Keep calm and allocate capital: Six process improvements…
23/06/2024
Most large corporations have annual processes to allocate capital and other resources across business units and for strategic initiatives enterprise-wide. The typical practice is to begin with a strategy or “strategic refresh,” develop a long-term (three- to seven-year) financial plan, and lay out a highly detailed budget for the first year of the plan. Unfortunately, […]
Scaling a Midsize Startup…
19/06/2024
The popular conception of entrepreneurship is that it comes in two sizes. Venture-scale startups aim for billion-dollar valuations within a decade by targeting large markets disruptively through innovative technologies or business models. Such aspiring “unicorns” capture the attention of many venture capitalists and angels and include success stories such as Google, Meta, and Airbnb. On […]
How Middle Market Companies Can Avoid a Liquidity Crisis
27/11/2023
This is no time to be caught short of cash, or long on inventory, or both: not when interest rates are double what they were a year ago and revolving credit is hard to find. Not when the International Monetary Fund projects that the world’s advanced economies will grow just 1.4% next year. Not when […]
Making Radical Change a Business Sustainability Imperative
24/11/2023
Companies need to take risks if they want truly impactful results. Devastating wildfires, floods and droughts are already revealing the catastrophic effects of climate change. Yet, a rapidly warming planet is just one of multiple sustainability megaforces that threaten our way of life. It is clear that business as usual is no longer an option. […]
Charted: How Long Does it Take Unicorns to Exit?
03/10/2023
For most unicorns—startups with a $1 billion valuation or more—it can take years to see a liquidity event. Take Twitter, which went public seven years after its 2006 founding. Or Uber, which had an IPO after a decade of operation in 2019. After all, companies first have to succeed and build up their valuation in […]
Case Study: When the CEO Dies, What Comes First: His Company or His Family?
22/08/2023
Shortly after the sudden death of her beloved husband, Priya Gowda learns that the company he built from a small dairy farm into a major Indian conglomerate is in deep financial trouble. Unbeknownst to her and his investors, her husband had taken on a lot of short-term, high-interest loans, and the company is struggling to […]
How leaders can drive business growth in the Middle East
04/05/2023
The pressures of the recent global crisis, evolving demographics, high interest rates, and the cost of capital that hit the world in early 2023 have forced global businesses to adapt—including those in the Middle East region. Savvy leaders, however, view these disruptions as growth opportunities. Research shows that companies that set strategies to consider all […]
How Startups Can Land a Second Meeting with a Corporate Partner
27/04/2023
In a LinkedIn post shared last year, the general manager of PepsiCo Labs, Anna Farberov, shared her frustration with the strategic errors start-ups make when pitching to corporations. Having attended 3,500 such meetings, she felt she had the expertise to detail their mistakes. However, the backlash to her post was severe, with employees and founders […]
Consumers care about sustainability—and back it up with their wallets
03/03/2023
CPG companies increasingly allocate time, attention, and resources to instil environmental and social responsibility into their business practices. They are also making claims about environmental and social responsibility on their product labels. The results have been evident: walk down the aisle of any grocery or drugstore these days and you’re bound to see products labelled […]
Buy and scale: How incumbents can use M&A to grow new businesses
20/01/2023
In line with that goal, business leaders report that their companies are currently building 50 percent more new businesses per year than they did two to five years ago.2“New-business building in 2022: Driving growth in volatile times,” McKinsey, November 14, 2022. But as effective as building new businesses through internal innovation and organic growth can […]
How to Grow Your Top Line in a Down Market
12/01/2023
Facing a tough economy — demand down, interest rates up, disruption and uncertainty everywhere — companies are cutting back. A survey of 3,000 global executives conducted by consultancy AlixPartners, where we work, reveals that 20% have already conducted layoffs, 20% expect to, and 25% have imposed hiring freezes. In addition, 33% said they are building […]
Will Your Competitive Advantage Work in Other Markets?
