MIT Sloan Management Review

The product-development process is often seen as an undependable “black box” that rarely produces results that exceed business expectations. With an approach called “net present value, risk-adjusted,” the author offers an operational framework of quantitative tools that can be integrated into existing stage-gate methodologies to create a risk-adjusted NPV that considers the impacts of product portfolio, user needs, and technical and marketing risks.

In a world of mobile talent, open markets and brutal competition, it’s increasingly difficult to maintain an advantage over competitors through product innovation. As a result, some companies have figured out how to outdistance rivals through customer-focused strategies that are virtually imitation-proof.

As networks become very large, they can fall prey to saturation, cacophony, contamination, clustering and high search costs. Those phenomena mean that larger networks can, in some cases, have less value than smaller ones. The authors have identified several strategies that network builders can employ to maintain network effects or limit their decline.

The idea that e-commerce would lead to disintermediation has turned out to be largely wrong. The Web transforms but does not eliminate the advantages of the middleman‘s central lookout position. The authors show how new kinds of intermediaries are helping smart companies realize the promise of the Web. They offer nine ways that intermediaries traditionally add value and explain that three will change, three will survive in a new form, and three present growth opportunities.

Executives know they need to develop their company’s next leaders, but many are disillusioned by all the once-promising fads that have come and gone. Some, however, have discovered how an approach that’s as old as Homer can be one of the most effective means of developing high-potential managers.

When an activity turns into a buzzword, the odds are high that managers will stop thinking consciously about the behavior they‘re trying to elicit and the best way to set expectations clearly. When it comes to the messy, human realities of management, a dose of straight talk — and clear thinking — can go a long way.

Managers are continually being confronted with new and ever-changing competitive pressures from deregulation, globalization, ubiquitous connectivity and the convergence of industries and technologies.

In times of adversity, many organizations miss the opportunity to rethink their business model to optimize their positioning for the recovery ahead. Recessionary economies may not require re-engineering or moving noncore competencies outside the organization for greater efficiency. Oxman suggests four critical ways to prepare for economic recovery.

In 1996, the browser wars became headline news. The conflict involved three of the most important companies of the early Internet era: Netscape, Microsoft and America Online. At stake was AOL’s choice of a browser for its online service, either Netscape’s Navigator or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

OPINION: The proliferation of sanctioned information intermediaries will increase the productivity of interorganizational tasks and processes and spur the next surge in global growth.

No enterprise can out-innovate all potential competitors, suppliers and external knowledge sources. Knowledge frontiers are moving too fast. In almost every major discipline, up to 90% of relevant knowledge has appeared in the last 15 years.

Multiple studies have revealed that over half of completed M&A transactions actually dilute shareholder value within the first year. In a recent white paper,“Fundamental Issues Surrounding Failed Acquisitions” (April 2002), co-authors Robert Stefanowski and Anshuman Ray explore the underlying environmental factors that frequently derail promising corporate pairings.T

Managers in the same company frequently use different criteria to review their employees’ work — unless the organization has trained them to do otherwise.

Accounting watchdogs have long warned that providing nonaudit services can compromise an auditor's independence. Now they have some numbers to support their case.

When Mattel's directors went shopping for a new CEO, they found their man in processed cheese. When IBM's board needed to replace John Akers, it picked an executive who had worked in financial services and cigarettes.

IT professionals seem to have an image problem: Senior executives persist in viewing them as analytical, detail-oriented and introverted — generally unsuitable for high-level strategic, “big-picture” responsibilities.

What do Kmart, Lucent, Bull, Marks & Spencer, Moulinex, Polaroid and Xerox have in common? All are examples, say the authors of a recent white paper, of once thriving companies that seem unable to reinvent themselves in response to environmental change.

Some companies go to great lengths to monitor their workers to discourage stealing and other bad behavior. While monitoring may weed out scofflaws, it may also have a deleterious effect on the morale and motivation of other employees.