Strategies

How to Win Frugal Consumers and Influence Them to Buy

Consumer shopping habits are changing. But the right sign, well placed, can bring sales even in a recession, says retail guru Paco Underhill.

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The $300 Million "Continue" Button

Everyone gets exasperated by bad websites. But we think of those things as tiny annoyances, and assume that users will eventually get what they need. Not true: Tiny mistakes can cost businesses dearly.

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How to fire right

Unlike many of his management consulting peers, Tom Peters deems across-the-board staff cuts "dumb" and multiple rounds of layoffs counterproductive.

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Turning Around a Struggling Business

From increasing your selling efforts to minimizing layoffs, business experts offer 11 practical tips to counteract economic uncertainty.

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Best Buy seeks to expand its reach online

26 JAN 2009 from Finance and Commerce | Read the full story»

Electronics retailer hopes ‘API’ technology will boost sales and branding... Convinced that customers’ online-shopping behavior is now deeply colored by social-media experiences, the Richfield retailer has opened up proprietary product catalog data collected through its online store. Now, Web-application developers can access product images, pricing and customer reviews, incorporating them in websites and blogs to provide a richer experience for their audience. For instance, a photography blog that compares a Cannon digital camera with a Nikon camera can now borrow and use Best Buy’s product shots, ratings and customer reviews.

Hat tip: Jackie Huba

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Firms Turn on Charm to Collect Bills

23 JAN 2009 from Smart Money's Small Business Site | Read the full story»

Small businesses, hit by a wave of customers postponing payments because of the recession, are struggling to find ways to come up with enough cash to stay alive.

Hat tip: MyBusiness Magazine

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Costco Uses "Robo-Calls" to Build Brand Loyalty... Really.

How thorough is your database? How are you using it not to sell to your customer, but to help them? It's a strong way to build an iron-clad marketing strategy on a shoestring budget.

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Green-Light Specials, Now at Wal-Mart

24 JAN 2009 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Mr. Scott, hungry for ways to protect and transform his company, began to see environmental sustainability as a way to achieve two goals: improve Wal-Mart’s bottom line and its reputation. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Ben McConnell

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Your flying car idea

Opening your company to a participatory, social media system for potential customers, vendors and fans before you have a product to release is an insurance policy against your most dreaded outcome: obscurity.

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social media is the new marketing job

The core team works on "blog resolution" – trawling the web for dissatisfied customers, then attempting to contact them to make amends... Others on Dell’s social media team manage the company’s 80 Twitter accounts and 20 Facebook pages. Still others manage IdeaStorm, Dell’s forum for customer feedback.

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How GE Drives Change

Attention was paid to the eternal leadership challenge of managing the short term and the long term simultaneously.

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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Talks About Competition, Advance Planning, and How to be Successful During Hard Times

We've admired Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, so it was exciting to sit down and have a conversation with him about corporate culture, advance planning and whether he considers Amazon the competition.

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Can Free Content Boost Your Sales? Yes, It Can

22 JAN 2009 from Mashable | Read the full story»

Despite the entertainment industry’s constant cries about how bad they’re doing, it works. As we wrote yesterday, Monty Python’s DVDs climbed to No. 2 on Amazon’s Movies & TV bestsellers list, with increased sales of 23,000 percent.

Hat tip: boingboing

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Internet Giants Return to Basics

Both Microsoft and Google are essentially one-trick ponies that have used their prodigious cash flows to pursue side projects. The economic climate is reining in these efforts. (Subscription required)

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5 Tips for More Productivity in 2009

We must be willing to question conventional wisdom when it comes to the burdensome, bureaucratic stuff that we do "just because." As leaders of small businesses and growing teams, we must challenge ourselves to boost not only our productivity but the general productivity of our teams.

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Can Ford's New Social Media Strategy Help It Become the Leading Social Automotive Brand?

"It's important to monitor what's being said about you. If you're not watching the online conversations, you could be missing a lot," said Monty.

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Plotting a Better Course for Your Company

To do that, business leaders must revisit the fundamentals such as the company's purpose and operating principles.

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Twitter's risk of ubiquity

The microblogging service runs the risk of becoming too prevalent without a clear path to revenue. There is a risk in becoming ubiquitous before you make money.

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paying for reviews

People are starting to rely heavily on customer reviews before they make important purchase decisions.Companies know this and are looking for ways to exploit the opportunity to their advantage.

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Why Social Media Is Worth Small Business Owners' Time

Columnist Steve McKee explains why experimenting with free Web tools and using them to promote your company or forge connections makes sense.

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The Art of Execution

In the movie The Candidate, the Robert Redford character mouths "Now what?" after he gets elected. Most entrepreneurs ask the same question after they get funded. The answer is, "Now you have to deliver." And the next question is, "How do we deliver?" This is where the art of execution comes in, and in times like this, you either execute or you die—no pun intended.

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McComeback

"It wasn't too long ago that McDonald's, vilified as making people fat, was written off as irrelevant," writes Andrew Martin in the New York Times (1/11/09). "Now, six years into a rebound spawned by more appealing food and a less aggressive expansion, McDonald's seems to have won over some of its most hardened skeptics."

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The Satyam Truth: Outsourcers Don't Work For You

The Saytam meltdown provides a critical moment for us to re-assess our outsourcing needs and understand the truth of their limitations. Done right, outsourcing can enhance focus, flexibility, agility, quality and efficiency. Done wrong, outsourcing puts the enterprise at risk.

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Facebook, Meet the Locals

U.S. social networking sites are eager to expand overseas, but they'll have to contend with homegrown competitors in key markets.

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Managing Through a Crisis: The New Rules

In times of turmoil, opportunities abound. All managers must do is keep their companies afloat, their eyes peeled for openings, and their bearings—as the old rules wash away.

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Depressed? Summon Your “Animal Spirits”

So here’s my message for 2009: Don’t let risky times dull your appetite for taking risk. More then ever, companies and their leaders have to offer a positive alternative to a demoralizing status quo. So why wouldn’t you move now to shake up your market and transform your company, especially when rivals are too timid to respond? All it takes is a good idea—and some animal spirits.

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How companies make good decisions

Do strong decision-making processes lead to good decisions? McKinsey asked executives from around the world about their companies' decision-making processes: who was involved, what drove the decisions, how deep the analysis was, how unfettered the discussions, and how and where politics were involved. We also asked respondents to describe financial and operational outcomes of the decisions. The results highlight the hard business benefits—such as increased profits and rapid implementation—of several decision-making disciplines.

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Samsung: Rethinking the Printer Business

05 JAN 2009 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Samsung's bet that eye-catching design, and a partnership with Apple, would boost its share of the printer market is paying off.

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A User's Guide to 21st Century Economics

Scary new year? Think again. 2009 may look bleak - but this year, those with the purpose, courage, and vision to get seriously radical will have the opportunity to reconceive and reinvent the global economy. This year, leaders of all kinds face a single, critical challenge: building 21st century organizations that yield new sources of advantage, powered by new rules of management. Here's why - and how to get started.

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The Difference Between Building a Business and Building a Brand

05 JAN 2009 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

Are you building a business? Or are you building a brand? Silly questions, you might be thinking. Naturally, you are trying to do both. But that might be a mistake. What's good for the business is not necessarily good for the brand. And vice versa. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Diane Hessan

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Key of IKEA

Bill Agee of IKEA says innovation begins with a culture of courtesy and a sense of community. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.

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We Don't Need No Stinkin' Web Sites

Even in the Digital Age, many small businesses may not need to invest the time and money it takes to launch and maintain a full-blown site.

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Recession survival strategies

Right now, you need to be thinking about how you will emerge and thrive from the recession ahead of your competition. But how? To point you in the right direction, here's Max McKeown's advice on dealing with the financial crisis.

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What Can The Book Business Learn From iTunes?

This week the media is a-squabble over the death rattles coming from the book publishing industry. Yes, it's in dire condition. But a new business model might bring readers back. Call it the Free Lunch model.

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Eating green saves workplace green

Having a salad instead of a cheeseburger for lunch is a choice some companies want their employees to make. To promote healthy living and save money, companies are subsidizing the costs of more nutritious meals.

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McDonald's Supersized Retirement Plan

The fast-food giant is persuading more African American workers to enroll in 401(k)s. Can McDonald's keep talent by helping families save?

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An Idea That Even Scrooge Would Like: DailyLit's Sponsorship Model

24 DEC 2008 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

Book serialization has come into vogue again, 170 years after Charles Dickens popularized it with "The Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist." Funny enough, it's the 19th-century author who is championing the form in 2008: His "A Christmas Carol" is one of more than 1,000 titles available through DailyLit, a digital serial book publisher that shares books with nearly 150,000 subscribers in short, customized installments via email and RSS feed. And now it's opening its virtual pages to advertisers. (Subscription required)

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Dell Elevates Insiders in Strategy Change

The replacement of two top executives could suggest that founder and CEO Michael Dell is rethinking his plan to revive the company with outside talent. (Subscription required)

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Will Social Media Tools Be Monetized In 2009?

It seems as if businesses are finding ways to use social media (usually without paying anything)... But regardless of whether some businesses are using social media tools, when do the social media tools themselves start to generate money?

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'Silo' Thinking Let Us Down

Actions that made sense in isolation guaranteed a financial crisis when added together.

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Tesco: 'Wal-Mart's Worst Nightmare'

As Tesco takes on the U.S. market, American companies like Wal-Mart are taking notice—and adopting some of the British megaretailer's strategies.

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Making 'free-mium' work amid the advertising death spiral

Ad revenue will get even harder to come by in 2009. Web 2.0 companies need to consider alternative revenue streams.

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2009 Will Be the Year for Small Businesses to . . .

29 DEC 2008 from Duct Tape Marketing | Read the full story»

"Run/grow/compete like mad because the big bad companies that have been slowing you down are in such disarray." Seth Godin

Hat tip: Dan Pink

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J & A Shoe is in step with clients

29 DEC 2008 from the Los Angeles Times | Read the full story»

The Gardena company makes all its items in the U.S. Close ties with customers have been key to its survival.

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Coca-Cola's John Brock: Sustainability Is No Longer 'Niche'

John Brock has come a long way since his first jobs working in his uncle's dime store and, later, at a paper mill in Moss Point, Miss. Today, he is chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, the world's largest marketer, producer and distributor of Coca-Cola products. Brock has more than 25 years of experience in the beverage sales industry. In 2003, he was named CEO of Interbrew, headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. In 2006, he joined Coca-Cola Enterprises where he was appointed chairman in April 2008. Brock talked with Knowledge@Wharton about Coke's philosophy on selling soda in schools, helping the environment and recruiting teens to become devoted customers.

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Fear Kills Businesses, Dead

Recessions naturally inject fear and panic, which is only heightened by every discussion of market losses, layoffs, bailouts, and somber predictions. We’re only human after all; of course everything affects us personally and emotionally. Fear is not a catalyst for productivity however.

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Ford Picks Up PR Points for Declining Auto Bailout

22 DEC 2008 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

Experts say move plays well with recession-weary consumers. (Subscription required)

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The Curious Marriage of Socially Conscious Brands and Their Larger Corporate Counterparts

Harvard Business School professors James E. Austin and Herman B. Leonard are co-authoring a paper titled "Can the Virtuous Mouse and the Wealthy Elephant Live Happily Ever After?" that examines the acquisitions of smaller socially conscious brands by their larger corporate counterparts. The goal of the report is to study why these mergers occur and how to manage them most effectively so that both companies benefit. The study explores these issues from the perspective of three recent real world examples: Tom’s of Maine acquired by Colgate, Stonyfield Farm Yogurt purchased by Danone, and Ben & Jerry’s bought by Unilever. Though delicate in nature, when these partnerships are approached correctly, they can drive both profits and positive change.

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Game On: Theory Y meets Generation Y

WINTER 2008 from the Business Strategy Review | Read the full story»

Think of the most innovative high-tech companies. What comes to mind? Most people start with Google Inc. and then perhaps Apple Inc. After that, it's less obvious. Microsoft Corp. is usually overlooked in these discussions. Conventional wisdom views the software colossus as the innovator of the previous century and now the master of carefully orchestrated software development projects such as Windows and Microsoft Office rather than as a developer of creative and innovative working practices. Julian Birkinshaw and Stuart Crainer look at a Microsoft team that is changing the way it works by incorporating the interests of its young employees to increase creativity and productivity. (PDF)

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Anything But Generic

Private label brands have steadily grown in volume, sophistication--and respectability. In tough times, more and more consumers pick up grocery store brands to save money. As long as the quality and packaging speak to them, that is.

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Should You Lower Prices in a Downturn?

Learn the best way to handle pricing and promotions in an economic downturn from Knowledge@Wharton, the Wharton School’s online business journal, in this conversation with Wharton marketing professor Eric Bradlow. (Audio)

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Hertz Tosses Some Car Keys Into the Ring, Battling Zipcar

A new model for rental-car companies in an economic environment that has hurt businesss. (Subscription required)

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Japanese Companies Still Invest in Themselves

Many Japanese companies are cutting back less than their rivals, investing instead for the eventual end of the downturn. (Subscription required)

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No Return for HarperStudio at Borders

Borders has agreed to accept books from HarperStudio on a nonreturnable basis, departing from a decades-old publishing tradition. (Subscription required)

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Meetup's Dead Simple User Testing

On my way out after a meeting, Scott pulled me into a room by the elevators, where a couple of product people were watching a live webcam feed of someone using Meetup. Said user was having a hard time figuring out a new feature, and the product people, riveted, were taking notes. It was the simplest setup I'd ever seen for user feedback, and I asked Scott how often they did that sort of thing. "Every day" came the reply. Every day. That's not user testing as a task to be checked off on the way to launch. That's learning from users as a way of life.

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Winning in Turbulence: What Does the Downturn Mean for My Business and How Will I Get Through It?

