According to the World Trade Organization, the products and services purchased by the government account for 15-20% of developing countries’ GDP. Putting aside the relative handful of defence contractors with their multi-billion contracts, how can companies break into the B2G sector? The surprising answer from one academic researcher is a firm’s corporate social responsibility activities. […]
Read More… from How CSR Can Lead to Lucrative Government Contracts
The hunt for innovative ideas is best achieved, according to the ‘variance hypothesis’ by leaving your office and meeting a broad range of new people in new domains. The greater variety in your network of external contacts — what is known as ‘external breadth’ — the more successful the search for ideas. Variety refers to […]
Read More… from Hunt for Innovative Ideas Externally or Internally-Just Not Both
Equity-based incentives, such as restricted stock grants or options, are common for C-suite corporate executives. This is not surprising as they have corporate-level responsibilities. For business-unit managers in decentralized corporations, however, the practice has been less common. The preference in the past was for business unit-level incentives — that is, compensation tied to business unit-level […]
Read More… from Why Equity-Based Incentives Work Below the C-Suite
Two schools of thought exist on the best source of innovation. The foundational school argues that a deep, expert knowledge of the domain is required to unlock new pathways. Only someone with a complete immersion in the topic is going to discover the breakthrough innovation in that topic. The tension school argues that a diversity […]
Read More… from Broad Knowledge or Narrow Expertise: What Works Best for Innovation?
There are a variety of product-related services that manufacturers offer their customers. New research pinpoints the following different categories of services: Complementary services help customers feel more comfortable buying the product because they either smooth the sale and use of the product or they adapt the product’s functionality. Complementary smoothing services — such as financing, […]
Read More… from Adapt Your Choice of Product-Related Services to the Industry Life Cycle
Organizational design theory studies the formal structures of an organization; network research focuses on informal structures — the informal interactions and relationships ‘behind the chart’. Giuseppe Soda of Bocconi University in Milan and Akbar Zaheer of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management argue, however, that to evaluate individual performance in an organization — […]
Read More… from How Informal and Formal Networks Hurt and Help Performance
The best students from the best universities and graduate schools will be attracted to the most desirable companies to work for in their industries. At first glance, it would seem that these ‘high-status’ companies would be able to unequivocally benefit from the influx of only the best and the brightest into their workforce. A best-in-class […]
Read More… from Why High-Status Companies that Attract the Best Fail to Keep Them
Buying companies in other countries poses significant challenges, requiring close co-ordination and careful integration and creating what’s been referred to in management literature as the ‘liability of foreignness’. But the costs and complications can be matched by the opportunities. The literature also makes clear the potential to access a new managerial and technical ‘ecosystem’ — […]
Read More… from Foreign Acquisitions: The Path to Better Productivity at Home?
New products and technologies often fail to depose inferior ‘incumbents’. (The classic example is the Dvorak keyboard, which, despite being more efficient, lost out to the original QWERTY model in the 1930s.) New products and technologies of equal strengths often go on to win unequal shares of the market. The dynamics of competition are complex. […]
Read More… from Why Inferior Innovations Often Beat the Best
Outsourcing is no longer just an operational issue. As globalization takes hold and more companies shift more activities to suppliers in emerging economies, outsourcing is now a strategic concern. Slowly, a question began to emerge in the consciousness of major manufacturers: were suppliers learning too much? In other words, was it possible that by ‘learning […]
Read More… from When Supply Chain Partners Move Up the Value Chain
