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Pricing is no longer a purely economic challenge, or a problem that can be solved through simply lowering prices or allocating costs and adding markups. Pricing must focus on value exchange — that customers will buy a product when it delivers value in excess of its price after adjusting for alternatives — and the marketing orientation of the firm. The challenges of pricing can be categorized as price setting (setting the right price in the first place), discounting, price structures (the strategic approach through which specific transactional prices are set), and overall pricing strategy. Various qualitative and quantitative analytical techniques have been developed that help with pricing challenges. Executives must realize that they cannot rely upon the output of a single equation or quantitative analytical technique, as pricing is a strategic challenge, not an “engineering” challenge. In examining the four basic challenges of pricing, this article reminds us that firms exist to serve customer needs profitably. The right price reflects the ability of the product to address a customer challenge, and the right price extracted from customers must exceed the firm’s cost to deliver. Price structures enable executives to align their prices with customers’ willingness to pay without resorting to discounting. The modern understanding of pricing, as detailed in this article, is crucial for executives to embrace in order to make better decisions for their firms.

Promoting women to executive positions and nominating them to sit on boards are goals that are still, for the most part, a long way from being realized. As these authors show, responsibility for stepping up to meet these goals starts at the top. This article provides five principles that can be applied to accelerate the promotion of women to executive positions and board rooms.

Building from within isn’t necessarily a new approach, but in a flat-growth environment it represents a significant opportunity for entrepreneurial business. This article explains how many successful companies focus on internal growth, improved relationships with existing customers, and incremental innovations, rather than mergers, risk-taking, and radical new innovations. It is the paradoxical combination of entrepreneurship and restraint in small and medium-sized businesses that will lead to much business growth of the future.

There has long been discussion about the need for more innovation in Canada. This article uses interviews with business and education leaders and summarizes the obstacles to innovation, including a risk-averse culture and lack of cross-sector collaboration, and the enablers of innovation, such as creating a culture of innovation. Recommendations for advancing innovation in Canada are synthesized under the categories of awareness, intent, and actions.

The battlefield may provide a metaphor for all manner of success in life. Survive, and you’re likely agile, decisive, quick-thinking, and courageous; and that courage manifests itself not just in war. As this Ivey doctorate and battle-tested Canadian Forces officer writes, courage means much more than bravery. It means having the character traits that make one an effective leader on the battlefield — and in the C-Suite.

While there are advantages to being proactive, the best strategy for today’s volatile, slow-growth environment may be one that is essentially reactive — a strategy in which CEOs, like some great athletes, allow events to “come to them.” This is emergent strategy, one that is formed spontaneously, in constant reaction to events and fast-changing realities. This author, a colleague of Henry Mintzberg, argues that an emergent strategy is the right strategy for a slow-growth business environment and stresses the importance of frugal innovation, or Jugaad (an idea whose time for implementation has come).

The transition to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2011 and new pension rules coming into effect in 2013 bring increased transparency for Canadian companies with large defined-benefit pension plans. This means that the financial health and related risks will be more openly reflected in sponsoring companies’ financial statements. However, until uniform policies arrive in 2013, financial-statement users will need to be aware of the choices companies made upon adopting IFRS and how such choices impact their financial reporting. This article describes these choices and their impact on firms.

In 1961, on his second day of classes in the University of Western Ontario's Graduate School of Business Administration, a young Robert Cunningham bought The Human Side of Enterprise, by Douglas McGregor. The book became a classic and changed forever how organizations view and treat employees. The Human Side of Enterprise also had a powerful impact on Mr. Cunningham, who would graduate from Western with an MBA and go on to a successful career of more than 50 years in labour relations and human resources management in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. In this article, written to mark the 50th anniversary off his graduation from Western, and in recognition of Douglas McGregor's great contribution, Mr. Cunningham describes the impact McGregor's book had on him and organizational behaviour.

The recent downgrading of the United States’ credit rating brought into focus the fact that sovereign credit rating is today a largely unregulated industry. While ratings are a prime driver of investment decisions and collateral eligibility standards, they are also a potential contributor to global financial instability. This article compares the three dominant American ratings agencies — Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch — to the Chinese agency Dagong, and discusses the flaws of the current sovereign credit rating industry, including the dominance and minimal regulation of the three major agencies, as well as their limited anticipatory function and potential triggering of misguided economic policies. The article concludes by discussing an alternative — a supra-national organization with a functional focus and political impartiality.

As a generation, the millennials are very different from the baby boomers. Managers accustomed to using certain practices to engage baby boomers must change their practices if they hope to engage and retain the millennials. This article outlines the key differences between the two generations, such as millennials’ technological prowess, preference to work in teams, and desire for work-life balance. It presents the lessons learned from the author’s research on millennial engagement and explains how to put these lessons into practice, including conducting annual engagement studies, ensuring transparent processes, and identifying key drivers of and threats to engagement.