In this series of blog posts from downturn strategist Darrell Rigby and fellow partners at Bain & Company, we will walk you through the tools and strategies you need to survive the current downturn and to improve your competitive position. To go deeper and complement these posts, we will provide early chapters--available free for download here--of Rigby's forthcoming book with Harvard Business Press, Winning in Turbulence. We understand the need for companies to get started immediately. And while we realize that survival is every company's top priority, we also know that downturns present strategic opportunities for well-positioned companies along with the inevitable risks. Our goal is to help you navigate both.

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Top Twelve Ways to Grow Your Business in a Down Market

7. Do something remarkable. The only reason that people will talk about you is because you do something worth talking about. Invest the time in teaching your people to build remarkable into everything they do.

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Make Giving Part of Your Business Strategy

Use charitable giving to increase sales, lift employee morale—and help out your favorite cause.

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Big Blue's big plan

02 DEC 2008 from Fortune | Read the full story»

IBM is drooling over the coming infrastructure boom.

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Shalom, Kiosk Christmas Shoppers

Amid a grim holiday season, mall shoppers are being besieged by a determined crop of salespeople: young Israelis who man mobile carts and have a no-holds-barred selling style. (Subscription required)

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The Power of the Poor and the Purpose of Profit

"Empowerment" has long been the buzzword in both management and development circles. All too often it refers to what the powerful have to give to the powerless. But at its core, the practice is about recognizing, respecting, and inviting to the table the power that resides in every person, however poor, abject, or status-deprived.

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Cost-Conscious Companies Turn to Open-Source Software

As the recession puts pressure on tech spending, many companies are turning to open-source software to handle more IT tasks.

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A Modest Proposal For The Auto Industry: Stop Building Cars

If the car companies want to be more like Apple, they need to stop building any actual cars.

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Corner Office: Macy's Terry Lundgren

Retailers are facing grim predictions for meager Christmas-sales growth. So Kai Ryssdal spoke with Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren about how one of the biggest retail chains is dealing with the downturn.

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Implementing sustainable change

Benjamin Franklin wrote that the definition of madness was doing the same thing over and over again and expecting change to happen. But this is exactly how many change programmes - in organisations both large and small - can be described.

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The Strategic Obligation of Sustainability

Sustainability issues directly affect the competetive dynamics in an industry, and business leaders who aren't paying attention will find themselves competing on different terms under which they aren't prepared to win.

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Advantage of Corporate Bankruptcy Is Dwindling

More companies that file for bankruptcy protection are shutting down because they cannot obtain enough financing to operate while they reorganize. (Subscription required)

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Google, P&G Swap Workers

Google and Procter & Gamble are swapping employees as P&G seeks to learn how to market products online and Google tries to persuade advertisers to shift away from TV. (Subscription required)

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GM: The Case Against a Bailout

As the ship sinks, "creative destruction" is too simplistic. Only a "creative response" can rebuild a U.S. auto industry.

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Find Your ONE THING Before Launching In Social Media

To really make social media work for your company, your message cannot be ABOUT your company. Unless you're one of the very few companies that already has a natural community of raving fans (apple, nike etc) people don't care about your company enough per se to get involved with you online in a meaningful way. Instead, you have to find the ONE THING in your company that is truly defining and interesting, and build your social media program around that.

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The ways stores entice shoppers to buy

Marketing expert Martin Lindstrom says stores have ways to get shopppers to spend. Kai Ryssdal gets him to reveal some.

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Hug Your Customers

If you’ve grown complacent with your current customers, often a symptom of an up market, now is the time to go back to this precious resource and beg forgiveness. Or, at least, set up some processes to capture their hearts and minds before they drift away.

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Cutting Jobs Instead of Pay

Why employers facing a recession will eliminate jobs and slash benefits before they cut wages.

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Cashing In on Small Company Ideas

An interesting new concept is cropping up these days, according to the Wall Street Journal. In a nutshell: large consumer product companies are looking for the inventive ideas many small business owners and entrepreneurs have—in order to gain an edge.

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Not a Bad Time for Small Businesses to Raise Prices

Some small-business experts are arguing that in a slowing economy, this may be the perfect time to increase marketing budgets — and even prices. (Subscription required)

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IBM Reshapes Its Sales Meetings

Lee Green, head designer at IBM, is applying the same design method for creating PCs to guide the tech company's sales pitches.

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The Collaboration Game

Although an elusive goal, cooperative relationships between retailers and suppliers can be wildly profitable.

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How Barack Obama Became CEO of the USA—and What It Means for Aspiring CEOs Everywhere

Think of the best-performing and most-beloved companies and brands, from Southwest Airlines and Apple Computer to Zappos and the Geek Squad. What do they all have in common? They are outliers, innovators, weirdos—they don’t look, talk, act, compete the same way as everyone else in their industry does. They are as "exotic" in their field as Barack Obama is in his—and they, like Obama, are winning votes that the competition isn’t.

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road rage at work

There's an interesting new study that suggests male commuters who suffer road rage brought on by tough commutes, take that stress and frustration into the workplace. Corporations will be impacted by lost productivity and damage to working relationships. What could companies do that are located in cities with tough commutes?

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Obama's Victory:Three Lessons for Business

The Illinois senator built his decisive win on three leadership principles: a clear vision, clean execution, and friends in high places.

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Crisis Advice from GE's Immelt: Stay Committed to Growth

Keep your company safe but keep building the future. GE CEO Jeff Immelt imparted that advice to his top 175 managers at a recent gathering. I couldn't agree more. With financial markets in turmoil and the economy slumping, the natural tendency is to retreat into the bunker, but that's the antithesis of leadership.

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Economy Requires "Back to Basics" Cash Flow Approach

Staying on top of what your business needs to stay afloat financially will go a long way in helping you make your business a success. And it will help you sleep better at night too.

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McDonald's Coffee Strategy Is Tough Sell

McDonald's faces fresh challenges to its coffee expansion as the economy keeps more consumers home and franchisees balk at the costs for remodeling. (Subscription required)

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Why Traditional Recession Tactics Are Doomed to Fail This Time

How should boardrooms respond to the macro crisis? Is it just a case of recession-as-usual: budget-paring, personnel-slashing, and portfolio-trimming? Not a chance. The tactics of recession-as-usual are neither necessary nor sufficient for firms to weather the global economic superstorm—because it's no ordinary squall, but a once-in-a-lifetime gale ripping up the very foundations of the global economic order.

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Pop!Tech Launches Digital Hub

The annual media and technology conference in Maine starts an online social network for attendees and others to collaborate year-round.

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CraftNetwork: Making fair-trade sustainable

16 OCT 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

The idea is that you make fair-trade sustainable the same way you make any business sustainable: by winning in the marketplace.

Hat tip: PSFK

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Dollars and Sense—Worthwhile Moves for Tough Times

4. Invite your people to help figure out the future. There’s something about tough times that brings out the rugged individualist in most CEOs: "It’s up to me to get us out of this mess." But with economic problems this complex, and the stakes this high, the "lone genius" model of leadership doesn’t cut it. Don’t think of yourself as a problem-solver, think of yourself as a solution-finder. And assume that you’ll find some of the best ideas in the most unexpected places. There is "hidden genius" all around you, from the quiet genius of your colleagues to the collective genius that surrounds your organization. Seek it out, invite it in, put it to work.

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Tea and Empathy with Daniel Goleman

Meet the author of Emotional Intelligence, the man responsible for associating corporate leadership with steadfast personal maturity. Now this best-selling writer says that companies are entering an era of corporate transparency, when every product and service they offer will be scrutinized as never before.

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Looking for Cost Cuts in Lots of New Places

16 OCT 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

When it comes to cutting costs during tough economic times, many small businesses start out with a disadvantage: They don't have all that many costs to cut. Even during good times, small businesses tend to keep expenses pretty tight. The result is that small companies often have to get creative in their efforts to find waste in places where little exists. Here's a look at four companies that have cut their overhead expenses without sacrificing inventory, daily necessities or their employees... (Subscription required)

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Tracking the Elusive Consumer

Consumer choice modeling can help companies improve their market share by providing them with a better understanding of their consumers' preferences.

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Building Your Strategic Network

There are certain core strategies that, if focused on continually, can make your business almost impervious to changes in the economy.

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'Contribution Revolution' More Important Than You May Think

20 OCT 2008 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

Yes, much of this amounts to a free, de facto workforce, as Cook notes, but it's not resource-free to implement, and we should consider that more consumers today are taking real pride in the fruits of their content creation. Right now, the fine-print disclaimers on most brand websites -- even on many of the brands Cook cites -- are outright hostile to the concept of a consumers sharing ideas or volunteering product improvements. At minimum, we need to meet the consumer halfway. (Subscription required)

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Popularity or Income? Two Sites Fight It Out

Twitter and Yammer, two microblogging services, are testing the merits of two different start-up business models. (Subscription required)

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Design Thinking

Until it discovered "design thinking," Saturn thought that making its showrooms feel like living rooms was a good idea... now, Saturn’s showrooms are less like home and more like an "interactive museum," featuring "hands-on exhibits, self-guided tours and touch-screen computers."

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Southwest's hedge on fuel backfires

At first, it looked like Southwest Airlines hedged its bets well when it prepaid for fuel because prices were going up. Unfortunately, now oil prices are falling. Janet Babin has more on Southwest and airlines in general.

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Recession roundup

Yesterday's item on Jeremy Grantham's hemispheric explanation for the credit crisis got tons of hits. So to feed a hungry public, let me serve a few other chewy tidbits I've collected from the economic meltdown:

Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban offers some keen thoughts about how to get rich — especially in times of economic uncertainty.

In Wired, Clive Thompson makes a good case that the next wave of high-tech innovation will come from Old Hands, not Young Turks. Why? The real action now is atoms, not bits — complicated, capital-intensive, politically sensitive areas such environmental technology. In those realms, experience rules. (Addendum: This idea softly echoes the work of economist David Galenson, whom I profiled in Wired a couple of years ago.

Culture prediction: In our newly cash-strapped world, frugality will become the new ostentation. I mean it. Guess who owns the domain www.ostentatiousfrugality.com?

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Thriftiness on Special in Aisle 5

Several chain stores have concluded that providing information about how to manage a household on a budget can spur loyalty. (Subscription required)

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At JetBlue, Growing Up Is Hard to Do

Ever since the snowstorm debacle last year, JetBlue has been on a reinvention drive amid the biggest crisis airlines have faced in years. (Subscription required)

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How to Avoid Business Failure

Paul Carroll, co-author of Billion-Dollar Lessons, talks about the fallacy that strategy doesn't matter, the importance of naysayers, and the need to gauge competitive threats carefully.

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welcome to the new normality- 10 potential manifestations

[P]eople are going to question every single purchase and ask themselves if it's a necessity or something they can live without. If it's a necessity, they are going to work out if they can find an alternative at a cheaper price. Expect budgets to constrict, savings to go up and private label/low cost alternatives to be the vogue. Here are 10 things that I expect to rise...

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How to Seize the Storm

With financial uncertainties proliferating, how can you guide your company past the crisis and keep up with competitors all the while? Aggressiveness should be your response--not sticking your head in the sand and hoping the trouble will all go away. (Audio)

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Retail as Theater

The store is a stage. And don't forget audience participation.

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Craig Mundie's 'Primordial Soup': Steering Microsoft through the Next Big Technological Disruption

When Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates stepped down from daily involvement with the company this past summer, the company's chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie, was one of two Microsoft executives tapped to fulfill Gates's role as technological visionary. In an interview with Knowledge@ Wharton, Mundie talks about his vision of the future of computing, the challenges and opportunities of disruptive technologies and how he intends to keep Microsoft relevant in the post-Gates era.

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Bracing for U.S. Corporate Budget Cuts

CEOs are preparing for the worst—and everything, including deep payroll reductions, is on the table.

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7 Steps to Stop Finger-Pointing in a Crisis

After any crisis -- like the economic crisis we now experiencing -- there is a lot of finger-pointing. Any tips on how to help my team avoid finger-pointing when we face a crisis?

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Why Companies Should Pave the Way to Praise

Your frustrations feed a lot of families. In America alone, there are about 2.7 million call-center employees who are standing by ready to soothe you. That's roughly the population of Kansas. But what if you've got joy in your heart? Good luck finding someone who cares. In essence, there's a state full of people who exist to handle our complaints and, at best, a canoe full of people to handle our compliments. Why do companies make it so hard for us to say thank you?

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Is Management the Enemy of Creativity?

There's no question that it would be better for a business to learn to work with the creative impulses of its own people. But what would that entail in a large organization? Is the whole notion of managerial discipline antithetical to creativity?

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Sesame Street Simple: A.G. Lafley's Leadership Philosophy

As I compare A.G.'s approach to what is happening in financial meltdown, it strikes me that the crisis (and the apparent cure too) is brought to us by people who -- at times -- did such complicated things that no one, including themselves, understood what they were doing and what the implications might be. I am sure that some very smart economists or finance people believe that they understand all this, and I guess we have to trust some of them now to get us out of this despite their history of greed and arrogance. But this crisis has further convinced me that I prefer Sesame Street Simple to Wall Street Convoluted every time.

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How CEOs Should Work With Customers

Customers are the source of all cash flow. Organic growth depends on developing relationships with new and existing customers.

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Political Tensions Are Creating New Rules for International Business

Emerging economies still promise opportunity but also political risk for international businesses. Growing income disparity in rapidly developing economies, geopolitical tensions and anti-U.S. attitudes are among the broader political trends that could shape global business in the future, according to Wharton faculty. "Increasingly, politics will intervene and political management skills will be valuable for multinationals," says Wharton management professor Witold Henisz.

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Senge and sensibility

Peter Senge, once described as the "strategist of the century", explains to Stuart Crainer the steps we need to take towards creating a more sustainable world and why this change is imperative.

