This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For executives running global companies, the challenge of keeping abreast of events in markets around the world is mind-boggling. The problem is not a lack of information--it is having the time and energy to process the information. How should executives prioritize their time to ensure that it is focused on the countries and subsidiaries that need the attention? Which markets should they emphasize, and which ones can they allow to fall off their radar screen? Researches executive attention at global companies for five years, interviewing 50 executives at 30 corporations--including ABB, Dun & Bradstreet, Nestle, and Sara Lee--and finds that executives end up prioritizing a handful of markets at the expense of the others, but they don't always select the most promising ones. Because executive attention is so limited, executives tend to focus on the home market or on "hot" markets, always at the expense of other opportunities. Examines the nature of executive attention and identifies mechanisms by which subsidiary companies attract attention from the top executives. Although attention can be harmful as well as helpful, focuses on the positive aspects, three elements in particular: support, in terms of how headquarters executives interact with and help subsidiary managers achieve their goals; visibility, in terms of the public statements headquarters executives make about how the subsidiary is doing; and relative standing, in terms of the subsidiary's perceived status vis-a-vis other subsidiaries in the organization.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. It is estimated that of the $255 billion spent per year on information technology projects in the United States, more than a quarter is burned up in failures and cost overruns. Project professionals and management experts have attempted to respond to these failures by improving the formal systems related to program governance, project management, and project-related technologies. Though these new approaches have produced improved results, with more than two out of three projects continuing to disappoint, something is still missing. Suggests five crucial questions to ask to help prevent project failure; are we planning around facts, is the project sponsor providing support, are we faithful to the process, are we honestly assessing our progress and risk, and are team members pulling their weight? Examines the success of project managers who do engage in these conversations, and then lays out a plan for using them in the organization.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Dynamic pricing, in which prices respond to supply and demand pressures in real time or near-real time, has long been used by airlines and hotels. Now dynamic pricing is making inroads in many different sectors, including apparel, automobiles, consumer electronics, personal services, telecommunications, and second-hand goods. These companies are making use of new findings on dynamic pricing and of increases in data processing power to raise their average realized prices, thereby increasing revenues and profits. There are two mechanisms for dynamic pricing: posted prices that customers can see; and price-discovery mechanisms, in which customers determine prices through their own actions. These two mechanisms are employed in seven different forms: yield management (commonly used by airlines), demand-based pricing, three types of auctions, group buying, and negotiations. Describes eight situations for using the various forms of dynamic pricing. An important constraint in employing dynamic pricing is consumers' Latitude of Price Acceptance, which varies for different products and situations and which can be discovered through observation, surveys, or analysis of demand elasticities. Customer participation in the pricing process decreases the chances of a consumer backlash. Customers also tend to embrace dynamic pricing in the following situations: where the price reflects intensity of demand for the product, there is communication between the seller and the consumer, and the price difference is explained by a difference in perceived value across channels through which the transaction occurred. The more the seller understands the buying cycles and habits of the customer, the more he is able to manage price margins to the rhythm of the customer's shopping, to segment customers, and to develop price discrimination.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In the past, companies have tried to manage risks by focusing on potential threats outside the organization: competitors, shifts in the strategic landscape, natural disasters, or geopolitical events. They are generally less adept at detecting internal vulnerabilities that creep into organizations and other human-designed systems. Indeed, as companies increase the complexity of their systems they often fail to pay sufficient attention to the introduction and proliferation of loopholes and flaws. A crucial thing to remember is that the possibility of random failure rises as the number of combinations of things that can go wrong increases, while the opportunity for acts of malicious intent also goes up. Build new applications on top of legacy systems and errors creep in between the lines of code. Merge two companies and weaknesses sprout between the organizational boundaries. Build Byzantine corporate structures and processes and obscure pockets are created where bad behavior can hide. Furthermore, the