27/06/2022
When building a business, the critical first step is to develop a strategy that resonates with your market. But once you’ve crafted that winning strategy, what does it take to successfully translate it into new markets? When companies expand overseas, they often assume the competitive advantages that have made them successful in their home countries […]
Ensure that Your Joint Ventures Meet Your ESG Goals
06/06/2022
Companies are under intense pressure to improve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance. To date, the lion’s share of management scrutiny and investor activism has focused on wholly-owned or controlled entities. But this worldview contains a sizable blind spot. Many companies hold large and growing portfolios of joint ventures, many of which are equally-owned […]
The Success of Your M&A Deal Hinges on How You Announce It
12/05/2022
One of the critical mistakes that acquirers make is the mismanagement of Announcement Day, which usually arrives in the form of a carefully staged conference call packed with journalists and analysts — and plenty of excitement. Then investors react to the acquirer’s presentation. For the majority of companies, those reactions come as a harsh surprise, […]
When to Change Your Company’s P&L Responsibilities
19/04/2022
Most major rearrangements, or “leaps,” involve a change of profit and loss (P&L) responsibility in the organization’s primary dimension. Companies can be organized around product category, region, customer segment, distribution channel, business function, asset, program, major account, or any other value-driving dimension. For example, let’s take consumer goods company Procter & Gamble (P&G). In July […]
The flip side of large M&A deals
08/04/2022
The latest readout of our ongoing Global 2,000 research shows that a large-deal approach to M&A holds more risk than other types of M&A programs—second only to an organic approach, in which a company pursues no M&A. According to the data, the chances that a company using the large-deal approach 1 1. A transaction in which […]
State of Grocery Europe: Navigating the headwinds
06/04/2022
Disclaimer: The war in Ukraine is having a deep human, as well as social and economic, impact across countries and sectors. The exact implications for grocery retail are still unclear. This article was written before the war started. Our first analysis of the impact of the war indicates that it mostly accelerates the trends we […]
5 Questions to Help Leaders Achieve Growth Amid Uncertainty
12/01/2022
While the world is still deep in the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, business leaders are busy repairing their operations, looking forward to a post-pandemic world. They frequently find themselves torn between two opposite poles: the urge to act and the need for prudence in the face of uncertainty. Even as business picks up in […]
A new way to score your ability to scale new ventures
01/12/2021
Why do so many great ideas just fail to take off? For all the importance of business building—it’s a top three priority for 52 percent of companies, up from 30 percent two years ago—companies struggle mightily to get a good idea over the hump so that it becomes a big-time success. Only 22 percent of […]
Are You Trying to Retain the Right Employees?
12/11/2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has triggered the latest battle in the war for talent. Hospitals, desperate for nurses, have offered $40,000 sign-on bonuses. Wall Street firms are increasing base pay for entry-level analysts to six figures. Even fast-food operators are promising retention bonuses between $500 and $1,500 to attract new talent. While these approaches may be […]
Should You Localize Your Product for the Chinese Market?
29/09/2021
As China’s consumer base grows larger and more enticing to international brands, many global companies have begun investing heavily in localizing their products to meet the needs of the Chinese market. KFCs in China sell soy milk, fried dough sticks, and congee; Volkswagen launched a whole series of new models designed specifically for China; Starbucks […]
A Futurist’s Guide to Preparing Your Company for Constant Change
23/09/2021
As we look back, 2020 and much of 2021 were a wake-up call for how much and how quickly change can happen. But they were also a warm-up for what’s ahead — not necessarily another pandemic with multiple variants, of course, but flux of every imaginable stripe. The future will not be more stable or […]
The trailblazing consumers in Asia propelling growth
08/07/2021
Asia is already the world’s consumption growth engine and is likely to reinforce that position over the next decade. Disregarding Asia’s consumer markets would mean missing half the global consumption story. Asia’s consumer markets are not only a story of scale, but also one of diversity and shifting preferences and behavior caused by powerful demographic, […]
The growth triple play: Creativity, analytics, and purpose…
06/07/2021
The next normal is the ‘no normal’ The year 2020 was unlike any other, as lives and livelihoods were upended by the pandemic. COVID-19 affected every aspect of our lives, forcing customers and businesses alike to embrace new behaviors, including digital ways of working, shopping, and relaxing. Within a span of a few months, a […]
Business building inside older, established companies
02/07/2021
If you think it’s hard teaching elephants to dance, as Lou Gerstner once characterized change programs at large businesses, 1 1. Louis V. Gerstner Jr., Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround, New York, NY: Harper Business, 2002. here’s a choreographer for you: Bart Schlatmann, the CEO of Allianz Direct—a thriving digital business […]
Is the Stock Market Accurately Valuing Your Company?
