Read trivago case study provided down below! In 2016, trivago's field of business could be described as hotel-related online marketing and distribution. The firm provided a two-sided, online meta-search platform that connected travelers seeking hotel accommodations with more than 200 booking sites and 1.3 million hotels. With 1.4 billion visits and 487 million qualified referrals1 in 2016, trivago was the largest hotel meta-search platform in the world. What differentiated trivago's business model from that of online travel agents (OTAs) was its value proposition as an independent information provider. trivago did not sell hotel rooms. Instead, it organized large amounts of hotel-related information from multiple sources to offer the optimal basis for making a booking decision. Thus, trivago helped users convert their initial interest into a clear, specific booking intention, thereby fulfilling their personal needs. Describe trivago's corporate-level strategy and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the company's matrix organizational structure. Does the organizational design effectively support the needs of trivago's corporate-level strategy? How does the management innovation activity at trivago facilitate achievement of the company's corporate objectives? What recommendations would you make to improve either the design or implementation of the company's management innovation efforts? Using a balanced scorecard framework, outline the financial and strategic organizational controls used by trivago to drive management behavior and firm performance. Are the corporate criteria balanced? Are they yielding desired outcomes for the company? * Present your report as a twelve to thirteen-page Microsoft Word document formatted in APA format.

HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Managementis a university-level institution and ranks among the leading international business schools. The goal of the oldest business school in German-speaking Europe is to educate effective, responsible, and entrepreneurially-minded leaders. HHL stands out for its excellent teaching, its clear research focus, its effective knowledge transfer into practice as well as its outstanding student services. According to theFinancial Times, HHL ranks first in Germany and fifth globally for its entrepreneurship focus within the M.Sc. and EMBA programs. HHL is accredited by AACSB International.www.hhl.de On the night of December 16, 2016, Rolf Schrmgens, trivago's CEO and managing director, gazed over the New York City skyline. Only a few hours previously, he and his co-founders had rung the stock market opening bell at NASDAQ and, thereby, realized the largest IPO of a German company in NASDAQ history. A feeling of disbelief washed over him as he considered the incredible journey the team had taken. What had started only a decade earlier as a small, online-travel community had become the world's leading hotel meta-search engine. Each month, it linked 120 million travelers with 1.3 million hotels in 190 countries. In 2013, trivago had signed a USD 632 million deal in which travel giant Expedia acquired 61.6% of trivago's shares. Since then, the firm had continued to grow rapidly. Only two weeks prior to the IPO, trivago had released its figures for yet another record year. From 2015 to 2016, its revenue had again increased by more than 50% to EUR 754 million. Moreover, in 2016, the firm hired employee number 1,200 and the fast-paced recruitment continued. Now, in the silence of his hotel room, Rolf's mind turned to the question that had often preoccupied him in recent months: Would trivago be able to remain the entrepreneurial, driven company he had built and loved? He thought back to the days prior to trivago's emergence. He and his co-founders had worked for large corporations that were focused on high efficiency but functioned on the basis of bureaucratic processes and rigid routines. As such, these corporations were not open to change or innovation, and Rolf and his associates felt they were not desirable places to work. Consequently, the goal of not "becoming corporate" became a core premise for building trivago. The task had been easy when trivago was still a small start-up, but its rapid growth made preserving the firm's entrepreneurial capacity an increasingly challenging task. Business Model In 2016, trivago's field of business could be described as hotel-related online marketing and distribution. The firm provided a two-sided, online meta-search platform that connected travelers seeking hotel accommodations with more than 200 booking sites and 1.3 million hotels. With 1.4 billion visits and 487 million qualified referrals1in 2016, trivago was the largest hotel meta-search platform in the world. What differentiated trivago's business model from that of online travel agents (OTAs) was its value proposition as an independent information provider. trivago did not sell hotel rooms. Instead, it organized large amounts of hotel-related information from multiple sources to offer the optimal basis for making a booking decision. Thus, trivago helped users convert their initial interest into a clear, specific booking intention, thereby fulfilling their personal needs. Given the large number of hotels, even in smaller cities, finding the right place to stay could be time consuming and frustrating for travelers, who generally faced an overload of information. trivago supported accommodation