enormous complexity of large systems like communications networks means that even tiny glitches can cascade into catastrophic events. In fact, catastrophic events are almost guaranteed to occur in many complex systems, much like big earthquakes are bound to happen. So, without the benefit of perfect foresight, how can businesses uncover and forestall the fatal flaws lurking within their organizations? There are three complementary strategies: (1) Assess the risk to make better-informed decisions, such as purchasing an insurance policy to cover the risk; (2) spot vulnerabilities and fix them before catastrophic events occur; and (3) design out weaknesses through resilience. These ideas have been around for years, but researchers have recently had to reinvent them in the context of extremely complex, interconnected, cascade-prone systems.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Numerous studies confirm that few people can make it through a typical day without lying. So it should not be surprising that falsehoods and deception are widespread in business negotiations as well. The unspoken, and perhaps unconscious, thought is that if everyone lies, why is it so bad? Examines legal and ethical views of lying, noting that while courts often hold parties to the truth of their representations, negotiators have many ways to mislead the opposing side. For example, negotiating tactics such as nondisclosure and evasion are rarely considered illegal. Indeed, it is often possible to avoid liability by using misleading behaviors that make no representations but which seem to. In light of the moral and legal ambiguity of lying, offers suggestions for how to detect lies and how to protect oneself against bargaining deception, including: establishing negotiating ground rules before the discussions begin; asking the same question in different ways; asking questions to which you already know the answer; including written claims in the final agreement; and using contingent agreements, an escrow agent, or a performance bond.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Business schools and others interested in management education and development have vigorously debated how best to teach strategy to future leaders. Some experts have questioned whether the topic should be taught at all--or at least whether it should be taught to managers. Often missing from the debate, however, has been any in-depth discussion of how individuals learn to think strategically in the first place. What specific experiences are important and how do they contribute? Moreover, what are the different ways in which people absorb those experiences to develop the ability to think strategically? To answer these and other questions, conducts a study that identified executives who were considered the top strategic thinkers in their industries. The study then investigated the totality of experiences (educational, job related, or other) that contributed to the high ability of those individuals. In addition, the research investigated the different ways in which the executives acquired their expertise in strategic thinking--a process that typically took more than a decade. The data showed that strategic thinking arises from 10 specific types of experiences--for instance, spearheading a major growth initiative or dealing with a threat to organizational survival. Moreover, executives appear to gain their expertise in strategic thinking through one of three developmental patterns. These findings help demystify the process by which strategic thinking is learned, offering important implications for management development and the practice of strategy.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. When consumers resist adopting an innovation because it requires them to alter established habits, the innovation is called a resistant innovation. Uses a study involving the diffusion of screwcap wine closures in three countries--Australia, New Zealand, and the United States--to analyze strategies for marketing a resistant innovation. For winemakers, screwcap closures represent a solution to "cork taint," a quality problem that can be caused by poor-quality corks and that can affect wine flavor. But consumers have shown resistance to screwcap closures, associating them with cheap wines or preferring the tradition associated with cork. However, among wine consumers in Australia and New Zealand, screwcaps have now achieved widespread acceptance. But 2005 wine industry statistics showed that less than 5% of U.S. wineries used screwcaps on fine wines. What is the reason for this difference? Earlier research in 2004 had found few differences between U.S. wine consumers and those in Australia and New Zealand--except in their attitudes toward screwcaps. Interviews decision makers at more than two dozen wineries in the three countries, and concludes that winemakers in Australia and New Zealand had generally taken a different approach to marketing screwcap wine closures than United States wineries did. Concludes that under certain circumstances coopetition strategies, which involve some cooperation among competitive firms, can be an effective strategy for marketing a resistant innovation. Suggests that managers should analyze the marketing problem the new innovation faces and the resources available to address it; consider the kind of specific resources and knowledge that might be exchanged during coopetition; and evaluate the industry climate, including the role of trade associations and industry experts.

