Should birds of a feather flock together? Not if the goal is to promote innovation, says Rachelle C. Sampson, assistant professor of logistics, business and public policy at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Entrepreneurs can learn to maintain discipline while pursuing an opportunity and manage — rather than ignore or avoid — the uncertainty that comes with the territory.
I had probably greeted Tom in passing more than 50 times before we actually met. A new student at the MIT Media Lab, he worked just a few doors down the hall from my office, but I was a busy doctoral student and didn’t have much time to cultivate relationships.
The information revolution is making consumer disaggregation vastly more efficient and profitable than aggregation, the traditional source of brand power. This raises a fundamental question:
By understanding the variety and interconnectedness of supply-chain risks, managers can tailor balanced, effective risk-reduction strategies. The authors show how smart companies use “stress testing” to identify parts of the supply chain that might break in the event of a natural disaster, terrorist strike or other upheaval. They then explain a variety of ways that supply-chain partners can collaboratively prepare for and effectively manage risk.
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Although large-scale risks garner media attention, it is the everyday, small-scale risks associated with a lack of transparency in countries’ legal, economic, regulatory and governance structures that can confound global investment and commerce. New research identifies the causes and measures the effects of this phenomenon.
Contrary to a widely held assumption, companies can integrate a variety of techniques to substantially reduce costs, not just in the design phase but throughout the product life cycle.
Green marketing hasn’t fulfilled its initial promise, but companies can be more effective with it if they realize that a one-size-fits-all strategy doesn’t exist. Consumers swear that they want green products, but in checkout aisles, most revert to more common requirements — convenience, availability, price, quality and performance. The authors show how companies today can choose among several different green strategies targeted to specific customer segments.
Employees with deep motivation, strong commitment, unquestioned loyalty and widely shared values can have drawbacks. Much has been written about the upside of deep commitment, but employers need to be wary of workers who identify too much with the company. Overidentification, says the author, may lead to an ends-justifies-the-means outlook, unethical actions, substitution of personal needs for company goals and resentment when the company doesn’t meet employees’ expectations.
The sale of branded products through unauthorized channels is a growing problem for suppliers. A three-pronged approach can help them fight back.
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Many studies have shown that the most treacherous time in the failure-strewn business of mergers comes after two companies tie the knot, when they attempt to combine operations. Surprisingly, however, they often destroy value not as a result of inattention to detail but through excessive zeal in their integration efforts.T
For multinationals, it is increasingly difficult to maintain competitive advantage on the basis of the traditional economies of scale and scope. Future advantage will go to those that can stimulate and support interunit collaboration to leverage their dispersed resources.
Over the course of the past two decades, it has become increasingly, abundantly clear that companies must find ways to be more innovative, more flexible and better prepared.
Manufacturing practices popularized by the Japanese, such as total quality management and just-in-time procurement, have become the worldwide gold standard for producing high-quality products. One might expect the same to be true of Japanese methods of logistics management (planning and arranging the transport and storage of goods and materials).
Most companies today are using precious little of the computing power available to them through the machines and software they already own. PCs, servers and mainframes all sit idle much of time, while the people who operate them are away from the office or the plant.