seekers in this regard by providing real-time transparency regarding a large set of hotels, room availability, and prices (Exhibit 1). Moreover, it reduced the number of booking sites a user had to visit before booking. All of trivago's services were free for the traveler. OTAs faced the challenge of winning customers. A duopoly of industry giantsExpedia, Inc. (e.g.,Expedia.com, TripAdvisor, eLong, Hotels.com) and The Priceline Group (e.g., Priceline.com, Booking.com, Agoda, Kayak) with their various sub-sitesdominated online distribution. For example, 75% of US online hotel bookings went through Expedia, Inc. in 2014, while 60% of online bookings of European hotels in 2015 went through The Priceline Group. The OTAs competed for direct bookings with each other, offline booking providers, and the hotel brands themselves (Exhibit 2). OTAs typically worked with hotels using a commission-based model and they received commissions of 15-30% of the room price. As the same hotel could be booked through various travel agents and platforms, OTAs invested heavily in marketing in order to be the premier access point for room distribution (Exhibit 3). trivago added value to OTAs by offering them direct customer access, as well as a performance-based measurable marketing and distribution channel (Exhibit 4). trivago monetized its business using a cost-per-click (CPC) bidding-platform (Exhibit 5) and a flat fee for managing premium features on hotel profiles. This case was written by Sabina Pielken, Philipp Veit, and Professor Dr. Stephan Stubner, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. Sabina Pielken and Philipp Veit contributed equally to this project and should be considered co-first authors. The case is intended to be used as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either the effective or ineffective handling of a management situation. Information used in this case was compiled from public sources and through primary data collection. The latter was made possible through the generous co-operation of trivago N.V. 2018, HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. No part of this publication may be copied, stored, transmitted, reproduced, or distributed in any form or medium whatsoever without the permission of the copyright owner. Exhibit 1Traveler Value Added Exhibit 2Hotel Booking ChannelsMarket Shares (2015) Exhibit 3Online Advertisement SpendingThe Priceline Group Versus Expedia, Inc. (USDbn) Meta-Search Competition trivago faced head-on competition in its own competitive environment. By 2016, hotel meta-search had become the starting point for 30% to 50% of hotel-related online searches and the area was still growing rapidly. Therefore, firms invested heavily in building brand recognition to capture market share. trivago and its major meta-search competitors, Kayak and TripAdvisor, engaged in a constant and fierce fight to serve as the "front gate" for the customer. One key driver of competition in these two-sided platform markets was found in cross-site network effects. In other words, the value generated for travelers increased with the number of hotels listed on a platform, as they therefore had more freedom of choice. On the other hand, an active presence on trivago became more attractive for hotels and OTAs, as more travelers could be reached. This influenced the share of marketing budgets committed to trivago. Consequently, for trivago and its competitors, the number of users was highly significant, as higher numbers resulted in increasing returns to scale and enhanced profitability given the sites' highly scalable infrastructure. Exhibit 4ROAS Comparison, trivago versus Online Travel Agent (OTA) (example) A hotel in Berlin launched a marketing campaign on trivago that referred customers directly to the hotel's own booking engine. The following results were achieved, which can be compared to those of a traditional OTA-based business. trivago Online Travel Agent (OTA) Marketing budget Clicks EUR 1,000/month 1,891 Average OTA commission Average net room price 25% on net room price EUR 120/night Bookings 71 OTA commission EUR 30/night Room nights 133 Room nights 133 Channel revenue EUR 15,960 Channel revenue EUR 15,960 ROAS (EUR 15,960/EUR 1,000) =1596% ROAS EUR 15,960/(EUR 30*133) =400% Source: Case authors based on hebsdigital (2013). Exhibit 5Overview of MonetizationCPC Bidding Thus, trivago developed in a fast-pace, competitive environment where it wanted to play the leading role. Rolf stated: "In two, three, or four years, one company in the market will dominate the top of the funnel. We want to be that player." Starting Up: 2004-2009 The Initial Idea In early 2004, Rolf provided the initial spark to what would become one of Germany's biggest start-up success stories of the early twenty-first century. He called Peter Vinnemeier and Stephan Stubner. These close friends had studied together and worked together as co-founders of ciao.com, a review-based evaluation platform for products and services from mobile phones to hotels. The three met for breakfast at Tresznjewski, a restaurant in the cultural heart of Munich. At that breakfast, Rolf pitched his business idea to his friends: creating a "digital Wikipedia for travel" in the form of a web-based, focused community for sharing travel experiences. The website would be monetized through a CPM2payment model for affiliate marketing banners, which could be placed next to the focal content ranging