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Every day, managers face the risk of lawsuits being filed by their workers. Lawsuits are disruptive, time consuming, expensive, and often completely unexpected/unanticipated. To better prepare for this undesirable occurrence, managers must understand the risks involved. Three metrics-frequency, severity, and range-elucidate the risks of employment lawsuits and illustrate how these may vary from one state to the next. Risk management tactics can be deployed strategically to handle the variety of risk present in various locations. These tactics create a defense-in-depth strategy with layered multiple-hurdles to stymie employee depletion of corporate assets. Rather than live in perpetual fear, employers can more successfully manage the risks of worker lawsuits.

With European nations approaching financial meltdown, conflicts multiplying in the Middle East, and the fiscal cliff looming in the United States, the world seems threatened by geopolitical crisis. This article identifies five factors that are contributing to global insecurity and delaying financial recovery. The first is economic uncertainty, marked by the global financial crisis and high unemployment — youth unemployment is 17 per cent in the United States and surpassing fifty per cent in Spain and Greece. The second factor is demographic shifts, with high projected population growth in Asia and Africa and shrinking projected populations in countries like Germany, Russia, and Japan. The third factor is political paralysis, as exemplified by partisanship in the U.S. Congress or the struggles of the fledgling Iraqi state. The fourth factor is war and terror, marked by an unresolved War on Terror, a rising Chinese military, and cyber warfare. The fifth is climate change and resources, particularly the increasing problems of global warming and resource scarcity. After outlining these five challenges to global security, this article stresses the importance of innovation and research and development as ways to avoid potential crises.

By the late 1980s, Japan was the second-largest economy in the world, in part due to its ability to produce high-quality products like automobiles. But the Japanese Miracle, which had begun with Japan’s quick economic recovery after the Second World War, ended abruptly in 1990. This article suggests that Japan, while excelling at reverse engineering and incremental product improvements, must boost innovation in order to thrive. It attributes Japan’s innovation deficit to its culture of harmony, which affects decision making. Japan’s “nemawashi-ringi” decision-making process involves preparing the groundwork for a new proposal, including talking with those affected by the proposal, getting their feedback, and modifying the proposal. Unfortunately, this process is slow, focuses on incremental improvements, and suppresses innovation. A better process should be compatible with Japan’s culture of consensus building, should foster knowledge creation, and should fit a centralized, hierarchical firm. Top management should encourage the formation of self-organized groups (the engines of innovation) and use a Rapid Evaluation of Ideas process. This includes a group formulating a proposal on a specific problem, identifying stakeholders, preparing a list of assumptions for each stakeholder, assessing these assumptions’ “Importance” and “Certainty,” plotting assumptions on a two-dimensional scale, analyzing the plot and identifying the next steps, collecting more information, meeting a week later after gathering information, and determining the next steps.

Although entrepreneurs commonly give advice, many of their most valuable lessons are left unsaid. This article lists and explains ten entrepreneurial “secrets.” 1. People are lazy and most innovations involve efficiency or reduced effort. 2. People are impatient and want instant gratification. 3. Starting a new business is a slow and deliberate process, but time is limited. 4. There is value in getting started and learning as you go. 5. Everything is a trade-off. 6. Unexpected things happen. 7. Take care of your body and you will make better decisions. 8. Know the intimate details of a venture. 9. Learn from everything. 10. Don’t be a jerk.

The global nuclear industry is at a pivotal point, as risk is weighed against opportunity. The debate is fuelled by the recent disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant, the global focus on a secure energy supply, climate change, and political instability in oil-producing regions. This article, co-authored by the communications director of the Canadian Nuclear Association, describes what steps the Association is taking to communicate its strategy to stakeholders and increase their understanding of nuclear. <br><br>True to its scientific focus, the Association built its 2010-2015 strategic plan and communications on mental models research, which helps in identifying deeply held expert and stakeholder beliefs about an issue. With insights from mental models research, the Association developed a communications strategy built on sociology and psychology, insights from social science-based research, a dialogue orientation, and an understanding of network effects. What the association learned about successful communications strategy was to a) create impactful, consistent branding; b) enrich your web site and social and mainstream media to energize dialogue; c) hold milestone events for continuity, connection, and consensus; d) educate, inform, and engage; e) build strategic partnerships for inclusiveness and transparency; f) advertise key information and issues; g) engage with all levels of government; and h) engage and support members and employees. The Association measures communications efficacy using a variety of techniques, including updated mental models research, social media assessments of participation, web metrics, stakeholder surveys, and advertising reach.

