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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For many years now, companies seeking to deliver higher business performance by harnessing IT have focused on alignment--the degree to which the IT group understands the priorities of the business. In practical terms, that means there must be shared ownership and shared governance of IT projects. However, the authors contend that their research reveals a troubling pattern: Even at companies that were focused on alignment, business performance dependent on IT sometimes went sideways, or even declined. That's because underperforming capabilities are often rooted not just in misalignment but in the complexity of systems, applications, and other infrastructure. The complexity doesn't magically disappear just because an IT organization learns to focus on aligned projects rather than less aligned ones. On the contrary, the authors say, in some situations it can actually get worse. Costs rise, delays mount, and the fragmentation makes it difficult for managers to coordinate across business units. The research also showed that almost three-quarters of respondents are mired in the "maintenance zone." IT at these companies is generally underperforming, undervalued, and kept largely separate from a company's core business functions. Corporate management budgets the amounts necessary to keep the systems running, but IT doesn't offer enough added value to the business and often isn't expected to. Drawing on the experiences of Charles Schwab & Co., Selective Insurance Group, De Beers, First Data Corp. and National City, among others, the authors identify a group of best practices that constitute "IT-enabled growth."

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Most of the economy is made up of firms that were created well before the advent of e-business. Yet most e-business research has focused on "pure-play" companies that were created specifically to take advantage of the Web. The authors created an e-business planning process that can be used both to examine an established company's existing operations and to identify promising new business opportunities. The planning process has four steps. The first is to identify potential e-business initiatives according to whether they create business value or reduce costs. The second step is to analyze the functional scope of each project using an architecture of e-business processes. The third step, analyzing the sustainability of each initiative's benefits, is particularly important in the e-business context because Internet interactions are susceptible to being copied by competitors. Finally, prioritizing among e-business projects depends on how they fit with other information technology elements. The authors explore ways in which e-business can create opportunities for completely new products and markets, including adding information features, selling information as a product, and finding new markets. The authors detail how their e-business planning process was used at a mature global company. A company task force considered two major projects. The e-business planning process sharpened the definition of the projects, outlined the technical requirements and other resource needs, and confirmed the sustainability of both projects.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How are companies approaching intellectual property (IP) strategy, and what are successful strategies for managing IP? To explore such questions, the author and his research team conducted a detailed survey of senior IP executives at 34 companies. The survey findings indicate that IP has become an area of focus for the executive committee and the board at many companies. What's more, the study found that top executives' involvement in IP strategy was correlated with better IP performance. Analysis of the survey data suggests another intriguing point: Some companies are now using an approach to IP strategy that the author calls "full-fledged IP protection." This "full-fledged IP protection" strategy includes seeking technical and nontechnical IP protection for even minor inventions, in an attempt to "pack" technology spaces with IP claims. This practice differs from a classic IP strategy of using IP to support core research and development. At least in some industries, this change in IP use may, the author suggests, be causing the nature of IP competition to shift from the world of "real" products to that of "potential" products. The study also found that, in the companies surveyed, IP-related tasks often entail cooperation among staff from different functional areas within a company, such as product designers and patent and trademark attorneys. Having clear-cut rules about IP at the functional level was associated with better IP performance in the companies surveyed, as was having corporate management devote time to listening to the company's most senior IP officers. On the other hand, failure to sell or license out IP when circumstances facilitated or necessitated such a trade was associated with significantly lower IP performance.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How can companies design products and product lines to maximize profits? Out of all the potential configurations available to them, how should they decide which ones to offer? The authors have developed a framework for balancing the costs of developing and offering a rich line of products and services against customer demand for additional choice. Their methodology helps managers make informed decisions about which features to include in the product; which variations to include in a product line; and how the offerings should evolve with technology and competition. Using examples from the music, software, and media industries, and citing companies including Apple, Dell, Microsoft, The New York Times, and ESPN, the authors describe five basic types of product offerings: the a la carte offering, the specialization offering, the all-in-one offering, the basic/premium offering, and the have-it-your-way offering. By highlighting how costs influence product design, they depart from the standard product-success metrics, such as revenue and market share, which are the main focus of most of the work on product bundling. The authors note that the decision to offer a product and how it is designed generally affects both the fixed costs and the marginal costs. They argue that product architects need to expand their definition of fixed and marginal costs beyond those that they typically track and account for to cover costs across the entire supply chain. Although some of these costs may be hard to quantify, they are often too significant to ignore.