10/06/2021
Traditionally, price discovery — determining a company’s fair value price — is based on the interactions of buyers and sellers in a marketplace. The publicly quoted share price demonstrates how capital markets value a company, and it’s the basis upon which the company issues debt and equity. It also helps determine how the company allocates […]
To Make Lean Startups Work, You Need a Balanced Team
21/05/2021
The lean startup approach has taken the entrepreneurship world by storm. Even established companies such as Dropbox, Slack, and General Electric have embraced it as a way to rapidly test and refine ideas for products or businesses. But is lean startup all it’s cracked up to be? In a recent Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal article, we […]
Childcare Is a Business Issue
19/05/2021
When the Covid-19 pandemic removed the safety net of schooling and employee-paid child care for working families, the damage was cataclysmic. Without a stable form of childcare as part of the business infrastructure, the world stopped working for the vast majority of working parents around the world. One third of the U.S. workforce, or an […]
How Midsize Companies Can Maximize Growth and Efficiency
13/05/2021
A few months into 2021, middle-market companies are eager for growth and sense unique opportunities, including the chance to profit from pent-up demand and the momentum of a rebounding economy — and, for some, to take share from or acquire a weakened rival. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting U.S. economic growth at 6.4% this […]
Defining a Post-Pandemic Channel Strategy
23/04/2021
While consumers sheltered in their homes during the pandemic, more economic activity moved online. “In many markets, the surge in e-commerce has compressed the equivalent of several years of growth into just a few months,” McKinsey noted in a report in August 2020. Now, with vaccinations proceeding, CEOs and others who allocate resources face a […]
How Long Can a Company Thrive Doing Just One Thing?
26/02/2021
In a year of many changes and shakeups in the technology world, the recent news that Salesforce would acquire Slack for $27.7 billion (!) definitely raised eyebrows. What, exactly, did the veteran customer relationship management (CRM) company want from the breakout chat application? Why did Slack, which had seen record growth this year, sell? And […]
How to Capitalize On the Coming M&A Wave
24/02/2021
Well-capitalized companies will soon face a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make acquisitions and consolidate power. As the Covid-19 crisis continues and the full brunt of its economic impact becomes clear, weaker players that had been given some breathing room by temporary government support programs or by falling back on their cash reserves, are likely to experience […]
The CEO agenda for companies in advanced industries
16/02/2021
CEOs and corporate leaders are awash with uncertainty due to the persistent transmission of COVID-19, shifting regional dynamics, fluctuating customer demand, and transformational technology disruptions. For industrial companies—those within advanced electronics, aerospace and defense, and automotive and assembly—the decisions made today about their strategy, products and services portfolio, and sustainable performance transformations could have […]
How incumbents can lay the foundations for hypergrowth
28/01/2021
Even with considerable resources available, many big organizations find it challenging to achieve double-digit revenue growth for new products and services—a range that for many start-ups and scale-ups would be dangerously low. But established companies can expand the market reach of their new businesses quickly and effectively by gaining an understanding of how scale-ups and […]
More than a mission statement: How the 5Ps embed purpose to deliver value
27/11/2020
We’ve all seen it: companies that have the “it” factor, an enthusiasm and passion that lights up employees, delights customers, and shines for investors. It’s not just the company’s warmer fleece, or a more delicious ice cream, or even a breakthrough technology. And it’s so much more than just a mission statement. It’s purpose. Purpose […]
When do you need a chief restructuring officer?
