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Traditional retail practices are under stress as retailers ponder various ways of setting up a sustainable omnichannel business model. A significant challenge in their endeavor relates to the blurring lines between physical and digital worlds. This article analyzes three retailers' exploratory efforts of alternative physical retail spaces. There are five key innovation areas to revamp for such a retail store: in-store technology, the role of sales associates, leveraging a mobile channel, data analytics, and collaborations. Moreover, physical retail space can serve as an aggregation hub that connects various retailer-customer interaction points across physical and digital spaces.

Given the continued risks to public health during the COVID-19 pandemic, boosting a company's risk-to-value proposition is both a financial and moral imperative. Companies that establish reputations for having safer locations will be rewarded by risk-averse clients. Leaders should keep in mind that the effectiveness of potential interventions will vary depending on their business's type of location.

Decision making requires managers to constantly estimate the probability of uncertain outcomes and update those estimates in light of new information. This article provides guidance to managers on how they can improve that process by more explicitly adopting a Bayesian approach. Clear understanding and application of the Bayesian approach leads to more accurate probability estimates, resulting in better informed decisions. More importantly, adopting a Bayesian approach, even informally, promises to improve the quality of managerial thinking, analysis, and decisions in a variety of additional ways.

If we think big enough, smart buildings can play a key role in helping us figure out what work will look like in the coming months and years. They should promote productive collaboration; improve virtual as well as physical work; yield data that's visible to employees, not just their bosses, for coaching and development; and help us apply lessons we learn about effective work over time.

The United States has had many problems coping with the coronavirus. A critical and underappreciated problem is bad data: Without good data, planners can't plan, epidemiologists can't model, policy makers can't make policy, and citizens don't trust what they're told. The U.S. needs a robust program, with professional management of the data supply chain, to develop trustworthy data about pandemics and other public health crises.

Modernization has changed the way economies are exposed to, respond to, and are affected by disasters. Changes to the drivers of economic growth, particularly the move to a knowledge-based economy, should make us more resilient and limit the long-term effects of COVID-19.

Companies are concerned about finding new sources of revenue and cutting costs to stay afloat during the COVID-19 crisis. But those aren't the only risks they need to manage. They must also consider the impact of their activities on their myriad stakeholders. Those that don't pay attention to corporate social responsibility may end up hurting their performance, their reputation, or both.

To drive growth in digital ecosystems, companies need to develop two partnering capabilities: digital readiness and curation. Digital readiness requires that ecosystem value is distinctive and that partners are digitally organized and connected via technology such as APIs. Curation requires that ecosystem partners share joint goals, benefits, and information. Both capabilities are positively correlated with higher ecosystem market share and higher revenues.

Leading through difficult times requires agility to leverage, not react to, the turbulence around you. Here's what that means for managing your team, your network, and yourself.

Originally developed for software development, Agile approaches are increasingly adopted by organizations that seek flexibility in the face of rapid change. However, little attention has been paid to the potential negative consequences of the implementation of Agile in large-scale settings. This article presents the results of a multi-site study of a multinational telecom company over five years during its implementation of Agile practices in the context of large-scale software development. The article points to six potential pitfalls of implementing such practices that may negatively influence individual learning, ideation, and exploitation capabilities. It offers advice on how to avoid these consequences in large, established firms.

The diffusion of digital technologies has enabled a notable transformation in the firms' boundaries, processes, structures, roles, and interactions. It is now clear that digital transformation is not just a traditional IT back-end process; rather it affects the organization as a whole, redefining strategies, entrepreneurial processes, innovation, and governance mechanisms. This permeation has led to the emergence of new ways of organizing firms' value chains and interfirm relationships, which now increasingly occur in digital ecosystems and marketplaces. The scope of transformation as well as the modalities of value co-generation and delivery are here used to introduce the content of this Special Issue of California Management Review on Digital Transformation.

Organizations may soon start monitoring employees whereabouts and behavior more closely than ever, using surveillance tools such as apps, sensors, and algorithms that scrape and analyze the data people produce as they work. With the help of artificial intelligence, this data can be translated into real-time diagnostics that gauge people's health and risk levels. That may sound creepy, but there are ethical ways to use AI to promote safety on the job.

