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PepsiCo's CEO Indra Nooyi believes that each PepsiCo product must engage customers so directly and personally that they fall in love with it. So in 2012 she hired renowned designer Mauro Porcini as PepsiCo's first chief design officer. What Nooyi calls "design thinking" now informs nearly everything the company does, from product creation, to the look on the shelf, to how consumers interact with a product after they buy it. HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius interviews Nooyi about how she transformed the company's strategy, its products, and its organizational culture by placing design at the center. The article also includes a sidebar, written by Mauro Porcini, called "How Design Can Thrive."

This article identifies three types of traps that can emerge when implementing workplace flexibility-altered work-life dynamics, reduced fairness perceptions, and weakened organizational culture-and provides core lessons for managers seeking a balanced flexibility approach. First, managers must become flex-savvy to understand the variation that exists in flexibility practices to align implementation with the workforce and organizational context. Second, implementing flexibility must not be treated as an accommodation but as a broader systemic organizational change empowering individuals and teams. The article provides a Worksmart case to highlight how to avoid traps and implement balanced workplace flexibility across multiple stakeholder interests.

Consumer product returns in the United States are approaching three-hundred billion dollars annually. In the majority of cases, the returned products are perfectly functional convenience returns. Managers have a multi-billion dollar profit opportunity to reuse the products by strategically employing remanufacturing. Yet, remanufacturing has multiple barriers that must be understood and addressed. This article addresses several key managerial issues regarding remanufactured consumer products. First, will consumers buy remanufactured products? Second, will the green consumer segment desire remanufactured products? Third, will remanufactured product sales cannibalize new product sales? Finally, this article provides guidance regarding pricing and cannibalization mitigation strategies.

Two related trends characterize the recent past: value propositions are migrating from the physical to the informational, and value creation is shifting from firms to consumers. These two trends meet in the phenomenon of " consumer generated intellectual property" (CGIP). This article addresses the question: " How should firms manage the intellectual property that their customers create?" It explores how CGIP presents important dilemmas for managers and argues that consumers' intellectual property should not be leveraged at the expense of their emotional property. It integrates these perspectives into a diagnostic framework and discusses eight strategies for firms to manage CGIP.

Technology has transformed individuals from mere consumers of products to empowered participants in value co-creation. While numerous firms experiment with involving a crowd in value creation, few companies turn crowdsourcing projects into thriving platforms with a powerful business model. To address this challenge, this article analyzes successful platforms to identify patterns of effective crowdsourcing-based business models. The results provide guidance for managers who need to create new (or adapt existing) business models.

The automobile industry' s high costs of entry, economies of scale, and network effects from distribution, fueling, and service lead many to conclude that new entrants have no chance. Tesla Motors has overcome many barriers to pioneer electric cars. Starting with partnerships and a minimum viable product, Tesla is working to innovate and scale up. Tesla now produces a top-selling luxury car and has a market capitalization twice that of Fiat Chrysler and half that of General Motors or Ford. Tesla has shown that a startup can enter and disrupt the status quo in one of the most established industries.

"Inconspicuous consumption"--elite consumers' affinity for discreet rather than traditionally branded luxuries--has become a global phenomenon. Work by researchers at Royal Holloway, University of London and elsewhere has identified two best practices that can help companies get out in front of the trend. Firms can redesign offerings to be less conspicuous; Louis Vuitton, Michael Kors, Tesla, and Audi, for example, have begun downsizing or even hiding their logos, while Tiffany has dropped the spelled-out brand name from its fashion jewelry line in favor of a simple "T." Companies can also rebrand around experience, artistry, or utility. For instance, Daimler still markets the Mercedes line in China but has also launched the subtler, all-electric Denza brand there; the hotel chain Jumeirah markets the unique qualities of each of its properties. This reprint contains three additional Idea Watch articles. "The Sorry State of Nonprofit Boards" is a visual presentation of survey results from nearly 1,000 nonprofit directors. Among the findings are that directors lack critical skills, boards lack formal processes, and upheaval is common. "What Your Firm Can Learn from Coworking Spaces" looks at new research showing that people thrive in shared office spaces, and why. "CEO Pay Can Drive Consumers' Decisions" describes experiments showing that people are more willing to buy from companies with CEO-to-worker pay ratios close to what they deem is fair.

We've long sensed that spending time in green landscapes soothes and restores us. Now new research reveals that people benefit from simply looking at nature--for remarkably short periods of time.

