In February 2020, Pan-China Consulting Services Co. Ltd. (Pan-China) was entering its third decade in operation. Pan-China’s founder was reviewing the firm’s evolution and discussing several key opportunities with his team. Over the previous two decades, the company had shown solid performance in providing financial and capital markets advice to over 200 companies. It had generated strong returns for its key investors, who ensured that every deal was financially secured by the company’s auditing, financial, and consulting expertise. However, the founder and his two senior advisers had to make some decisions. Should Pan-China participate in a new round of private placement investment? Should it consider investing in a second opportunity? Which fund issuance would be the best fit for Pan-China? Was its consulting and investment business model sustainable?
In February 2020, Pan-China Consulting Services Co. Ltd. (Pan-China) was entering its third decade in operation. Pan-China's founder was reviewing the firm's evolution and discussing several key opportunities with his team. Over the previous two decades, the company had shown solid performance in providing financial and capital markets advice to over 200 companies. It had generated strong returns for its key investors, who ensured that every deal was financially secured by the company's auditing, financial, and consulting expertise. However, the founder and his two senior advisers had to make some decisions. Should Pan-China participate in a new round of private placement investment? Should it consider investing in a second opportunity? Which fund issuance would be the best fit for Pan-China? Was its consulting and investment business model sustainable?
Societies that are better at utilizing tools are likely to be more productive. The authors have studied when 161 countries adopted 104 technologies over the past 200 years, and they conclude that profound economic advantages--as measured by per capita income--accrue to early adopters of technology.
Data from the executive search firm Spencer Stuart reveals trends in the makeup of boards of directors, comparing the years 1987 and 2011. Most directors are still white men, but they're older and more independent. As the role of boards has professionalized over the years, they have evolved from larger groups to leaner decision-making bodies composed of directors with specific skill sets.
It's the ultimate bottom-of-the-pyramid challenge: How do you create a well-designed, safe, and affordable house for the world's poorest people? When Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar posed that question in an HBR.org blog post in August 2010, they offered their own simple sketch of a possible solution-and wondered if a version could be mass-produced for $300. Since then the $300 house has become a full-fledged movement, with a growing list of advisers, a website (300house.com), and corporate sponsors. In June 2011 the group announced the winner of its first design contest, sponsored by Ingersoll Rand. Here is the first-place entry, as voted on by members of the online community at jovoto.com.
Choosing which innovative ideas to pursue is often an exercise in guesswork. But by using existing management tools in a new way, you can effectively gauge your innovation's potential along two crucial dimensions: Can it withstand market pressures from competitors? And can it deliver more economic value to customers than alternatives?
Efforts to bring clean water to Bangladesh by installing tube wells appeared to be a huge success, but over time they led to epic failures: widespread arsenic poisoning, a rise in crime and prostitution, a projected increase in diarrheal diseases as villagers resume using groundwater.
Where and how do strategists find growth opportunities? Sometimes by literally drawing a map, using software that performs semantic-clustering analysis. By analyzing the text in millions of digital corporate documents, the software identifies individual companies' key phrases, or n-grams, and then links firms with similar n-grams on a map. The result reveals intriguing connections between industry sectors, as well as white spaces that offer untapped opportunities.
Many media strategists have been so busy bemoaning the demise of the TV commercial that they've failed to spot a new opportunity: People are combining TV watching and internet use in ways that could be highly valuable to advertisers. Research shows that multitaskers often take what they see in a TV ad and run to the internet, looking for more information. Smart advertisers will be a step ahead, waiting for them there.
This map demonstrates how 12 major cities' workdays overlap - and shows that the American workday is a terrible time to try to get the rest of the world on the phone.