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In many companies, the top management team is officially responsible for helping the CEO make a company's big decisions. But another, unofficial group usually does that job de facto. That's the way it should be, argues Frisch, of the Strategic Offsites Group, provided that the CEO is deliberate in devising the role of this informal and unnamed "kitchen cabinet." Problems can nevertheless arise when senior executives learn about important decisions after the fact, mistakenly assume that they have real power to protect their departments, and find themselves in a system where the way decisions are actually made goes unacknowledged. The key, according to Frisch, is to make better use of senior executives' time and talents by giving them specific responsibilities that complement--but do not overlap--the advisory duties of the kitchen cabinet. A CEO who explicitly acknowledges the role of her cabinet and strikes the right balance between it and her official advisory group of executives can get the best from both.

In the past 25 years, major original equipment manufacturers have delegated the management of their supply chains to a handful of first-tier suppliers. Although this approach frees OEMs from the tasks of building and supervising supply subsystems, speeds up product introductions, and helps manufacturers secure larger volume discounts, it has gone too far. In this article, Choi, of Arizona State University, and Linton, a former chief procurement officer of LG Electronics, point out the dangers of relinquishing so much power to first-tier suppliers: it weakens an OEM's ability to control costs, stay on top of critical technology developments and shifts in demand, and ensure that suppliers are operating in a socially and environmentally sustainable fashion. The solution is for an OEM to selectively establish direct relationships with key lower-tier suppliers. Specifically, an OEM should form close ties with vendors that have a significant impact on the OEM's cost of goods sold, have strong innovation potential, don't pose sustainability risks, and can provide insights into important trends. Implementing this approach isn't simple--it may require reshaping the entire purchasing function. But it's essential for manufacturers that want to stay ahead of competitors.

When terrorists attacked the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, employees of the Taj Mumbai hotel displayed uncommon valor. They placed the safety of guests over their own well-being, thereby risking--and, in some cases, sacrificing--their lives. Deshpande, of Harvard Business School, and Raina, of the HBS India Research Center in Mumbai, demonstrate that this behavior was not merely a crisis response. It was instead a manifestation of the Taj Group's deeply rooted customer-centric culture that, the authors argue, other companies can emulate, both in extreme circumstances and during periods of normalcy. The key ingredients of this Taj-style customer centricity include: 1) a values-driven recruitment system that emphasizes integrity and duty over talent and skills; 2) training of customer ambassadors who serve the guest first and the company second; and 3) a recognition-as-reward system that values well-earned plaudits--from customers, colleagues, and immediate supervisors--over money and advancement. Each of the three elements has important features and nuances, which the authors explore in detail so that your company can take its cues.

Your next internal assignment is your next chance to create results--for your organization and for your career--and a smart investment of time and effort up front can mark the difference between getting by and truly excelling. A key factor in your transition will be knowledge--not only substantive information about the project or field, but an understanding of how others inside and outside the organization have tackled similar assignments, what challenges and opportunities lie ahead, what resources are available, and how to mobilize those resources to overcome any obstacles you may encounter. The authors provide practical steps that will help you not only get smart for your next assignment but also stay smart, building knowledge capital to excel in new roles throughout your career. They expand on these steps, which they call phase zero, learning tour, and affinity groups.

HBR interviews fashion designer Kenneth Cole on a career that has combined work, family, and community activism.

It's a dynamic that plays out in industry after industry: One company makes a big acquisition, and rivals feel pressured to respond with deals of their own. But the authors' research in the tech industry suggests that alternative strategies often make more sense. They advise managers to consider three less direct responses and provide guidance on determining the best strategy.

Quick-and-dirty prototypes can help move projects forward. But many companies rapidly follow them with polished prototypes--and everyone focuses on the prototype, not on the remaining ambiguities about the problem the product is meant to solve or the obstacles in the way. This "innovation blindness" can delay a project or sink it altogether.

Thirteen years of research on more than 2,000 Japanese companies and their U.S. subsidiaries shows that the longer it takes to get from headquarters to that subsidiary, the less likely the subsidiary is to make a profit. Productivity, teamwork, trust, and staff retention can be eroded by long travel times.

Tiny verbal clues can speak volumes about your personality. New research from the chair of psychology at the University of Texas reveals that someone's use of function words--the pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and auxiliary verbs that are the connective tissue of language--offers deep insights into his or her honesty, stability, and sense of self.

What's needed today is courage from business leaders and employees alike.

The social sector could learn a lot from the "just do it" approach of design firms. When designers want to explore a new strategy, product, or service, they don't waste time describing it to dozens of groups and trying to get them to adopt it wholesale. They build prototypes, test them with small sets of users, and then roll out what works.

In preparation for the 90th anniversary of Harvard Business Review, the editors combed the magazine archives and other sources to select iconic charts that relate to the practice of management. This two-page spread illustrates the Experience Curve, the Growth Share Matrix, the Five Forces, Disruptive Innovation, and the Market Pyramid.

