Strategy

Like any corporate change, gender balance requires leadership.

Managers should make environmental investments for the same reason they make other investments: because they expect them to deliver positive returns or to reduce risks.

Many managers of service businesses are aware that the strategic management (by which I mean the total process of selecting and implementing a corporate strategy) of service businesses is different from that of manufacturing businesses. This article discusses how pure service businesses are different from product-oriented businesses and why they require different strategic thinking. A […]

Three cybersecurity investments to target.

The creators of the start-up AndFound, an online platform that connects angel investors with a curated selection of promising start-ups, have a towering...

Denial dogged my travels around the world these past weeks. At a World Economic Forum gathering in Dubai just before Dubai World’s debt problems made headlines, the head Sheikh touted Dubai’s superiority over the West for problems that Dubai had seemingly avoided. But the idle cranes and empty buildings I saw were monuments to denial […]

When business conditions change, the most successful companies are often the slowest to adapt. To avoid being left behind, executives must understand the true sources of corporate inertia.

For years "risk management" has been characterized chiefly by caution--preventing the business from doing things that would create exposure. Although...

Extreme uncertainty can tempt an organization to abandon budgeting. Consider your options instead.

We often assume things are more evenly distributed than they actually are - and this influences how we make decisions and manage risk.

Less than a decade after the frantic merger activity of the late 1960s, we are again in the midst of a major wave of corporate acquisitions. In contrast to the 1960s, when acquirers were mainly freewheeling conglomerates, the merger movement in the 1970s includes such long-established giants of U.S. industry as General Electric, Gulf Oil, […]

A long, often vague document won't do you any favors.

Position your company for global success.

A second generation of electronic commerce is emerging, one that will be shaped more by strategy than by experimentation. The battle for competitive advantage will be waged along three dimensions: reach, affiliation, and richness.

Three years ago, when a cave-in at the San Jose mine in Chile trapped 33 men under 700,000 metric tons of rock, experts estimated the probability of getting...

Companies should hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

Twenty years from now, the typical large business will have half the levels of management and one third the managers of its counterpart today. Work will...

The average cost of a data breach reached $4.35 million in 2022, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report in 2022.

How science fiction and other unconventional tools can fire the imagination and lead to breakthrough growth.

Buried in the news reports of the past two weeks, with hardly any fanfare or attention, was a report by the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that it lost $3.8 billion in fiscal year 2009. This was despite reducing expenses by $6 billion, eliminating 40,000 jobs, and reducing payments for retiree health benefits by $4 billion. […]