| The Life Cycle of Great Business Ideas by Bridget Finn With the right support and judgment, the corporate “heretics” of today could become tomorrow’s most effective leaders. |
| Purpose and Innovation by Nikos Mourkogiannis How to optimize corporate R&D efforts. |
| Strategic Due Diligence: A Foundation for M&A Success by Gerald Adolph, Simon Gillies, and Joerg Krings Understanding the rationale for a merger can help leaders uncover the potential value of a deal. |
| Results-Driven Marketing: A Guide to Growth and Profits by Johannes Bussmann, Gregor Harter, and Evan Hirsh The changing world requires a more rigorous approach to marketing. But that doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice creativity to analysis. |
| In Search of a Great Business Notion: Leading Innovations 2005 By Gregory J. Millman Of the 10 finalists in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Leading Innovations Competition, four made it to the winner’s circle. |
| The Power of Dumb Ideas by Randall Rothenberg The solution to marketing's current ills is not more creativity. It's less. |
| Skype’s Challenge By Gordon Cook The most attractive new form of Internet telephony is also the most threatening to corporate security — for now. |
| Beware Product Death Cycles by Art Kleiner The quality wars were allegedly won in the 1980s. Why, then, are we again overwhelmed by junk? |
| The Gasoline Industry’s Golden Age? by Harry Quarls and Robert Lukefahr Although the gasoline refining industry seems to have entered a golden age of higher margins, a recent Booz Allen Hamilton study suggests that optimism may be premature. |
| Capturing the Value of "Generation Tech" Employees by Marc Prensky The new breed of staff can be an enormous force for positive change and success in their companies — if managers listen to them. |
| U.S. Health Care’s Technology Cost Crisis By Charles Beever, Heather Burns, and Melanie Karbe Spiraling drug prices aren’t the only challenge facing the U.S. health-care system. Medical technology costs must be controlled, without sacrificing innovation. |
| A Better Way to Make Branch Banking Pay By Paul Kocourek, Aditya Bhasin, and Paul Hyde For today’s consumer banks, reinventing local branches as a hub to attract and retain customers is essential to profit and growth. |
| The New Leadership — Sober, Spirited, and Spiritual By Klaus-Peter Gushurst Leadership styles today combine the classic values of discipline and execution with the contemporary values of openness and natural expression. |
| How Wireless Carriers Will Make Mobile Data Pay By Helmut Meier, Roman Friedrich, Hanno Blankenstein, and Alexander Froment-Curtil Telecom carriers worldwide are poised to conquer the fast-growing mobile data market. But success requires a new business model. |
| What's Driving Prescription Drug Costs? By Heather Burns, Charles Beever, and Robert Hutchens Spending on prescription drugs is one of the biggest contributors to the unrelenting rise in the cost of health care for business. Critics of rising drug costs are quick to blame pharmaceutical companies’ advertising and aggressive sales practices for the problem. In fact, the real culprit is a third-party reimbursement system that undermines economic incentives to control costs. |
| How to Win the Information Battle — Lessons from a Modern War by David Newkirk and Stuart Crainer Business leaders can learn a lot from how the military manages the flow of real-time information. |
| Capturing the Value of Supply Chain Management By Peter Heckmann, Dermot Shorten, and Harriet Engel An exclusive survey shows CEO participation, smart use of technology, and bold change initiatives are key to successful Supply Chain Management. |
| Reinventing R&D Through Open Innovation By Henry Chesbrough Old-school R&D was strictly in-house. The new model for success requires collaboration with many innovators. |
| Treating the Troubled Corporation By Gary Neilson, David Kletter, and John Jones When everyone agrees but nothing changes, it’s a sign that organizational inertia is holding your business back. |
| Patient Safety: A Data-Driven Prescription By Heather Burns and Charles Beever Medical mistakes kill almost 100,000 Americans each year and cost the country as much as $29 billion annually. The right prescription could be a nationwide information system modeled on the FDA’s adverse drug reaction network. |
| The Internal Impact of External Branding By Victoria Pao and Steve Lawrence Companies in the throes of change need brand communication to affect their employees’ actions as much as it does their customers. |
| Flight for Survival: A New Operating Model for Airlines By Tom Hansson, Jürgen Ringbeck, and Markus Franke It is a turbulent time for major U.S. airlines, but this rough economic weather may be the challenge they need to alter the costly hub and spoke model that’s dragging them down. |
| A Five-Step Business Continuity Plan for CEOs By Gary Lynch and Karen Avery Straightforward planning makes business continuity less of a mystery and management burden, and more of a strategic priority and opportunity. |