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Making customer service a tweet

Even though they are relatively small in number, users of the Twitter online service are a powerful group. And companies looking to make quick contact with customers have taken notice.

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Microsoft’s Real Problem: Facebook is the New Outlook, and Other ways that Redmond is not Listening to Generation Y

What has really thrown Microsoft off, is that other companies have shown those consumers both most willing to try new technologies and most willing to open their wallets for technology, the consumers of Generation-Y, that they do not need Microsoft. Companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google, have changed the way that young consumers consume, and therefore purchase, technology. And that is a very dangerous position for a software company to be in, especially one that is not known for being nimble on its feet.

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How to Chrome Your Industry

Google's new browser is going to help the company discover how to redefine advantage.

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Have an important problem to solve

3. Talk to your competitors. The x-ray of DNA that inspired Watson was taken by Rosalind Franklin. She was trying to figure out the 3-D structure of DNA, too, but she didn't want to work with Watson and Crick. "She didn't like Francis because he was loud." Plus, Franklin wanted to discover the structure herself. Watson and Crick reached out to their competitors; "you tell them what you think, and they'll tell you what they think and pretty soon, you can get very close to the answer."

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A million sheep, a million stories

We've written about product life story labels on goods ranging from bananas to jewelry, and a few weeks ago a new example emerged from the world of apparel: New Zealand merino wool clothing company Icebreaker now allows customers to trace each garment they buy back to the sheep stations where the merino fibre was grown.

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Timberland's Jeff Swartz on Corporate Responsibility

No one preaches corporate responsibility quite like Timberland's Jeff Swartz. But with his company's revenue soft and the stock price tumbling, is his own job sustainable?

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Miles of Aisles for Milk? Not Here

After years of building bigger grocery stores, retailers are experimenting with radically smaller ones. (Subscription required)

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What CNN Can Teach Entrepreneurs About Social Media

Rick Sanchez may have changed the way news is delivered with his reporting on Hurricane Gustav. One thing for sure that he did was create a bond with the Twitter community by inviting them to help him cover this most important story in near real time. This no doubt has brought new viewers, and strengthened relationships with current viewers, to CNN. That’s the impact social media can have on our businesses if we learn how to fully value what customers mean to us – beyond the bottom line. Welcome to the age of the social customer.

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Place Your Bids: JetBlue Auctioning Tickets on eBay

JetBlue opens an eBay store, and bidding on tickets is strong. It could be a new way of doing business.

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Revenue Potential For Google's Chrome, Other Browsers

Tech guru Mario Armstrong talks with Renee Montagne about Google's new "Chrome" Web browser. They also discuss how Google might benefit from entering the browser business and taking on Microsoft. (Audio)

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Stalking the Ideal Work Week

It’s worth taking a few minutes to step back and ask yourself whether you’d benefit from a work week where every day was not just a carbon copy of every other.

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Can New Bosses Fix Alcatel-Lucent?

Master telecom manager Verwaayen, abetted by French business savant Camus, already has a five-point plan to turn the equipment maker around.

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NOLA businesses weather evacuation

Even though Hurricane Gustav wasn't as severe as expected, it still left billions in property damage behind it. But a bigger cost to business might turn out to be living with frequent mass evacuations.

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IBM's Management by the Numbers

By building mathematical models of its own employees, IBM aims to improve productivity and automate management

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Wal-Mart goes purple with Marketside

26 AUG 2008 from the Financial Times | Read the full story»

The design of Wal-Mart’s new small format Marketside stores, which will open in the Phoenix, Arizona area in coming weeks, marks a dramatic break with the branding of the rest of Wal-Mart’s more than 3,400 low-cost US stores. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: PSFK

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'Where to' might not be as important as 'how loud'

No direction is perfect, so we play with a strategy for a while, but you know what, flitting is more fun, so we go back to that. The alternative is to do your best to pick a direction (hopefully an unusual one, hopefully one you have resources to complete, hopefully one you can do authentically and hopefully one you enjoy) and then do it. Loudly. With patience and passion. (Loud doesn't mean boorish. Loud means proud and joyful and with confidence.)

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Cut Costs like Avon -- Not Home Depot

"Fire yourself, hire yourself. That advice completely changed me."

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The Knowledge Handoff

How corporations are scrambling to tap the expertise of baby boomers before they retire.

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Graco Builds On Social Media Relationships

20 AUG 2008 from MediaPost | Read the full story»

Some brands attempt to engage the blogosphere by targeting the top 30 blogs in their industry. By contrast, Graco has pursued a more long-term, community-building approach in an effort to establish more meaningful relationships with the tech-savvy mothers of today.

Hat tip: the Blog Council

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Prepaid MasterCard for teens adds a social twist

The facecard is a prepaid and reloadable card that can be used by young people 13 and over anywhere MasterCard is accepted. Parents can electronically add allowances or emergency funds to the card and have them available within 15 minutes; cardholders can access them in stores and ATMs worldwide... Perhaps even more interesting than its financial workings, however, is that facecard functions as a sort of social network, allowing users to create profiles, set their preferences and find each other online. Facecard holders can use the site to send funds to each other's facecards to repay loans or give gifts, for example. Through a "prewards" program with partner companies, meanwhile, the facecard also lets advertisers reward cardholders for their loyalty in a highly targeted fashion by periodically adding funds to their card for use at particular stores.

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Monitoring social media for big business

Navigating the blogosphere can feel a bit like traveling through the Wild West. You might find your brand mentioned in lots of fascinating (and sometimes bizarre) conversations. Effective monitoring provides insight into customer pain points that may not be on your company’s radar. It can also identify emerging opportunities that haven’t shown up in research studies. But what do you focus on? And how do you quickly distinguish random chatter from critical insights? Before you invest in a monitoring service, consider these tips to map out your strategy.

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Web Worker 101: Working with Subcontractors

If you’ve reached the point of having more work than you can handle, there are several ways to handle the overflow. One of the easiest, in some ways, is to hire subcontractors to do part of the work for you. But before you rush out and offer part of your next job to your closest web-working buddy, there are a few things that you need to consider.

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Crowd Funding: A Different Way to Pay for the News You Want

Journalists are turning to the public for ideas and the money to do their investigative reporting. (Subscription required)

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Five ways to drive your best workers out the door

Mistake No. 1: Keep the creative juices bottled up.

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Crowd Sourcing Turns Business On Its Head

What happens when a company lets customers design and vote on their own products? Some Web-based outfits are finding success by doing just that. And the new business model is really catching on. (Audio)

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Like your hair is on fire

In the US, the next two weeks are traditionally the slowest of the year. Plenty of vacations, half-day Fridays, casual Mondays, martini Tuesdays... you get the idea. What if you and your team went against type? What if you spend the two weeks while your competition (and the forces for the status quo) are snoozing--and turn it into a completed project? So, here's the challenge: Assemble your team (it might be just you) on Monday and focus like your hair is on fire...

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Online Sharing with Creative Commons

The Japanese Net entrepreneur Joichi Ito makes a case for free-content distribution on the Internet.

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Remember the Simple, Elegant Deal?

31 JUL 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

It's history. Today's protracted mergers involve ever more partners—and problems.

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Detroit's dilemma: big cars or small?

Detroit's doing all it can about drooping car sales, including plans for new fuel-efficient and smaller models. We ask an industry analyst what happens if consumer preferences swing back to big.

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Hurdles for businesses at the Olympics

The lower-than-expected turnout at the Olympics is disappointing for corporate sponsors and companies that wanted to do business in China during the Games. But they're hanging in there, Scott Tong reports.

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United: O'Hare Today, Gone Tomorrow

BusinessWeek's Roben Farzad says the only way to fix the airline's unique, intractable problems is to liquidate it.

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Could Microsoft's Windows Be Disrupted?

You see, everything could be disrupted. The important question is will disruption play out in a way that favors or kills the incumbent market leader? The real interesting question is "Will Microsoft disrupt Windows?"

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An Old Rocker Gets Digital

Peter Gabriel, the rock musician, has become a powerful player in the emerging online music industry by helping artists find new ways to market their music on the Web. (Subscription required)

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Uncovering Business Breakthroughs: Are You Tuned In or Tuned Out?

We've developed the Tuned In Process to allow companies to create success again and again. We see these same principles at work in a wide range of successful product experiences, such as business-to-business technology products, fast food chains, and professional services firms. Anyone can use Tuned In to replicate the model for success. It works for well-known companies like Ford, Apple, and GE and those not-so-famous like GoPro and Zipcar. It works for realtors, doctors, ministers and even rock stars. With a Tuned In approach, your everyday activities can be transformed into those which create the kind of culture that builds market leaders.

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Seeking Inspiration, Execution, The Ultimate Workspace

40 second meetings: "An agency I did some work with had a great system of 40 second meetings. Only those who needed to be present were present. It was their job to ‘gather the facts’ before the meeting. Each person had 40 seconds to get across their point and updates. Members of the meeting had truly learned how to cut to the chase and make their point the most important. This skill followed through into their day-to-day work. They now have a stronger ability to identify the true action points from the clutter. Timelines for jobs have since been dramatically decreased."

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Design and empathy in health care

"As the population in the developing world ages," the story says, "simulation programs like Xtreme Aging have become a regular part of many nursing or medical school curriculums, and have crept into the corporate world, where knowing what it is like to be elderly increasingly means better understanding one’s customers or even employees — how to design signs or instrument panels, how to make devices more usable."

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Are Social Networking Sites Useful for Business?

To get the most out of social networking sites, small companies should look past the hype, set concrete business goals, then start experimenting.

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In Tough Times, Lobstermen Use Web To Net Profits

High gas prices are cutting into profits in the commercial fishing business. But some lobstermen, who work off the coast of Maine, are using the Internet in innovative ways to expand the market and keep profits rolling in. (Audio)

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"Biogeochemistry" and the Need for An Interdisciplinary Approach to Business

Last week, riding my bicycle in Woods Hole, MA ("Where biology goes on summer vacation"), I noticed a sign for a "biogeochemistry" 1 conference. First I wondered how they decide in which order the several scientific disciplines in that word are listed; couldn't it be "geochemobiology," for example? Then I remembered a couple of interviews I'd had recently for some research projects I'm conducting. They didn't involve words like "biogeochemistry," but they did speak to the need for interdisciplinary approaches to business.

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Fashion Heavyweights Shut India Offices

Timberland closed India sourcing and now Liz Claiborne is considering doing the same, but retailers like WalMart and Target have been scaling up.

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Difficult Dubai

Dubai is the expat dream. Year-round sunshine, sandy beaches and a tax-free lifestyle to boot. Every year, thousands of people come here to seek adventure, to start a new life or to find a new job. For some of them, the dream destination quickly turns into a nightmare as they inadvertently find themselves on the wrong side of the law, which has been laid down by the ruling Maktoum family of Dubai and is based on Sharia.

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Freakonomics' Levitt Questioning Good To Great

Steven Levitt on his Freakonomics blog takes a shot at Good To Great and the recent performance of GTG standouts Fannie Mae, Circuit City, and Wells Fargo. A purchase of either Fannie Mae or Circuit City at the time...

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GE's Immelt: An Ever-Hotter Throne

17 JUL 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

The pressure to lift the share price is building. But CEO Jeff Immelt's options are limited

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CEO Longevity and Cognitive Dissonance

Longevity is too critical to an organization to fix cognitive dissonance by firing the CEO. Imagine where GE would be if they had let go of Welch during his Neutron Jack days. Boards and investors must be patient with CEOs, while encouraging them to, yes, make mistakes. Allowing CEOs the freedom to make mistakes gives them the freedom to admit them and correct them.

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Best Practices from the Best Employers

What makes these the top small companies to work for? Their No. 1 priority is good communication as part of management strategy.

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Virtual Workplace Options

Americans are making big changes due to the fuel price run-up. A new survey shows small business owners are changing how they work, with many cutting back on office space and working virtually. (Audio)

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Rubbermaid shrinking its product line

Rubbermaid, the company that makes those see-through food containers you can never find the lids for, is going to phase out some products and raise prices on others.

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Outsourcing the Offshore Operations

Western companies are increasingly getting away from running their own offshoring operations, handing the jobs over to Indian tech-services specialists.

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Hurry up, the customer has a complaint

07 JUL 2008 from the Boston Globe | Read the full story»

As blogs expand the reach of a single voice, firms monitor the Internet looking for the dissatisfied.

Hat tip: Biz Stone

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Travel less, skip the hassles, and help the environment

The 20 percent solution: Summer travel frustration seems to be affecting not just vacationers, but technology execs, too. Mark Lewis, president of a division of Hopkinton-based EMC Corp. , says he's trying to eliminate 20 percent of his air travel and replace it with other ways of communicating with customers, like online meetings and videoconferencing.

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Sites try to market to foreign visitors

It turns out a lot of the visitors to American websites are browsing from abroad, forcing companies to try to find a way to target ads to their readers outside the U.S. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.

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It's a Hot Time for Tea

Gene Dunkin, president of Tea Forte, a marketer of specialty brews, discusses innovation and brand strategy for the humble tea bag.

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Airlines ask frequent fliers for help

Desperate for lower fuel prices, airlines have asked their customers to lobby Congress to rein in oil speculation. Jeremy Hobson reports.

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GE shutting the lights off for 2 divisions

General Electric announced plans to sell its consumer and industrial divisions on the heels of its May announcement that it was looking to unload its appliance business.

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Starbucks Science

The reason 600 Starbucks stores are closing may have less to do with the economy than with the retailer's sloppiness in picking new locations, reports Brad Stone in the New York Times (7/4/08).

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'Not a Site, but a Concept': Tapping the Power of Social Networking

Companies like Hewlett-Packard, Ernst & Young and Del Monte Pet Foods have more in common than one may think: They are all savvy participants in the growing trend of consumers' use of social networking technologies to access information and get what they need. According to speakers at the recent Supernova conference in San Francisco, too few companies study how people actually interact with the Internet and utilize online collaborative tools, and are therefore not using the social networking phenomenon to their advantage.

