By featuring Colin Kaepernick in its latest “Just Do It” campaign, Nike has made a deliberate decision to increase the appeal of its brand among younger, liberal, and ethnically diverse consumers while risking not only a portion of its existing customer base, but also its overall reputation.

Platform businesses, like Airbnb or Lyft, often talk about themselves as if they’re merely matchmakers. That’s a smart pitch — when a company is negotiating with investors. But any platform that wants to succeed will have to learn something Airbnb did: Matchmaking isn’t everything. Success also depends on identifying and mitigating risks for your buyers and sellers. The quantity and quality of goods or services bought and sold on your platform will be proportional to the amount of risk mitigated.

Large projects can succumb to a “cycle of doubt” — when support for the project wanes and delivery is imperiled in a self-perpetuating negative spiral. Here’s how to spot the warning signs of stakeholder doubts — before they derail your project.

At the heart of the sharing economy is reputation — the accumulated data around the business, the customer, or both. Yet reputations (and the data that makes or breaks them) can be manipulated relatively easily. How do businesses go about managing data so they can work with quality customers — and vice versa?

Reaching out to customers on social media platforms can be a double-edged sword, particularly when the subject is sports. As airlines KLM and Delta discovered, there is a fine line to be walked between supporting the home team and offending a multitude of potential customers. Social media expert Gerald Kane offers some lessons derived from the Twitter errors made during the 2014 World Cup.

Many companies have initiated sustainability and corporate social responsibility programs that represent good first steps toward improving the impact of their organizations on the environment and society. However, unless boards change, many of the initial sustainability efforts launched in corporations are likely to be temporary. For organizations to achieve sustainable effectiveness, they need a corporate board that is designed to lead in a sustainably effective way.

A new study released by the Altimeter Group helps companies identify, manage, mitigate and even prevent the risks that come with embracing social media.

Consumers were surprised in October 2009 by the first of a series of highly publicized recalls of Toyota vehicles in the United States. Citing a potential problem in which poorly placed or incorrect floor mats under the driver’s seat could lead to uncontrolled acceleration in a range of models, Toyota announced that it was recalling 3.8 million U.S. vehicles. The article discusses two root causes for Toyota’s quality problems.

When consumers encounter negative information about a company, its reputation for corporate social responsibility can help — but only sometimes.

When bad things happen, companies need the right strategy for talking their way out of a mess and avoiding a calamitous pummeling of their corporate image. Choosing the best response can spell the difference between a brand’s survival — even enhancement — and its irreversible tarnishing.

When it comes to knowledge sharing among R&D employees, professional reputations matter — but the chances of successfully garnering information from a colleague increase if the information is important.

Some managers are discovering that the process of purposeful play can inject much needed vitality into their organizations.

Corporate social responsibility has become a vital part of the business conversation. Research points to five principles that underscore how collaboration provides the best combination of social and strategic payoffs.

When companies act dishonestly, the psychological costs outweigh any short-term gains. Dishonesty ultimately decreases repeat business and increases worker turnover and employee theft. Degradation of a company’s reputation, adverse effects on employee values and increased surveillance of workers through expensive new systems eat at an organization’s health. The authors offer proof that honesty is still the best policy.

The contention that loyal customers are always more profitable is a gross simplification, according to the authors. They posit that such schemes do not fundamentally alter market structure and, instead, increase market expenditures without really creating any extra brand loyalty. Dowling and Uncles suggest ways to design an effective program.

How can a company successfully attack an established market leader? How can it find new ways to compete that everyone else has missed? By breaking the rules of the game in its industry to find new sources of innovation, writes Constantinos Markides, of the London Business School. In a study of thirty successful attackers, Markides identified five ways that companies successfully thought about and developed new game plans.

ALTHOUGH RETURNS POLICIES HAVE BEEN WIDELY USED FOR MANY YEARS, THEY CONTINUE TO BE A SOURCE OF CONTROVERSY. THE AUTHORS present a framework that explains when and how to adopt returns policies. They analyze the benefits and costs of accepting returns from distributors, and also compare returns policies to alternative ways of coordinating the distribution channel.