The greatest business successes in history have stemmed from the ability of companies to capture new markets. Yet traditional business strategy in established fields does not provide appropriate guidance for capturing new markets, and a distinctive approach is essential. In crafting strategy for new markets, firms should pay attention to five critical ways in which their approaches should differ from strategy for established markets: 1) generate demand before vanquishing competitors; 2) time market entry rather than move immediately to exploit opportunities; 3) sell to customers directly before leveraging powerful sales channels; 4) win in targeted footholds prior to targeting big markets; and 5) retain flexibility instead of trying to leverage fixed costs. While discussing these guidelines, this article examines the conditions for early-mover advantage and explains when to use “superhighway” or “country road” sales channels. Large firms often spend a great deal of time charting customer segments, studying price sensitivity, and estimating demand for new markets, yet data on new markets are either backward-looking or fictional. The success or failure of a new venture often comes down to identifying a handful of risks up front, and managers should target foothold markets once risks are identified.

After reading some confusing management texts for an Executive MBA course he is taking, a manager falls asleep. He dreams that he is standing before a beautiful classical-style building, within which a man sits on some stones, chatting with three younger men. The manager is drawn to the seated figure and, to his delight, realizes that it is Socrates. He approaches him with a longstanding preoccupation and a discussion ensues regarding what 'leadership' really is.

Scenario development is a time- and resource-intensive process, one that not all companies are positioned to undertake at any given point in time. As such, this article will propose an Abbreviated Scenario Thinking process that uses published scenarios from government and industry sources to allow companies to make strategic decisions based on the results. Scenarios are narratives that describe the possible futures in which one must compete 5, 10, or 20 years from now. They allow people to test possible actions by playing them out in three or four different ways. Scenarios are based on plausible consequences of events, environmental forces, and players as they occur in time, and create patterns of the future that can have substantively different effects on strategic decisions. Thus, scenarios are important to executives and managers in the 21st century as they develop competitive strategies. By employing Abbreviated Scenario Thinking, executives utilize published global scenarios to analyze the driving forces that affect their organizations, asking "What If?" as an entry point to scenario planning. This can produce benefits even before any formal scenarios are written.

Major problems associated with product proliferation include higher production, inventory, and record-keeping costs; increased expenses associated with trade promotions and slotting fees; added consumer confusion and stress; and increased susceptibility to stockouts. This article describes how a firm can limit product proliferation without incurring reduced sales or lowering consumer loyalty. An effective product proliferation reduction program needs to be based on several principles: resisting the temptation of asking consumers if a greater assortment is required; classifying goods into consumer-behavior-based tiers; using interfunctional product pruning teams; practicing mass customization, where appropriate; placing absolute limits on product choice; and implementing effective strategies for product pruning.

Pricing is a key element of the marketing strategy. It does not require significant investments or resources, and is perhaps the most accessible lever to manage profitability. Even minor fluctuations in pricing can have a significant impact on both revenues and profitability. As such, lack of careful planning in pricing is a wasted opportunity. With this as a backdrop, we make a case for precision in pricing to enhance profitability. Since consumers vary in their preferences, motivations, and propensity to spend, they assign varying degrees of emphasis regarding price upon their purchase decisions. We argue that pricing is a creative exercise in math and behavioral economics, and companies should stay focused on profits. We also provide a series of guidelines for creating effective base prices, and then modifying them to enhance profitability. Finally, monitoring prices at the transaction level will reduce leakage in profits and further add to the bottom line.

A large business generally knows its customers through quantitative analyses and summary reports, which are staples of market research and corporate reporting. Too often, the voices of individual customers are muffled by a torrent of numbers, and the stories they would tell are garbled. Few managers and even fewer executives hear customers speak, in their own words and ways, about the company's products and services. Yet, as we discuss, these stories may suggest enhanced customer service, better products, and organizational innovation; indeed, a number of companies have shown that the value of attentiveness to customer stories can be great. Herein, we describe a controlled, exploratory approach a company might take to develop its own engagement with customer storytelling-one that encompasses not only its interactions with customers along the front line, but also conversations ongoing in social media. Our proposal demands sustained commitment from senior management. We counsel senior executives to lead by example, to listen to customer stories, to learn from them, and to share them with others in the executive suite. By truly caring about storytelling, business leaders can better serve their customers and their companies.

The solar photovoltaics (PV) industry would not exist without government policies. Governments around the world have implemented policies to support consumption of solar energy and production of solar PV products. These policies have varied across countries and across time, thus contributing to regulatory uncertainty. This article addresses two related questions. First, how does regulatory uncertainty in the solar PV industry shape firms' market and non-market strategies? Second, how might firms' responses to this public-policy environment affect technological development and the locus of manufacturing? Government policies on solar PV, and firms' strategies to overcome regulatory uncertainty, may have unintended consequences. Firms' decisions on location and technology development may result in loss of employment and national competitiveness for developed countries; and firms' market strategies may increase regulatory uncertainty if they do not involve non-market stakeholders.

This article analyzes the closing gap between regulation and enforcement of environmental protection in China and explores its implications for doing business there. It identifies three major dimensions that characterize change in regulatory systems: priorities and incentives, bureaucratic alignment, and transparency and monitoring. Using these dimensions, it describes the mechanisms that characterized China's prior period where enforcement of environmental protection was decoupled from regulation. Regulation and enforcement are becoming re-aligned. This is due to a change in national development strategy, reorganization of the bureaucracy, and increasing monitoring from both the government and general public. To address these changes, firms need to embrace environmental innovation and integrate local and global standards. They should also be more transparent and compete on reputation.