The conventional view of disruptive innovation as a series of cumulative advances that results in a new value proposition is incomplete. It does not account for the uncertainties surrounding an invention’s technology, ecosystem, and business model. To factor those in and understand the trajectory and impact of a disruptive value proposition, innovators must ask themselves five critical questions.

Leaders love to talk about corporate culture and values, yet many companies have a disconnect between what leaders preach and what is practiced throughout the organization. Improving corporate culture requires a sustained effort over time. A first step: Look at how well those values are being communicated to the workforce.

People tend to think the biggest innovation challenge is finding great ideas. But many great ideas die when entrepreneurs fail to persuade others of their potential. Indeed, the more novel the idea, the harder it is to get resources for it.

Challenging business threats and opportunities abound, yet few Renaissance men/women exist to help organizations move forward creatively in response to these challenges. Too much information exists today for a true rebirth to happen. However, self-perpetuating, quasi-renaissance managers might assimilate patterns of thinking and behavior into their professional/personal lives that ultimately make them more intersectional and innovative. Specifically, we point to five habits and three methods managers can implement to lower associative barriers and enhance intersectionality. We then introduce a culling process that helps managers find the few highly creative ideas from larger batches of mediocre ideas, thus enabling enhanced creativity.

Service that falls below customer expectations is framed as a service failure. While many researchers have investigated service failures, they have tended to focus on large service failures. This is likely because large failures are more noticeable by firms and more likely to prompt customer complaints than small failures. However, we argue that smaller service failures can cause as much damage as larger failures, and in some cases even more. We introduce the concept of service microfailures, which we define as instances when a customer's expectations go unmet in some small way. While minor in isolation, repeated service microfailures that go unnoticed and unrecovered can compound in effect and drive customer defection. For this reason, we propose that service microfailures are a potentially much larger managerial problem than they may appear on the surface. In this article, we conceptualize microfailures as a distinct form of service failure and outline the mechanism through which they cause damage. We then develop a multifaceted approach through which managers can detect, repair, and prevent service microfailures.

Organizations are becoming increasingly mindful of their purpose, clarifying their raison d'etre and fulfilling their economic, social, governance, ethical, and environmental responsibilities. One of the drivers for this behavior is stakeholders' interest in purpose-driven organizations committed to creating positive value in society. However, less is known about these stakeholders: who they are, why they care, and how organizations can adapt in response. In this article, we use the theoretical framework of hypermodernity to propose that a specific type of stakeholders, identified as hypermodern individuals, may care about purpose-led, responsible organizations. This article highlights five characteristics of these individuals that may explain why they care, including their desire to contribute to a humane and caring world and their love for experiential consumption. Furthermore, we offer recommendations for managers on how to create actionable strategies to implement and communicate purpose and corporate social responsibility to this stakeholder group.

Product platforming-using technology subsystems or components that are shared within and across product lines-is a proven way to increase the effectiveness of innovation processes in established companies and startups alike. Yet, embracing the product platforming strategy turns out to be difficult in practice, particularly within the context of global, diversified companies. In this article, we examine the strategies and challenges of implementing product platforms across multiple business segments and multiple geographies. Using the experience of global LED industry leader Signify, we explore the challenges of global platforming and the technological, organizational, management process transformations needed for success. We also examine how platforming strategies change as manufacturers enter the world of connected things.

There has been a lively debate following the 2007 financial crisis regarding the role of joint audits. Prior research argues that joint audits may improve audit quality because of shared audit efforts. However, empirical evidence has been inconclusive. To gain insight into how Big 4 audit firm imprimaturs have become a source of legitimacy in the audit industry, this article investigates how audit networks drive the audit industry in Saudi Arabia. Based on the application of quantitative and qualitative research methods, we conclude that the Big 4 audit firms have strong mutual ties, but ties with other local and international audit firms are weak. We also find the oligopolistic nature of the Big 4 audit firms and international audit firms. Specifically, Ernst & Young, KPMG, PwC, and PKF are controlling over 68% of the audit market. Interviews with accounting professionals suggest that several benefits of joint audits exist, but certain additional costs are also implicated. Our findings are particularly relevant for regulators and local and international policymakers in rethinking and evaluating the appropriateness of either the mandatory or voluntary nature of joint audits in developing countries.