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Southwest Airlines' Colleen Barrett Flies High on Fuel Hedging and 'Servant Leadership'

At a time when the airline industry is under assault from skyrocketing fuel prices and a sluggish U.S. economy, it's hard to imagine that a talk by the president of the leading American carrier would not be dominated by discussions of job cutbacks, reduced routes and higher fares. But then there aren't too many major airline executives like Southwest Airlines' Colleen Barrett, 63, who rose from legal secretary to president over a span of 23 years. Barrett discussed customer service, her charismatic boss and making a birthday cake out of toilet paper during the recent Wharton Leadership Conference. (including video )

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Bedeviled by the Churn, Sprint Tries to Win Back Disgruntled Customers

Sprint’s new chief executive, Daniel R. Hesse, has much to do to repair the cellphone operator’s corporate culture and to stem the losses of customers to rivals. (Subscription required)

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Advice From Strangers

Word of mouse is the latest trend in online travel planning, and a variety of corporate travel companies are setting up networking sites in hopes of becoming the Facebook of corporate travel. (Subscription required)

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If You're Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow

06 JUL 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Why do some people reach their creative potential in business while other equally talented peers don’t? After three decades of painstaking research, the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck believes that the answer to the puzzle lies in how people think about intelligence and talent. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Outsourcing, Small-Biz Style

Improved software and services allow the smallest of mom-and-pops to outsource work around the globe.

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Scion Speak

The art of creating a social media campaign for Toyota.

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Wal-Mart Gets a Facelift

Gone are the mega-retailer's blocky letters, hyphen, and star. Can Wal-Mart remake itself by remaking its logo?

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Niche Between Business and Economy

European and Asian airlines have carved out "premium economy" sections with better seats, legroom and food. (Subscription required)

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Building an Online Community

More and more businesses want an online networking site for themselves or their customers. The key to success lies in understanding what's appropriate.

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Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth

30 JUN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less. Greg Soehnlen, who helps run the company that designed the newfangled jugs, with a pallet at Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio. What’s not to like? Plenty, as it turns out. (Subscription required)

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Bill Gates' management style lives on

As the co-founder of Microsoft leaves to focus on his charitable work, the business world pauses to look back on the legacy of one of the most successful businessmen in history. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports.

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For Growth, What Matters Most?

In this three-part series, columnist Christine Comaford offers her top three priorities, starting with the business model and business summary.

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Making a Case for Partnership Pay

24 JUN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

It only seems fair on the face of it. If your income — let’s face it, your financial survival — is not guaranteed as an owner of a small business, shouldn’t your employees take some of the risk in return for sharing in your success? That is the theory behind variable pay, which is also sometimes referred to as "pay-for-performance," "at-risk" or "partnership pay" plans. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: MyBusiness Magazine

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The $10,000-a-Month Psychic

30 JUN 2008 from Newsweek | Read the full story»

When business people need a crystal ball, they turn to consultant Laura Day, the 'intuitionist.'

Hat tip: PSFK

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Achieving Breakthrough Performance

SUMMER 2008 from Stanford Social Innovation Review | Read the full story»

From the Girl Scouts, to Partners In Health, to the city of Providence, R.I., great organizations have one thing in common: great managers. These managers, in turn, share four simple management principles that they use to guide organizations from mere mediocrity to stand-out stardom.

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How we read online

13 JUN 2008 from Slate | Read the full story»

Nielsen champions the idea of information foraging. Humans are informavores. On the Internet, we hunt for facts. In earlier days, when switching between sites was time-consuming, we tended to stay in one place and dig. Now we assess a site quickly, looking for an "information scent." We move on if there doesn't seem to be any food around.

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Three Steps to Calming Angry Customers

Our communications columnist looks at a new process at JFK Airport that you can adapt to cool down steamed customers—and build their loyalty.

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Diving Head-First into Action Learning

More companies are training their managers by having them tackle real problems instead of just attending classes.

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Stung by Soaring Transport Costs, Factories Bring Jobs Home Again

13 JUN 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

The rising cost of shipping everything from industrial-pump parts to lawn-mower batteries to living-room sofas is forcing some manufacturers to bring production back to North America and freeze plans to send even more work overseas. (Subscription required)

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Clearing the Air: How Companies Operate in a Climate-conscious Era

Where to locate a new headquarters, how to close a supply-chain loop, how to anticipate customer demands: These are all decisions that companies must wrestle with as they respond to increasing concerns about global warming. Given the rush to be environmentally friendly, where do companies turn for dependable information and good advice? Wharton faculty and other experts say companies have to rely on a combination of internal and external resources as they try not only to manage the risks of climate change, but also to gain a competitive edge.

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Finding the natural size for your company

Popular perception holds that companies must always be growing or they’re dying. There’s either up or down, win or lose, success or failure. I think that’s a harmful dichotomy that leads to the death of perfectly viable companies in their quest for constant growth.

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Business Improvisation: The Diving Catch of the Corporate World by Randy Sabourin

Recall that moment when you where your most creative, aware, and tuned into the world around you. Imagine how valuable it would be to harness that state of mind and apply it at will to your most stressful and challenging business situations. To shine when others collapse or choke. To take a potentially disastrous circumstance and turn it into a diving catch worthy of any sports show highlight reel. Business Improvisation is the process of accessing and applying creativity to a situation in real time. It is the ability to converge composition, creativity and execution to achieve success.

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How Meetup Tore Up the Rule Book

The popular Web site company's radical experiment is putting employees in charge.

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Work Less, Give Your Customers Less... and Succeed Like 37Signals

03 JUN 2008 from Bill Taylor at Harvard Business Publishing | Read the full story»

Talk about a strategic mind-flip: In a competitive environment defined by bloated products, hyped-up marketing, and financial excess, the way to succeed more is to do less.

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Barry McCarthy, Chief Financial Officer of Netflix

Barry McCarthy joined Netflix as CFO when few were believed the company could rival the industry leader, Blockbuster. Today, Netflix is the biggest player in the video rental market and just finished its first billion-dollar sales year. (Audio)

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The Road to Global Readiness

BusinessWeek columnists Jack & Suzy Welch on why companies in developing nations need to hone their skills against local rivals. (Audio)

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Disney and Pixar: The Power of the Prenup

01 JUN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

When Disney bought its rival, Pixar, in 2006 for $7.4 billion, many people assumed the deal would play out like most big media takeovers: abysmally... But two years into the integration of Pixar...the merger is notable for how well it’s faring. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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How to Stand Out? Try Authenticity

Take a cue from Starbucks and Anthropologie and get to know your customers on an intimate basis. That's the only way to cut through the noise.

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Shane Robison: Managing All the Geeks

HP's chief technology officer on life outside the lab.

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Big Blue Embraces Social Media

IBM has been encouraging social networking among its employees with in-house versions of Web 2.0 hits such as Facebook and Twitter.

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Shutterfly: It’s Picture Perfect

Shutterfly is the little Silicon Valley company that could. It survived the dotcom bust and now competes with two behemoths in the online photo industry.

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Green no longer just a fad in consumer tech

Investors and tech industry leaders say being green is now critical to their bottom line.

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Microsoft to Launch Cashback Service

Microsoft hopes to make gains on Google in the lucrative business of Internet search through a new service that pays consumers who buy items they find through the software company's search service.

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Reinventing a 170-year-old company

A.G. Lafley heads Procter & Gamble, the biggest consumer products company in the world, earning $82 billion a year. But eight years ago it was a different story when he took the top spot. He tells Kai Ryssdal about making changes to struggling brands.

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The Computer Industry Comes With Built-In Term Limits

18 MAY 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

[T]wo successive Microsoft chief executives have long tried, and failed, to refute what we might call the Single-Era Conjecture, the invisible law that makes it impossible for a company in the computer business to enjoy pre-eminence that spans two technological eras. Good luck to Steven A. Ballmer, the company’s chief executive since 2000, as he tries to sustain in the Internet era what his company had attained in the personal computing era. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that he won’t succeed. Not because of personal failings, but because Mother Nature simply won’t permit it. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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Guessing the Online Customer’s Next Want

Retailers are turning to data mining software to find links between customers’ interests and their online buying behavior. (Subscription required)

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The Neuroscience of Retailing

15 MAY 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Retail therapy is a term many people are familiar with -- the notion that shopping can be a panacea. Now, researchers are studying the link between shopping and happiness -- and what puts people in the mood to buy. (With video )

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Why GE Is Getting Out of the Kitchen

Stoves, refrigerators, and other appliances used to be the core of General Electric's business. But now the hot growth is elsewhere.

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GM: Live Green or Die

The lumbering, money-losing giant finally sees that gas engines are a losing bet. But is it too late?

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Governance Lessons from Silicon Valley

The tech world is light years ahead in dealing with rapid global change, immigration issues, engineering education, and online business.

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Why Twitter Matters

Can the fledgling microblogging service become a social media powerhouse to rival giants like Facebook—or will it be gobbled up?

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An Ideal Marketplace: For-profit Businesses Helping, Not Exploiting, the Poor

Can a company make money from the work of impoverished people in the developing world without taking advantage of them? For Patrick Byrne, the answer is a qualified yes. Byrne believes that he has found a way for his company, Overstock.com, to benefit while it helps developing-world artisans connect with developed-world customers. But for Chuck Waterfield, creator of Microfin -- a software program he wrote for microlenders -- the answer is a qualified no, at least as it applies to Compartamos, a well-known microfinance lender operating in Mexico. Both men spoke at this year's University of Pennsylvania Microfinance Conference.

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You don't create a culture

You don’t create a culture. Culture happens. It’s the by-product of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, and you give them the freedom to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust then trust will be built into your culture.

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Red Flags for the Decade Ahead

BusinessWeek Columnists Jack & Suzy Welch provide some foresight to the issues which will confront the large and small businesses around the world in the near future. (Audio)

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In Deal-Making, Keep People in Mind

12 MAY 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Corporate deal-making, as we've seen recently, is a lot like dating and marriage. Success forging a partnership has as much to do with propitious timing and mutual attraction as it does with adroit negotiating -- and it's often difficult to predict the outcome.

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Craig (of the List) Looks Beyond the Web

In the face of the expansion of the classified ads Web site Craigslist, its founder, Craig Newmark, is capitalizing on his success to promote causes he holds dear. (Subscription required)

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Ballmer's War Against Google

A behind-the-scenes look at Microsoft's provocative plans to challenge Google's online-ad juggernaut without Yahoo.

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Comcast Mulling Net Usage Cap to Discourage 'Excessive' Use

Comcast is considering putting a formal cap on monthly downloads instead of just calling up users who used several times a typical subscriber's 2 gigs. It's a bid to increase transparency about limits that have always been there on an "unlimited" usage plan, they say. Others say "good luck" putting the genie back in the bottle.

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Meeting on the Right Side of the Brain

30 APR 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

"It’s really hard to have productive meetings in rooms that suck the life right out of you." Now, vanguard hotels seem to have heard Ms. Marquard’s complaints and are offering meeting spaces that look more like lounges than boardrooms, with high-tech replacements for flip charts and yoga and wheat-grass shots on breaks. Such surroundings are meant to stimulate the right half of the brain, which has been linked to creativity, versus the left brain, said to be responsible for logic and other thinking. (Subscription required)

Hat tip: reveries

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Chrysler offers cheaper gas as incentive

Chrysler has announced that customers who buy or lease one of its selected new cars in the next few weeks can lock in lower gas prices for three years. What is it thinking? Amy Scott reports.

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Little tweaks, huge impact

I love reading about little changes that make a big difference. The airline industry seems to be a great example.

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HBS Cases: Negotiating with Wal-Mart

28 APR 2008 from Harvard Business School | Read the full story»

There are numerous media accounts of the corporate monolith riding its suppliers into the ground. But what about those who manage to survive, and thrive, while dealing with the classic hardball negotiator?

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Users Demand Expertise at How-To Web Sites

28 APR 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Quamut differentiates itself from the long list of how-to sites like eHow, HowStuffWorks.com and, to a lesser degree, About.com (which is owned by The New York Times Company), with a somewhat novel twist: selling downloadable documents of its otherwise free content. For instance, users who want to know how to make sushi can browse through 15 pages of information, like "how to make sushi rice," or can copy and print the information themselves. But Quamut sells a more polished version in a six-page color document for about $3. (Subscription required)

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Google's Surfing Safari

"We feel that we shouldbe a catalyst," Joseph Mucheru says, sitting in his office that overlooks central Nairobi. We, in this case, is Google, and the stout 39-year-old Kenyan heads the company's first outpost in sub-Saharan Africa. About 5% of Africans are online, but the thinking is that as the Internet grows, so will Google.

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The Strategist: Better Ideas to Beat a Bitter Economy

Cutting costs and jobs won't give you an edge in tough times. Try mixing up teams and tearing down your company, for starters.

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Interactive Case Study: Accenture: Scaling Up Fast Overseas

How did the global consulting company respond to the challenge of hiring tens of thousands of workers in India in just six years?

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The charmed life of Amazon's Jeff Bezos

15 APR 2008 from Fortune | Read the full story»

Common wisdom once pegged Amazon and Bezos as goners. But guess what? They're thriving.

Hat tip: Stephen Garner

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The Hard Sell: How to Market Products That Are No Longer Popular

Condos in Miami, traditional music stores, gas-guzzling cars, pharmaceuticals that get unfavorable press, foods made with trans fats: All marketers, from time to time, confront products that, for whatever reason, become difficult to sell. What strategies should companies follow to reposition their products in ways that might attract new audiences, or at least retain existing ones? One answer: segmenting. "There are so many different kinds of customers out there. You just need to find them," says one Wharton expert.

