Team building is one of the largest and fastest growing segments of management consulting but, 
as recent NPR story illustrates, the consequences are not always functional teams (click <Here> for the NPR audio). Trainers may promise that a workshop or two will transform a low performing team into a winner. However, the many team building “fails” suggest that it is often more difficult than that. A class discussion may focus on the factors that make teamwork difficult to achieve. Undergraduates often assume that employees naturally cooperate since they are “all on the same team.” It is quite important to help them understand what real organizations are like and why teamwork may be rare and, accordingly, a source of competitive advantage. Bob Sutton’s discussion of dysfunctional competition within Sears might help bring this to light. Of course, there are many other resources here for teamwork and strategy – while they won’t transform every dysfunctional team, they will help to highlight the issues. Of course, this discussion isn’t complete without an engineer’s description of team building:
Contributed by Russ Coff
Monster, a father and son business (Noel and Kevin Lee) came up with the technology but was severely out negotiated by ts more experienced partner. A great cautionary tale for the study of alliances. I use the 
This is especially revealing given self reports of 4 to 5 minutes per resume. Online profiles get about the same amount of scrutiny with almost 20% of the time spent on the picture — of course this has the potential to introduce significant bias. The other few seconds is spent scanning the current and prior work experience, dates, and education. They do report that well-organized resumes, with clear headers marking the critical information, are rated significantly better. So you teach a strategy class, why should you care? First of all, this is an insight into how imperfect strategic factor markets actually are. In this context, you might ask, how can a firm gain an advantage in hiring talent. A key reason to use this example is that your students will tend to care about the job market and this will instantly get their attention. You could couple this with an exercise where teams of students rank a stack of resumes to identify candidates who might have critical capabilities for a company you are doing a case on (could work with any case where human capital is critical).
The one-atom thick sheets of carbon may one day replace silicon wafers and revolutionize computing and electronics. For example, recent findings suggest that 
Gourmet adventures
Dogbert writes a new management text and defines bureaucracy as when “a hundred people think ‘A’ but compromise on ‘B’.” One wonders how firms can create any value at all. This might spur a strategy process discussion of how satisficing results in suboptimal outcomes.
Carpenter Strategy Toolbox 