Innholdsfortegnelse for Winter 2015 i Rotman Management

• Focus on an important, complex problem that must be addressed but that established organizations cannot handle. • Identify the specific gaps that existing organizations cannot fill. • Create an organization with a formal governance structure that engages people with relevant expertise and equips them to make decisions that will lead to progress towards the fulfillment of important goals. • Construct a set of near-term goals against which progress can be measured. • Assure that the organization has access to relevant resources and capabilities. • Relentlessly measure progress against negotiated goals. • Celebrate successes. • Execute plans to ‘pull the plug’ by shutting down the organization when its mission is fulfilled. • Redeploy assets fast and effectively. • Manage networks of relationships to support talented organizational participants as they seek…

1. Do make sure that you have access to top-quality, company-specific research on sustainability risks and opportunities. Money managers are constantly increasing their capacity to do sustainability research in house. 2. Do make sure that they actually use this information. If your money managers cannot explain exactly how they are doing so, it’s almost certain that they aren’t. 3. Do not use sustainability research in isolation; Always combine it with more traditional fundamental and/or quantitative investment research. Being a sustainability leader does not mean that a company is worth investing in. 4. Do not expect perfection from your investee companies. Remember, with 150,000 employees in 100 countries, a major multinational company is unlikely to have a sustainability track record that is completely beyond reproach. Investors should instead look for at…

1. Idea Gathering. The open front-end of the innovation development funnel, this entails gathering more opportunities than you have the capacity to manage so that the most promising can be selected for moving forward. 2. Filtering. The selection of projects best-suited to development and marketing by your organization, and the culling of projects that either fail to meet targeted returns or do not fit strategically with corporate objectives. 3. Dissection. The decomposition of a large, complex project into discrete modules. These modules are larger than individual tasks, but considerably smaller than the overall project itself. They are of a scale and properties that can be made portable and placed as an integral body of work to be executed either internally or externally. Each module of an innovation can be characterized…

Design with women, not for them. Women should be involved at every stage of the discussion about investing with a gender lens, and in significant enough numbers that they are not merely tokens. Use a gender lens to expand rather than narrow opportunities. A gender analysis is not only a screen that narrows the scope of action; it can also uncover hidden opportunities or unexpected insights. Don’t be afraid of quotas. Quotas are a blunt instrument, but often a useful way to start a conversation. For example, by asking if there are at least three women on a company’s board of directors, one can begin a conversation about why there are not. Use a gender lens across the entire value chain. Opportunities for shifting value and empowering women can come…

Agriculture and agribusiness together are expected to become a US$1 trillion industry in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030, compared to $313 billion in 2010. We expect the strongest agricultural growth to occur in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt. Most African countries have natural comparative advantage in agriculture: suitable climates and long growing seasons, as well as habitats that are particularly well suited for the cultivation of large scale commercial crops such as sugar, tea, coffee and cocoa. These are some of the most dynamic crops with a global potential. For example, the consumption of sugar has grown at an average annual rate of 2.7% over the past 50 years, with consumption driven by rising incomes and populations in developing countries. Other crops that can tap buoyant global markets are likely to be:…

January 12, 5:00-6:00pm, Toronto Ideas Speaker Series @ Rotman Speaker: Timothy Caulfield, Professor, Faculty of Law & School of Public Health, U of Alberta & Author Topic: Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?: When Celebrity Culture & Science Clash (Viking, Jan. 13, 2015) January 13, 5:00-6:00pm, Toronto Psychology Experts Speaker Series @ Rotman Speaker: Brian Little, Distinguished Scholar – Department of Psychology, U of Cambridge & Author Topic: Me, Myself, & Us: The Science of Personality & the Art of Well-Being (HarperCollins, 2014) January 15, 5:15-6:15pm, Toronto Big Ideas Speaker Series @ Rotman Speaker: Charles Fishman, Investigative Journalist & Author Topic: A Curious Mind: The Key to a Good Life (Simon & Schuster, Apr. 14, 2015) January 21, 5:00-6:00pm, Toronto Martin Prosperity Institute @ Rotman “Shift Disturbers” Speaker Series Speaker:…

• Feedback is basically an exercise in remediation; correcting, learning and improving performance in an existing business. Feed-forward focuses on fashioning a future—a future that is unrelated to the past. • Feedback essentially involves performance appraisal and learning. Feed-forward focuses on managing uncertainty and an unknowable future. • Feedback continuously improves managerial decision making by advancing the understanding of cause-effect relationships. Feed-forward involves a leap of faith, committing to a belief in a cause-effect relationship in order to make strategic decisions and allocate resources. • Feedback-oriented systems engage in episodic reviews of performance at specified intervals of time (i.e. quartery). Feedforward-oriented systems trigger analysis whenever assumptions that have been made appear to be mistaken or new issues are spotted. • Feedback employs databases that collect historical data. Feed-forward works with…

1. Human-scale technology. Technology has evolved over the last ten years from enabling us to move online to enabling us to find purpose online. 2. The Millennial Effect. While many generations have sought out purpose, Millennials make it a greater priority than ever before, in everything from their consumption, to their work, to their communities. 3. Generation Disrupt. Generation X entered the workforce during the dot-com boom and were trained to think big and use technology. They are now the generation in charge and are putting those talents to practice working on big purpose. 4. Environmental, economic and political turmoil. The growing uncertainty in our society is moving people to find stability within themselves and to see a need to develop empathy for those affected by turmoil. 5. Longevity. As…