23/11/2020
In less than a year, however, the ailing company’s cash situation had stabilized, avoiding the possibility of an abrupt insolvency. The company had found new sources of liquidity, and millions of euros in working capital were freed up thanks to improved short-term cash management. Lenders and other key stakeholders got behind the balance-sheet restructuring. What […]
10 Leadership Lessons from Covid Field Hospitals
20/11/2020
ExCel Centre in London Converted Into Temporary NHS Nightingale Coronavirus Field Hospital The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic starkly revealed fundamental deficiencies in health care delivery around the world, including endemic racial disparities, the fragility of supply chains, the vulnerability of staff, and the depth of uncertainty about both a novel disease and our own systems. It […]
How to find and maximize digital value in any M&A deal
17/11/2020
The digital revolution is changing the dynamics of M&A transactions. IT used to represent a cost that needed to be managed and controlled as two organizations came together. Today, IT and digital capabilities are often the driving force behind the transaction. But, even when an acquisition centers around a company’s other attractive assets, digital capabilities […]
6 Ways a Crisis Can Help You Cultivate a Growth Mindset
22/10/2020
Disruptive, stressful experiences are often opportunities for growth. Research has shown that crises can help lift the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra that pervades many organizations, creating new opportunities for people to voice their ideas on how to do things better. For example, when the pandemic forced an insurance company we advise to […]
Startups, It’s Time to Think Like Camels — Not Unicorns
21/10/2020
Edwin Remsberg/Getty Images The world has changed. In the wake of Covid-19, and the global recession it has caused, business leaders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and investors are all girding for a long period of extremely challenging conditions in the global market. How can startups and innovators of all stripes survive in such conditions? Many are not […]
How CEOs and boards drive long-term value creation
13/10/2020
Corporate long-term behaviors: How CEOs and boards drive sustained value creation Ample evidence shows that when executives consistently make decisions and investments with long-term objectives in mind, their companies generate more shareholder value, create more jobs, and contribute more to economic growth than do peer companies that focus on the short term. Addressing the interests […]
Consumer companies in the “next normal”
11/09/2020
Roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic, many consumer organizations are wondering how they can survive and thrive in a time of unprecedented uncertainty. Even after the pandemic subsides, we face an unpredictable future that demands more flexibility than ever before. But while the COVID-19 crisis is unique to modern history, a look at prior global disruptions […]
How to win with digital marketplaces
10/09/2020
Digital marketplaces have been the buzz of the consumer industry for the past several years, yet many brands and retailers still struggle to understand if and how to partner successfully with them. As a result of marked shifts in consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, digitization has accelerated even further: 40 percent of consumers are […]
How incumbents scale up their new businesses
04/09/2020
So you’ve launched a new business, gotten the funding, built a product, and created a brand. But after some initial success, it’s not scaling. What do you do? If this situation is familiar to you, you’re not alone. In fact, only one in five incumbents succeed in scaling their business after their initial success. That’s […]
The telltale signs of successful Digital M&A
03/07/2020
The old saw that the best deals are the ones you don’t make doesn’t apply when it comes to digital acquisitions—you’ve got to make them, research has consistently shown. You also need to do them well, and that can be challenging, because buying in the digital, analytics, and technology space—what we call “digital deals”—is different […]
Preparing for the next normal via digital manufacturing’s scaling potential
17/06/2020
The coronavirus pandemic is changing manufacturing operations to a degree never before seen. As organizations and leaders seek to ensure the health and safety of their people, they are also reacting to supply-chain shifts that are impacting sourcing and distribution logistics. Supplier resilience is being brought into sharp focus, and labor shortages are bringing many […]
Digital collaboration for a connected manufacturing workforce
15/06/2020
