A well-staffed sales function is vital to business success, but most MBA programs fail to offer any sales-related courses at all. As selling becomes more sophisticated and solutions-oriented, and good sales jobs go unfilled for lack of qualified applicants, the value of university-based sales education programs rises. But such programs face substantial barriers in gaining funding and recruiting talent. This, in turn, leads to a frustrating lack of scholarly research relevant to improving sales capabilities. The authors, members of the marketing department at DePaul University, demonstrate that partnering with industry is the surest route to success in establishing sales programs and enhancing their effectiveness. They offer the experience of DePaul's Center for Sales Leadership to demonstrate that when businesses provide input to curricula and encourage their salespeople to contribute to classroom discussions, the benefits flow both ways. Furthermore, demand for sales courses is rapidly increasing: When the center was founded, in 2004, it hoped to enroll 90 students a year. Today about 700 per quarter enroll in its various sales courses.

In this collection of short essays, six executives describe their sales-related success. Jim Koch, of Boston Beer, remembers visiting bars with cold beer in his briefcase: If he could get the manager to taste Sam Adams Lager, he'd make a sale. James Farley, of Ford, sees car salespeople as a cross between problem-solvers and concierges: They help customers figure out complicated electronics, and in China they may even provide rudimentary driving lessons. Susan Silbermann, of Pfizer, describes selling in Latin America, where drugstores are small and independent, advertising directly to consumers isn't allowed, and physicians spend time building relationships with salespeople. Duncan Mac Naughton, of Walmart, gives advice to potential vendors--no matter how small--on how to get their products onto his company's shelves. Phil Guido, of IBM, relates the company's move into solution selling, using as an example the city operation center IBM created for Rio de Janeiro. Suresh Goklaney, of Eureka Forbes, emphasizes the personalized approach of his company's 8,000 door-to-door salespeople, who draw the entire family into their demonstrations.

When a major change initiative runs aground, leaders often blame their company's culture for pushing it off course. They try to forge ahead by overhauling the culture--a tactic that tends to fizzle, fail, or backfire. Most cultures are too well entrenched to be jettisoned. The secret is to stop fighting your culture--and to work with and within it, until it evolves in the right direction. Today's best-performing companies, such as Southwest Airlines, Apple, and the Four Seasons, understand this, say the authors, three consultants from Booz & Company. These organizations follow five principles for making the most of their cultures: 1) Match strategy to culture. Culture trumps strategy every time, no matter how brilliant the plan, so the two need to be in alignment. 2) Focus on a few critical shifts in behavior. Wholesale change is hard; choose your battles wisely. 3) Honor the strengths of the existing culture. Every culture is the product of good intentions and has strengths; put them to use. 4) Integrate formal and informal interventions. Don't just implement new rules and processes; identify "influencers" who can bring other employees along. 5) Measure and monitor cultural evolution. Otherwise you can't identify backsliding or correct course. When the leaders of Aetna applied these rules while implementing a new strategy in the early 2000s, they reinvigorated the company's ailing culture and restored employee pride. That shift was reflected in the business results, as Aetna went from a $300 million loss to a $1.7 billion gain.

The Association for Financial Professionals surveyed its members about the assumptions built into the financial models they use to evaluate investment opportunities. Remarkably, no survey question received the same answer from a majority of the more than 300 respondents. That's a big problem--because assumptions about the costs of equity and debt profoundly affect both the type and the value of the investments that companies make, as well as the health of those businesses and the broader economy. Citing the AFP survey results in detail, Jacobs and Shivdasani, of the University of North Carolina, argue that with trillions of dollars in cash sitting on corporate balance sheets, it's time to look honestly at precisely what affects the cost of capital. They offer specific examples of the consequences that misidentifying the cost of capital can have; a rigorous primer for how to calculate terminal value, the number ascribed to cash flows beyond a project's forecast horizon; and an online tool that allows you to input your own rates to see how terminal-value growth assumptions affect a project's overall value. With this knowledge, you'll be much better equipped to identify your true cost of capital.

