Organizations & People
The Critical Few: Components of a Truly Effective Culture
Forget the monolithic change management programs and focus on the elements of your culture that drive performance.
Issue 74, Spring 2014
Cover story
In this issue
America’s Real Manufacturing Advantage, Align with Your Star Employees, Rita Gunther McGrath on the End of Competitive Advantage, and More
- Operations & Manufacturing
America’s Real Manufacturing Advantage
A new wave of software innovation is about to transform industry — and give the United States the chance for a lasting edge. America’s Manufacturing Advantage—In Pictures
A slideshow view of the rebounding industrial sector in the United States.
Organizations & PeopleAlign with Your Star Employees
When you connect the development of your top talent with the needs of your organization, everyone wins—and your best people stay. To assess how well you’re retaining your top talent, take our interactive quiz.Are You Doing Enough to Retain Your Top Talent?
Leaders who excel at retaining star employees help their most valuable contributors understand their capabilities and career goals, and improve their performance. Are you that kind of leader? Take our quiz to find out.- Marketing, Media & Sales
A Step-by-Step Guide to Winning the Customer
Companies that understand the stages of consumer purchasing decisions have an outsized influence in their outcome. - Organizations & People
How to Break the Cycle of CIO Turnover
Companies benefit from strong IT leaders. The trick is developing and retaining them. - Thought Leaders
Rita Gunther McGrath on the End of Competitive Advantage
The Columbia Business School professor says the era of sustainable competitive advantage is being replaced by an age of flexibility. Are you ready?
Leading Ideas
Strategy & LeadershipCut Your Company’s Fat but Keep Some Slack
Why excess capacity leads to greater efficiency.
Young ProfsThought LeadersAngela Duckworth’s Gritty View of Success
A psychologist and new MacArthur Fellow says you need employees with stamina and tenacity above all else.
InnovationScale Your Innovation Initiatives
Five ways to boost the impact of new endeavors without adding bureaucracy or cost.
Essays
Corporate Social Responsibility’s New Role in the Middle East
An urgent need for job growth is spurring an innovative trend in CSR and high-minded commercial initiatives.
Four Profit-Boosting Strategies for Wealth Managers
How to help close the gap between assets under management and revenues.
Books in Brief
Working Together Apart
Scott Berkun’s chronicle of his stint as a team leader at WordPress.com offers insights for companies with distributed structures.
The Big Promise of Open Data
Nancy Scola reviews Joel Gurin’s Open Data Now, the first book to detail the rich business opportunities in open data and the challenges in capturing them.
The Rise and Fall of Western Innovation
A review of Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change, by Edmund Phelps.
The Lion versus the Fox
David Hurst reviews Professor Lawrence Freedman’s magisterial new history of strategy, which underscores the discipline’s central elements and limits.
The Trouble with Sunspots
A personality-driven history of economic forecasting by business historian Walter Friedman points up the limitations of the prediction business, then and now.
Recent Research
The Vicious Cycle of CEO Pet Projects
Incoming leaders follow a predictable pattern of disinvesting from their predecessor’s flops and eventually investing just as unwisely.
Trending articles
- 1. Beyond Bias Neuroscience research shows how new organizational practices can shift ingrained thinking.
- 2.10 principles of organization designThese fundamental guidelines, drawn from experience, can help you reshape your organization to fit your business strategy. See also “A guide to organization design.”
- 3.The fortune at the bottom of the pyramidLow-income markets present a prodigious opportunity for the world’s wealthiest companies — to seek their fortunes and bring prosperity to the aspiring poor.
- 4.Shall I Compare Thee to an Andy Grove?In a world of princes and apprentices, the performance of Shakespeare’s plays can release your inner king or queen.
- 5.How fearless organizations succeedAmy Edmondson describes three steps leaders can take to create psychological safety, the prerequisite for greater innovation and growth.
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