Companies often begin their search for great ideas either by encouraging wild, outside-the-box thinking or by conducting quantitative analysis of existing market and financial data and customer opinions. Those approaches can produce middling ideas at best, say Coyne, founder of an executive-counseling firm in Atlanta, and Clifford and Dye, strategy experts at McKinsey. The problem with the first method is that few people are very good at unstructured, abstract brainstorming. The problems with the second are that databases are usually compiled to describe current--not future--offerings, and customers rarely can tell you whether they need or want a product if they've never seen it. The secret to getting your organization to regularly generate lots of good ideas, and occasionally some great ones, is deceptively simple: First, create new boxes for people to think within so that they don't get lost in the cosmos and they have a basis for offering ideas and knowing whether they're making progress in the brainstorming session. Second, redesign ideation processes to remove obstacles that interfere with the flow of ideas--such as most people's aversion to speaking in groups larger than ten. This article offers a tested approach that poses concrete questions. For example, what do Rollerblades, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, and Spider-Man movies have in common? The answer: Each is something that adults loved as children and that was reproduced in an expensive form for grown-ups. Asking brainstorming participants to ponder how their childhood passions could be recast as adult offerings might generate some fabulous ideas for new products or services.

Word-of-mouth promotion has become an increasingly potent force, capable of catapulting products from obscurity into runaway commercial successes. Harry Potter, collapsible scooters, the Chrysler PT Cruiser, and The Blair Witch Project are all recent examples of the considerable power of buzz. Yet many top executives and marketing managers are misinformed about the phenomenon and remain enslaved to some common myths. In her article, author Renee Dye explores the truth behind these myths. As globalization and brand proliferation continue, writes Dye, buzz may come to dominate the shaping of markets. Indeed, companies that are unable to control buzz may soon find the phenomenon controlling them.

Kevin Coyne and Renee Dye, consultants at McKinsey, show how customers use networks in different ways and explain how companies can adjust their strategies according to the usage patterns in their networks. Managers of network-based businesses--defined here as those that move people, goods, or information from many points to many others--need to know the underlying economic framework of their network, because this can differ substantially from what works for traditional, stand-alone businesses. Managers have long assumed that customers valued all links in these networks equally. Intuitively, managers thought that many of their customers' needs were, in reality, narrower, but they had no way of knowing which links were most important. New computing power and robust mapping software now make it possible to understand network customers better. In applying this technology, the authors have uncovered three distinct usage patterns: one in which all links are, indeed, valued equally; another in which customers concentrate their use in particular zones; and a third in which customers value only individual links. Those managers who don't spot the patterns or understand their strategic implications will find themselves on the losing end of the network battle.