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India might appear to be the last place on earth where you would find health care innovation. Although government programs have finally brought some infectious diseases under control, the nation's ability to meet the basic medical needs of its citizens remains abysmal. However, necessity spawns innovation. Despite the pressing demand and constrained supply, a few relatively new Indian hospitals have devised ways of providing world-class health care affordably--and to scale. The authors identified more than 40 hospitals in India with innovative strategies and selected nine that were consistently providing high-quality care at ultralow prices. To deliver on those dual commitments, the Indian exemplars developed three powerful organizational advantages: a hub-and-spoke configuration of assets, an innovative way of determining who should do what, and a focus on cost-effectiveness rather than just cost cutting. Those moves don't require changes in legislation; only a commitment to reverse the inexorable rise in costs. Indian hospitals, doctors, and administrators have traditionally looked to the West for advances in medical knowledge, but it's time the West looked to India for innovations in health care delivery.

The prevailing wisdom says that negative thoughts and feelings have no place at the office. But that goes against basic biology. All healthy human beings have an inner stream of thoughts and feelings that include criticism, doubt, and fear. David and Congleton have worked with leaders in various industries to build a critical skill they call "emotional agility," which enables people to approach their inner experiences in a mindful, values-driven, and productive way rather than buying into or trying to suppress them. The authors offer four practices (adapted from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT) designed to help readers do the same: (1) Recognize your patterns. You have to realize that you're stuck before you can initiate change. (2) Label your thoughts and emotions. Labeling allows you to see them as transient sources of data that may or may not prove helpful. (3) Accept them. Respond to your ideas and emotions with an open attitude, paying attention and letting yourself experience them. They may be signaling that something important is at stake. (4) Act on your values. Is your response going to serve your organization in the long term and take you toward being the leader you most want to be?

The creator of Dilbert on stumbling your way to success.

Marketing managers tend to focus on "mean" or "net" consumer scores, but these miss an important point: Some brands are highly polarizing, with large numbers of "brand lovers" and equally large numbers of brand haters. Measuring "brand dispersion" will allow marketers to identify polarizing brands, and they can take steps to turn polarization to their advantage.

Initial public offerings are expensive, and many owners turn to M&A instead. But a little-understood mechanism known as a tax receivable agreement can offset the high costs of an IPO offering. Investment banks and private equity firms are already using this tool; other companies should, too.

Using simple online psychometric tests at the start of the hiring regimen can reap a smaller, better applicant pool and save thousands of hours of managerial time.

A new study shows that large office furniture makes people feel powerful--and that may make them more dishonest.

Business leaders are continually faced with complex change, and consistent performance is not enough to keep their companies relevant. They must be prepared to adapt to a shifting environment and continually reinvent themselves. The author has been the chairman and CEO of Abbott Laboratories since 1999. He describes how Abbott's reinvention has led to success.

Most executives accept that social and civic responsibilities are indispensable to doing good business; their enterprises won't survive if those responsibilities are ignored. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and Unilever CEO Paul Polman are exemplars of that attitude.

Despite its reputation as the engine of the modern economy, the information industry shed more jobs in the United States from 2001 to 2011 than any other sector except manufacturing.

Line managers are taking on duties that once belonged to human resources. They can benefit from emerging best practices and can start by asking and answering the five key questions the author explores.

An analysis of more than 25,000 earnings calls made by publicly held U.S. companies reveals that the tone of calls is markedly different depending on the time of day--and stock returns over the next quarter reflect that tone, with negative calls associated with abnormal negative returns. Managers should consider these findings when scheduling calls and be aware that, for example, a 3 PM call is likely to have a far more negative tone than an 8 AM call.

A series of studies reveals that the warning labels added to risky products can make those products more appealing to consumers. The mere inclusion of a warning builds trust, because consumers feel that the seller is being honest--and over time that trust becomes more prominent, while the substance of the warning fades.

A new study reveals that people who start companies pray more often and are more likely to believe that God takes a personal interest in them.

The personal traits your top people possess matter much less than what they actually do every day. Kevin Sharer, former chief executive at Amgen, argues that your greatest job as a CEO is to define the behavior you want the leaders of your organization to exhibit--not by dictating the behavior from on high but by involving the leaders themselves in the process of defining it.

How Walmart listened to its critics and demonstrated that taking on large social issues, such as providing help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, recycling, and hiring war veterans, can be compatible with building a strong business.

Surprising facts about Africa, which promises to be the world's next growth hot spot.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Is it better to reward existing customers for loyalty -or spend your marketing dollars on attracting new ones? Many companies face that management dilemma, and expert opinions on the subject conflict. The authors argue that the answer to that question depends on how fluid customer preferences are in a market and to what degree some of a company's customers are much more valuable than others. In markets where consumer preferences are highly fluid and where the highest-value customers are much more valuable than others, companies should focus on rewarding their best existing customers. Examples of industries in which this is the case include airlines and car rentals. However, if either or both of those two characteristics -customer shopping flexibility and concentrations in customer value -is not in place, then companies should focus on offering their best prices to new customers. When identifying high-value customers, it's important to remember that revenues and profits may not necessarily be correlated. The authors note that it is not only possible that high-volume customers are not as valuable as they seem, but, in some settings, they may be downright unprofitable. For example, at one bank with which one of the authors worked, about 50% of customers contributed negatively to profits. The authors suggest several approaches to addressing the problem of unprofitable customers, including customer education and selectively increasing prices to those customers.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article.