The traditionally close relationship between corporate legal departments and big law firms is being disrupted--in part because the former are concerned about costs and lack of accountability. But executives now have many more choices about how to get their legal work done: They can use technology to do document search, bring in high-end temporary lawyers to manage major projects, or send routine processing work overseas. It's tempting for legal departments to react to these new options by asking, "How can we acquire the same services at a lower cost?" But aiming for relatively small, short-term savings could critically damage important relationships, the authors write. Instead, corporations should seize this chance to do four important things: assign legal work to the providers best suited to a particular task; lower legal costs without sacrificing quality; achieve greater transparency and accountability; and derive greater value from in-house counsel. The recent downturn has resulted in excess capacity at many law firms and heightened scrutiny of the billable-hours model. Technology has both created a problem--by generating oceans of data that must be collected, preserved, and reviewed in litigation--and offered solutions, in the form of "smart searching." And over the past few years, new types of legal-services providers have emerged. These three factors have led many companies to renegotiate terms with their law firms. They should beware, say the authors, of focusing on discounted rates rather than aligning incentives between client and counsel. And if legal services are unbundled, firms should be alert to the opportunity to reintegrate them for valued clients.

The U.S. corporate tax code is broken. High rates and perverse incentives drive capital away from the corporate sector and toward other uses and countries. This is bad news for U.S. workers, because corporations aren't making investments that would increase productivity and real wages. And while one might think higher rates lead to higher revenues, the U.S. actually collects less in taxes (as a percentage of GDP) than most other developed nations. Desai, a professor at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law, believes a handful of changes could fix all that. A significant rate reduction and an end to foreign-income tax would encourage U.S. multinationals to keep more money at home. Any revenue lost could be offset by a small tax on noncorporate business income, which is now exempted. Closing the chasm between how income is reported on taxes and earnings are reported to investors would also raise revenue--and end public perceptions of unfairness. These reforms could actually turn the U.S. tax system into an asset. But they won't be effective if managers don't change their mind-set. Rather than shirking their tax obligations, they need to start viewing them as an important social responsibility.

How will the logic of globalization change for corporations from countries such as India, China, Indonesia, Brazil, and Turkey if the growth opportunities in emerging markets continue to far outpace those in developed markets? Natura Cosmeticos, a Brazilian beauty giant, has considerable experience with that question. For some 30 years, the company has been attempting to move, with decidedly mixed results, into developed markets even as the opportunities of its region have grown stronger and stronger. Markets like the United States exert a strong pull on emerging-market multinationals, but Natura must contend with a changing economic equation: The U.S. beauty market grew by an anemic 1.1% in 2010, whereas demand in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru increased by 10.9%. Ultimately, Natura has moved beyond stereotypes of globalization, recognizing that winning in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico can be an entry onto the world stage every bit as effective as conquering Paris or New York.

Disruptive innovation has been a pioneering concept in business since 1995. Johnson, a founding partner at Clay Christensen's investment firm, explains how you can apply disruptive thinking--responsible for the success of many products, companies, and even countries--to your own career. Using the stories of highly successful personal innovators, including herself, she articulates four principles of self-disruption: 1) Target a need that can be met more effectively. Playing in a market where no one else is or wants to be might mean leaving your comfortable career perch for an amorphous role. But it will enable you to head off the competition and could generate rewards you'd never envisioned. 2) Identify your disruptive strengths. Think about what you do exceptionally well that most others can't. Then use that discovery to make an innovative transition. 3) Step back (or sideways) in order to grow. Personal growth can stall at the top of a classic S curve. Avoid that problem by jumping to a new plane and putting yourself on an entirely different growth trajectory. 4) Let your strategy emerge. Don't hesitate to be flexible and inductive in your approach to personal innovation. Disrupters take a step forward, gather feedback, and adapt accordingly.

It's 2008 and Spanish food retailer Superado is on course to miss its financial targets. According to company policy, this means that Superado should withhold all bonuses for the year. But the company has an unbroken tradition of paying out bonuses and treating its workforce well--and it enjoys low staff turnover and high productivity as a result. In this fictionalized case study, based on a Harvard Business School case by Zeynep Ton and Simon Harrow, CEO Luisa Fernandez faces a dilemma: Should Superado reward its employees for maintaining outstanding productivity in an economic crisis, or should it save its resources as a buffer against worse to come? Daniela Beyersdorfer, Vincent Dessain, and Zeynep Ton present this fictionalized case study with expert commentary provided by Nicolas Hollanders and Marcos Barberan.

