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This industry note is a supplement to the case "Delhivery: Leveraging the Platform".

This note describes how historical and on-going policies and practices that discriminate against African Americans led to present-day inequality. Topics include slavery, segregation, Jim Crow laws, "black codes," and policies and practices relating to criminal justice, housing, and education.

This note describes the most common financial ratios and how they provide insight into firm performance. The emphasis is on how ratios summarize operating behaviors and results in ways that facilitate interpretation and highlight decisions. There are three broad categories of ratios covered in the note: profitability, operating efficiency, and leverage (the use of debt financing). The note defines the ratios, explains how they provide insight, and explores complications related to their use. The concepts in this note are applied to the firm Morgan Industries, a setting that has been integrated across all the Financial Analytics Toolkit series of technical notes.

This note reviews the basics of projecting cash flows for a typical operating decision. To find the economic consequences of any decision, one needs to project the cash flow effects of that decision and discount those at the appropriate hurdle rate. The focus on cash flows arises because any evaluation of economic impact must recognize opportunity costs-the other uses to which one might allocate resources available to a firm. This note discusses two typical ways to organize operating information to calculate cash flow, typically referred to as free cash flow in this context. The first estimates the cash consequences related to various elements of a decision. The second starts with a typical accounting estimate of operating income before taxes and then makes adjustments. The concepts in this note are applied to the firm Morgan Industries, a setting that has been integrated across all the Financial Analytics Toolkit series of technical notes.

This case describes how caregiving responsibilities influence American employees, firms, and the broader economy. It details how sociodemographic trends in the late 20th century transformed the way that Americans balance their personal and professional lives, analyzing changes such as the evolving role of women in the economy, the rise of non-traditional households, the increasing cost and complexity of healthcare, and the aging and ailing of the U.S. population. The case then reflects on how such changes impact the productivity and profitability of the modern American company. It reviews survey data from employees and employers to understand how caregiving impacts individual careers and firms' profitability. The case concludes by asking readers to "rethink" how care might be provided by employers. It analyzes recent research on the return-on-investment of caregiving benefits, describes ways that firms are expanding their caregiving benefits coverage, and discusses the importance for managers to understand internal "care demographics" and promulgate a culture that supports caregiving.

Background note for "Patanjali Ayurved: Valuation of an Unusual FMCG Company in India", case ISB178.

Discusses the link between marketing and operations, which, when combined, constitute a way to "manage" customers. Also links these activities to other processes, such as management control.

The background notes accompany the free online case "Indian Premier League: Innovation Without Disruption" (https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/teaching-materials/IPL), a self-paced, interactive case that lets readers analyze the strategic logic behind the launch of Indian Premier League (IPL) using blue ocean analytical tools and frameworks. With visual aids and interactive exercises, the case explores how the IPL transformed traditional days-long cricket matches into a thrilling three-hour sports drama with Bollywood music and cheerleaders, and opened up a new market space - "cricketainment" on the pitch and on primetime TV for families to enjoy. Students and executives come to understand the IPL and cricketainment market as an example of nondisruptive creation, i.e., they did not displace or disrupt the existing sector (players, products or services). They were creative but not destructive of what went before, i.e., the domestic cricket league and other forms of entertainment. Applying Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne's three-step process, readers discover how the IPL unlocked a new market that was beneficial to both the domestic cricket league and the entertainment industry.

Founded in 2006, the B Lab, a nonprofit organization, created the certified B Corporations (B Corps). B Corps are businesses that satisfy a set of standards and benchmarks defined by social and environmental impact. B Corps and their supply chains are assessed on their policies and procedures around governance, workers, community, environment, and disclosures to the public. Certification means the company is a "purpose-driven" business that creates benefits for its stakeholders. By the end of 2018, over 2,700 companies across 60 countries and 150 industries have been certified as B Corps. This technical note discusses the founding of the B Lab and its certification process, including public disclosure; legal requirements and US state laws governing benefit corporations; and B Corp self-assessment. It explores benefits to B Corps and criticisms of the process as well as additional endeavors that resulted from the B Lab's collaborative efforts, including Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS), and Global Impact Investing Ratings System (GIIRS).