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Hotels court high-tech guests

For years, hotels have tried to provide the best creature comforts and services. And now, many are adapting to the digital age.

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Craigslist CEO keeps focus on service

Jim Buckmaster isn't much interested in maximizing profits. The chief executive of Craigslist says the rapidly growing website's business model is all about the social good. He talks with host Kai Ryssdal in our latest Conversations From the Corner Office. (Audio)

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Buried Resentment

16 APR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

[I]t turns out burying hexes in enemy territory isn't just for baseball fanatics. It's a common tactic among rivals in the cutthroat world of business, too. (Subscription required)

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Cheaper suppliers now come at a price

American businesses save tons of money buying parts and products from overseas suppliers. But sometimes they're buying worries, too -- from tainted pet food to poisonous toothpaste -- which have led some to work on ethical supply chains. Curt Nickisch reports.

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Activism site ensures participation

Few things are more frustrating to those trying to effect social change than an effort that fails simply for lack of participation. The Point is a new activism site that avoids that problem by giving planners a way to organize fundraisers, rallies, boycotts and other events so that they occur only once enough people have promised to join in.

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Three Keys to Better Web Meetings

Interactive Webinars are imperative for connecting with far-flung customers while saving on travel costs. Here, a few tips to make a virtual event more engaging.

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Starbucks Seeks Jolt From Another Mass Tactic

21 APR 2008 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

Howard Schultz insists he's returning Starbucks to its roots, but he's doing it with mass-marketing tactics once anathema to the original brand. (Subscription required)

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How Obama targets nonconsumption

Instead of trying to win over people who love Gantt charts, we built Basecamp to win over people who had never used project management software before. Likewise, Obama isn’t trying to steal a share of "the existing market," he’s trying to create a new one.

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Steal This Idea

The Fast Interview: Author Matt Mason on how the pirating of intellectual property can be a good thing.

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'How About Coffee Cubes?'

Starbucks' CEO is using customers' advice and dedicated software to try out new ideas in a bid to reinvigorate the company.

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It's All About Experience

Companies that try to create holistic experiences by emotionally engaging their consumers are flourishing.

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Dove.com

"You can have extremely relevant information and content but if no one is seeing it, what’s the point?" says Unilever’s Dove marketing director Kathy O’Brien in a Wall Street Journal piece by Suzanne Vranica (4/10/08). Kathy is explaining why Dove is rolling out its new online community for women, Dove.com, on Microsoft’s portal, MSN.com. She hopes that the MSN connection will give the brand "accelerated access" to its target audience.

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How to do business like the Mafia

09 APR 2008 from the Guardian | Read the full story»

The letters of jailed Cosa Nostra boss Bernardo Provenzano are full of insights into his leadership style. The result could be a how-to manual for company directors.

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New Life for Tired Brands

How to discover the dormant vitality in an old product line.

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Something to Yelp About

Jeremy Stoppelman's local-review site is off the business-press radar. That's O.K. He's building credibility, market by market.

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Small Meetings, Big Pluses

At many companies, some 70 percent of meetings consist of 50 or fewer participants. And their popularity is growing nationwide. (Subscription required)

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Solving Wicked Problems

Marty Neumeier discusses workplace problems including balancing long-term goals with short-term demands and attempting to predict returns on innovative concepts. (Audio)

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Whipsaw Pricing

Some supermarkets are promoting lower prices but the reality is that the grocery prices are going up, report Julie Jargon, Ann Zimmerman and David Kesmodel in The Wall Street Journal (4/1/08). Reason is, some supermarkets are promoting lower prices on non-essential items while raising them on staples.

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Citigroup Shifts Corporate Structure

Citigroup confirmed plans to revamp its structure on geographic, not product, lines, as recently installed CEO Vikram Pandit continues to place his imprint on the struggling financial-services company. (Subscription required)

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Saving the Earth? Good for You — Just Be Sure to Watch the Bottom Line.

Toyota relies on sales of gas-guzzling pickups to be the cash cow offseting development costs of the hybrid Prius. Oother companies hoping to reap the benefits of going green face the same Catch-22: Rolling out earth-friendly products attracts environmentally conscious customers, but corporate profits still come largely from doing business the old, dirty way.

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Is Motorola's split a good call?

Motorola is breaking itself in two, but analysts don't agree on whether it's the best move for the company. Lisa Napoli reports.

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The Secret To Google’s Success: Free Beer And Sushi

Google’s original chef Charlie Ayers claims in a new book that much of Google’s success comes from free beer and sushi.

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The Problem with Business as Usual

It seems like a no-brainer, but taking the time to root out stupid routines can mean the difference between a company's success and failure.

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How Apple Got Everything Right By Doing Everything Wrong

18 MAR 2008 from Wired | Read the full story»

[B]y deliberately flouting the Google mantra, Apple has thrived. When Jobs retook the helm in 1997, the company was struggling to survive. Today it has a market cap of $105 billion...

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Starbucks Gets Web 2.0 Religion, but Can It Convert Nonbelievers?

24 MAR 2008 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

Starbucks, after all, is something of a late convert to the customer-listening game, and there's some indication that it hasn't been paying as much attention as it should have. (Subscription required)

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Overseeing More Employees With Fewer Managers

24 MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Business researchers have maintained that bosses optimally should manage about seven to 10 people. But some new research suggests effective managers can oversee 30 or more people by redefining what it means to be a boss. (Subscription required)

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cultural sustainability

08 MAR 2008 from apophenia | Read the full story»

To me, the idea of "cultural sustainability" is about companies whose actions offset the consequences of their presence (or disappearance). For example, when large companies abandon cities that they've been in for years and where the entire city revolves around them, their move has a HUGE culturally destructive force. How do they offset this in a functional way? How does this get considered to be an externality that needs to be factored in? (It used to be through layoff benefits and pensions that kept going no matter what... this is no longer viewed as critical.) Large companies who come into a town and put out of business a variety of different local merchants have another kind of culturally destructive practices. This is why the conversations around Wal-Mart get so heated: capitalism vs. cultural sustainability.

Hat tip: PSFK

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Customer Loyalty That Lasts

Competency and integrity might get customers through your door, but to develop real loyalty, you'll have to do more. Jim Kane of the Brookeside Group explains how small firms can engender lifelong loyalty. (Audio)

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Starbucks Seeks Customer Input

Starbucks said it will introduce new espresso machines that will allow baristas to interact more easily with customers, and also said it plans a new social-networking Web site to gather customer suggestions. (Subscription required)

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The Innovation Engine: The Upside of Recession

Most businesses think now's the time to cut back and cower. Why not see it as an opportunity, the way the creators of some very big brands have?

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When Smart Leaders Do Dumb Things: On Bear Stearns, the Democratic Primary, and Other Avoidable Disasters

How might you and your company avoiding becoming a case study in failure? My one piece of advice is to keep reminding yourself how easy it is to screw up—especially when you’re in a position of great success.

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How Hulu's Design Gets It Right

Hulu, a major coup for Hollywood's Web aspirations, is the latest offering successfully designed for the elusive Gen-Y youth market.

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Siemens CEO Peter Löscher: A Company Is Only as Good as Its Values

It would be hard enough under any circumstances to become the first outsider named to lead a 161-year-old global conglomerate, but Peter Löscher faced a unique challenge last summer when he assumed the reins at Siemens AG -- the German-based engineering and healthcare giant. During a recent Wharton leadership lecture series, Löscher openly acknowledged that his first and most difficult task was dealing with the aftermath of a scandal that included allegations of bribes to foreign governments and union leaders. In his presentation, Löscher emphasized the importance of corporate culture and standards. Corruption, he said at one point, "is not a sustainable business model."s

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Stop & Talk

Turning stores into brands means talking to shoppers and serving their needs. A commentary on a Reveries.com survey by Michael Shinall.

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In the Game of Business, Playing Fair Can Actually Lead to Greater Profits

Tune into "The Apprentice," and you get an all-too-common view of business. Every week, the contestants try to impress Donald Trump by preening, cajoling and conniving. In this world, toughness is the measure of every CEO, and the boss glories in firing people and squeezing every penny out of suppliers. Yet according to John Zhang and Jagmohan Raju, both Wharton marketing professors, and Tony Haitao Cui from the University of Minnesota, many people aren't purely mercenary in their business dealings. They care about fairness -- and they should, the researchers say, because doing so can maximize their profits.

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Can a Toyota Man Fix Chrysler?

Seeking stability, Chrysler turns to James E. Press, a 37-year veteran of rival automaker Toyota. (Subscription required)

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The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites (Steve Rubel/Micro Persuasion)

The Future is Web Services, Not Web Sites — [E]veryone - including marketers - will need to think of their online brands not as sites but as portable services that can go anywhere and everywhere the consumer wants. Without such appendages, no brand will ever be able to break through the online clutter such unlimited choice offers.

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Marissa Mayer

"I have this open-door thing every day, where for two hours, I just sit at my desk--it’s like office hours--and whoever wants to come by and show me stuff can. I get to see a bunch of the cool and interesting demos, and engineers get quick feedback. We need to move fast, and we need employees to want to move fast, too."

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In Tanker Bid, It was Boeing vs. Bold Ideas

10 MAR 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

WASHINGTON — Just hours before the Air Force announced the winner of a $35 billion contract to build aerial refueling aircraft on Feb. 29, an Airbus plane lumbered off the runway in Getafe, Spain, and climbed to 27,000 feet to rendezvous with a Portuguese F-16 fighter.

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Going to the Company Elders for Help

Hewlett-Packard is trying to galvanize thousands of its retirees into an auxiliary army of senior marketers, good-will ambassadors and volunteer sales people. (Subscription required)

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Commandments of Visual Thinking: The "Lost Chapter" from The Back of the Napkin

07 MAR 2008 from ChangeThis | Read the full story»

Visual thinking is the future of business problem solving. Using our innate ability to see—both with our eyes and our mind’s eye—gives us entirely new ways to discover hidden ideas, develop those ideas intuitively, and then share those ideas with other people in a way they are simply going to ‘get.’

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Look Who's Reviving Chiasso

Christopher Segal, scion of the Crate & Barrel empire, believes in the Web but is rediscovering storefronts.

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The Offline Store

Prescilla Carluccio, sister of Sir Terence Conran, has opened a store that she hopes can’t be replicated online. She admits that many bricks and mortar stores should be replaced by electronic retail because of the poor experience that they deliver - but, as she tells the FT, she wants to create a store with a sense of surprise...

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Cutting the cord for all-you-can-eat wireless plans

Mobile operators are hoping to get customers who are looking to ditch their home phone lines to upgrade to their new unlimited wireless voice plans.

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Building an Online Community of Loyal and Vocal Users

MAR 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Internet marketplace Etsy embraces forums, blogs, social sites to get people to spread the word. (Subscription required)

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Haute Chipotle

Marketing chief Jim Adams says Chipotle wants to change everything. One burrito at a time. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.

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Big Blue Goes for the Big Win

IBM's director of research and development is shifting the tech giant's focus—and making a few enormous bets.

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Solve a Company’s Problems, Win Cash

We’ve seen it before: companies turning to the general public to mine ideas for solutions to internal problems. Now there’s a central location for companies to solicit creative ideas from anyone with an Internet connection: Innocentive.com. The site lets "seekers" (i.e., private companies, government agencies, and nonprofits) solicit help from average Joes...

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Boards Behaving Badly

A look at different types of problem directors, and how to deal with them before they disrupt the entire governance process and infect the whole board.

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Hoping to Make Phone Buyers Flip

Executives and industry analysts say it has become more important than ever to understand the psyche of consumers and why they pick one phone over another. (Subscription required)

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Bigger isn't always better for business

Commentator Charles Handy says American businesses' desire to keep getting bigger leads to bureaucracy over humanity. Instead, he says, companies should strive to do more with less.

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Trader Joe's Recipe for Success

21 FEB 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

By limiting its stock to specialty products at low prices, Trader Joe's sells twice as much per square foot than other supermarkets.

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Buy toilet paper, save the planet

26 FEB 2008 from Fortune | Read the full story»

You know that green concerns are mainstream when even Procter & Gamble - maker of heavily packaged goods - say they want to be sustainable. But can they really do it?

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A Capitalist Jolt for Charity

Can business extend the reach of nonprofits? To help serve its philanthropic mission, a social business tries to profit. (Subscription required)

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How to Get Workers to Think and Act Like Owners

FEB 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Companies that want to create an ownership culture need to make an explicit effort to teach employees about their stake and keep them focused on increasing stock value, says Corey Rosen, executive director of the National Center for Employee Ownership. To that end, they should give workers the freedom to take initiatives to cut costs and boost a company's bottom line. Companies should "push decision-making down," he says.

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At Toyota, a Global Giant Reaches for Agility

Toyota’s top executives are trying to replicate the company’s success and operating principles in other countries while ceding more control to these new outposts. (Subscription required)

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How business can save the world

17 FEB 2008 from the Boston Globe | Read the full story»

A provocative study suggests that enlightened management philosophies can spread from the office -- and change societies.

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Wal-Mart: The New Washington

03 FEB 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

[A]fter years of running afoul of the United States government on labor and environmental issues, Wal-Mart now aspires to be like the government, bursting through political logjams and offering big-picture solutions to intractable problems. (Subscription required)

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Wal-Mart Eyes Indian Market

Wal-Mart plans to open 10 to 15 cash-and-carry stores in India, hoping to crack the booming retail market without angering the mom-and-pop retailers and middlemen that dominate the industry in the country. (Subscription required)

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Give Me Your Black Sheep

17 FEB 2008 from Bob Sutton | Read the full story»

Bird explained that he was brought to Pixar partly because senior management was worried that the company would become too complacent after three big hits: Toy Story, A Bugs Life, and Toy Story2. To help fight against such complacency on The Incredibles, Bird wanted people to work with people who weren't satisfied with how things were done and so -- to staff the film-- he requested "Give me your black sheep."