from personal travel guides and tips to travelogues, evaluations, andpictures. The idea was met with immediate approval, as Peter and Stephan were both strong believers in the power of user-generated content, a belief based on their experiences at ciao.com. Rolf's proposal came during the golden era of online marketing. Advertisers were willing to pay a three-digit price per thousand advertising impressions (CPM) and many young firms were entering the online-marketing field in order to take advantage of the high returns. Driven by their entrepreneurial spirit, Rolf, Peter, and Stephan soon started working on the initial idea in a single-room office under a garage in Dsseldorf. Given their limited resources, they focused on bootstrapping their endeavor to build a great product that would enable them to at least pay the bills. In June 2005, trivago GmbH was founded and the first beta version of trivago went live in Germany. Team and Working Mode in the Early Years In early 2006, Stephan left trivago and Malte Siewert, also a former fellow student, joined the firm as a co-founder. Moreover, a first business-angel funding round was completed, which also provided trivago with valuable contacts and expertise. Later that year, Rolf as CMO, Peter as CTO, and Malte as CFO started looking for employees to support them in their respective functions. Employees were usually hired as interns and were offered a permanent position after successfully completing an internship. By early 2007, the first interns had been permanently hired. At this early stage, everyone was still doing a bit of everything and the employees supported one another wherever possible. Within a short period of time, the small trivago team managed to develop a passionate and dedicated working mode, which was highly result oriented and performance driven. All work pursued at trivago had to directly and measurably affect the business. The founders made important decisions together and although they did not always agree, each of them was committed to accepting the majority vote. In addition, decisions were based on analytics rather than on emotions. In order to pursue a project and allocate resources accordingly, the founders had to be convinced of sufficient "short-term" return potential. At the same time, early employees welcomed the positive relationships among each other and with the founders, who were always accessible and open to new ideas. The founders' unrestricted accessibility was underpinned by the fact that the door to their office was almost always open. Even though the founders expected their employees to work independently on their tasks and to equip themselves with the knowledge they needed, employees were encouraged to directly approach them whenever they needed support or assistance. The founders favored informal and constructive direct peer-to-peer-communication not only among themselves but also with and among their employees. As one of the first employees stated: What made trivago special from the first day was the feeling of family. The founders wanted us to reach our objectives, but they also wanted us to enjoy working for trivago and being part of the team. Finding Product-Market Fit Success did not come easily. By the end of 2006, advertisers' satisfaction with their advertisements' performance on trivago's site was decreasing, as the advertisements generated too few direct bookings. The devil was in the details. For example, advertised hotels were often unrelated to the content on trivago's site. As advertisers were unable to find a solution, trivago developed a software algorithm to match hotel advertisements with site content. Moreover, as the different advertisements often featured the same hotels at different prices, trivago created a database that bundled the advertisements together, which allowed it to display different prices for the same product without showing double entries. This marked the birth of trivago's price-comparison feature. In addition to hotel advertisements, trivago experimented with a variety of other products (e.g., flights, holiday packages) and tried to license its software algorithm to generate additional revenue. Moreover, the company began to expand internationally. It was present in the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Sweden, Poland, and Italy by the end of 2007. 2008 was a groundbreaking year for trivago. An additional funding round, which aimed at supporting trivago's growth and internationalization, was completed. The funds backing trivago contributed additional industry expertise and network contacts. Nevertheless, trivago's revenue was declining, and the founders felt a need to reconsider their ambitions and search for ways of securing the company's liquidity. Despite the availability of funding, the founders insisted that the business needed to quickly pay for itself. In other words, subsisting on venture capital was not an option. Therefore, during a "legendary management offsite" meeting in 2008, Malte, Peter, and Rolf pondered the company's future. Rolf described the situation: We had not yet understood that people were visiting our site for the price comparison, not because we were the "travel wiki" we aimed to be. That was when we realized we were doing too many things at the same time ... software licensing, flights ... We realized that if we continued like that, trivago would never amount to anything. On the basis of the firm's strengths, the