This Note explains some of the key issues of international trade policy. That entails examining the reasons that governments impose tariffs and non-tariff barriers to imports, although there are some other issues as well, such as export subsidies and financial policies that affect international trade. A core aspect of this policy analysis is to recognize that governments need to pursue policies that have not just economic goals, but also political and social ones as well. So, a trade policy that hurts domestic consumers, for example, may be very sensible for a government that needs to satisfy a particular political or social group in the country, such as a powerful union or a political party whose constituents oppose imports.

This note explains the rationale and derivation behind "return bridge," a key analytical tool used in the private equity industry to understand sources of value-add. The note elaborates on the advantages and the shortcomings of the return bridge.

Netflix Top Picks, Amazon recommendations, the iTunes Genius button. They all have one thing in common: they are driven by clever algorithms that use a technique known as collaborative filtering. Often used in machine learning operations, collaborative filtering is the process by which a firm like Netflix generates predictions about a single user's preferences using data taken from a large number of users. This technical note offers an overview of three of the main collaborative filtering methods: slope one, a purely predictive nonparametric model; ordinal logit, a parametric regression model; and alternative least squares, a matrix factorization technique.

While several tactics can drive company performance by instilling a sense of shared ownership among employees, perhaps the most direct is to actually share ownership with employees. Many public and private companies across industries have done just that, and studies have found that sharing ownership with employees can benefit a number of workplace performance metrics. This note summarizes the historical context from which shared corporate ownership grew, presents the three key decisions that leaders need to make when offering shared ownership (how broadly to do so, with what accountability, and with what rights), details the strategies that companies can use to share ownership with employees (e.g., profit-sharing, Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), etc.), illustrates different strategies particular companies have employed, and concludes with open questions for future leaders. The goal of the note is to educate future leaders and managers on the implications of shared ownership decisions on employee engagement, and ultimately, long-term company performance. The note also provides a basic how-to user's guide to familiarize future managers with approaches to sharing ownership more broadly with employees.

Making good hiring decisions is a critical management activity, yet many leaders just "wing it" when interviewing candidates to fill openings by having an organic conversation to assess the candidate's fit, unknowingly subjecting the process to unconscious bias. Instead, organizations should employ structured interviewing techniques to carefully assess the skills needed for a given opening, to determine a consistent approach for fairly evaluating candidates' skills, and ultimately to make the best possible hiring decision. This note aims to help the reader acquire the skills necessary to be an effective interviewer and to champion best-practice interviewing within his or her organization. Beginning by briefly summarizing the pitfalls of unstructured interviewing, the note proceeds to explain three types of structured interviewing techniques, the steps hiring managers should undertake to prepare for and conduct interviews, and tips for making evidence-based assessments.

90% of the GDP in the world is created through family-owned businesses. Family businesses are frequently thought to be exclusively mom-and-pop, small businesses. Most fail to realize that Walmart, Fidelity, Cargill, Koch Industries, and Ford, to name a few, are all family-owned or controlled businesses. Family businesses can be private or public, sometimes with a dual-class stock structure. They can also be 100% family-owned or have outside investors. Family businesses come in all shapes and sizes, and they are here to stay globally, gaining power and influence by the day. In this module note, we provide an overview of the Demystifying the Family Enterprise Course course, which explores each of the three Family organizations, (1) Family, (2) Operating Company, (3) Family Office, as well as what it takes to create an enduring Family legacy.

Module 1 of Demystifying Families in Business focuses on the Family. The Family unit forms the bedrock of the organizations that comprise the collective Family organization, specifically, the virtues that define the Family members' rules of engagement, and the Family governance structure necessary to support it. In this module note, we provide a framework for Legacy Governance, and introduce the Three Virtues of Family Business, (1) Clarity, (2) Fairness, and (3) Motivation, as requisite shared values for all Families in Business.