More and more manufacturing companies are talking about what''s often called the circular economy--in which businesses can create supply chains that recover or recycle the resources used to create their products. Shrinking their environmental footprint, trimming operational waste, and using expensive resources more efficiently are certainly appealing to CEOs. But creating a circular business model is challenging--and taking the wrong approach .....more

Chicanery is common in the start-up world: With so much at stake, founders are apt to exaggerate, obfuscate, and otherwise stretch the truth when courting investors and other important stakeholders. Such deception locks up resources by prolonging the life of doomed ventures and makes it hard for VCs and employees to know where best to invest their money or labor. It also exacts a personal toll on founders themselves. The authors take a multidisciplinary .....more

This package begins with "What the West Gets Wrong About China," by Rana Mitter and Elsbeth Johnson, which discusses three fundamental misconceptions: that economics and democracy are two sides of the same coin; that authoritarian political systems can''t be legitimate; and that the Chinese live, work, and invest like Westerners. "The Strategic Challenges of Decoupling," by J. Stewart Black and Allen J. Morrison, contains .....more

This case describes the 2012-2020 effort at IBM to implement design thinking throughout the company and hire thousands of designers to serve on every product team alongside technical engineers and developers and product managers. IBM''s design transformation is told through the development of the Design Program Office-a new centralized function led by General Manager Phil Gilbert to support the organizational change effort-and the adoption .....more

Richard Evans, the newly appointed General Manager of the Siam Chemicals Company (SCC) returns to his Bangkok office after a two-week absence to find his in-box full of emails from his Thai team. Under time pressure he must first prioritise and then decide how best to respond to them. However, SCC is his first posting outside Europe and he has begun to realise that in this very different cultural environment, his previous managerial experience and .....more

This case addresses the events that took place following the conclusion of the case "Facebook''s Libra (A): The Privatization of Money?" In October 2019, several months after the conclusion of the A case, multiple members of the Libra Association announced that they were leaving the project. Observers speculated that the departures were due to Libra''s inability to meet regulatory scrutiny. Nevertheless, the Libra Association .....more

Despite the high rate of churn in the labor market today, many companies pay scant attention to offboarding employees. That''s a mistake, say the authors, who argue that offboarding is an increasingly vital part of talent management--and an opportunity to create long-term value. Drawing on their scholarly research and interviews with HR professionals, the authors recommend a number of best practices. One is to plan well in advance for employees'' .....more

In 2017, the general manager of Rajarambapu Patil Co-operative Sugar Factory, a 50-year-old sugar plant in India, needed to recommend a strategy for the factory''s upcoming production cycle. For the aggregate production plan, he was considering three options: a chase strategy, a level strategy, and a subcontracting strategy. The company faced multiple challenges, including a limited pool of skilled labourers, employee poaching by competitors .....more