Business growth, though one of the most discussed topics in the entrepreneurial world, is the subject of many faulty assumptions and erroneous beliefs. In detailing the science of business growth, this article starts by debunking the common myth that growth is always good. Growth can create value, but mismanaged growth can destroy value. A growth risk assessment tool is provided so that entrepreneurs can assess whether or not their firm is prepared to grow. Growth requires much more than strategy, and the author shares lessons such as that growth requires constant improvement, that hiring for cultural fit is essential, that a choice must be made between a team culture and a star culture, and that when a firm believes it “has it all right,” it has started to decline. The article discusses business upgrading and the growth plateau, and describes the four ways to grow — through improvements, innovations, scaling, and strategic acquisitions. It ends with a nine-part strategic growth checklist that includes geographic expansion, introduction of complementary products to existing customers, and expansion to new customer segments with existing products.

Little is known about the growing phenomenon of the “reluctant entrepreneur,” or individuals who start new ventures because they have no other choice. Often, these individuals would prefer to work as salaried employees but find themselves jobless; their motivation is less the entrepreneurial spirit than economic necessity. This article, based on an empirical study of 287 reluctant entrepreneurs, examines the personality issues that may drive them and provides evidence that they can achieve impressive results despite their less-than-perfect motivation. The study seeks to find out whether reluctant entrepreneurs possess the “Big Five” characteristics of entrepreneurs — risk-taking, need for achievement, need for autonomy, self-efficacy, and internal locus of control. The authors find that reluctant entrepreneurs are generally older than opportunity entrepreneurs when they start their business, and so have more managerial experience. A higher level of managerial experience predicts a higher level of success, and a higher level of the Big Five characteristics predicts a lower level of reluctance to become and remain an entrepreneur. Although it is encouraging that reluctant entrepreneurs are often successful, it is less encouraging that many are unhappy and want to return to their positions as salaried employees.

Many entrepreneurs believe that simply filling a niche will result in business success, but they fail to see the crucial role of effective media relations. Media coverage is essential in order to raise capital, generate demand, and gain credibility, yet it is difficult to attain. The direct method to attract media coverage is to issue a press release, yet this rarely garners attention unless delivered by a large firm. The indirect method, however, is to cater to the media’s needs — in effect, asking not what a reporter can do for you, but what you can do for a reporter. The author, a Manhattan-based public relations expert, describes how decades ago he earned limited coverage in The Wall Street Journal for a client’s medical product. But rather than focusing on simply promoting the product, he could have leveraged the inventor’s medical credentials and knowledge — this way, the media could have interviewed him as an expert who had made a scientific discovery and then gained familiarity with the product. In another case, a facial recognition product failed to gain publicity until after the World Trade Center attacks, when the inventor was widely interviewed as an authority on how to increase border security. This article suggests that if an entrepreneur can become positioned as a source of information on the broader field encompassing or related to their product, then the media can in turn become the entrepreneur’s "customer."

The Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Steve Coll is interviewed on the topic of ExxonMobil, the American multinational oil and gas corporation that is often considered both a corporate bully and a paragon of prudent management practices. In describing his research on ExxonMobil, Coll details its extreme degree of discipline and tightness of information released on the energy industry. He describes the former CEO Lee Raymond as sophisticated, concrete, and reform-minded, albeit intimidating to colleagues and ardent in his philosophy of anti-government regulation and climate change skepticism. Raymond focused on metrics for measuring company health, forced employees to follow the same script on operating performance, improved safety records, and bolstered financial discipline. He also had a close relationship with Dick Cheney, the U.S. vice president under George W. Bush. Besides his complex views on ExxonMobil, Coll shares his thoughts on “resource nationalism,” particularly the fraught relationship between oil and nationalism. He attributes opposition to building oil pipelines to environmentalist forces, and finishes the interview with his outlook on the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Companies must strike a balance between competing effectively in their current market while strategically innovating to capitalize on future opportunities. This article begins by examining the concepts of “competitive strategy” and “strategic innovation.” It details the Competitive Strategy Framework (5 C’s) of customers, competitors, channel configurations, cost structure, and core capabilities. It also unpacks the four archetypes of strategic innovation: attacking the mass market by designing a new value configuration; opening a new market by maximizing economies of scope through horizontal integration, value bundles, and enhanced customer experience; opening a new market by maximizing economies of scale through vertical and virtual integration; and pursuing the unserved, under-served, or non-consumers by tailoring products and business models to them. Managers should consider an organizational design that can both manage stability and handle change. The ability to continually adapt strategic moves as a function of strategic ambitions and new consumer behaviour will inspire new business models and innovations, which is the ultimate sustainable competitive advantage.

