More from the Author

• Article | MIT Sloan Management Review (website)

  How to (Inadvertently) Sabotage Your Organization

  Stefan H. Thomke

  Some of the biggest threats to organizational performance can and do come from within. In an age when companies are told to be agile, to learn from experiments, and to be entrepreneurial, we are still vulnerable to actions — deliberate or unintentional — that stem from timeless human behavior and organizational processes that haven’t changed much in the last century. In 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Central Intelligence Agency’s predecessor put together a secret field manual for sabotaging enemy organizations. Lowering employee morale — organizational sabotage — was considered as effective at slowing down an organization’s output as pouring sand into the lubrication systems of its machines. Are today's managers inadvertenyly following the field manual's advice?

  Keywords: management practices; effective managers; self-awareness; CIA,; organizational behavior; Management Practices and Processes; Organizations; Behavior; Performance;

  Citation:

  Thomke, Stefan H. "How to (Inadvertently) Sabotage Your Organization." MIT Sloan Management Review (website) (September 4, 2019).  View Details

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• Article | MIT Sloan Management Review

  The Magic That Makes Customer Experiences Stick

  Stefan H. Thomke

  Why do some customer experiences have that magical "wow" factor, making them all destined for success, while others get few, if any, enthusiastic customer responses? How would we "design" a great customer experience? These are some of the questions that the article addresses.

  Keywords: customer experience; Emotion; innovation; experimentation; storytelling; Customer Satisfaction; Emotions; Design; Innovation and Invention;

  Citation:

  Thomke, Stefan H. "The Magic That Makes Customer Experiences Stick." MIT Sloan Management Review 61, no. 1 (Fall 2019).  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | February 2011 (Revised August 2019)

  Hindustan Unilever's 'Pureit' Water Purifier

  V. Kasturi Rangan and Mona Sinha

  The case asks students to formulate a strategy to respond to various competitive threats to its Pureit Water purifier, launched in 2008, targeted at millions of low-income Indian consumers who did not have access to safe drinking water. The case describes in detail the product development and launch process that required HUL, the $3.5 billion Indian subsidiary, to innovate on many different fronts. It details competitive actions since the launch to set the stage for what the company should do next.

  Keywords: Multinational Firms and Management; Marketing Strategy; Product Launch; Product Development; Social Enterprise; Competitive Strategy; India;

  Citation:

  Rangan, V. Kasturi, and Mona Sinha. "Hindustan Unilever's 'Pureit' Water Purifier." Harvard Business School Case 511-067, February 2011. (Revised August 2019.)  View Details

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