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. To measure brand health (and, contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors contend, it can be measured) is to obtain a 360-degree view of a brand in its marketplace--a wide-angle view of consumers and competitors. What is required, they say, is isolating underlying elements that matter, measuring them, and linking them to business performance. Based upon quantitative survey data collected in 2007 from consumers in large sectors of the U.S. economy--food and grocery, wireless services, and banking--drawn from major geographic markets nationwide, the authors offer a statistically reliable set of brand-health elements for companies to measure and use as leading indicators of sales risk and potential: brand leadership, attractiveness, distinctiveness, satisfaction, and liabilities. They then map those elements to four revenue-related expressions of customer commitment: current customer spending, risk of sales loss, revenue momentum, and likelihood of referrals. The resulting framework allows marketers and investors to "connect the dots" between key elements of brand health and business performance and to reconcile previously separate notions: brand and operations, the short term and the long term, investment and return. In the research, the number of companies consumers named as having strong brands was surprisingly small. Fifteen companies accounted for fully 50% of the mentions and only three companies--Apple, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft--accounted for 25% of mentions. The authors conclude with a set of best practices that are implied by the brand-health framework and also characterize companies that are perceived as having the strongest brands.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. The largely erroneous perception that breakthroughs are impossible to predict arises from the tendency to focus on just the breakthroughs while ignoring the iterative process of invention and its distribution of outcomes. When all inventions are considered, they demonstrate a highly skewed distribution in which almost all inventions are useless, a few are of moderate value, and only a very, very few are breakthroughs. Those breakthroughs constitute the "long tail" of innovation. If managers wish to understand how those breakthroughs arise, they cannot ignore the process that generates the entire distribution. In particular, they need to keep in mind the following three measures of inventive success: shots on goal (the total number of inventions a company generates), average score (the mean value of those inventions), and maximum scores (the breakthrough inventions). Various factors can affect a company's inventive output, including the presence of inventors who work alone, the type of collaboration among those inventors who work in teams, the amount of team diversity, and the degree to which inventors apply science in the innovation process. Greater team diversity, for instance, will help generate more shots on goal although, on average, those shots will be less successful. But diversity also will increase the variance of the outcome, so that failures as well as breakthroughs are more likely. Thus companies first need to identify how they want to improve their innovation process and then take the appropriate measures to address any deficiencies. Only then can they improve their capacity to innovate in ways that make the best sense for the organization as a whole.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How can established organizations build successful new businesses on an ongoing basis? In their study of nearly 30 corporations as diverse as Google, DuPont, and Cargill, the authors identified two dimensions under the direct control of management that consistently differentiated how companies approach corporate entrepreneurship. The first is organizational ownership: Will the primary ownership for the creation of new businesses be focused in a designated group, or will it be diffused across the organization? The second is resource authority: Will projects be funded from a dedicated corporate pool of money or in an ad hoc manner, perhaps through business-unit budgets? Together the two dimensions generate a matrix with four basic models of corporate entrepreneurship: the opportunist, the enabler, the advocate, and the producer. In the opportunist model (example: Zimmer Holdings), the company has no deliberate approach to corporate entrepreneurship, and new businesses are built mainly from the grassroots efforts of a few "project champions." Enabler companies (example: Google), provide funding and senior executive attention to prospective projects. In the advocate model (example: DuPont), the company strongly evangelizes for corporate entrepreneurship, but business units provide the primary funding. Lastly, producer companies (example: Cargill), establish and support a full-service group with a mandate for corporate entrepreneurship. Each of the four models has a different objective, function, and set of challenges. Whichever model is chosen, the crucial thing to remember is that corporate entrepreneurship needs to be nurtured and managed as a strategic, deliberate act.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Brazil's poorest households have an annual total income of around $73 billion per annum; China's have an annual income of about $691 billion; and India's have an income of about $378 billion. However, even though there has been a burst of interest in recent years in how economic growth is unfolding in the developing world, most of the research is still focused on how growth occurs in developed markets. Strategic innovation in developing markets is fundamentally different from what occurs in developed economies, the authors argue. It is not about locating "new whos" (assuming the products and services are affordable, there are plenty of under- and nonconsuming customers to tap), more often it involves adapting existing products to customers with fewer resources or different cultural backgrounds and creating basic market ingredients such as distribution channels and customer demand from the ground up. Using examples from mobile telephony in the Philippines; consumer goods, power equipment, and auto industries in India; the personal care market in Brazil; and the appliance industry in China, the authors discuss cases from companies including Smart Communications, Hindustan Unilever, Tata Motors, Eveready, and Haier. They present a framework for strategic innovation based on four factors (affordability, acceptability, availability, and awareness) and show how companies can create value.

