strategy+business is published by the global management consulting firm Booz & Company
 
strategy and business

Leading Ideas

Leading Ideas are reports on management trends, thinking, and practice. They are crafted to help senior decision makers see their work and their environment in new ways so they can act more effectively.

Archives by Year
2009 2008 2007 2006
December 18, 2007

Bridging the Marketing–Sales Chasm

A common, fundamental disconnect between getting the message out and closing the deal can lead to lost sales opportunities. But it doesn’t have to.
December 11, 2007

Why Your Next CEO Should Come from Inside

Harvard Business School professor Joseph L. Bower believes that only home-grown leaders have the sense of history and respect for culture to bring companies through major transitions. But not every insider is up to the job.
December 4, 2007

An Inside Job: Best Practices from Within

The best solutions to an organization’s problems may be found among its members.
November 27, 2007

Retail Banking’s Secret Weapon

Even as financial-services organizations are reemphasizing the local branch, they continue to overlook the performance impact of successful branch managers. A recent study reveals how banks can recruit, retain, and develop the branch managers who will be sales leaders.
November 19, 2007

Personal Ethics in the Corporate World

How to confront the moral tensions inherent in corporate life and come out with your ethics intact.
November 13, 2007

Keeping Marketing’s Promises

Ads that trumpet, “We’re unique!” are meaningless if the stores say, “No, we’re not.”
November 6, 2007

HP Engineers a Megacommunity

A multi-stakeholder effort to train engineers in Africa.
October 30, 2007

Why the United States Needs an Innovation Strategy

Author John Kao diagnoses America’s ills as a continuing loss of innovation capacity. But, he says, there is a way to reverse that trend.
October 23, 2007

How Green Is My Value Chain?

Transforming the value chain into a value loop can save natural resources and enhance a business’s long-term prospects.
October 16, 2007

Kevin George: Unilever’s Digital Media Strategy

Unilever’s U.S. vice president and general manager of its deodorants division discusses his company’s approach to launching new products using a variety of new media channels.
October 9, 2007

Evolution on the Global Stage

Their raw potential is clear, but Chinese companies will have to master the imperatives of “soft power” to reach the next level of international growth.
October 2, 2007

Saving Procurement from Itself

It’s time for chief procurement officers to stop relying solely on functional depth and start increasing functional breadth.
September 25, 2007

Fearlessness: The Last Organizational Change Strategy

Corporate courage has faltered in the wake of September 11, 2001, and the dot-com crash. Management expert Margaret Wheatley says that leaders must face reality — and maybe abandon e-mail.
September 18, 2007

Keeping Costs Cut

When it comes time to cut costs again, look past the traditional structural approaches to the company’s DNA.
September 11, 2007

The Situational Leader

Jack Stahl, a former chief executive at Coca-Cola and Revlon, discusses how great leaders balance their broad strategic missions with constant attention to organizational detail.
September 4, 2007

The Other Energy Crisis

As nuclear energy becomes a viable alternative to carbon-based fuels, security is a vital concern. Here’s how private markets might be able to help.
August 28, 2007

How Causes Can Animate Companies

Moving beyond the mission statement to find true motivation.
August 21, 2007

Are Internet Companies Overvalued (Again)?

What we can learn from eBay’s acquisition of Skype.
August 14, 2007

Executives without Borders

A novel proposition for saving driest Africa from total collapse.
August 7, 2007

Web 2.0: Profiting from the Threat

Fresh trends in consumer behavior driven by social media pose significant challenges to companies stuck in a traditional market-to-the-masses mind-set. Here’s how to thrive on the new Web.
July 31, 2007

Technology and Its Discontents

In this interview, historian David Edgerton maintains that we will not fully understand innovation unless we rethink the history of technology and its uses.
July 24, 2007

The Big Squeeze

Can traditional legacy airlines find a way out of the “no-man’s-land” between the established low-cost carriers and the premium players?
July 17, 2007

Covering the Cost of War

Robert Hormats, an international finance expert and the author of The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars, describes the problems with current U.S. fiscal policy, and how to adjust the country's spending for present and future global battles.
July 10, 2007