Hat tip: Freakonomics

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Unusual Route: Discount Airlines Woo Business Set

19 FEB 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Discount carriers are making a new push for business travelers, adding flights in heavily traveled business routes and even quietly offering companies special deals. (Subscription required)

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Digital Borders

In a bid to differentiate itself from Barnes & Noble, Borders has rolled out the first of 14 concept stores featuring digital centers intended as "a hub for knowledge," reports Jayne O’Donnell, et. al., in USA Today (2/14/08).

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Newspapers launch online ad network

Four major U.S. newspaper chains are combining efforts on a network they hope will attract online advertisers seeking to book national campaigns. Dan Grech reports on this latest attempt to keep newspapers competitive.

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Quirky Conformity

Gary Kelly’s willingness to conform to the quirky culture of Southwest Airlines is a key reason the carrier is “the only consistently profitable company in the domestic airline industry,” reports Jeff Baily in The New York Times (2/13/08). His approach — to reflect the existing company culture versus trying to change it —

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EA's CEO: How I Learned To Acquire Developers And Not Screw Them Up

08 FEB 2008 from Wired News | Read the full story»

In his presentation kicking off the final day of the DICE Summit, the head of the videogame superpublisher acknowledged that his company's previous strategy of acquiring talented developers just didn't work. But these days, even as EA and its competitors swallow up more and more developers in the race towards consolidation, Riccitiello thinks things are working out right with companies like Bioware and Maxis, by letting them keep their corporate culture.

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The Bottom Is Not Enough

12 FEB 2008 from the Technium | Read the full story»

I [Kevin Kelly] wrote a book, Out of Control, heralding the immense power of bottom up systems. You know: smart mobs, hive mind, web power, amateur hour, decentralized webs, network effects, and collaborative work. Twenty years ago Out of Control made a wide-ranging and exhaustive case for the remarkable things which decentralized, out-of-control systems can accomplish in biology, technology, and cultural realms. Two decades later I'm still keen on the untapped potential of emergent bottom-up systems.

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Nice Guys Don't Finish Last

12 FEB 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

It is one of the biggest questions in corporate governance: Is there really any financial payoff for promoting enlightened social, environmental, and ethical practices? Or are companies that get the most attention for doing good merely those that can afford to do so?

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Delta CEO Waives Merger Compensation

13 FEB 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Delta Air Lines Inc. Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson told the airline's board that he will waive millions of dollars in compensation to which he would be entitled in the event of a merger.

The move is the latest signal of the seriousness of the airline's effort to find a merger partner, most likely Northwest Airlines Corp. or United Airlines parent UAL Corp.

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HarperCollins Will Post Free Books on the Web

In an attempt to increase book sales, HarperCollins Publishers will begin offering free electronic editions of some of its books on its Web site on Monday. (Subscription required)

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Publisher Tests Selling by the Chapter

Random House will test selling the digital version of one of its titles chapter-by-chapter. (Subscription required)

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100 Ways to Help You Succeed/Make Money: Part II by Tom Peters

We published the beginning to a very empowering list three years ago— Tom Peters’ 100 Ways to Help You Succeed/Make Money. That list was finished recently, and we now update it here with success tips #51-100 (&1).

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Kraft tries out cream cheese on JetBlue

JetBlue announced that it would work with Kraft Foods to taste test a new reduced-fat cream cheese on some of its flights. But is it a good idea to use airline passengers as captive product testers? Jeff Tyler reports.

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Finding Drucker's vision in all that stuff

Commentator Charles Handy reflects on the philosophies of economist Peter Drucker to figure out what to do when a consumer economy starts to buy less stuff. First in an occasional series of commentaries by Charles Handy.

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Social pizza ordering, with a side of gravanity

Short for Big Fantastic Deal, the BFD Builder lets consumers create the pizza of their dreams—specifying the type of crust, the amount of sauce and cheese, and unlimited toppings—for a flat rate of USD 10.99. A 10-day contest last month even promised USD 500 in gift certificates for the most creative design. What's really interesting, though, is that consumers can name and register the pizzas they design in Domino's BFD database, where they can be viewed and ordered by other consumers.

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Make Goals Not Resolutions

Your dismal New Year's resolution record--and what your business can learn from it.

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Starbucks to Close Stores and End Sandwich Sales

The decision came as Starbucks reported anemic sales growth of 1 percent at stores open at least a year, the worst three-month performance in the company’s history. (Subscription required)

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Note to Eddie Lampert: It’s the management, stupid

28 JAN 2008 from Fortune | Read the full story»

Back in 2005, both Sears and Toys ‘R’ Us were down on their luck and in danger of permanently losing relevance with their customers. Both were bought by financial firms, Sears by the hedge fund ESL Investments, controlled by Edward Lampert, and Toys “R” Us by a group that includes Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bain Capital and Vornado Realty Trust. That’s where the similarities end.

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Overhaul, Make It a Venti

After more than a decade of sensational buzz, Starbucks is struggling nationwide as it faces slowing sales growth and increased competition. (Subscription required)

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Bridging The Gap Between Online and Offline Shopping

"The Internet hasn't destroyed brick-and-mortar retailing, as many once feared. But has it ever changed consumer behavior. Across the U.S., stores are playing catch-up with shoppers habituated not only to the speed and convenience of purchasing online but also to the control it gives them."

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The Case Against Case Studies

24 JAN 2008 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

How Columbia's B-school is teaching MBAs to make decisions based on incomplete data.

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'Framing Contests': When Companies Face Uncertainty, Internal Wrangling Can Lead the Way

After riding a wave of unprecedented industry growth, an established technology manufacturer experiences a sudden market downturn. What should it do? Whereas managers often push for quick, bottom-line analysis when facing uncertainty, Wharton management professor Sarah Kaplan says that the best move might be to encourage employees to engage in "framing contests," in which they champion alternative strategy scenarios. In a new research paper titled, "Framing Contests: Strategy Making under Uncertainty," Kaplan looks at how employees' frames shape strategic decisions, calling into question traditional notions about hierarchy and power in firms.

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Wal-Mart Chief Offers a Social Manifesto

As part of a campaign to upgrade its image by changing the way it does business, Wal-Mart has pledged to cut the energy used by many of its products by 25 percent. (Subscription required)

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Layering

Here's what we used to do: Create ---> Edit ---> Launch Here's what happens now: Create ---> Launch ---> Edit ---> Launch ---> repeat

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EBay’s New Leader Moves Swiftly on a Revamping

In an effort to reinvigorate growth, John Donahoe, the new chief executive of Internet giant eBay, said he would shift the company’s emphasis from auctions to fixed priced listing. (Subscription required)

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Failure Isn't Always a Bad Thing

22 JAN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Successful entrepreneurs invariably say that they have learned as much from their failures as their successes. (Subscription required)

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Flagging Sears Plans Shakeup In Latest Bid at Turnaround

19 JAN 2008 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

In a fresh effort to halt a long decline, Sears Holdings Corp. Chairman Edward S. Lampert plans to reorganize the 121-year-old retailer into several businesses with broad authority to shape their own future. (Subscription required)

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Ford CEO keeps both hands on wheel

CEO Alan Mulally has been running Ford for the past 15 months, when he was brought in from Boeing to lead the turnaround of the troubled automaker. In an interview with Kai Ryssdal, he says he's got his work cut out for him.

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From MySpace to YourSpace

A Web blockbuster is evolving to try to stay ahead of rivals. (Subscription required)

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The Right Job for the Right Time: Google’s Director of Other

Google has an intriguing job posting on its website which strikes me as exactly the right job for the right time. The company is looking for a "Director of Other" to explore tangential opportunities, lead the company in new directions, and discover new sources of growth.

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The best decision Scott McNealy ever made

Since turning over the reins to Jonathan Schwartz in April 2006, Sun has picked itself off the floor, staging one of the more improbable corporate comebacks in recent Silicon Valley history.

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Lessons from Etsy on building community

Handmade 2.0 is a long article that talks about artist-entrepreneurs who open up virtual shops on Etsy and eslewhere. The author explores what makes Etsy seem different from so many current efforts to "build community" online. There are some lessons here for anyone trying to build an ecosystem around a product, store, or whatever...

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The Search Party

14 JAN 2008 from the New Yorker | Read the full story»

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, believe that expanding their company’s lobbying operation in Washington, D.C., has become a necessity.

Hat tip: Searchblog

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17 Ways You Can Use Twitter: A Guide for Beginners, Marketers and Business Owners

15 JAN 2008 from doshdosh | Read the full story»

Twitter can be actively used as a tool to push out messages that capitalize on the attention you’re receiving from other users. Yes, I’m talking about self-promotion and marketing. This involves active user engagement. Apart from its use as a info resource and publicity tool, Twitter is also a communication platform for individuals and their personal social networks.

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can brands cope with consumer participation?

Given how little bandwidth most departments have these days, it's safe to assume that there are quite a few brands out there who risk damaging their reputations because they simply aren't structured to cope with the new era of conversation and participation.

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Trying to Fine-Tune Yahoo

Yahoo’s chief executive and co-founder plans to expand the Internet stalwart to make it "a starting point" for consumers. (Subscription required)

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Attraction method #1

Gather customer feedback. It's anti-selling, which makes it magnetic.

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Competition: How McDonald's Will Kill Itself Killing Starbucks

McDonald's has nearly 14,000 stores nationwide, all of which will be equipped with full-fledged coffee bars and baristas by year's end. Having already begun adding plush seating, gentler lighting and subtler colors to their franchises, the big M is looking to steamroll the limping Starbucks on its own turf. Starbucks, however, isn't going anywhere; rather, it's McDonald's that will be maimed most by its own campaign to destroy the Seattle super-brand.

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How Investing in Intangibles -- Like Employee Satisfaction -- Translates into Financial Returns

Contrary to management theories developed in the Industrial Age, employee satisfaction is an important ingredient for financial success, according to a new research paper by Wharton finance professor Alex Edmans. His findings also challenge the importance of short-term financial results and may have implications for investors interested in targeting socially responsible companies. The paper is titled, "Does the Stock Market Fully Value Intangibles? Employee Satisfaction and Equity Prices."

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An Interview with Richard D'Aveni

Here he talks to Stuart Crainer about his work and the strategic challenges posed by the emerging economies.

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7-D Loyalty

The seven dimensions of profitable loyalty management. By Michael Kryzston and Killian Schaffer.

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Born-Again Virgin

Virgin Megastores sails where others sank. Dee Mc Laughlin tells how. An exclusive Q&A interview by Tim Manners.

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Music lessons

1. Past performance is no guarantee of future success. Every single industry changes and, eventually, fades. Just because you made money doing something a certain way yesterday, there’s no reason to believe you’ll succeed at it tomorrow.

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Work Is Broken: Here's How to Fix It By Marc Orchant

Meetings, presentations, and e-mail are a part of many people’s work day. Used effectively, each can help keep teams aligned, impart important information, and move projects forward. We now are bombarded with information from the web, blogs, wikis, intranets, search engines, and other digital sources in addition to paper. We’re challenged to develop and maintain a system for collecting, processing, and acting on all of this information. And the classic techniques we’ve relied on in the past have either ceased to be effective or have simply broken. In this essay, I’ll share some proven techniques for fixing what’s been broken.

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Twitter, Firefox and Big Ideas That Are Small Companies

03 JAN 2008 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

The Internet now creates so much leverage for certain activities, that it is possible to create services that are incredibly useful, widespread and economically self-sustaining, yet involve very few people and not many dollars. This can sometimes be better for customers, business partners, and even founders, than trying to turn every good idea into a giant company. (Subscription required)

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Outlet for Exclusivity

How a "premium" brand manages the dance with the mass market. (Subscription required)

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Circuit City's suicide: firing the people who know stuff

"The basic story is that last March, the wise men who run Circuit City came up with the brilliant idea of laying off their more senior salespeople, who get $14-$15 an hour, and replacing them with new hires who get around $9 an hour. It turns out that this move was not very good for business. One of the reasons that people go to a store like Circuit City, rather than buying things on the Internet, is that they want to be able to talk to a knowledgeable salesperson. Since Circuit City had laid off their knowledgeable salespeople, there was little reason to shop there."

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What Is The ROI Of Requiring User Registration To Access Online Content?

What Is The ROI Of Requiring User Registration To Access Online Content? — I somehow got logged out of my NYTimes.com registration and just hit the registration wall when I tried to read an article — I almost forgot it was there. Which made me wonder, now that the TimesSelect pay wall is gone...

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Stars, Stripes, and Social Media

What you can learn from the presidential candidates and their Web strategies.

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Private Place for Smokers, on the Web

Le Lab, an internal Web site at Altadis, Europe’s tobacco giant, is meant to be part social networking site, part data resource, part virtual pep rally. (Subscription required)

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Why No One Comments on Google News

TechDirt comments on the NYT's story on the fact that pretty much no one is commenting on Google News stories, despite Google's attempts to get folks to do so. Why is that, we wonder? Why, given that Google News is one of the largest, most successful, most important drivers of news reading in the world, why won't we engage in a conversation around it? It's simple, really, and it goes to the heart of what Google is not good at: Community.

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Inside Apple Stores, a Certain Aura Enchants the Faithful

Apple’s stock skyrocketed 135 percent in 2007, and its sleek retail gadget emporiums are a large part of that success. (Subscription required)

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designing an agency for black swans

In the end, it’s all about allowing and encouraging accidents to happen.

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A tale of two electronics retailers

Best Buy is going gangbusters. Circuit City's shares are down 75% so far this year, and things are expected to get worse. Stacey Vanek-Smith reports on how two companies selling similar stuff have wound up in such different places.