Climate change will affect everything businesses do, as government efforts to mitigate carbon emissions cause their prices to rise steeply. This special edition of Forethought takes a hard-nosed look at the risks and opportunities of climate change. Michael E. Porter and Forest L. Reinhardt argue that the effects of climate change on companies' operations are now so tangible and certain that the issue is best addressed with the tools of the strategist, not the philanthropist. Reinhardt also posits, in another article, that success in a carbon-constrained world will be determined by innovation and acumen, requiring companies to make bold moves. Peter Schwartz explains that firms that do business in vulnerable regions can advance their interests if they help those areas adapt to global warming. Daniel C. Esty notes increasing pressure on corporations to reduce emissions, predicting that companies that fail to do so will face grave consequences. Andrew J. Hoffman says that corporations need to know what regulatory issues are at stake--and where. Alyson Slater of Global Reporting Initiative discusses the challenges and benefits of voluntary disclosure. Auden Schendler cautions companies buying up renewable energy certificates that they could end up tarnishing their green credentials. Theodore Roosevelt IV and John Llewellyn explain that virtually any firm in any sector can reap the benefits of investors' surging demand for green business ideas. Vicki Bakhshi and Alexis Krajeski show how climate change will affect businesses in the midterm. Maria Emilia Correa describes a key plank of the strategy at Masisa, a company in Chile, that is engaging B2B customers in efforts to become greener. Mark Way and Britta Rendlen explain why insurer Swiss Re is persuading employees to reduce their carbon footprints. HBR also provides a forecast of the extreme climate phenomena likely to occur in the future, and their expected repercussions on industry, agriculture, and settlements.

While entrepreneurial creativity is a desired behavior in most firms, it is difficult to understand both how this complex phenomenon occurs and how to increase its rate of occurrence. Understanding and increasing managerial creativity is important not only in developed economies but also in developing economies, where the research discussed herein was conducted. Argues that a solid knowledge base, a well developed social network, and a strong focus on identifying opportunities are all necessary inputs toward entrepreneurial behavior. High-tech entrepreneurs interviewed in Hong Kong, however, indicated that creativity also plays a critical role in the entrepreneurial process. Attesting to this, they credited their competence with their being able to make the associations and bisociations needed to develop new products, leading to their entrepreneurial success.

Business-to-Business (B2B) online reverse auctions have become a popular way to source products and services. Due to their relative newness and conflicting reports, however, several myths and misconceptions about them still exist. Investigates the truth behind five common myths associated with reverse auctions and, based on insights obtained from 30 case study companies, provides prescriptive evidence and direction for supply managers regarding how not to fall victim to these myths. Presents useful guidance to achieve the following realities: First, while a lower price is one objective in reverse auctions, it is often not the most important, and can easily be complemented with non-price attributes; Second, commodity items are usually easier candidates for reverse auctions, but non-commodity items can also be bid successfully; Third, reverse auctions can frequently hurt buyer-supplier relationships, but there are many ways to prevent this from happening; Fourth, while first-time bidding events generally result in higher savings, continued cost advantages are possible; and Fifth, even though there is a decline in reverse auctions usage, they are here for the long run.