founders decided to limit their business operations to meta-search and price comparisons for hotels only. To manifest this focus, they formulated trivago's mission statement: "to be the traveler's first and independent source of information for finding the ideal hotel at the lowest rate." This mission statement was to guide all future business decisions. Three months later, trivago relaunched the entire website. Notably, by the end of 2008, the company had extended its market presence to Russia, Greece, and the Netherlands, and it had 19 employees. At the time, more than 2.5 million visitors per month were searching 225,000 hotels around the globe. In conjunction with the mission statement's introduction, the founders intensively discussed brand-building opportunities. One important reason for doing so was to become more independent of Google and its dominant search-market position by increasing the ratio of branded traffic. The founders knew that trivago could only be travelers' primary and independent source of information if travelers considered trivago before any other source. For this purpose, trivago needed to be a recognized brand. At the time, TV spots were the medium of choice for reaching a broad audience. Convinced of the value of TV advertisement, trivago invested half of the capital it had previously collected from investors. The plan worked and trivago's advertising spots struck a chord with the German TV audience. The TV spots were a key driver of trivago's success, as reflected in the year-on-year revenue growth rate of nearly 400% from 2009 to 2010. Growing Without Growing Up?: 2010-2016 Growth Numbers and Office Locations In 2010, trivago took its TV presence international and aired TV campaigns in five European countries. That year, the meta-search engine could compare hotel prices from more than 100 websites. Every second person in Germany and Spain recognized the trivago brand. In fact, Spain became trivago's strongest market in 2011. Moreover, in 2011, trivago launched TV advertisements in the United States and Brazil. The company's internationalization, marketing activities, and increasing product complexity fueled the need for more manpower. With 46 employees in 2010, trivago had already more than doubled its workforce from 2008 and, in 2011, the company welcomed employee number 100. The growing number of employees forced trivago to frequently change office locations, as capacity limits were quickly reached. Hence, in December 2011, after having changed office locations twice since its foundation, trivago moved for the third time. Its new office was located at "Bennigsen-Platz" in Dsseldorf. In terms of interior design, trivago favored open-space offices. The meeting rooms were individually designed and furnished, and often named after employees' hometowns. Relaxation areas, table-soccer games, and a climbing wall were introduced for recreation purposes, while complimentary drinks and healthy snacks were made available in trivago's shared office kitchens. In addition, gym classes were provided free of charge. In 2012, 315 employees already called trivago their working home. External growth also remained strong and, by the end of 2012, trivago was present in 33 markets, 13 more than at the beginning of 2010. At that time, the period of significant organizational growth was topped off with Expedia, Inc. announcing that it would buy a 61.6% strategic stake in trivago, making the company the first German start-up worth more than one billion dollars. The Expedia deal did not affect trivago's appetite for growth. In the ensuing years, trivago expanded into 22 new countries across Europe, South America, Africa and Asia, adding 150 new partner websites and hotel chains to its price-comparison network. The increase in the number of hotels listed in its database from 700,000 in 2013 to more than 1 million in 2016 led to an increase in brokered hotel rooms to 1.4 billion. Even though trivago strongly insisted on a one-office policy, it opened up two innovation centers, one in Leipzig, Germany, and the other in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in 2013. However, management insisted that new offices should only be opened if regulatory or entrepreneurial (e.g., innovations apart from the core product) interests justified it. Moreover, the new offices were kept as small as possible, as the Dsseldorf office was to always be "home" to at least 90% of trivago's employees. By 2014, trivago had become the world's leading hotel meta-search company. The trivago growth engine was further fueled by the skyrocketing employee numbers, which rose from 571 in 2013 to more than 1,200 in 2016. The increasing number of employees soon started to challenge the "Benningsen-Platz" office's capacity. New office space was continuously added by spreading employees across multiple floors and, later, to surrounding buildings. During this time, however, the top management team was alarmed by the increasing physical distance among employees. The founders feared that it could lead to communication challenges,social detachment, and empire building, which could negatively affect day-to-day cooperation, trust building, and information exchange. Slower working and learning processes were the dreaded, potential consequences. Therefore, in early 2016, trivago announced that it had commissioned the construction of a trivago campus in Dsseldorf, where all employees would be reunited in 