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When it comes to making business decisions, being overconfident about your choices can actually be more harmful than just guessing. Here's how managers can calibrate their confidence levels--and avoid being too sure in the wrong situations.

Few companies can pinpoint just how much they're spending on procurement. Here's a matrix that gives companies a systematic way to identify and organize the full costs of their relationships with their suppliers.

Guidant's Ginger Graham argues that senior executives are actually better prepared than most lobbyists to inform and educate members of Congress about the issues that will affect their businesses.

In a roundtable discussion, top executives from Southwest Airlines reveal that relationships with the company's unions and frontline supervisors may actually be more important to its success than the operational focus for which it is so well known.

In big organizations, traditions and territoriality often keep people in different product groups from working together. Siemens may have found an answer to this problem: managers need to feel they have "permission" to collaborate across divisions.

The case describes AOL Latin America, a joint venture with Venezuela's Cisneros Group. It highlights the challenges faced by AOL, a leading brand, into entering emerging markets. AOL was a latecomer in Latin American Internet and had a difficult debut in Brazil after a challenging Initial Public Offering.

Discusses the components of the statement of cash flow and its direct and indirect format of presentation. Also briefly explains the difference between cash and accrual accounting and provides examples of Standard Microsystems Corp. and Intel Corp.

Discusses the accounting equation and defines common terms found in the statement. Also provides an example of the balance sheets of Coca-Cola Co., Ariba, Inc., and Safeway, Inc.

Includes a description of the common components of the income statement. Includes examples of the income statements of Home Depot, Inc., Lucent Technology, Inc., Gap, Inc., and McDonald's Corp. and lends itself to a brief discussion regarding these companies.

Supplements the (A) case.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 101109.

Spreadsheet Supplement for case 101108

President Vincente Fox takes over in Mexico on December 1, 2000--a political revolution ending 71 years of PRI rule. In the past five years, Mexico has solved a number of macroeconomic problems and had a good run of economic growth. But a host of microeconomic problems have been largely ignored for years--poverty, income distribution, education, labor reform, energy and the environment, crime, and drugs. The Fox administration is trying to lay out plans for mitigating all of these problems at once--a very ambitious strategy. Do they have the problems right, and will it work?

Supplements the (A) case.

In the Third Edition of Winning at New Products, published by Basic Books and distributed by Perseus Books, Professor Robert Cooper of McMaster University demonstrates why consistent product development is vital to corporate growth and explains methods for maximizing the chances of success. Chapter 1, "Winning Is Everything," presents the book's major themes. The author demonstrates that launching well-targeted new products with all possible speed is the linchpin of corporate success, not just yielding new revenues but increasing the financial value of companies that achieve a reputation for innovation. The author also considers the high odds of failure with new products and initiates his perspective on beating those odds.

In the Third Edition of Winning at New Products, published by Basic Books and distributed by Perseus Books, Professor Robert Cooper of McMaster University demonstrates why consistent product development is vital to corporate growth and explains methods for maximizing the chances of success. Chapter 2, "New Products: Problems and Pitfalls," looks at the reasons why new products fail -- and what goes wrong with product innovation before product launch. The author's stated hope is "that we are not doomed to repeat the same mistakes year after year."

In the Third Edition of Winning at New Products, published by Basic Books and distributed by Perseus Books, Professor Robert Cooper of McMaster University demonstrates why consistent product development is vital to corporate growth and explains methods for maximizing the chances of success. In Chapter 3, "What Separates the Winners from the Losers?," the author shows that new product success is both predictable and controllable. He emphasizes the importance of marrying technological prowess to a strong market orientation; undertaking one's homework before product development begins; logically sequencing the flow of activities as projects moved from idea to launch; and encouraging interaction between people from different functional groups within each firm.

In the Third Edition of Winning at New Products, published by Basic Books and distributed by Perseus Books, Professor Robert Cooper of McMaster University demonstrates why consistent product development is vital to corporate growth and explains methods for maximizing the chances of success. Chapter 4, "Lessons for Success: The Critical Success Factors," integrates lessons from the first three chapters into fifteen key lessons for new product success, which the author then builds into a game plan for winning at new products.

In the Third Edition of Winning at New Products, published by Basic Books and distributed by Perseus Books, Professor Robert Cooper of McMaster University demonstrates why consistent product development is vital to corporate growth and explains methods for maximizing the chances of success. Chapter 5, "The New Product Process: The Stage-Gate Game Plan," is the first of six chapters on the implementation of the author's Stage-Gate, a process for driving new products to market successfully and quickly. In this chapter, the newest version of Stage-Gate-a beginning-to-end product innovation road map-is introduced.

In the Third Edition of Winning at New Products, published by Basic Books and distributed by Perseus Books, Professor Robert Cooper of McMaster University demonstrates why consistent product development is vital to corporate growth and explains methods for maximizing the chances of success. Chapter 6, "Discovery: The Quest for Breakthrough Ideas," is the second of six chapters on the implementation of the author's Stage-Gate, a process for driving new products to market successfully and quickly. The author presents his thinking on the earliest phase of the Stage-Gate process: coming up with breakthrough new product ideas.