Network Effects: The Virtues of Telecom Regulation

A strong, competitive telecom market plays a crucial role in promoting a country's overall economic development -- but the government must first institute intelligent regulatory policies and practices.
July 3, 2007

Protecting the Company Jewels in an Unprotected Country

As governments wrestle over safeguarding intellectual property rights in China with no solution in sight, more and more companies are taking the problem into their own hands.
June 26, 2007

How the U.S. Government Can Cut Overhead

By using in-house agencies to provide services to other departments that need them, the federal government is saving tens of billions of dollars and learning what some in the private sector already know.
June 19, 2007

Big Impact in a Small Format

Large retailers are beginning to see the beauty of a tinier world.
June 12, 2007

The Defining Features of a Megacommunity

A primer for creating successful multipartite initiatives to solve critical problems that embraces the talents of government, business, and civil society.
June 5, 2007

Shift Worker Productivity Need Not Be an Oxymoron

Employees who work nontraditional schedules can create as much value as nine-to-fivers if executives can manage their expectations and special needs.
May 29, 2007

Solid Connections in a Liquid World

Prescriptions for how leadership and commercial relationships can excel in a fluid world.
May 22, 2007

When Teams Fail: The Virtual Distance Challenge

Critical as they are, corporate teams have been a notorious weak link in the effort to get work done on time and within budget. Here’s how to measure what’s going wrong.
May 15, 2007

Culture Change: Calling on Philosophers and Engineers

By blending the poetic with the quotidian, organizational strategies and cultures can find common ground.
May 8, 2007

The Importance of Being a Must-See Destination

Excellent travel and tourism policies, infrastructure, and services can translate into a roaring economy.
April 24, 2007

Is Your Sales Force Adaptable?

Here’s a five-step plan for routinely revamping a sales team.
April 17, 2007

Making the Most of Customers

The most innovative companies see consumers for who they really are.
April 10, 2007

Why Neuroscience Matters to Executives

The latest research on how the brain works unearths fresh insights into effective leadership.
April 3, 2007

What’s a Chaebol to Do?

The family-owned conglomerates made South Korea an industrial powerhouse, but can they transform themselves and their nation’s economy again now that the rules have changed?
March 27, 2007

Planners, Shoppers, Contenders, and Cavaliers: How Consumerism Is Changing the Health Insurance Industry

David Cordani, president of CIGNA HealthCare, describes how his company is responding as individuals take control of their medical benefits.
March 20, 2007

Brownfield Transformation: 25 Years On, Fulfilling the Promise of Lean Manufacturing

Under intensifying pressure to relocate manufacturing to areas of cheaper labor, the challenge facing many traditional manufacturing locations in the United States and Western Europe will be to transform or close.
March 13, 2007

The Case for Pricey Acquisitions

High-multiple acquisition targets can be the best bargains.
March 6, 2007

An Industry for All Seasons

What the apparel industry has gained in scale and scope over the past few decades it has lost in agility and speed. A new kind of product segmentation keeps painful trade-offs to a minimum.
February 27, 2007

The View from the Engine Room

Pharmaceutical executive Michel Lurquin on where manufacturing stands and where it’s going.
February 20, 2007

When Addressing Climate Change Is Good Business

Smart companies are working to reduce their role in global warming now to get ahead of regulators and gain a competitive edge.
February 13, 2007

The Dignitarian Way

Author and activist Robert Fuller argues for the end of abuse of rank — at work, in society, and around the world.
February 6, 2007

Getting a Return on Financial-Services Marketing

The financial industry lags others in making the connection between marketing investments and returns. Three analytical tools can help financial-services companies develop the capability to see more clearly.
January 30, 2007

Seven Counterintuitive Trends

Everyone expects turbulence, but few people are watching the most significant pressures that will confront industry this year.
January 23, 2007

Innovation Takes Perspiration

To foster invention, organizations need to build in a process for experimentation.
January 9, 2007

Lessons from the Shop Floor

Service companies can cut costs by borrowing techniques from their manufacturing brethren.
January 2, 2007

A 21st-Century Approach to Product Launches

Forget the old rules for bringing products to market. Procter & Gamble is helping to write a new playbook.


advertisement

advertisement