2018. Workforce Characteristics Members of trivago's workforce shared many characteristics from the beginning. For example, most of the employees were young, and they came from diverse cultural and educational backgrounds. The hiring of international talents was seen as particularly advantageous. As one employee outlined: We always looked to recruit talented people from around the world who are still in the early stages of their careers and reflective. We need pragmatic people with an agile mindset and a willingness to continue learning. The fact that these employees were willing to leave their home countries and move to Dsseldorf implied that they were adventurous, willing to take risks, and able to adapt to a new environment. Moreover, as many new employees were new to Dsseldorf without social contacts outside the firm, employees often quickly developed friendships, which contributed to trivago's team spirit. These features were all greatly appreciated in the entrepreneurial environment of trivago. In contrast, more experienced employees who had been socialized in corporations were often seen as difficult to integrate, as they were frequently already shaped by firm cultures that promoted rigidity, less openness to new ideas, and strong career aspirations. Despite trivago's established practice of hiring young professionals who did not have extensive experience with other companies and the fact that the company generally wanted to promote internally, hiring some experienced personnel was unavoidable from a skills perspective. Certain external hires were seen as vital, as trivago's size required increasingly advanced management and leadership capabilities. Moreover, these professionals were expected to be able to bring in new managerial impulses for professionalizing the organization without making trivago "corporate" in its working style. In 2015, the top management team was expanded beyond the group of founders. Andrej Lehnert and Johannes Thomas were promoted from within trivago to become managing directors. Both had been with trivago since 2011. Moreover, Axel Hefer left the German online furniture retailer Home 24 AG, where he had served as COO and CFO, to join trivago in 2016. Like the three founders, Axel had studied at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. Initially, Axel led the Country Development department, but he was soon promoted to the top management team. By the end of 2016, the top management team's competencies were distributed as follows: Axel was CFO and the managing director for finance, legal and international; Andrej was the managing director for marketing and business intelligence; Johannes was the managing director for advertiser relations, business operations, and strategy; Malte was the managing director for trivago's marketplace-related business; Peter was the managing director for technology; and Rolf was CEO, and responsible for products, people, and culture. Organizational Structure In 2010, departments and teams began to evolve on an as-needed basis. While departments were expected to function with a high degree of freedom, an increasingly specialized range of tasks required more cross-team coordination. Compared to the early years in which each employee covered a broad range of issues, job profiles became particularized and, therefore, changed significantly. Hierarchies and clearer responsibilities began to emerge within each department and team. In terms of leadership structure, the chain at trivago was basically as follows: managing directors were responsible for department leads, department leads were responsible for their team leads, and team leads were responsible for their team members. Moreover, a basic matrix structure evolved in which country-development teams were supported by functional teams active in, for example, marketing, technology, finance, and HR. However, the founders were wary of formal management and control structures, which they felt could limit subsidiarity and compromise decision speed across the organization. They feared that increasingly specialized tasks could lead to silo-based thinking, and that evolving hierarchical structures could give rise to status asymmetries in which individuals perceived discrimination in the supply of information and the degree of decision autonomy depending on their hierarchical status. To counter the emergence of such asymmetries, the founders tried to nurture an "absence of ego" mentality. They believed that such a mentality was vital for the success of a knowledge-driven business in which the accessibility and flow of information and data formed the basis of competitiveness. One step towards an "absence of ego" mentality was the founders' official announcement thattrivago would remain a company without job titles. As one employee explained: At trivago, it is important to respect others' knowledge and inspiration, not their titles. Decision processes should not be slowed down because an individual feels a need to get approval from various levels. Instead, the individual should be empowered to make his or her own decisions and work independently. The official statement from top management seemed necessary, as employees had started to create titles on their own. One employee described this period: "It was a bit weird ... We had interns calling themselves 'Senior Vice-President,' while their team leads did not have titles themselves." The employees' reaction to the abolishment