When getting a company ready to sell in the short term, it turns out, PE firms employ many of the best strategy practices--use debt aggressively, focus on cash flow, reduce costs, concentrate on the dominant part of the business and sell the rest--that make for success in the long term. They just do it in months, not years.

Singapore is the most future-oriented country in the world, new research from Thunderbird business school reveals, whereas Russia is the least. Yet people the world over aspire to plan for the future, a fact global managers can use to inspire workers in present-oriented cultures to look ahead.

Four times more CEOs are being fired today than in 1995, a Booz Allen Hamilton study finds. That's good news. It's not that CEOs are being pressured to think more in the short term; it's that boards are finally clearing away the dead wood.

Scenario-planning tools are getting better, and companies are using them more effectively to prepare for an uncertain future, according to the latest results from Bain & Company's ongoing 14-year survey of corporate tool use.

A study of 2,859 firms shows that companies unwisely cutting costs to artificially improve performance are fooling no one for long. Their stock rises sharply right afterward but falls precipitously in the next few years, as poor management comes home to roost.

The oldest family-run business in the U.S., the Zildjian Company has been making cymbals, first in Turkey and then in America, since 1623. As a 14th-generation leader of the company, Craigie Zildjian sees innovation in collaboration with customers as her best path to continued success.

When they cut R&D, underinvest in their brands, and--worse--cut worker and middle management ranks, leaders are merely punishing their employees (and stockholders) for their own inability to create real value, says this McGill University professor. Productivity improvements come from better management or applying new technologies, not from making fewer people do more work.

Companies are expecting to spend more on R&D this year, but they're putting it in the wrong place--too much on new project development and not enough on the basic research that will produce tomorrow's revenues.

Within the past few years, executives have come under increased scrutiny and criticism for the levels of compensation they receive. At the same time, corporate practices surrounding the design and review of executive compensation programs have received increased attention. While some recent executive misconduct has involved violations of the law, many academics and other corporate critics view the issues involving executive compensation more from an ethical than a legal perspective. Several dimensions of the executive compensation decision process offer significant opportunities for ethical choices. Identifies the major components of executive compensation and highlights decision points in the design and administration of each component where ethical issues may arise. Proposals to reduce the potential for ethical misconduct are also offered.

Postulates that successful viral marketing campaigns trigger an emotional response in recipients. Working under this premise, examines the effects of viral messages containing the six primary emotions (surprise, joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust) on recipients' emotional responses to viral marketing campaigns and subsequent forwarding behavior. According to findings, in order to be effective, viral messages need to contain the element of surprise. By itself, however, surprise is not enough to guarantee message success; therefore, it must be combined with other emotions. The effectiveness of the viral message is also moderated by gender, with disgust-based and fear-based campaigns being more likely to be forwarded by male recipients than female recipients. To ensure forwarding behavior, the message must capture the imagination of the recipient, as well as be clearly targeted. Moreover, achieving fit between a campaign and the featured emotions is important, as this ensures an increased chance of forwarding. In addition to relaying these and other findings, shares and discusses the managerial implications of using different emotions in viral marketing campaigns. Finally, culture is recognized as an influencer.

In recent years, the practice of using corporate Web sites to recruit job applicants has increased steadily. Despite this trend, however, studies show that approximately 75% of job seekers find the sites too complicated to use successfully (Brown, 2004) and that more than 20% have rejected job opportunities based on poorly designed Web sites (Pastore, 2000). To address this problem, joins Internet marketing and employee recruitment research to offer six development implications for creating an effective "e-recruitment" source on a corporate Web site. Based on a job marketing approach to the recruitment process and consumer behavior research on persuasive communication and decision making, we present considerations important to creating an online recruiting Web site that effectively influences the search decisions and behaviors of a target market of desired job candidates.

Open source software (OSS) is a dramatically disruptive force in the software industry. While businesses see OSS succeeding, many of them have trouble gleaning the lessons that can be learned from the OSS phenomenon, since OSS development appears to be far removed from traditional business practices and principles. A major observation resulting from research on OSS products is that OSS product development is not only enabling innovations by its users, but also providing a structure for them to back-propagate into OSS products, a process that enhances compatibility in OSS products and presents a low-cost solution to the more general problem of servicing highly segmented markets. Argues that this innovative management process carries important insights for both commercial software vendors and companies outside the software industry.

Conventional wisdom assumes that trust develops from a history of interpersonal interactions and communication, through which people come to 'know and trust' one another. In virtual teams, however, establishing trust can be complicated: members may have no past on which to build, no future to reference, and may never even actually meet face-to-face. Swift but fragile trust can develop early in a team's life cycle. Yet, if swift trust doesn't develop or even dissipates, members need to find ways of building trust in each other. To this end, an understanding of how trust impacts a virtual team's development will help managers and team leaders to facilitate and improve team success. Describes the three components of trust (ability, integrity, and benevolence) and identifies which of these are critical to each life cycle stage (establishing the team, inception, organizing, transition, and accomplishing the task) of the virtual team. Proposed action steps for each stage show managers and team leaders how to help members develop trust and sustain it through the project's successful completion.