The world’s rapidly growing megacities represent significant opportunities for companies seeking new markets and justify a unique approach to an important source of potential growth. In this article, Jennifer Lacks Kaplan and Mark Pocharski explain what it takes for companies to build winning strategies to take advantage of this growth opportunity.

The Monitor Institute, the social change division of the Monitor Group, today released a case study examining how KaBOOM! innovated its approach to scale by putting its model online for others to copy. KaBOOM! is a national non-profit organization dedicated to saving play through engaging communities; creating dialogue; and providing tools, training and resources to build playgrounds across the United States.

The case study, entitled Breaking New Ground: Using the Internet to Scale: A Case History of KaBOOM!, commissioned by KaBOOM!, looks at the organization's challenges and lessons learned while pioneering an online strategy to scale their program model. Instead of replicating a traditional non-profit approach to organizational growth, KaBOOM! is using the Internet to disseminate its model, empowering local communities to self-organize to build their own playgrounds using free resources and guidelines on the KaBOOM! website. While the idea of giving away a non-profit model itself isn't new, KaBOOM! is one of the first non-profit organizations to take this approach online.

Monitor Institute researchers Diana Scearce, Gabriel Kasper and Heather McLeod Grant write in Stanford Social Innovation Review that "working wikily," a leadership style characterized by greater openness, transparency, decentralized decision making, and collective action, can lead to greater social impact for nonprofits.

In this feature article "Shotgun Blues" from The Conference Board Review, Monitor's Bansi Nagji and Brian Quinn explain how corporate leaders can set a course to innovate in their organizations and industries to unlock value and create new opportunities for growth.

On Wall Street, bankers continue to speculate about a government role in their future compensation. Although policymakers shelved the issue during the health care showdown in the United States and the Greek debt crisis in Europe, that suspension is likely to be temporary. Seldom have the heads of the world’s leading economies demonstrated such unanimity of opinion on a controversy. President Obama expressed disgust over bankers’ bonuses. In London, City Minister Paul Myners, called “grotesque” the news that 5,000 London bankers would receive bonuses of 1 million pounds.  French President Nicolas Sarkozy received widespread applause at Davos when he stated that pay packages that “bear no relationship to merit” are “morally indefensible.” The scrutiny and torrent of criticism is bound to reemerge, as New York officials reported that Wall Street bonuses grew 17 percent in 2009 to surpass $20 billion. Rarely has any economic issue been better suited to populist political rhetoric.

In this webcast presentation, experts from Monitor share specific insights gained from 25 years of experience helping executives lead major transformations in their organizations. Experts explain the critical enablers of successful transformation and the barriers that every leader must anticipate and confront. And they will explain why speed is essential to execute bold new ideas that create lasting impact.

A business environment in which carbon emissions carry new costs creates a different competitive context. To succeed in this new environment, companies must reevaluate their core strategic choices, rethink their critical sources of competitive advantage and invest in new capabilities.

In this Harvard Business Review cover article, Robert H. Miles, a senior adviser to Monitor, outlines six organizational problems which can slow corporate change, and explains how to attack them sequentially.

Companies need to look beyond their walls to compete in these tumultuous times. Open innovation can help businesses more reliably discover new ideas, but they need discipline to pursue the right opportunities with the right approaches. Read more and see other articles in our series.

In this video Eamonn Kelly outlines four key discontinuities driving global change and identifies how leaders can take action to gain competitive advantage. It is part of a special series explaining how leaders can seize opportunities during tumultuous times.