1. As stated in the case, The New York Times chose to deploy their innovation support group as a shared service across business units. What do you think this means? What are the advantages of choosing this approach? Are there any disadvantages?

2. Boston Scientific faced the challenge of balancing openness and sharing with security and the need for restricting access to information. How did the use of technology allow the company to achieve both objectives at the same time? What kind of cultural changes were required for this to be possible? Are these more important than the technology-related issues? Develop a few examples to justify your answer.

3. The video rental map developed by The New York Times and Netflix graphically displays movie popularity across neighborhoods from major U.S. cities. How would Netflix use this information to improve their business? Could other companies also take advantage of these data? How? Provide some examples.

Almost everybody has a theory about how to save the U.S. newspaper industry. The only consensus, it seems, is that it needs to change fundamentally or it could all but disappear. At The New York Times, tough times have elevated IT-enabled innovation to the top of the agenda. A research and development group, created in 2006, operates as a shared service across nearly two dozen newspapers, a radio station, and more than 50 Web sites. "Our role is to accelerate our entry onto new platforms by identifying opportunities, conceptualizing, and prototyping ideas," explains Michael Zimbalist, the company's vice president of R&D.