This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Too often, great products fail because customers do not recognize the value that they create. Although we now have ample insight into how customers evaluate new products, many companies focus primarily on creating value -- without enough regard to how customers recognize innovations and evaluate new products. There are only two ways consumers can collect information, the author notes: They can search, or they can infer. Knowing when consumers will search or infer will help you determine which of your innovations customers will recognize. The Internet has had a profound impact on the way customers evaluate many products. First, it has lowered the cost of search by making information more accessible. Second, the Internet has broadened what is searchable by including customer reviews as well as product features on standard spec sheets. To ensure that customers will recognize the value your products offer, the author recommends focusing on three questions: Are customers motivated to search? Are they able to search effectively? What cues will customers use to infer value?

In theory, customer feedback, whether positive or negative, is good. In reality, it can be hard to figure out which online reviews are legitimate-and how responsive to be.

The power of analytics in decision making is well understood, but few companies have what it takes to successfully implement a complex analytics program. Most firms will get greater value from learning to do something simpler: basic business experiments. Managers need to become adept at routinely using techniques employed by scientists and medical researchers. Specifically, they need to embrace the "test and learn" approach: Take one action with one group of customers, a different action (or no action at all) with a control group of customers, and then compare the results. The feedback from even a handful of experiments can yield immediate and dramatic improvements. In this article, the authors provide a step-by-step guide to conducting business experiments. They look at organizational obstacles to success and outline seven rules to follow.

HBR's editors searched for the best new ideas related to the practice of management and came up with a collection that is as diverse as it is provocative. The 2004 HBR List includes emergent concepts from biology, network science, management theory, and more. A few highlights: Richard Florida wonders why U.S. society doesn't seem to be thinking about the flow of people as the key to America's advantage in the "creative age." Diane L. Coutu describes how the revolution in neurosciences will have a major impact on business. Clayton M. Christensen explains the law of conservation of attractive profits: When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products usually emerges at an adjacent stage. Daniel H. Pink explains why the master of fine arts is the new MBA. Herminia Ibarra describes how companies can get the most out of managers returning from leadership-development programs. Iqbal Quadir suggests a radical fix for the third world's trade problems: Get the World Bank to lend to rich countries so that there are resources for retraining workers in dying industries.

For most of the items they buy, consumers don't have an accurate sense of what the price should be. Research shows that consumers' knowledge of the market is so far from perfect that it hardly deserves to be called "knowledge" at all. Yet, people happily buy products every day. Is this because they don't care what kind of deal they're getting? No. Remarkably, it's because they rely on retailers to tell them whether they're getting a good price. In subtle and not-so-subtle ways, retailers send signals to customers, telling them whether a given price is relatively high or low. In this article, the authors review several common pricing cues retailers use--"sale" signs, prices that end in 9, signpost items, and price-matching guarantees. They also offer some surprising facts about how--and how well--those cues work. For instance, the authors' tests of several mail-order catalogs reveal that including the word "sale" beside a price can increase demand by more than 50%. The practice of using a 9 at the end of a price to denote a bargain is so common, you'd think customers would be numb to it. Yet, in a study the authors did involving a women's clothing catalog, they increased demand by a third just by changing the price of a dress from $34 to $39. Pricing cues are powerful tools for guiding customers' purchasing decisions, but they must be applied judiciously. Used inappropriately, the cues may breach customers' trust, reduce brand equity, and give rise to lawsuits.

Companywide incentives often produce disappointing results; individuals assume they will receive rewards regardless of their efforts. But at Continental, such a program resulted in more efficient employees and more timely flights. Here's how the airline did it.