Many experts predicted that with the coming of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), automation and advanced technologies would rapidly displace factory jobs and workers world-wide. Thus far, this prediction has not panned out. In fact, our research with the World Economic Forum (WEF) reveals that leading factories (“Lighthouses”) have invested significantly in people. And the […]
No longer on autopilot: Lessons for CFOs from COVID-19
12/06/2020
We’re now months past the first reports of global infections and deaths from the novel coronavirus, and CFOs and finance teams have done the hard work of leading their organizations through the immediate crisis—for instance, helping to ensure the safety and protection of employees, suppliers, and other key stakeholders; collaborating across functions; assessing liquidity and […]
Digital adoption through COVID-19 and beyond
11/06/2020
By now, most C-suite executives have led their companies to digitize at least some part of their business to protect employees and serve customers facing mobility restrictions as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. As one CEO of a large tech company recently stated, “We are witnessing what will surely be remembered as a historic […]
How Investors Can Navigate Pandemic-Related Risk in Emerging Markets
01/06/2020
HBR Staff/artpartner-images/Getty Images Long after developed markets have Covid-19 relatively under control, the virus will remain a threat in emerging markets, where uneven governance, weak health systems, dense urban slums, and high rates of poverty multiply the challenges of fighting the pandemic. In a few countries there are already early signs of political instability and […]
Direct-To-Consumer Brands Are Finding New Ways To Engage With Customers
27/05/2020
Even before the pandemic arrived, acquisition channels and costs were on the top of mind for a lot of direct-to-consumer brands. Since they can’t rely on exposure through big retail chains and online marketplaces, they have to find their own ways to reach customers while staying cost-effective. A lot has changed in the world over […]
A blueprint for M&A success
11/05/2020
Large mergers and acquisitions (M&A) tend to get the biggest headlines, but executives should be paying attention to all the small deals, too. These smaller transactions, when pursued as part of a deliberate and systematic M&A program, tend to yield strong returns over the long run with comparatively low risk. And, based on our research, […]
How the CPG industry can prepare for the next normal
07/05/2020
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads across the globe, threatening both lives and livelihoods, consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) manufacturers continue to play an important role: producing essential items we all rely on for our health and well-being. CPG leaders have focused on meeting this demand while guarding the safety of employees and customers. At the same time, forward-thinking […]
Leading marketing and sales with purpose
05/05/2020
“Without empathy, nothing works.” 1 1. Sean Gregory, “ ‘Without empathy, nothing works.’ Chef José Andrés wants to feed the world through the pandemic,” TIME, March 26, 2020, time.com. That quote, from José Andrés, a celebrity chef who also founded and runs the nonprofit World Central Kitchen, highlights the reasoning behind the organization’s mission: to […]
Don’t Make This Common M&A Mistake
03/04/2020
Huber & Starke/Getty Images According to most studies, between 70 and 90 percent of acquisitions fail. Most explanations for this depressing number emphasize problems with integrating the two parties involved. That’s perfectly true, but my experience suggests that integration problems are particularly severe in cases you wouldn’t necessarily expect — when the acquisition is a related […]
Capturing cross-selling synergies in M&A
23/03/2020
When companies look for synergy potential in deals, they tend to focus on costs. After all, cost synergies are more straightforward to estimate than revenue synergies and often pay off quickly after Day 1. Revenue, or growth, synergies are more complex and take longer to capture. But, with deal multiples at record highs, capturing revenue […]
The CIO challenge: Modern business needs a new kind of tech leader | McKinsey
20/02/2020
“There’s no worse time than now to be an average CIO.” These words, uttered by an executive at a recent conference, neatly capture the intense pressure on CIOs. For years, executives have stressed the need for CIOs to move beyond simply managing IT to leveraging technology to create value for the business. This priority is […]
Supporting employees during mergers and acquisitions…
05/02/2020
