are consistent (or at odds) with the brand values and promise. For companies, the social media behavior of employees represents both an opportunity and a risk. Some companies encourage employees to become brand ambassadors to consumers and job candidates on social networks such as LinkedIn and share the company culture on Facebook and Twitter. However, the authors found that in the companies they studied, employees on the whole displayed very low brand engagement on social media. Management was surprised to learn that their employees were not following the company on Facebook or other popular social media sites. When employees are not fans or supporters of the company's products, the authors noted, this can send an ambiguous message to employees' contacts and deprive the company of potential supporters. So what can companies do? From their research, the authors developed a set of recommendations for encouraging effective employee branding on social media. The first recommendation is to empower a stable of employee advocates. The authors say employees born in the era of the internet (so-called "digital natives") tend to be more active on social media and are more likely to become brand ambassadors for the company.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review Article. Companies must make important decisions about which features to include in the goods and services they offer to customers. Understanding the return on investment for a feature is essential to increasing profitability. Although tadding features increases costs, it may also increase revenues, either by attracting new customers or retaining existing customers. Yet the features that retain customers, the authors argue, may be different from the features that initially attract them. The authors provide insights from their research on how to calculate the return on investment for features. Working with a global hotel company, the authors developed a model to assess how features produce financial returns by attracting new customers and/or by retaining existing customers. The model integrates three kinds of data: the revenue increase due to the effect the feature has on attracting new customers; the revenue increase due to the effect the feature has on retaining existing customers; and the costs associated with adding the feature. They tested the model using three features, or "amenities of interest," in the hotel industry: bottled water, free internet access, and a fitness center. Not surprisingly, the authors found that free wireless internet was much more likely to attract customers than free bottled water. However, the picture changed when the authors switched from looking at features that attracted guests to features that retained them. Offering free bottled water during a stay led to a bigger boost in customer retention than offering wireless internet access.