The famed gymnastics coach on identifying Olympic-level aptitude, changing his style to suit different athletes, and working his way back up in the United States after defecting from Romania.

It's 2008 and Spanish food retailer Superado is on course to miss its financial targets. According to company policy, this means that Superado should withhold all bonuses for the year. But the company has an unbroken tradition of paying out bonuses and treating its workforce well--and it enjoys low staff turnover and high productivity as a result. In this fictionalized case study, based on a Harvard Business School case by Zeynep Ton and Simon Harrow, CEO Luisa Fernandez faces a dilemma: Should Superado reward its employees for maintaining outstanding productivity in an economic crisis, or should it save its resources as a buffer against worse to come? Daniela Beyersdorfer, Vincent Dessain, and Zeynep Ton present this fictionalized case study.

It's 2008 and Spanish food retailer Superado is on course to miss its financial targets. According to company policy, this means that Superado should withhold all bonuses for the year. But the company has an unbroken tradition of paying out bonuses and treating its workforce well--and it enjoys low staff turnover and high productivity as a result. In this fictionalized case study, based on a Harvard Business School case by Zeynep Ton and Simon Harrow, CEO Luisa Fernandez faces a dilemma: Should Superado reward its employees for maintaining outstanding productivity in an economic crisis, or should it save its resources as a buffer against worse to come? Daniela Beyersdorfer, Vincent Dessain, and Zeynep Ton present this fictionalized case study with expert commentary provided by Nicolas Hollanders and Marcos Barberan.

Human genomics promises to be a wellspring of innovation, diagnosis, and treatment--but it needs an industry cluster if it's to reach its full potential. How and where is such a cluster likely to arise?

Research shows that today's most sought-after young professionals are constantly looking for their next job. Gaps between what they want in terms of professional development and what their companies provide are largely to blame.

Detailed, hard-to-compile data on private equity, venture capital, and real estate firms shows that the number of women in senior finance positions is stuck in the single digits--and 60% of the firms studied had no female senior investment professionals at all.

In a new study by a scientist at the Planck Institute, people who simply believed that a championship golfer had used their club played better than other people who played with the same club. In this Q&A, the researcher discusses the psychological phenomenon that explains how people "catch" success from others: positive contagion.

Airline rewards are still based on miles flown. This is a mistake, according to Hal Brierley, the executive chairman and chief loyalty architect of Brierley + Partners. In this column, he points out the biggest problems with airline loyalty programs--and some ways to fix them.

The world needs more entrepreneurs--the people who make innovation real and advance the "frontier economy." It's a failure on the part of society if their ranks are too thin. But imagination in how to educate entrepreneurs seems to be lacking. Startup Weekend and The Launch Pad are two programs that show what works.

A snapshot of monthly activity on popular social sites, along with a depiction of key demographics.

In June 2012, Best Buy was in crisis. In 1996, Best Buy overtook Circuit City as the world's leader in consumer electronics retailing; however, 18 years later, Best Buy now found this position threatened. With $51 billion in revenues, it was still the biggest CE retailer, but sales were flat and profits had collapsed. Meanwhile, Amazon's sales in Best Buy's categories were growing at more than 50% p.a. and its total sales, at $48 billion, were approaching those of Best Buy. As Wal-Mart cherry-picked popular items for steep discounts and Amazon encouraged consumers to compare prices using smart phones, Best Buy was becoming a showroom for lower cost retail models. International expansion was struggling and domestic sales of digital televisions were cooling. Although the popularity of mobile devices suggested easy growth, many devices were sold by telephone service providers, creating increased retail competition. To add to Best Buy's problems, on April 10, 2012, CEO Brian Dunn resigned after an investigation into his personal conduct. On June 7, 2012, Dick Schulze, the firm's founder, who had navigated the company through many strategic changes since 1966, also decided to leave and "explore all available options" for his 20.1% stake in the company. Best Buy had seen off many competitive challenges in the past. Would it be able to fend off these challengers and maintain its position?