Mergers create vast organizational anxiety about the future: in most cases, the operating model and culture will change dramatically for one or both merging companies. These changes go far beyond a new name and senior leadership; they challenge the core of an organization’s identity, purpose, and day-to-day work. Even small tactical changes, like new expense […]
How businesses can thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
03/02/2020
The ‘move fast and break things’ ethos that epitomized Silicon Valley business culture for much of the 21st century’s first decade has fundamentally changed the global economy. For evidence of this, look no further than the French start-up, Guppy, which was launched in late 2018 to dredge discarded electric rental scooters out of the River […]
Here’s how your company should scale up artificial intelligence this year
28/01/2020
One of the key benefits that company leaders expect from investment in AI is the streamlining of in-house processes. The automation of routine tasks, such as the extrication of information from tax forms and invoices, can help companies operate more efficiently and make significant savings. As AI usage continues to grow, so do public fears […]
How the VC Pitch Process Is Failing Female Entrepreneurs
15/01/2020
HBR Staff/alxpin/Getty Images In 2018, only 3% of venture capital in the U.S went to companies with a female CEO. Yet, the number of female-owned businesses has risen both in the U.S. and around the world, and the number of women intending to become entrepreneurs globally has increased even more sharply. Women who venture into […]
Digital transformation: Improving the odds of success
20/11/2019
For established companies, the pressure to digitize business models and products has reached new intensity. McKinsey research shows that the best-performing decile of digitized incumbents earns as much as 80 percent of the digital revenues generated in their industries. Ascending to that elite group is far from easy. In a new survey of more than 1,700 […]
How to Improve Your Company’s Net Promoter Score
14/10/2019
HBR Staff/Paula Daniëlse/Getty Images There is a sure-fire way to increase your company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) or the likelihood that customers will recommend you to others. There’s also a sure-fire way to learn about your operational vulnerabilities using customer surveys. The key in both cases is to give customers the chance to evaluate you […]
Pricing: Distributors’ most powerful value-creation lever
12/10/2019
Pricing is undergoing a revolution fueled by big data, advanced analytics tools, and powerful digital capabilities. Distribution businesses are well positioned to reap the benefits of this revolution, given the high volume of transactions they support and the breadth and complexity of both their product and customer portfolios. The pricing capability is critically important in […]
Why Africa’s Industrialization Won’t Look Like China’s
16/09/2019
eyegelb/Getty Images China designed and executed a policy that shrank the industrialization process in a mere 25 years — something that many economies took at least a century to do. That redesign has brought immense dislocation in global commerce and industry, enabling China to become one of the world’s leading economies. China’s success has led […]
When Should You Fire Your Child from the Family Business?
31/07/2019
Tetra Images/Getty Images For years Charles dreamed of working side by side with his son, James, in the family business, a thriving manufacturing company that his father had founded and he had grown. Since James joined the business straight out of college, both men assumed he would eventually take over. But things hadn’t turned out […]
The next startup cities that will transform the global economy | World Economic Forum
29/07/2019
During the past decade, much of the discussion about start-up ecosystems has been centered on the question of which city or region will become “the next Silicon Valley”. Although there are several places with promising growth trajectories, we frankly think this view is short-sided. It implies there needs to be a new champion overshadowing the […]
How traditional companies can launch new businesses that ensure their survival
22/07/2019
The list of long-established companies that have been disrupted by fast-moving, tech-enabled powerhouses gets longer by the day. Facing pressure from younger, more innovative challengers, many incumbent companies in the energy sector are also reinventing themselves through a dual effort to digitize their legacy businesses and create new enterprises. Indeed, McKinsey research shows that top-performing […]
5 Signs That Your Family Business Might Have an Ethics Problem
25/06/2019
Sunny/Getty Images When he was attending his grandfather’s funeral, Robert Pasin, the CEO of Radio Flyer, was overwhelmed by the outpouring of affection and respect for the family patriarch, who had originally founded the third generation family business, which manufactures toys. “All these people who worked in the factory, all these suppliers, they told me […]