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Three Leadership Experts on Dealing With Internal Trouble

Hidden inside Fortune's 2008 Investor's Guide is a one page article titled "The Three Minute Manager: Lessons In Leadership." They interview Bill George (True North), Noel Tichy (Judgment) and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld (Firing Back) and each was asked questions around the problem: "What do you do if you discover a huge loss at your company?"

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Mozilla Gets Freaky

For the last few years I’ve been trying to convince businesses to run experiments in order to learn how to do things better. Why is it that experimentation is the gold standard in science, but rarely exploited in corporations? My own hunch is that the main reason is what economists call "path dependence" — in other words, businesses don’t run experiments because they rarely have in the past.

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Opinions Wanted (Really)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibition invites the audience to give its opinion on 65 costumes using computers next to the displays, or online. (Subscription required)

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...and your clicks for free (the new ebook)

There's an enormous amount of superstition about what makes some pages rank high while others languish. When you look at the actual figures, though, much of that fades away. It turns out that the new playing field enforced by the search engines is eliminating many of the shortcuts that used to be effective. In other words, the best way is the long way. The long way is to create content that is updated, unique and useful.

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Making a hot stock out of Campbell's

At the time Doug Conant was hired as CEO of Campbell's, the world's biggest soup company had lost its way in selling soup. He talks with Kai Ryssdal about reviving an iconic brand in this latest installment of Conversations From the Corner Office.

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The Six Lessons of Kiva

4."Bank" on unproven people. What would the ideal background be of the founder of Kiva? Investment banker from Goldman, Sachs? Vice president of the World Bank? Vice president of the Peace Corp? Vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation? Partner at McKinsey? How about temporary administrative assistant at the Stanford Business School? Because that’s how Jessica started her quest. The spark that lit the fire was a speech by Muhammed Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

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Big Shoes to Fill at Adobe

10 DEC 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Chizen will be a tough act to follow. Can Narayen, with an ambitious plan to remake how we gain access to the Web, fit the bill?

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Death to Bureaucracy

BusinessWeek Columnists Jack and Suzy Welch discuss how to eradicate bureaucracy from the workplace. Though not easy to do, removing a bureaucratic system is a benefit to business.

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Maurice Flanagan's Emirates Airline: Flying High and Treating Customers like Sheikhs

If you were looking for clues on how to save the troubled airline industry, you might be tempted to start by focusing on Dubai-based Emirates -- one carrier that has continued to increase traffic and revenues even as most of its rivals struggle with rising fuel and personnel costs and mounting losses. But Maurice Flanagan, who launched the global air giant in 1985 and remains executive vice chairman, conceded that it would be hard for any American airline to duplicate the success of the Dubai carrier. Flanagan talked about the reasons for Emirates' ascent, his own management style and the new Airbus A380 jetliners as part of a recent Wharton Leadership Lecture presentation.

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Easy Money

Aaron Patzer is taking on Quicken by merging personal finance with Web 2.0. Can he get twentysomethings to be smart with their cash?

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Market IQ

The problem with some companies is that they take too narrow a view of their customers, and lose growth opportunities as a result, write Constance M. O’Hare and John M. Matthews of Beacon Advisors and Calvin P. Duncan of the University of Colorado in The Wall Street Journal (12/3/07).

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Investing with a mission

Some people in the field of grant giving now believe charities can improve their social returns by becoming investors, not just donors. It's an idea called mission investing. Mark Kramer, founder of FSG Consulting, explains it to Kai Ryssdal.

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Social Marketing: How Companies Are Generating Value from Customer Input

Fansumers, viral videos and social computing -- these are just some of the many buzzwords pinging around the marketing world today. While making sense of them isn't easy, the concept behind them is clear: Online technologies allow customers to communicate in new ways with one another, and companies must decide whether to ignore, co-opt or dive into these new waters of interactivity. "Consumers want to feel they are being heard, and they love having an impact on the future development of products," says one Wharton professor. "To the extent that they can air grievances, or understand the company's position, that can be beneficial for the company itself."

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'Embedded giving' good for the taking

Charities are making it easier than ever to give by dropping a dollar at the check-out stand or including a donation in a product's purchase price. Philanthropy consultant Lucy Bernholz tells Kai Ryssdal about the concept called embedded giving.

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Corporations find 'responsibility' sells

You've probably seen ads about what companies are doing for the environment or for the community. So many companies are jumping on the bandwagon that corporate responsibility has become an industry unto itself. Jill Barshay reports.

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How the Discounters Hurt Themselves

10 DEC 2007 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

Wal-Mart Stores, Southwest Airlines and Dell Computer reshaped their industries with low-cost models that forced competitors to adapt or die. But each is now facing a much tougher battle for growth. (Subscription required)

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Dell to Sell Computers in Best Buy Stores

Dell built its business around selling personal computers directly to customers, but it has been cutting deals with retailers as growth of PC sales slowed. (Subscription required)

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TiVo Shifts to Help Companies It Once Threatened

TiVo is trying to climb into the black by working with the companies it once threatened and moving away from the hardware that it pioneered. (Subscription required)

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Working to make eBay easier and safer

eBay has been a cyberspace powerhouse for more than a decade. But its auction business has slowed. CEO Meg Whitman has been trying to make the site more user-friendly and to clamp down on fraudulent sellers. She talked with Kai Ryssdal in our Conversations From the Corner Office.

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How a Top Unilever Exec Is Thinning the Headcount

Unilever's head of human resources is carrying out a sweeping reorganization using his own performance-ranking system.

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CEO Succession: Has Grooming Talent on the Inside Gone By the Wayside?

The recent departures of two chief executives -- Stanley O'Neal of Merrill Lynch and Charles Prince of Citigroup -- in the wake of major financial losses at their firms, have focused renewed attention on the issue of succession planning. Published reports speculated that both positions would be filled by outside candidates, and on November 14, Merrill Lynch announced that it chose John Thain, CEO of NYSE Euronext, to succeed O'Neal. While such a move is not surprising for a board wanting to signal a fresh start to investors, Wharton faculty say that, increasingly, companies are looking to fill top spots with external candidates, while spending less time on grooming future leaders and managing talent in general.

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NBC Universal to Use TiVo Ratings Data

NBC Universal has agreed to become the first major broadcaster to use ratings data and other advertising products from the digital video recorder company. (Subscription required)

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Southwest's New Flight Plan: Win More Business Travelers

18 SEP 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Hoping to wean itself from its reliance on budget travelers, Southwest Airlines is dispatching a beefed-up sales force across the country to woo corporate road warriors. (Subscription required)

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8020 Publishing

"Ask someone to write a magazine story and they freeze up... But say ’send us a postcard’ and it becomes easy," comments Paul Cloutier of 8020 Publishing...

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A Web Tour Will Show Stores From the Inside Out

A new three-dimensional promotional tool will allow Web surfers to venture down streets and inside some local businesses. (Subscription required)

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Dogfish Head: Brewing Up Relationships

21 NOV 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

The beermaker employs an off-center approach to everything, including its flavors, grassroots marketing, and wacky promotions.

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Scrambling to Find a Successor

BusinessWeek columnists Jack & Suzy Welch answer the question: If good succession planning makes so much sense, why isn’t it more common?

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Continental CEO Kellner Bets the Business on Being on Time

OCT 2007 from Stanford Graduate School of Business | Read the full story»

In an industry known for stiff competition, market volatility and demanding customers, Larry Kellner has a formula guaranteed to smooth out the ride. Speaking to a packed audience of students and faculty at the Graduate School of Business on October 11, the Continental Airlines Inc. chairman and CEO gave excerpts from his leadership playbook that led to one of the most successful turnarounds in U.S. aviation transportation history.

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Can Wal-Mart save the world?

Retail powerhouse Wal-Mart has been taking great pains to improve its image by adopting environmental standards across all of its stores. Kai Ryssdal talks to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott. (Audio)

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Retailers Explore New Ways of Being Paid

Several high-end Web retailers are introducing promotions with PayPal, hoping to attract consumers willing to try methods other than credit cards to pay for online purchases. (Subscription required)

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Public solutions or private enterprise?

Can the profit motive solve our energy problems? Management professor Stuart Hart of Cornell University, and physics professor emeritus Marty Hoffert of New York University consider that question with host Kai Ryssdal.

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thrasher- an investment fund for xers

A fund focused single-mindedly on the cool Xers, yep the same ones, who were singing along to Beck's Loser and were never supposed to confirm to the ideals of the Baby-Boomers. Thrasher appears to know these people, what they look like, what they want to hear, but more than that, they know what they want in cool brands.

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Selling Sales Forces on a Merger

12 NOV 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

When competitors merge, melding sales forces can be a tricky but crucial task. Salespeople accustomed to stealing clients from one another must learn to cooperate. (Subscription required)

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Hook Line & Loyalty

A great relationship is its own reward. A discussion featuring Scott Deaver of Avis Budget Group, Ken Fenyo of The Kroger Co., Steve Fuller of L.L. Bean, David Gitow of Barnes & Noble, Eric Leininger of McDonald’s and David Norton of Harrah’s Entertainment.

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Web 2.0 Dead? Don't Be Silly! It's Just Starting

At last, my corporate clients, several of whom are Fortune 500 companies, are beginning to incorporate social media into their business. They’re using some fun tools in very serious ways. In fact, the changes they are making at my not-so-gentle urging, are fundamentally changing the way they do business.

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Redstone: 'If Content Is King, Copyright Is Its Castle'

Redstone: 'If Content Is King, Copyright Is Its Castle' — He may look his age when he's not speaking, but when Sumner Redstone, the 84-year-old chairman of Viacom and CBS, starts talking about the shifting media landscape, you forget he was born when radio was a novelty.

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Right By Radiohead

The difference between what Radiohead and Apple are doing is that where Radiohead is earning customer loyalty, Apple is spending it.

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The British are coming ... with groceries!

Grocery giant Tesco is trying to succeed in the U.S., where many of its fellow British companies have failed. It opens five stores across Southern California this week. Stephen Beard reports on whether the company can break Britain's retail losing streak.

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Serena Software Adopts Facebook as Intranet

Serena Software in San Mateo, Calif. is wrapping Facebook in a big corporate bear hug. Today, the company is launching Facebook Fridays.

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Why Google Turned Into a Social Butterfly

A new alliance will help friends on networking sites roam freely. (Subscription required)

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Why Delta Should Buy Northwest

31 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

With a new CEO and a clean balance sheet, Delta is pondering expansion. Here's why Northwest is the logical choice.

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Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

An alliance of companies led by Google plans to roll out a common set of standards to allow developers to write programs for Google’s Orkut and other social networking Web sites. (Subscription required)

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When Rebuilding Confidence Becomes the Priority

29 OCT 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Airplane manufacturers Airbus and Boeing Co. must do more than build new jets these days. They also need to regain the confidence of their customers. (Subscription required)

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G.M. Will Build Its Own Research Center in China

General Motors said the research center, to be built in Shanghai, would focus on developing hybrid technology and other designs. (Subscription required)

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At Chrysler, Home Depot Still Lingers

Robert L. Nardelli, Chrysler’s new chief who earlier ran Home Depot, spoke about the auto industry in terms that suggested he was still in a home-improvement state of mind. (Subscription required)

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The Google Way: Give Engineers Room

21 OCT 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally. This means that if you have a great idea, you always have time to run with it. It sounds obvious, but people work better when they’re involved in something they’re passionate about...

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How Curiosity Empowers Toyota

19 OCT 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

The carmaker's determined willingness to try new ideas has allowed it to build a commercial fortress and an astonishing record of success.

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A shopping trip, aisle by virtual aisle

John Butler is trying to introduce true browsing to the online shopping experience, blending the innovations of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with the old-school merchandising of R.H. Macy.

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Bringing 'Lean' Principles to Service Industries

"In terms of operations and improvements, the service industries in general are a long way behind manufacturing," Upton says. "The motivation for this work was to gain some well-grounded research on how improvements can be brought to services through some of these lean concepts."

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What do 16,000 people do at Google?

Google's growth may be chaotic, but will it help the company take over the world?

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For Google, It Pays Not to Advertise

While Google makes pots of money selling advertising for other companies, it does very little advertising itself. Even without a bloated marketing budget, the brand is a household name.

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Why Silicon Valley Is Rethinking the Cubicle Office

15 OCT 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Intel Corp. is often credited, or blamed, for popularizing the office cubicle. Now it is joining some prominent Silicon Valley peers in reconsidering the concept.

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Right by Radiohead

The difference between Radiohead and Apple is that where Radiohead is earning customer loyalty, Apple is spending it. A new Fast Company column by Tim Manners.

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Executive Suite: MySpace's CEO took big merger in stride

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe, 41, spoke to USA TODAY corporate management reporter Del Jones about how the two cultures — one old school, the other new school — came together where so many failed.

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Return of the King

Cofounder Jerry Yang returns as CEO and ushers in a more social Yahoo.

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Unilever Shuns Stereotypes of Women (Unless Talking to Men)

A consumer group is urging Unilever, which makes Axe body spray, to "ax the Axe campaign," saying it undermines the company’s other efforts to celebrate women of all sizes. (Subscription required)

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Seeing Recruiting as Crucial to Rebuilding H.P.

Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard’s chairman and C.E.O., says that focusing on strategy and staff were key to helping the company recover from last year’s spying scandal. (Subscription required)

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ABC Reshapes the Evening News for the Web

Aiming to attract younger audiences, ABC is using its evening news staff to produce a separate and distinct 15-minute daily news program for the Web. (Subscription required)

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Advertising: Imitating the Web, for the Busy Reader

With its latest redesign, BusinessWeek is looking for some magic to raise circulation and keep advertisers interested. (Subscription required)

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Attending the conference? Bring the kids!

Smart conference organizers have realized that arranging sideline events for the conference-goers' children is a good way to keep stress levels down and attendance up. Rachel Dornhelm reports.

