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Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a holistic approach to quantifying the environmental impacts-including resources consumed and wastes produced-associated with the entire life cycle of a product, from the production or extraction of the raw materials used in its creation, to its end-of-use disposition. LCAs are often used to better understand how choices made in a product's design (e.g., materials, assembly, energy sources, energy efficiency) would affect its overall environmental impact. This note provides an overview of the different types of LCAs, LCA methodology, and LCA tools and databases.

This note provides an overview of the evolving landscape of customer data privacy in 2023. It highlights two pivotal aspects that make privacy a central concern for businesses: building and maintaining customer trust and navigating the intricate regulatory environments. The note examines common privacy risks and their potential impacts on businesses, including reputational damage and compliance issues. It also offers insights into the differences between European and American regulatory practices. Furthermore, the note explores prevalent business practices related to data privacy and the challenges faced by industry professionals. It concludes by analyzing the perspectives of both consumers and regulators on privacy, identifying key challenges, and posing thought-provoking questions for further exploration in this digital age.

Companies that are addressing climate change by mitigating their greenhouse gas emissions often set reduction targets. This note describes several types of widely used carbon reduction targets, including carbon neutral, science based, net zero, real zero, and carbon negative.

In 2023, The Official Board surveyed 853 executives on the topic of talent incubators/academy companies. Executives were asked to list the top three academy companies within their function, industry, and country. They were also asked: what practices differentiate these companies; if they matter when hiring; and if talent academies were harder to identify today than in the past. The note summarizes the findings.

A project's scope specifies the work needed to deliver a product, service, or result, given specified features and functions. At its core, scoping a project requires accurately predicting the allocation of resources for a given initiative in a way that forecasts answers to questions about performance, including timeline, cost, and deliverables. Such a skill is highly valued by organizations but is rarely taught formally. This technical note offers an overview of project scoping, defining related terms and tools such as project charters, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), and action plans. It places project scoping in organizational context and discusses drivers and indicators of scope quality, along with potential pitfalls.

This technical note is designed to be used early in a graduate-level elective course on strategic analysis, though it can be used at multiple levels, including advanced undergraduate and Executive Education. The note assumes some basic knowledge of hypothesis testing or the hypothesis-driven approach as a tool used in strategic analysis, particularly in the context of consulting. Building on this foundation, students will learn more about what makes a good hypothesis, the relationship between hypothesis and theory (the scientific method), and why this has become such a useful problem-solving framework in business settings. Specifically, a significant part of the discussion will center on the more practical or applied art of using hypotheses to reduce complexity and get to the heart of a clients or other stakeholder's needs.

This paper will provide an overview of the nature of anxiety and depression, the particular vulnerabilities and stresses of CEOs, and suggestions for managing mental health in the workplace.

Targeted interventions serve as a pivotal tool in business strategy, streamlining decisions for enhanced efficiency and effectiveness. This note delves into two central facets of such interventions: first, the design of potent decision guidelines, or targeting policies, through assessing individual reactions via A/B testing; and second, the strategic use of A/B tests to predict policy outcomes prior to their full-scale implementation. Complementing these insights, the note presents real-world data illustrations and essential coding guidance, furnishing readers with the hands-on skills needed to adeptly create and evaluate targeting policies.

In late 2021, Netflix leadership had to deal with some fierce employee and public blowback after airing The Closer, a comedy special by comedian Dave Chappelle. In the special-the last of six that Chappelle was contracted to make for Netflix-his targets included the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, plus others (LGBTQ+) community, particularly the transgender and nonbinary segments of that population. Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings were caught by surprise by the reaction, particularly from Netflix employees, to the special. While supportive of Chappelle despite his often-incendiary remarks over the years, Sarandos and Hastings knew they had to do major damage control. Had they made the wrong decision in allowing this particularly strident special to air? Should they take it off the platform? What was the future of Netflix's relationship with Chappelle? And-very importantly for a company that prized its workforce and had tried to create a culture of inclusion and diversity-how would they deal with Netflix's many disaffected employees?

In November 2022, OpenAI launched the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT on the web. Demonstrating the ability to understand human language and generate human-like, high-quality dialogues, answers, essays, jokes, and even poetry, ChatGPT attracted 100 million users within two months—setting the record of the fastest-growing consumer app in history. This case introduces ChatGPT and generative AI, elaborates on ChatGPT’s underlying large language models, examines the drivers of the technology’s rapid adoption, and investigates potential use cases, risks, and societal impacts. Finally, through an optional design exercise, the case leads the students to explore how the technology can shape the future of business and society.

In November 2022, OpenAI launched the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT on the web. Demonstrating the ability to understand human language and generate human-like, high-quality dialogues, answers, essays, jokes, and even poetry, ChatGPT attracted 100 million users within two months-setting the record of the fastest-growing consumer app in history. This case introduces ChatGPT and generative AI, elaborates on ChatGPT's underlying large language models, examines the drivers of the technology's rapid adoption, and investigates potential use cases, risks, and societal impacts. Finally, through an optional design exercise, the case leads the students to explore how the technology can shape the future of business and society.

A brief overview of how to measure social impact at nonprofits, social organizations, and impact investments.

This background note describes the Amager Bakke waste-to-energy (WtE) plant in Copenhagen, which merges traditional waste incineration with a combined heat and power (CHP) plant and air pollution control (scrubbing) technology, and had plans to add carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technology to become the cleanest incineration plant in the world. The note also provides an overview of integrated waste management, waste incineration, district heating, Amager Bakke's process, and the future of waste management in Denmark.

The best time to have a difficult conversation is, ideally, as soon as possible. Engaging in challenging conversations early can produce beneficial results for several reasons, such as resolving issues, improving communication, preserving relationships, and increasing efficiency. This note includes best practices for difficult conversations, how to initiate conversations, steps for guiding the dialogue, methods for upholding intentions, and examples of difficult conversations.

This final note in the five-part series on competitive-cost analysis introduces the concept of the experience curve, which can be analyzed with a log-log relationship between unit cost and cumulative volume.

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions that were contributing to climate change, the world needs to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Power-to-X (PtX) refers to an array of processes that convert electricity (power) to various gaseous and liquid fuels (X). PtX is widely viewed as essential to accelerating the deployment of renewable energy. This note focuses on five central PtX fuels: hydrogen, ammonia, syngas, methanol, and methane.

This technical note surveys the concepts of free and open source software and hardware. It introduces the concepts in general, providing a brief history of their development and numerous examples of how companies employ them in practice. Further, it identifies various business models whereby companies can benefit from using and contributing to free and open source software and hardware. Importantly, these concepts often go counter to traditional business strategy teaching related to owning resources that are rare and inimitable. On its face, using free and open source software or hardware should not provide any competitive advantage because competitors can use the same products for free. Further, contributing to the creation of these products or open sourcing previously proprietary software or hardware, especially that protected by patents or other intellectual property protections, seems to be counter to these traditional strategy theories. However, in a growing number of contexts, it may make strategic sense for a company to use and/or contribute to open source software or hardware.