The journey to an agile organization
24/06/2019
Agility is catching fire, and there is growing recognition of its transformational benefits. But moving to an agile operating model is tough, especially for established companies. There are several paths to agility and many different starting points, yet successful agile transformations all share the common elements described in this paper. Agile organizations are different. Traditional […]
Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement
20/06/2019
michellealbert/Getty Images A number of health systems have scored impressive gains in improving outcomes and patient satisfaction and lower costs by applying the Toyota Production System (TPS) to redesign “lean” clinical and administrative processes, eliminating waste and boosting quality. But in all too many cases, when the leader who championed TPS left his or her […]
Britain’s constitutional time-bomb – The next to blow
19/06/2019
BRITONS PRIDE themselves on their “unwritten” constitution. America, France and Germany need rules to be set down in black and white. In the Mother of Parliaments democracy has blossomed for over 300 years without coups, revolution or civil war, Irish independence aside. Its politics are governed by an evolving set of traditions, conventions and laws […]
Scaling Culture in Fast-Growing Companies
13/06/2019
Tim Robberts/Getty Images Over the past few years, there has been a marked increase in hypergrowth companies across the globe. First coined by Alexander V. Izosimov in the Harvard Business Review in 2008, “hypergrowth” refers to the steep part of the S-curve, where industries and firms grow at an explosive pace. Businesses rapidly expand, company valuation […]
What Makes People Upgrade Products? Thinking About Self-Improvement
14/05/2019
Cultura RM Exclusive/Rob Prideaux/Getty Images From upgrading mobile phones to trading in cars, consumers often face the decision of whether to buy new versions of products they already own. As marketers know, product improvement is a key driver of consumers’ decision to upgrade—the greater the improvement between the previous and new iPhone, the more likely […]
How Company Culture Shapes Employee Motivation
13/04/2019
In a recent strategy meeting we attended with the leaders of a Fortune-500 company, the word “culture” came up 27 times in 90 minutes. Business leaders believe a strong organizational culture is critical to success, yet culture tends to feel like some magic force that few know how to control. So most executives manage it […]
A Theoretical Physicist (and Entrepreneur) on Why Companies Stop Innovating
26/03/2019
Safi Bahcall, a former biotech CEO, began his career as a theoretical physicist before joining the business world. He compares the moment that innovative companies become complacent ones to a glass of water freezing, becoming ice. The elements are the same, but the structure of the company has changed. Bahcall offers ways for growing companies […]
Trade is not a weapon. Lets not use it as one…
08/03/2019
For decades, trade has been the number one way for countries around the world to peacefully co-develop, build ties and produce wealth, and it has been enormously successful at that. Globalization has enabled billions of people to become part of a global trading system and to be lifted out of poverty. And trade has reduced, […]
How Big a Problem Is It That a Few Shareholders Own Stock in So Many Competing Companies?
01/03/2019
Richard Drury/Getty Images Many critics claim that anti-trust enforcement has dangerously weakened since the 1980s, often citing the dominance of the tech giants as evidence of this. They argue that any benefit gained from Google’s free services or Amazon’s low prices is outweighed by their chokehold on suppliers, their possession of mountains of personal data, and […]
Neuroscience Is Going to Change How Businesses Understand Their Customers
16/02/2019
ANDRZEJ WOJCICKI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images A Fortune 100 automotive company is exploring a new technology on the periphery of their core business. The executives in charge believe they have struck on a possible breakthrough, but as they push the project into uncertain terrain, their traditional signposts for decision-making are no longer relevant in this new […]
It’s time for small businesses to get serious about Brexit
06/02/2019
You might be enthralled or appalled by the Westminster shenanigans; you might be a leaver, remainer or remoaner; you might predict we’ll have no deal, the withdrawal agreement much as currently agreed, a second referendum, or we’ll go full circle and be welcomed back by Brussels with open arms. But, as we get towards the […]