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Tesco thinks small to be big in America

07 OCT 2007 from the Independent | Read the full story»

[T]aking on the US will be the greatest challenge in the company's 83-year history. The supermarket was invented in the US, and Tesco grew in the UK by copying the pile-it-high-sell-it-cheap strategy of retailers such as Wal-Mart. But it now claims that, after years of careful and secretive research, it can offer US shoppers something they do not already have: "Whole Foods quality at Wal-Mart prices", via local convenience stores.

Hat tip: PSFK

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Nothing Says "Buy" Like "Free Shipping"

L.L. Bean’s free-shipping offer comes with no minimum purchase requirement, in contrast to strings-attached shipping offers used by most online merchants last year. (Subscription required)

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the power of brand voice

Brand voice has the power to transform how people see your brand, especially if you use it in the right places.

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Career Crisis: Monster.com Has Choices to Make as It Approaches 'Middle Age'

When the Internet was young, pioneering online job recruitment firm Monster.com rocked the way people look for work. Now, Monster itself has hit a rocky patch, marked by the resignation of three top officers, a major security breach and the rise of new competitors, including Craigslist. According to Wharton faculty and analysts, Monster is confronting the "middle age" that all veteran firms of the Internet's early days must face. The company remains a force in employment advertising, they say, but as it settles into maturity, Monster must find new ways to protect its established markets and expand overseas.

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The Venturesome Giant

In the last few years, G.E. has shown an ever-greater willingness to hook up with other companies, even if it means taking a minority position. (Subscription required)

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The Cheap Revolution

The Cheap Revolution — Poor Steve Jobs. First he apologizes for dropping the price of the iPhone from $599 to $399 after just 10 weeks on the market and offers Apple customers a $100 rebate. Now he's being slapped with a $1 million lawsuit...

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How to Help Your Company Focus on the New World of Risk

Most corporate risk managers today are finding they've got a higher profile than ever before. The reason is painfully obvious: Risk itself has a more prominent place on the corporate agenda. In a world where customer loyalty is plummeting, new forms of competition are multiplying, deregulation and globalization are making the environment more complicated and unpredictable than ever, and outside forces from political upheaval and terrorist threats to technological change are repeatedly disrupting "business as usual"--in such a world, risk is no longer the province of a few specialists. Instead, it's near the top of the list of high-priority issues for virtually every manager.

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Fair Trade in Bloom

Major corporations are rushing to meet the growing demand for food products that adhere to social and environmental standards. (Subscription required)

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Dealing With the Damage From Online Critics

Negative online postings by disenchanted employees and competitors can do more than irritate; financial damages can reach millions of dollars or shut down a business entirely. (Subscription required)

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Teleconferencing as Plan A, With Flying as a Backup

It appears that business travel will be slowing down over the next year. The reasons, say corporate travel managers, are extensive flight delays and rising costs. (Subscription required)

Via NYT > Travel

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Encouraging Dissent in Decision-Making

Consider the costs to organizations, large and small, when dissent does not or cannot surface: Abjuring rigorous debate about its merits, a youthful president John F. Kennedy essentially rubber-stamped a 1961 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, resulting in one of the biggest U.S. foreign policy fiascoes in decades.

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The management philosophy of Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster

This profile of Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster gives a summary of his management philosophy: ...Put speed over perfection: "Get something out there. Do it, even if it isn’t perfect."

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Inside Microsoft's Plan To Bring in Outside Talent

[A] combination of forces within Microsoft -- its engineers' exalted stature, its insular culture, its sheer size -- make integrating new executives a lingering problem. Often through Microsoft's history, decisive and aggressive outsiders have been worn down by the second-guessing of Microsoft veterans before stepping down to less prominent roles or leaving altogether.

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Benefit to Employers Who Help Depressed Workers, Study Says

Although most companies look at mental-health coverage as a drain on the budget, firms that provide this kind of help to their employees tend to save both time and money.

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Retailer’s Shortcut From Desktop to Store

Retailers are increasingly offering ways for consumers to shop online but pick up their goods in stores, letting customers avoid shipping costs. (Subscription required)

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The Quiet Giant

01 OCT 2007 from Newsweek | Read the full story»

Adobe's CEO on his brand, piracy and Microsoft.

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How Teams Far Apart Can Work Well Together

IBM uses high-tech tools to grapple with an increasingly common problem: making far-flung teams work well together.

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A Photographic Vision

30 SEP 2007 from Newsweek | Read the full story»

Shutterfly was a survivor of the dotcom crash. Now it's a leader in online photographic services and a trusted brand. The CEO explains how he did it.

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Free listing for sellers & cash back for buyers

Selling a home ‘by owner’ may save consumers a real-estate agent commission, but it also makes it harder to get the broad exposure agents typically provide. Iggys House, launched in March, offers sellers a way onto critically important MLS lists—for free.

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Mattel Apologizes to China for Recalls

In the extraordinary apology, Mattel took the blame for design flaws and said it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified. (Subscription required)

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Round-the-Clock Operations Aren't Just for Call Centers

Thanks to more robust information technology and a growing acceptance of offshoring, the 24-hour workplace is now feasible for a broader range of work.

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Think Big

15 SEP 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

To win market share, don't try to influence what brand of product people buy. Change how they use the product in the first place. (Subscription required)

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It's Free - The New Economics of Giving It All Away

If you build it -- and it's cool -- they will come. The business model to support it comes later. That's the new economics of the free lunch: Giving away a product or service builds the customer attention and loyalty that rack up earnings.

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Rolling Ball

To make sense of the "mind-numbing flow of data on the purchases" of its 13 million loyalty-card holders "across 55,000 product lines," Tesco’s Dunnhumby "cooked up an algorithm called the rolling ball," reports The Economist (9/15/07).

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Secrets to Amazon's success

High Scalability offers some secrets to Amazon’s success based on interviews and writings of early employees. Some of the choice bits... Teams are small. They are assigned authority and empowered to solve a problem as a service in anyway they see fit.

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Secret Retail

"All the clothes are hidden behind panels that you have to open yourself, sort of like checking out a friend’s closet."

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Virtual Events

"You want to avoid the sweaty rooms and waiting for taxis, but you want to keep the buzz and the live feedback," says Gartner analyst Jeffrey Mann, explaining the appeal of virtual trade-shows in a New York Times article by Heather Clancy (9/12/07). In fact, more and more trade shows are happening online...

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Eau de Hotel

The latest trend in hotel design is to appeal to all five of a guest’s senses, offering what may be described as a "sensory stay." (Subscription required)

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Can Michael Dell Refocus His Namesake?

The founder of the former top PC maker is back in charge and rethinking the company’s orthodoxies. (Subscription required)

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P&G Gain-iacs

Procter & Gamble is answering the classic question as to whether anybody would really want to have a "relationship" with a jug of laundry detergent...and the answer, apparently, is "yes," as reported by Ellen Byron in The Wall Street Journal (9/4/07).

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Just 1%: The Power of Microtrends

Just 1% of people can create a new market for business, spark a social movement, or effect a political change. Here, Penn (one of the world’s most highly regarded pollster) and Zalense (social-change expert) introduce you to this compelling idea of microtrends, and their assertion that the culture is formed by the push and pull of small trends that are often invisible or ignored. Just think "Soccer Mom"...and you’ll know the power wielded by these small, but strong groups.

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Store perpetually reopens

Most stores change their window displays regularly. GrandOpening, located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, completely reinvents its entire operation every three months. This winter, the 350-square-foot space housed an exhibit for a proposed eco-community a two-hour drive west of New York. Currently, GrandOpening is a ping-pong parlour, tapping into that sport’s growing popularity.

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Rebuilding Lego, Brick by Brick

AUTUMN 2007 from strategy+business | Read the full story»

How a supply chain transformation helped put the beloved toymaker back together again. (Subscription required)

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Fresh as Tesco

Few recent developments have created as much of a stir as the news that Tesco — the U.K.’s top retailer — will soon open about 100 small-format grocery stores in the American West. Building the tension is Tesco’s top-secret, Apple-esque launch, which has kept the tightest of lids on exactly what these Tesco stores — known as Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market — will be like.

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Drivers Size Up Fords (Unknowingly) in New Campaign

Commercials for "Swap My Ride," Ford’s new advertising campaign, feature people who drove Fords for a week instead of the cars they had just purchased. (Subscription required)

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Honda Dealers Selling Cars ... and New Image

03 SEP 2007 from Advertising Age | Read the full story»

That's been the association Americans have had for the past 30 years, according to Gallup polls that routinely lump dealers at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to ethics and trustworthiness. But now, a group of Honda dealers is out to change that reputation, at least in Southern California. About six months ago, it acknowledged dealers' notorious image and now is aiming to clean it up. (Subscription required)

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Mitt Romney Involves Supporters in Campaign Ads

Republican White House hopeful Mitt Romney is challenging supporters to create their own TV ad for his campaign. It's the latest in a series of efforts by political candidates to get their followers more actively involved. (Audio)

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Worm In The Apple - Apple Chief Steve Jobs' not-so-secret plan

Worm In The Apple — Apple Chief Steve Jobs' not-so-secret plan to take over the world is going well. On the desktop, Apple's Macs are chewing away at Dell and Gateway's market share. The iPod has squashed Microsoft's Zune beneath its tank treads...

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How to create a WOM-worthy airline

The reason why Capt. Flanagan is a rogue is because his work isn't the result of formal training. I'll bet his techniques make some colleagues uneasy or nervous. Even United's "Chief Customer Officer" isn't quite sure what to do with him other than "hope" Flanagan's techniques rub off on other pilots. That's a missed opportunity.

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Crain's Chicago Business interviews Jason [Fried]

Crain’s Chicago Business recently posted a video interview with Jason where he discusses avoiding structure, how interruption is the enemy of productivity, why it’s a good idea to emulate drug dealers, the secret to competing with free stuff, and more. (Video )

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Man vs. Machine

"Anything less than being the next Yahoo, Google, or eBay is a failure."

-Jason Calacanis , founder, Mahalo

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The Fed’s Subprime Solution

26 AUG 2007 from the New York Times | Read the full story»

The subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 is, in fact, a credit crisis — a worldwide disruption in lending and borrowing. It is only the latest in a long succession of such disturbances. Who’s to blame? The human race, first and foremost. Well-intended public policy, second. And Wall Street, third — if only for taking what generations of policy makers have so unwisely handed it. (Subscription required)

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How to Fix Wal-Mart? Ask Its Managers

21 AUG 2007 from BusinessWeek | Read the full story»

Store managers from across the country—who know Wal-Mart's customers best—have a few ideas to get the retailer back on track.

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Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web (Steve Rubel/AdAge)

Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web — As Long-form Content Becomes Bite-Size, Make Everything on Your Site Eembeddable.

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Working with the Enemy

"I wholeheartedly believe in what Wal-Mart's doing, which astounds me."

-Adam Werbach , founder, Act Now

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More hourly rentals on the block

A few small car-sharing services have been offering autoless city dwellers the option of renting by the hour for years. Now some of the big traditional car rental companies want a share of that market. Lisa Gray reports.

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Micro-Communities

Social networks should take notes from Ian Schrager and the Delano Hotel. By Bradley Kay.

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Why Google Inspires Diverging Case Studies

15 AUG 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Two high-profile thinkers -- management consultant Gary Hamel and Harvard Business School associate Prof. Thomas Eisenmann -- have been scrutinizing Google. Their perspectives differ sharply. (Subscription required)

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Perfecting Change Management

Efforts to change how a vital process works in business often fail — whether due to project mismanagement, miscommunication, too few resources, a reordering of priorities. But the key factor may be a lack of expertise in change management, according to Forrester analyst Connie Moore, who writes on the topic in, "Peer Practices: An Interview With A Business Change Management Practitioner."

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Voices of Chrysler: Voices of Change

[O]ur email interview Jackie Headapohl, Editor of Voices of Chrysler, provides some of the back-story, the now-story and the future-story... "The culture of The New Chrysler is the same as the old one—scrappy, innovative, risk-taking. The people that work here are passionate and love the car culture. We wanted to start out fresh by opening a conversation with our customers, also passionate people who love our products and cars in general."

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Mega Cultural Connection

Lego’s top competitor changes the game with a mom-inspired manifesto of creativity for kids. By Scott Goodson.

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Manufacturers Find Ways to Navigate Web Retailing

Manufacturers have realized that they can sell more aggressively to consumers online, which puts them in stronger financial positions and allows them to serve consumers more effectively. (Subscription required)

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In India, a Retailer Finds Key to Success Is Clutter

08 AUG 2007 from the Wall Street Journal | Read the full story»

Kishore Biyani's businesses have built their success by mimicking the chaos and grime of traditional Indian markets. (Subscription required)

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Do Companies Look in the Mirror Too Much?

We have all seen companies that are constantly pushing to re-invent themselves based on what the competition is doing, or who spend too much time benchmarking their own efforts.

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The Tiger in Costco's Tank

The big box is fueling its revenues with its gas business and freaking the competition.

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Not your typical rental car

Business 2.0's Erick Schonfeld talks with Zipcar CEO, Scott Griffin, about how his innovative car rental business is changing the way people get around. (Video )

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Survival lessons from Man vs. Wild's Bear Grylls

Some of the lessons he offers sound ripe for being turned into a business "survival" guide too.

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Disruptors Video: An eBay for Manufacturers (MFG.com)

Remember all of those B2B exchanges that were supposed to change the industrial landscape before they evaporated at the tail end of the last dotcom boom?  Well, at least one of them survived—a small company based in Atlanta called MFG.com.  Today, it is a thriving Web marketplace for manufacturers and their suppliers.  I talk with CEO Mitch Free in this week’s episode of the New Disruptors.

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New Analysis Formula Still Can't Predict Future

Management by numbers is the latest trend in business methodology. But running a complex enterprise can't be reduced to a spreadsheet.

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Job-Hopping, or, Hello, He Must Be Going