of titles took the form of a series of questions: "If we do not have titles, how do I emphasize the expectations linked to my position?", "How am I supposed to lead?" and "How am I supposed to be led?" To strike a balance between the title-free environment and the clear role expectations, a self-developed categorization pattern called "Responsibility Scope" was introduced in the early 2010s. This scope was expressed in a three-stage system: developers, executors, and supporters. Supporters were expected to be temporary, topic-specific project leaders whose work was guided by daily or multiple meetings during the week. Executors were to take on managerial responsibility for their own divisions, and their work focused on goals and their attainment. trivago considered the role expectations for supporters and executors as similarly to be found in other companies, while it viewed the developer role as more unique. Developers were expected to act as entrepreneurs within the company, resulting in small and fast "firms-within-the-firm" with the aim of keeping trivago adaptable. Rolf explained: Developers are expected to be independent players inside the organization who think of the company as their own. They are granted entrepreneurial freedom, they are motivated, and they are led by inspiration and only sporadic meetings. Developers need to be self-reflective to such a point that they abandon their position if it is no longer meaningful to the company. Company Values and Purpose After surpassing 150 employees in 2012, trivago's management started to sense growing anonymity. It became increasingly difficult to remember everyone's name and personal communication became more complex. This development alarmed the founders, as it could dilute the highly cherished start-up spirit. In 2013, therefore, the company hired a dedicated employee to take over the function of "Strategy & Organization," which had formerly been handled by Rolf. The department's purpose was to ensure that trivago would not be driven by bureaucracy or politics. The newcomer's first task was to create a formalized description of the values inherent in trivago's culture. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with trivago employees, especially those hired in the early days. Furthermore, employees were asked to participate in a company survey and describe what trivago meant to them. The survey and interview results were aggregated and then discussed in an open meeting with interested developers. This enabled the identification and formulation of six core values: trust, authenticity, entrepreneurial passion, power of proof, unwavering focus, and fanatic learning (Exhibit 6). Employees who had been with trivago since the early days did not view these values as something new. Instead, the core-value list was a written representation of what had been always felt and lived at trivago. To stress the overall importance of trivago's values and foster their internalization, they were prominently communicated both within and outside the firm. In addition to displaying the values on office walls and on the website, the values were discussed with all employees holding leadership responsibility, as trivago believed that living the values was only possible if these employees served as role models in this regard. In 2016, trivago introduced its purpose statement: "empower to get more out of life." This message was designed to emphasize the feeling that each trivago employee and the company as a whole should strive for and to clarify the company's purpose. When reflecting on the purpose statement, Rolf stated: We put a lot of thought into the development of that statement. In essence, 'empower' means creating a basis from which an individual can be successfula basis from which he or she can get more out of life. "To get more out of life" represents personal learning and growth. It is an individualistic, non-competitive approach that focuses on continuous personal development. This purpose also represents the founding team's motivation for establishing trivago freedom and personal development. Management Style and Planning Instead of resting on their laurels after the Expedia deal in March 2013, the founders were still driven to continually improve trivago as a product and as a company. Every employee would soon know their mantra: "never great, never wise, never done." Expedia had contractually agreed to a hands-off approach, which was an important requirement for the founders. Therefore, trivago continued to operate independently and its founders remained in place. Exhibit 6trivago's Core Values trivago continued to finance its expansion solely through its own profits, such that it operated on a breakeven basis. As in the early trivago days, decisions regarding investments in new initiatives and growth were based on an analytical trial-and-error principle: initiatives needed to be analytically sound and the potential for short-term revenue had to be visible. Initiatives were then run through a test phase to obtain proof-of-concept data. Therefore, decisions were data-driven whenever possible. If initiatives did not work out as planned, their initiators could either make justifiable improvements or stop the projects. Employees, regardless of their position, were expected to constantly challenge whether a task or activity made sense. Whenever certain tasks or activities were proven to add no value, employees were expected to