A viral video is every marketer's dream. Social viewers--people who watch shared content rather than videos they've found by browsing--are far more likely to buy a product and recommend it to others. But it remains a mystery to most companies why some videos catch fire and others just sputter out. Unruly, a marketing technology company, offers an answer. Its analysis of 430 billion video views and 100,000 consumer data points reveals the two most powerful drivers of viral success: psychological response (how the content makes you feel) and social motivation (why you want to share it).

The hacker attack on Toronto's Avid Life Media — in which confidential information on 32 million Ashley Madison users was released — offers lessons for all companies, not just controversial ones. After all, the hackers in question did not act simply because the company runs the infamous Ashley Madison infidelity service. They were also moved to act by its aggressive marketing and customer service claims, not to mention its short-term thinking when developing tactics to make the firm more attractive as an investment. In this article, Ivey Business Journal Editor Tom Watson takes readers back to his 2010 investigative journalism on Ashley Madison during the time of its attempted initial public offering, when one of his questions to a boardroom of potential Avid Life backers was enough to make the bankers second-guess their decision. In addition to examining the stakeholder versus shareholder perspectives, he explores the threat that hackers and hacktivists pose to firms and cautions that leaders, such as the former CEO of Avid Life, can in fact have too much bravery.

When it comes to negotiating, attitudes and approaches matter more than people think. In fact, master negotiators share many attitudes and approaches to deal making. Rather than focusing on differences and incompatibilities — a tendency known as incompatibility bias — they first focus on similarities and common values and deal with differences later. Recognizing that a wide gap in interests calls for resilience and value creation, they share a spirit of cooperation and rarely resort to destructive threats and ultimatums. Despite being focused on harmonizing interests and striking deals, they see the fragility of the deal-making process and remain conditioned to walk away from the negotiating table if necessary. Most importantly, they never underestimate the value of continuous planning and preparation. Based on numerous interviews with top deal makers from the worlds of business, diplomacy, sports and labour, this article highlights how the best in the business achieve results.

We are entering a new era of strategy, transitioning from strategic management to strategic prototyping. In this new era, strategy needs to be on the minds of everyone concerned — all the time. And that’s only a good thing if everyone across the organization shares the same view of what strategy means. Unfortunately, the meaning of the term is often blurred in people’s minds. However, to avoid developing a non-strategic strategy, a firm has to develop a shared understanding. Simply put, strategy is what dictates how everything within an organization is put in motion through defining what it wants to achieve as a business. Firms should consider the following four questions: What does success look like for us and how does that translate into objectives? What businesses are we in and what ones are we not in? What value proposition sets us apart from competitors? What activities do we perform internally and what activities do we outsource, and how do we conduct these activities differently than competitors? Strategy development is a never-ending process — one that needs to be managed and adjusted as market conditions shift. Ultimately, for a strategy to work, it must be owned and supported by the daily decisions and actions of all employees across all levels of the organization.

Speechwriters do not exist to free executives from having to work on presentations; they exist to help make executives look good enough to give their careers a boost. The objective is the creation of a speech that is memorable, hopefully for its key message. Those planning speeches must ask: “Do I endure or embrace the speech experience?” Because giving a great speech can help one climb the corporate hierarchy, there is no excuse not to embrace it. Speeches should be clear and concise, usually between 1,500 and 2,000 words. As very few people are born to give fabulous keynote addresses without preparation, practice is key. Indeed, delivering a good speech requires training, energy and commitment. While preparing, one should ask for and be open to blunt feedback. Inserting brief pauses into speeches as a means to emphasize key points can be a powerful tool. When crafting a speech, it is important to consider aural quality and avoid non-conversational language. Good speeches create a dialogue with the audience through relating to people and involving participants. Furthermore, every good speech should feature an attention-grabbing title.

Product counterfeiters hurt more than just corporate bottom lines. They put millions of jobs at risk, not to mention threaten the health and well-being of consumers. And the problem is getting worse. By the end of 2015, the International Chamber of Commerce estimates that the value of counterfeit products will reach US$1.7 trillion, about two per cent of global economic output. In the past, retailers mainly had to deal with the problem of brand theft and counterfeiting in the brick-and-mortar realm, e.g. fake Louis Vuitton bags or Rolex watches. Today, the threat that counterfeiters pose is much broader. The online world is rife with counterfeit products, and perpetrators are using increasingly sophisticated techniques, such as 3D printing, to manufacture goods and parts. However, firms can take stock of their online brand presence — including their website, social media and mobile components — to identify vulnerabilities. They can prioritize what needs to be done through a scoring system specific to the most important brands and infringements. Finally, they can take the counterfeiters down through a combination of using online platforms’ reporting mechanisms for intellectual property infringements, using search-engine mechanisms to remove links, and directly asking infringers to take down fraudulent content.

