Strategy

How to mobilize your employees to navigate today's volatile environment.

Paragon Tool, a thriving machine tool company in an increasingly tough industry, has been pouring money into growth initiatives. These efforts have shrunk...

Digitization may be necessary for many businesses' continued success, but in our increasingly complex world, what companies really need to do is build...

Success brings profits, growth, and unbounded optimism. But it also has a way of blinding executives to the many organizational dangers that creep in at the same time. How much internal risk is hiding within your company? Use the risk exposure calculator to find out.

When your company is doing well, and money is pouring in, how do you know if it could be doing better? How can you tell which management practices are...

The CEO wants to increase collaboration and cut costs with an open-plan work space, but the knowledge workers say they need their walls, their doors, and their privacy.

As a recent article in the Wall Street Journal noted, a spate of companies in the high technology/high-end services space has rediscovered the joys of vertical integration — you all remember (or at least those of you of a certain age remember) the excited discovery of “M” form organizations and the power of giving product […]

What do the Burroughs Corporation, Crown Cork & Seal Co., Inc., and the Union Camp Corporation have in common? Although none of them enjoys a dominant market share, all three earn quite respectable returns on their equity, have healthy profit margins, and continue to maintain strong sales growth year after year. In this article, the […]

The first article of this series reported that, traditionally, European firms fire employees by expense categories-the most expensive first, followed...

The traditional growth strategies of organic expansion and acquisition require up-front investments in additional assets, with an uncertain payoff. So...

Three common pitfalls to avoid.

In a rapidly changing world managers need to increase their skills at diagnosing resistance to change and at choosing the appropriate methods for overcoming it.

Understand how you’re perceived, but focus on results.

Dial 1298 for Ambulance, a new 911-style emergency dispatch service in Mumbai and neighboring cities, is a for-profit company with an intriguing business...

One of the great facts of a quarter of a century of scholarship from MIT Professor Eric von Hippel and his co-authors is that a vast number of useful innovations come not from some scientist and engineer tinkering in a lab, but people who would best be described as users solving their own problems. Examples […]

The internet's fleeting interest isn't a stable source of advantage.

Anyone clinging to a bad idea needs a face-saving way to back out.

Last December the Toyota Motor Corporation officially forecast that it would sell 9.34 million cars in 2007--which could make it the world's largest automaker....

With a keen eye and a flair for romantic copy, John Peterman created a successful catalog company. As an entrepreneur, he was in his element. As top manager of a fast-growing enterprise, he was ultimately much less successful. What happened?

Two ways to show them just how much they matter.