either adapt or terminate them. In this context, failure was always seen as an opportunity to learn. As one developer stated: "You need to be willing to pay for knowledge." In 2015, to emphasize trivago's "absence of ego" mentality and to decrease the perceived distance between employees and the managing team, the managing directors moved out of their shared office and spread their work stations across the open-space office areas, where they could mingle with their respective teams. The former management office room, named "Leipzig" in honor of the place where the founders first met, was then used for weekly management meetings. In 2015, trivago also introduced a yearly Management Workshop and a Strategy Summit. During the Management Workshop, managing directors developed the company's overall strategic priorities for the upcoming year. Those priorities were then presented and discussed in a subsequent Strategy Summit attended by the developers. Generally, these strategic priorities were expected to support trivago's mission as formulated in 2008 and to be compatible with trivago's core values. Moreover, based on a critical review of the previous year, they included ideas for adjustments necessary to achieve the mission. Finally, strategic priorities were to be viewed as guiding lights rather than fixed goals. Eventually, the tasks related to these strategic priorities were not delegated from topdown. Instead, the teams developed their own missions and strategic priorities based on the overall strategic guiding lights, trivago's mission statement, and trivago's values. As Rolf stated: "At trivago, we emphasize the need to convince, not command, people. Therefore, we do not enforce strategic initiatives from the top down." This need to convince instead of command was also reflected in how meetings were conducted. Employees were granted freedom to only attend meetings if they individually perceived them as value-adding. Systems and Processes Recruiting.The need to increase the number of employees amplified the recruitment efforts required from each department. In order to let each department concentrate on its core tasks, a Human Resources (HR) department was established in early 2010. HR began to introduce a centralized recruiting process that same year. Ideas for systematizing job advertisements and the application process were developed by HR in 2011, and a system was introduced in the following year. In 2014, a joint "Talents and Organization" (TO) team, the result of the consolidation of HR and the "Strategy & Organization" department, was established to focus recruiting, developing, and retaining talent, as well as the best ways of sharing the trivago identity in a rapid-growth environment. The department was also charged with anticipating needed changes in trivago's organizational design and introducing value-conforming measures. The aim was to ensure that the growing organization would still function and that it would not "become corporate." In the year of its formation, TO introduced a structured, week-long, onboarding process. On their first day, new hires ran through an extensive process aimed at ensuring that everyone understood the trivago values and why they were vital for the organization. The new hires also familiarized themselves with the challenges of different departments through practical case studies designed to help them understand the various roles and responsibilities. One of the managing directors took the time to welcome each new group of employees and to personally explain what trivago represented. TO also introduced a structured offboarding process aiming at understanding why employees left the company and where improvements could be made. In 2014, more than 260 people were hired, while the number of applications exceeded 45,000. While trivago had no rigid recruitment criteria, cultural fit with the company was key, especially as the need for experienced hires with specialized functional expertise increased with continuing professionalization. As one developer stated: If you are someone who needs clear directionfor this problem I go to "A" and for another problem I go to "B," you will not be happy here. Here at trivago, you always need to find new approaches and figure out who can help you yourself. Also, we do not have a hierarchy of communication you can approach anyone who might be of help. Therefore, the right traits, which were labelled as "trivago skills" (e.g., intrinsic motivation, positivity, trust in others) and "universal skills" (e.g., taking ownership, welcoming of change, determination) were viewed as crucial for trivago employees. Performance Evaluations, Rewards, and Employee Development.Given the continued growth in employee numbers and departments, trivago introduced additional measures to reduce the risk of status asymmetries and strengthen the entrepreneurial core. In 2012, HR introduced a customized 360-degree feedback tool. Initially an Excel document, the tool developed over the years into a professional in-house peer-evaluation software that was constantly adapted. As of 2014, the "trivago 360" reflected the six trivago values and the universal skills, which served as the basis for evaluations of employees' individual job performance (Exhibit 7). Twice each year, every employee had to be provided with feedback by the person to whom he or she reported.The content of that feedback was based on input from the employee's direct peers.