For the past decade, Indian outsourcing firms have talked about “moving up the value chain” as a way of enhancing their service offerings, protecting their outsourcing dominance, and increasing their opportunities for profitability. These long-term moves have important implications for client firms, since they imply a shift in how client firms and business leaders engage with these outsourcers. While Indian outsourcers have prepared for this shift, it seems that many business leaders on the client side have not. This article explains the different meanings of “moving up the value chain” for Indian firms, as well as their sophisticated knowledge management and IT expertise. It reveals what can be learned from Indian outsourcers who have successfully equipped their businesses for high value-chain work, such as their use of social media.

The need for effective business leaders in India is as intense as it is elsewhere. But the path that Indian firms take to develop effective leaders is considerably different from the path followed by North American firms. Indian managers are fixated on profits, yet if top Indian firms are to depend on leadership development organizations, then these organizations must promote research and teaching in six key areas, including developing and retaining talent, developing strong fiscal management, and cross-enterprise strategy formulation.

Conscious capitalism is a philosophy of doing business that incorporates the principles of higher purpose (beyond profit maximization), stakeholder interdependence, conscious leadership, and conscious culture. Companies that adhere to its principles have been shown to outperform the market by a ratio of 9 to 1.<br><br>This article takes four variables inherent in this business philosophy – such as the consequences of fear versus trust in an organization, and understanding workplace prejudice – and applies modern brain science to show their basis. The importance of brain science for risk management and conscious business practices is demonstrated.

It is common for Canadian retailers to receive blame for in-store prices that are higher than in the United States. However, retailers have little control over higher prices. This article explains the causes of these higher prices, such as foreign-owned companies’ expectations of higher margins in Canada, as well as higher costs of doing business in Canada. It also provides recommendations for ways to keep shoppers in Canada.

India’s business prowess has been influenced by the ability of its entrepreneurs to innovate. But if the ability to recognize an opportunity to innovate is to become part of the national business culture, then changes in non-business domains must be made. This article details the history of innovation in India, the nature of innovation for low cost, and India’s gradual embracing of innovation, as well as obstacles to innovation such as company hierarchies and societal stratification.

Cross-business collaboration, a powerful tool for overcoming the challenges of mergers and acquisitions, has the greatest impact on three areas: expanded due diligence, merger intent, and integration. This article details these areas and posits that the success rate for mergers and acquisitions could increase considerably if managers from two merging companies jointly developed a picture of what the combined organization should look like one year later.

It was once unthinkable that international aid would be as intensely scrutinized as it is today. But academics have concluded that the very problems that international aid was supposed to cure still exist, despite the resources that have been channelled to developing countries. This article discusses the types of international aid as well as misguided development approaches — such as single-solution approaches. It then details the best practices in international development, including conducting a forensic analysis of development indicators and managing the transition to local ownership.

Divergent views exist on how to define innovation and measure success in innovation. However, this article contends simply that “innovation is the process of change that creates and grows wealth.” Accordingly, the purpose and key success metric of innovation is the creation of wealth. After examining various perspectives on innovation and justifying this view, this article shows how net cash flow is the best metric of wealth creation. It concludes with two notable innovation failures, involving wind turbines and electric cars.

For small firms, partnering with a multinational corporation (MNC) provides great opportunities and great challenges. Conventional partnering approaches are unlikely to succeed, and firms must use less orthodox strategies. In particular, start-ups can employ three strategies for success: forming, consolidating, and extending MNC relationships. 1) Forming MNC relationships entails fathoming the larger company, targeting the right individuals, and not reaching out blindly. Early experiences with an MNC can have profound effects on the relationship forged. 2) Consolidating MNC relationships involves ensuring a strategic fit and increasing the odds of the relationship leveraging the best of the start-up and the MNC. It requires focus and goal orientation and, frequently, mid-course changes in direction, including dropping the relationship. 3) Extending MNC relationships entails recognizing the potential for conflict and balancing cooperation and competition. It requires shrewdness, and the recognition that aligning closely with an MNC may lead over time to overlapping goals and offerings.<br><br>In illustrating these strategies, this article offers various examples, such as the success of Mango Technologies in engaging with Qualcomm. Qualcomm was actually the third MNC that Mango reached out to, and the relationship was successful because Mango devoted itself to the technology front while Qualcomm negotiated bureaucracy. In another example, Lixter leveraged BizSpark One, an MNC partnering initiative run out of Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus. Here, a small firm took advantage of Microsoft’s partnering initiative through being proactive and getting noticed early on.

Researchers agree that between 40 and 70 per cent of mergers fail, yet there is a lack of practical advice for identifying and integrating knowledge that is dispersed through a merged organization. The Knowledge Jam is a process, set of disciplines, and culture that seeks to surface and translate knowledge into productive work in a merged organization. This article explains how knowledge fragmentation is a key impediment to a merged firm, and breaks down leaders’ under-investment in identifying and transferring the knowledge that is dispersed throughout two merged firms. It then details the five steps of Knowledge Jam, as well as its three disciplines — facilitation, conversation, and translation.