Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Opportunity, Profits, Growth, and Social Good

Rosabeth M. Kanter

Book | 2009

Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Opportunity, Profits, Growth, and Social Good

Abstract

Supercorp is based on a 3-year study involving more than 350 interviews in 20 countries to identify the leadership practices and operating methods of major companies seeking profitable growth through innovation that benefits society. For example, when the tsunami and earthquake struck India in 2006, IBM did not just write a check. It used its core competence-expertise in technology-and its skilled people to accomplish what government and relief agencies could not: an information system and supply chain that tracked and managed the flow of relief supplies. Its efforts were crucial in avoiding the all-too-familiar problem in disaster relief-chaos and mobs of desperate people. IBM's actions, as well as many others reported on by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, capture the emerging zeitgeist of business: the vanguard company simultaneously pursuing-and creating synergy between-opportunity, growth, profit, humanistic values and social good. Vanguard companies have a sense of mission enabling them to deliver what their customers want in a way that is significantly better than the competition. As a formula for the future it brings together the necessity of financial success shareholders demand and the social conscience demanded from the new generation moving up the corporate ranks.

Keywords: Profit; Leadership; Mission and Purpose; Opportunities; Welfare or Wellbeing;

Format: Print

Find at Harvard

Citation:

Kanter, Rosabeth M. Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Opportunity, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. New York: Crown Business, 2009.

Chinese appliance company Haier's 2016 acquisition of iconic GE Appliances ushered in strategic and structural changes to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship at the U.S. company, and to help it grow. Haier, which had a model designed to bring the company closer to users of its products, wanted GEA to adopt a version of the model that suited the U.S. market, U.S. consumers, and GEA's employees. This case describes GEA's efforts to do that as a member of the Haier Group. Teaching Note for HBS No. 319-044.

Chinese appliance company Haier's 2016 acquisition of iconic GE Appliances (GEA) ushered in strategic and structural changes to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship at the U.S. company and to help it grow. Haier, which had a model designed to bring the company closer to users of its products, wanted GEA to adopt a version of the model that suited the U.S. market, U.S. consumers, and GEA's employees. This case describes GEA's efforts to do that as a member of the Haier Group.

This teaching note assists in the classroom instruction of the HBS No. 318-089, “City Year at 30: Toward Long-Term Impact.” It offers to instructors a case summary and analysis, along with student preparation questions and a guide for classroom discussion of the case. The teaching note helps explain teaching objectives of the case, including lessons on how to manage the growth and evolution of not-for-profit social enterprises and how to pursue even bigger societal change.

Faculty & Research

Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Opportunity, Profits, Growth, and Social Good

Abstract

Citation:

About the Author

More from the Author