Previous decades were characterized by relative stability and predictable economic growth. But in the new climate of volatility, unpredictability, complexity, and ambiguity, leaders must accept imperfection and uncertainty. Rather than respond to new situations according to scripts, expectations, and external standards, leaders should exercise self-awareness, creativity, and improvisation. Leadership is defined not by creating perfect plans, but by responding to unscheduled events and learning from them. As this article suggests, leaders must prepare themselves by accurately perceiving their unique mix of talents and flaws. Only then can they effectively leverage their ability to lead and move past conformity and the projection of superficial strength.

Nations across the world are commonly said to be facing leadership crises in sectors such as government, business, religion, and education. One phenomenon in the context of leadership decline is the rise of followers. Partly, this rise stems from long-term historical shifts away from dominance and hierarchy and towards democracy and increased rights. But recent technological changes also account for it, with social media and the Internet placing more power in the hands of common people. Paradoxically, during the last thirty years while leadership has been in decline, the leadership industry has flourished, and there is a proliferation of leadership centres, programs, workshops, books, and consultants claiming to teach people how to lead. After describing the current leadership crisis, this article uses the examples of political opposition to Vladimir Putin and more cooperative, restrained CEOs to illustrate the decline in traditional norms of leadership.

In recent years, professional service firms have seen considerable senior talent (often women with children) leave work. Many of these individuals leave their career due to the unwillingness of their employer to provide them with the flexibility to achieve a work-life balance. Virtual teams — often the answer to this problem — are those in which not all members are physically assembled; they share complementary skills and are enabled by technology such as the Internet and telephone. This format, which is especially suitable for individual, knowledge-based work, is on the rise due to employee demand. The lifestyle-driven virtual team model allows practitioners to be selective about their hours and projects, increasing employee satisfaction. Employers benefit due to virtual teams leveraging the best talent more easily and workers facing fewer office-related distractions. Unique challenges, however, include the absence of non-verbal communication, working across time zones, difficulty of building rapport, overreliance on e-mail and telephone communication, and managing conflict at arm’s length. After describing the paradigm of lifestyle-driven virtual teams, this article outlines the best practices: institute strong leadership, choose the right team members, set expectations from the start, implement strict protocols, use proven processes, manage timelines and budgets carefully, establish meaningful project milestones, encourage interaction, communicate more efficiently, and minimize team conflict.

Canada’s economic axis was originally domestic, running east to west. Later, with the North American Free Trade Agreement, it ran north to south. Now, Canada is in free trade negotiations with the European Union and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and has a bilateral pact with Japan. This article, by a former senior policy advisor to the prime minister of Canada, begins by examining Asia’s economic miracle, including China’s rise and Japan’s generation of the largest increase in wealth creation in world history. It then describes the proposed but somewhat uncertain Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would include various Pacific nations, as well as Canada and the United States. It argues that the top priority for Canada should be a bilateral free trade agreement with Japan and that three issues should guide Canada’s actions: a) Canadian manufacturers can become part of Japanese global manufacturing by producing specialized parts; b) Japanese banks, trading firms, and manufacturers have entered into alliances and networks to invest in new technology, share production, transfer technology, and enter new markets; c) Japan, which invented lean production and just-in-time production, is aggressively transforming global supply chains and Canada could become a North American gateway for container flows from Europe and Asia. In describing the global economic climate, this article shows the economic shift from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the importance of leveraging the new opportunities therein.

Canada ranks 17th out of 24 OECD countries on productivity. Many consider productivity to mean “working harder for less pay,” but a more accurate definition would be “output per hour of work” or “combined output from labour and capital.” General disinterest in and misunderstanding about productivity impedes necessary actions being taken to fix Canada’s looming crisis. As this article explains, reasons for Canada’s productivity deficit include its abundance of small businesses, which generally invest less in R&D; Canadian governmental and private-sector under-investment in information technology; unfavourable taxation; and inertia due to unions’ demands. Yet there are various opportunities for Canada to boost productivity, including implementing more government policy that addresses barriers to competition and growth and promotes technology and education investment; researching opportunities in the private sector and applying them in the public sector; and investing in teams, processes, and equipment. This article, based on interviews with business executives who have overseen significant change, finishes by detailing various enablers of productivity, including technology investment; strategic leadership; better workplace cultures with a stronger sense of teamwork and increased training; and an entrepreneurial mindset.