| Will Prepaid Service Be the Next Wireless Frontier? By Raul L. Katz, Eric J. Riddleberger, Bharat V. Sarma, and Daniel H. Yang Profits and growth are slowing for the U.S. wireless industry, but new customers for prepaid services could be the key to a revival. |
| Relearning e-Learning: Three Principles for Success By Reggie Van Lee, Sumita Bhattacharya, and Tina Nelson Providers of click-and-drag curricula and virtual classrooms have stumbled, but the e-learning sector is poised for a comeback. |
| Digital Cinema: Promising Future, Dicey Debut By Michael S. Katz, John B. Frelinghuysen, and G. Krishan Bhatia Will digital cinema ever come to a theater near you? Filmmakers are talking up the technology, but studios, theater owners, and distributors still need to work out the financial hurdles. |
| How the Auto Industry Should Embrace CRM By Steven Wheeler Information technology is a costly enabler of customer relationship management (CRM). But CRM programs coupled with smart technology and strategy may soon mean the end of the road for mass marketing in the auto industry. |
| Security Concerns Prominent on CEO Agenda By Mark Gerencser and DeAnne Aguirre An exclusive survey shows CEOs are comfortable with their ability to handle threats and discontinuities, even though most anticipate adjustments to internal operations. |
| Capturing Value in the Enterprise Wireless Market By Carolina Junqueira, Sajai Krishnan, Gregor Harter, and Mark Page Tired of waiting for 3G Wireless Technology? Try 2.5G |
| Security, Strategy, and the Commercial Enterprise By Ralph Shrader and Mike McConnell In the post-911 world, companies are faced with the challenge of simultaneously promoting openness and protecting the firm. To achieve this goal, senior executives must understand one fundamental principle: Security and strategy are interdependent. |
| Home, Life, Auto, Click: Insurers Vie for Web Customers By Gil Irwin, Paul Lockmiller, and Larry Altman Isolated bare-bones sites have put insurers behind their competitors on the Web. To catch up and attract customers, insurers need to add features, secure screen space on high-traffic sites, and connect to offline channels. |
| Sweeping Webvan into the Dustbin of History By Nicholas Hodson and Tim Laseter "Common-goods" e-tailers are collapsing because they ignored an iron law of retailing: New formats win only by offering better prices, not better service. |
| The Future of Enterprise Software By Ray Lane The software industry should adopt a Web-based distribution system to accelerate innovation and serve customers better. |
| Online Music Gets a Hollywood Strategy By G. Krishan Bhatia, Richard C. Gay, and W. Ross Honey When music labels offer online subscription services, they risk cannibalizing current CD sales. To expand the entire music market, the labels should adopt the movie industry's "windowing" approach and create distinct value propositions for retail and digital channels. |
| Operations at the Core: What Amazon Offers Category Killers By Tim Laseter and Martha Turner Online's biggest retailer aims to serve the offline retailers it once threatened. The shift may be Amazon's best hope for prosperity. |
| In a Slump? Realign, Don't Re-Engineer By Jeffrey W. Bennett and Steven B. Hedlund When recession looms, companies typically turn to layoffs for short-term relief, but this rarely improves long-term performance. This time, shake up your organizational model to improve efficiency. |
| Governments Go Digital: Citizens Get a Direct Connection By Van Wallach E-Government can be as simple as renewing driver's licenses online, as complex as supporting the growth of high-tech industries. Around the globe, e-Government is changing how public agencies serve citizens. |
| Seize the Occasion: Usage-Based Segmentation for Internet Marketers By Horacio D. Rozanski, Gerry Bollman and Martin Lipman Marketers fail when they segment Web users on demographics alone. Our study of click-stream data reveals seven usage-based segments that correlate to users' online moods and goals. They can be a powerful tool in crafting effective Web strategies. |
| Run for the Money: The Battle for Online Aggregation Business By Larry Altman, Anju Simon, Ami Bhandari, and Zaki Hyatt-Shaw Banks, brokerages, and financial portals are racing to grab a piece of the booming market for aggregation services. Traditional institutions have the lead — but they can't afford complacency. |
| Energy Deregulation and the Web—Still Waiting for a Spark By Kyle Datta and Dan Gabaldon The Web can deliver the fruits of energy deregulation once consumers and suppliers adjust to new business rules and new technology. |
| WebHouse Rocked: Why Priceline's Groceries and Gasoline Venture Failed By Raman Muralidharan and Rhonda Germany The short self life of Priceline's WebHouse shows some products aren't suited to dynamic pricing. But it doesn't mean the model can't work. |
| The Last Mile to ... Somewhere? By Tim Laseter, Martha Turner, Anne Chung, and Pat Houston Is Urbanfetch's demise a harbinger of doom for other Web-based delivery services? Maybe not, depending on their willingness to change and investors' willingness to wait. |
| Winning on the Wireless Web By Christian Fongern, Pierre Peladeau, and Bernhard Kerres The m-Web is just taking off, but killer applications and transforming challenges are already emerging. |