This installment of Marketing & Technology introduces managers to improvisation--colloquially known as 'improv'--or acting sans pre-planning, as a device for delivering warm, unmechanical service without breaking the training budget. We begin by describing improv, reviewing its history, and covering the rules and guidelines that improv uses. Then we explore some of the ways in which improv has been used in non-theater settings, and we present a number of examples of improv in customer service. We conclude by offering three lessons that improv theater can teach service firms.

Valued at $80 billion annually, state and local tax incentives are an important source of capital for expanding or relocating businesses. Using Tesla's recent $1.4 billion megadeal in Nevada as an example, we outline best practices for negotiating incentive packages. This installment of Accounting Matters discusses the evolution of incentives and provides insights regarding the regulatory and oversight changes that business owners and executives should anticipate. We conclude with recommendations for navigating increased compliance and reporting burdens.

Interest in and enthusiasm for crowdsourcing is growing tremendously. But should organizations contemplating the use of crowdsourcing view it as simply another means of outsourcing to non-employees, or as something unique that has special requirements for success? This article addresses that issue. After reviewing the various ways organizations employ non-employees to overcome human resource limitations, we suggest areas in which they are similar and areas in which they are different. We then focus on crowdsourcing as a novel source of external labor. Presenting key questions that every organization considering the use of crowdsourcing must address, we offer specific recommendations for those organizations that choose to employ a crowd to meet their needs. These recommendations are based on an extensive review of both the research literature and the practitioner literature, and include additional insights gleaned from transcripts of sales calls with prospective customers conducted by a large crowdsourcing intermediary.

Innovation contests are increasingly used by businesses to identify new ideas for better servicing their customers; yet, the degree to which the innovation contests provide new ideas has been disappointing. We describe the case of a large innovation contest via which we examined the role of three elements of the online discussion context to predict whether innovative ideas are generated during the contest. The three elements are: (1) the discussion thread's amount of variety (i.e., variation of participants' familiarity with the topic or organizational background), (2) the amount of collaborative versus argumentative posts that have been made in the discussion prior to a contributor's innovative post, and (3) whether the discussion includes previous posts from the participant prior to the innovative post. We found three ideal profiles for a person generating innovative ideas: (1) he or she posts after participants who have substantial variation in familiarity with the topic, (2) he/she posts on discussion threads in which participants focus their contributions on adding their own perspectives, not on arguing with others, and (3) he/she has not previously posted. These findings lead to specific implications for managing innovation contests.

During the next decade-plus, thousands of Baby Boomer entrepreneurs will retire, usually without formal succession plans. Next-generation relatives, former employees, or outsiders will assume leadership of these now-mature enterprises, hopefully bringing their own visions and initiatives and becoming, in every sense, re-entrepreneurs. Re-entrepreneurship describes a process through which a mature enterprise can be made new again. Re-entrepreneurial leaders will encounter challenges that differ radically from those confronted by traditional entrepreneurial leaders. Re-entrepreneurial initiatives necessarily should begin with new visions of what mature organizations might do to become new again; will succeed only if stakeholders commit to that vision; and should culminate with reimagined, restaged, and revitalized enterprises. To secure re-entrepreneurial outcomes, three framing principles are proposed. Each principle is rooted in the theory of Joseph Schumpeter, the godfather of entrepreneurism and creative destruction. Seven re-entrepreneurial rules follow. While grounded in entrepreneurial theory, each rule is based primarily on experiential lessons shared by re-entrepreneurial executives who have previously assumed leadership succession roles inside mature organizations--and subsequently reimagined, restaged, and revitalized, ultimately renewing their firms.

There is growing interest in how gamification--defined as the application of game design principles in non-gaming contexts--can be used in business. However, academic research and management practice have paid little attention to the challenges of how best to design, implement, manage, and optimize gamification strategies. To advance understanding of gamification, this article defines what it is and explains how it prompts managers to think about business practice in new and innovative ways. Drawing upon the game design literature, we present a framework of three gamification principles--mechanics, dynamics, and emotions (MDE)--to explain how gamified experiences can be created. We then provide an extended illustration of gamification and conclude with ideas for future research and application opportunities.