Increasingly, commercializing new technological innovations means drawing on multiple inventions spread across various firms. In multi-invention contexts (such as smartphones), a single person or company rarely invents and patents all the components of a commercially viable product. Success requires that companies choose the right business model, manage their patent strategies, and align their business model and company strategies. Firms must choose between integrated business models (assembling as many complementary technologies and commercialization assets as possible within the firm) and non-integrated business models (combining inventions with those of others through component or licensing market relationships). <br><br>After selecting a business model, firms need to implement a patent strategy, which can be broadly categorized as either a) proprietary, where the firm seeks to stake out and defend a proprietary market advantage; b) defensive, where the firm may not wish to use patents to gain a competitive advantage, but needs to not be put at a competitive disadvantage by other firms’ patents; and c) leveraging, where the firm relies on using a patent’s power to prevent others from using the invention, thus enabling the firm to collect revenue, influence a technology, or close business deals. The article concludes by highlighting the importance of firms developing and aligning patent strategies with business models from the beginning, not merely on an ad hoc basis.

China is facing a shortage of workers as its demographics and role as the “factory of the world” change. Though set to remain an export hub, China is climbing the value chain and its middle class is growing, so that “Made in China” will turn into “Sales in China.” Since the economic crisis, Asian markets have shown resilience for three reasons. Firstly, Asia is diversifying its trade base, with less dependence on Western trade and more domestic and intra-Asia trade. Also, economic diversity has stabilized the region, due to the presence of developed financial centres like Hong Kong, sophisticated manufacturing bases like mainland China, and low-cost manufacturing, such as in Vietnam and Bangladesh. Finally, the region is well financed, with such rapid economic growth that the Asian middle class is expected to account for over 40 per cent of total global consumption by 2020. A global talent imbalance exists due to high unemployment in mature markets and talent scarcity and rapid economic growth in Asian markets. Opportunities in this scenario include the chance for foreign universities to attract more Chinese students, a role for the subsidiaries of multinational enterprises to develop capable talent for Chinese operations, a prioritization of Chinese-language schools, and a strengthening of relations with China in the key area of trade engagement.

Big data is a capability that allows firms to extract value from large volumes of data. When combining two dimensions — business objective and data type — the use of big data can be organized into four main strategies. 1) Performance management involves understanding the meaning of big data in company databases using pre-determined queries and multidimensional analysis. The data used for this analysis are transactional. 2) Data exploration makes heavy use of statistics to experiment and get answers to questions that managers might not have considered. It leverages predictive modeling techniques to predict user behaviour based on past business transactions and preferences. 3) Social analytics examines the vast amount of non-transactional data, often on social media platforms. 4) Decision science involves experiments and analysis of non-transactional data, such as consumer-generated product ideas and product reviews. In addition to explaining these strategies, this article provides a list of popular big data techniques and vendors and identifies three emergent big data practices: a) integrating multiple big data streams; b) building a big data capability; and c) being proactive and creating a big data policy.

Despite its crucial role in corporate success, human capital has not received the rigorous study it deserves and workforce analytics has been underutilized. Workforce analytics is not about simple measurement — “counting heads,” reporting turnover, cataloguing employee knowledge and skills, reporting engagement scores, or buying analytics software. Instead, it is a systematic approach used to define workforce problems, test successful solutions, and make better decisions. This article provides six steps for maximizing the value of strategic workforce analytics: 1) Frame the central problem. 2) Apply a conceptual model to guide the analysis. 3) Capture relevant data. 4) Apply analytical methods. 5) Present statistical findings to stakeholders. 6) Define action steps to implement the solution. The authors leverage their experience at IBM and elsewhere to explain how embedding workforce analytics into companies requires the integration of timely, accurate, and multi-purpose data; a flexible and responsibe set of processes and technical infrastructure; individuals who possess the functional, statistical, and business-oriented skills needed; and adequate governance structures.

In today’s complex world, having a disruptive innovation capability is mandatory, both for growing a business and protecting existing markets. Though disruptive innovation transforms and creates markets, many of today’s executives rise through the ranks of management, where predictability is valued, and therefore lack the ability to lead disruptive innovation. This article highlights the key dynamics involved in leading disruptive innovation and proposes a five-phase model (with the acronym LEAPS) that provides the structure for understanding the ways that leaders create clarity during times of uncertainty. L – Listen: Start with yourself, not the market; be instinctual. E – Explore: Go outside to stretch the middle; appreciate ambiguity and push personal boundaries. A – Act: Take small, simple steps repeatedly; embrace continuous adaptation. P – Persist: Take the surprise out of failure; accept setbacks as a normal part of leading disruptive innovation. S – Seize: Make the journey part of the destination; the firm’s focus may change over time and luck may play a role.