Individual consumers have quickly embraced the practice of using a variety of channels through which to make their purchases, as evidenced by the current multichannel shopping average of 65-70%. Indeed, multichannel shoppers (defined as those who utilize a variety of different purchasing channels, including bricks-and-mortar stores, the telephone, and the Internet) are now in the majority, and spend significantly more than single-channel shoppers. Given this reality, it is critical that organizations adopt a multichannel mindset and effectively employ a multichannel marketing program, as they can enhance profitability, the customer experience, and customer satisfaction. Provides firms with guidance in developing an effective multichannel mindset, and in designing a multichannel marketing program for serving end-consumers in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) situations.

In today's dynamic entertainment environment, movies are struggling to stay afloat and remain profitable. Challenges such as piracy, digital theft, competition, overlapping movie campaigns, media fragmentation, and audience saturation are forcing marketers to stretch their film budgets and make every dollar as effective as possible. With more and more entertainment options crowding peoples' lives, marketers must search for innovative ways to reach movie audiences. By breaking through the daily clutter and noise, and capturing peoples' attention to the point that talking about a movie becomes an enjoyable experience to share, buzz marketing is one such promotional posture that drives audiences to theaters. In order to achieve success with buzz marketing, however, marketers must recognize the role it plays in the context of movie differentiation strategies to support the company's overall approach. Analyzes buzz marketing as it pertains to six movie differentiation strategies (differentiation with cosmetic movie features, differentiation to reach market segments, growing a movie segment, positioning to support the movie image, positioning to extend the movie image, and differentiation via non-traditional channels) and offers steps for its successful implementation.

Contends that viewing organizations through an accountability lens (in terms of source, focus, salience, and intensity) helps illuminate issues of governance and ethical dilemmas common to most individuals at work. Proposes that disconnects between aspects of accountability may pressure individuals to behave unethically and seek to rationalize their behaviors and suggests that accountability is not only an organizational requirement, but also a perceptual lens that can be used to observe and understand behavior in, and of, organizations. Demonstrates how to make better sense of functional and dysfunctional behavior in organizations by applying the accountability lens. A key component of this accountability lens is the notion of an accountability environment: those aspects of an individual's immediate work environment that directly affect the subjective interpretation and experience of felt accountability. The notion that individuals perceive and interpret their accountabilities subjectively is critical to understanding why multiple employees can behave differently (and sometimes unethically) under the same accountability conditions.

Slogans are a key element of a brand's identity and contribute to a brand's equity. In today's marketplace, almost all brands employ slogans; they enhance a brand's image, aid in its recognition and recall, and help create brand differentiation in consumers' minds. While there is general consensus on the importance of the device itself, little agreement exists as to what constitutes a successful slogan. Although marketing managers use slogans extensively, they are often at a loss when it comes to creating them. In turn, this leads to ineffective use of slogans and, ultimately, the possibility of a surprisingly poor linkage between a brand and its slogan, even among the most well known brands. To explore this phenomenon, surveys articles from a variety of academic streams related to slogans, and also looks at industry publications for relevant case studies. Proposes a series of guidelines for the strategy behind slogans, and on creation and utilization of effective slogans.

In a premortem, team members assume that the project they are planning has just failed--as so many do--and then generate plausible reasons for its demise. Those with reservations may speak freely at the outset, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied.

Employees in stigmatized occupations can be helped with an array of techniques to cope with or even feel proud of their jobs, including developing an occupational ideology to confer a more positive image on the work; creating social buffers such as professional associations; and avoiding specifics in conversation with outsiders.

Failing to reduce poverty by supporting the wrong microcredit program can tarnish a company's good name. Executives in charge of corporate social responsibility should insist on clearly defined measures of success, invest in improving microcredit's effectiveness, and support the growth of small companies in regions of poverty.

For customers, value has two components: benefits received and price paid. After gauging their customers' perceptions of value, managers can plot a simple chart that reveals any misalignment and use it to balance the benefit-price equation.

Companies are beginning to use their brand-enhancing sponsorship of teams and events internally, to motivate employees or facilitate major structural change. Sports-related communications and incentives can create cohesion and foster pride in the company.