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Chris Van Dyke, the CEO of the outdoor apparel start-up Nau, offers some intriguing ideas about how to engage a generation of customers who are comfortable shopping online and eager to enter into a dialogue with the companies they buy from.

The Delphi technique involves recruiting panels of experts from a variety of fields and asking them to iteratively evaluate predictions about the future of, say, an emerging innovation until they reach consensus. Shaping the strongest predictions into several possible scenarios prepares managers to act quickly when one begins to unfold.

CEOs tend to have a rosier view of senior management's performance than other top team members do, according to new research--and it looks like the former need a reality check. The authors offer three simple questions that can provide one.

If designers are brought into the innovation process at the very beginning, they can test prototypes and share users' responses even as the business case is being developed, enabling companies to nimbly adjust to changes in market opportunities.

The huge sums that private equity firms make on their investments evoke admiration and envy. Typically, these returns are attributed to the firms' aggressive use of debt, concentration on cash flow and margins, freedom from public company regulations, and hefty incentives for operating managers. But the fundamental reason for private equity's success is the strategy of buying to sell-one rarely employed by public companies, which, in pursuit of synergies, usually buy to keep. The chief advantage of buying to sell is simple but often overlooked, explain Barber and Goold, directors of the Ashridge Strategic Management Centre. Private equity's sweet spot is acquisitions that have been undermanaged or undervalued, where there's a onetime opportunity to increase a business's value. Once that gain has been realized, private equity firms sell for a maximum return. A corporate acquirer, in contrast, will dilute its return by hanging on to the business after the growth in value tapers off. Public companies that compete in this space can offer investors better returns than private equity firms do. (After all, a public company wouldn't deduct the 30% that funds take out of gross profits.) Corporations have two options: (1) to copy private equity's model, as investment companies Wendel and Eurazeo have done with dramatic success, or (2) to take a flexible approach, holding businesses for as long as they can add value as owners. The latter would give companies an advantage over funds, which must liquidate within a preset time-potentially leaving money on the table. Both options present public companies with challenges, including U.S. capital-gains taxes and a dearth of investment management skills. But the greatest barrier may be public companies' aversion to exiting a healthy business and their inability to see it the way private equity firms do-as the culmination of a successful transformation, not a strategic error.

Two decades ago, people began using the "glass ceiling" catchphrase to describe organizations' failure to promote women into top leadership roles. Eagly and Carli, of Northwestern University and Wellesley College, argue in this article (based on a forthcoming book from Harvard Business School Press) that the metaphor has outlived its usefulness. In fact, it leads managers to overlook interventions that would attack the problem at its roots, wherever it occurs. A labyrinth is a more fitting image to help organizations understand and address the obstacles to women's progress. Rather than depicting just one absolute barrier at the penultimate stage of a distinguished career, a labyrinth conveys the complexity and variety of challenges that can appear along the way. Passage through a labyrinth requires persistence, awareness of one's progress, and a careful analysis of the puzzles that lie ahead. Routes to the center exist but are full of twists and turns, both expected and unexpected. Vestiges of prejudice against women, issues of leadership style and authenticity, and family responsibilities are just a few of the challenges. For instance, married mothers now devote even more time to primary child care per week than they did in earlier generations (12.9 hours of close interaction versus 10.6), despite the fact that fathers, too, put in a lot more hours than they used to (6.5 versus 2.6). Pressures for intensive parenting and the increasing demands of most high-level careers have left women with very little time to socialize with colleagues and build professional networks--that is, to accumulate the social capital that is essential to managers who want to move up. The remedies proposed--such as changing the long-hours culture, using open-recruitment tools, and preparing women for line management with appropriately demanding assignments--are wide ranging, but together they have a chance of achieving leadership equity in our time.

Negotiators often fail to achieve results because they channel too much effort into selling their own position and too little into understanding the other party's perspective. To get the best deal--or, sometimes, any deal at all--negotiators need to think like detectives, digging for information about why the other side wants what it does. This investigative approach entails a mind-set and a methodology, say Harvard Business School professors Malhotra and Bazerman. Inaccurate assumptions about the other side's motivations can lead negotiators to propose solutions to the wrong problems, needlessly give away value, or derail deals altogether. Consider, for example, the pharmaceutical company that deadlocked with a supplier over the issue of exclusivity in an ingredient purchase. Believing it was a ploy to raise the price, the drug maker upped its offer--unsuccessfully. In fact, the supplier was balking because a relative's company needed a small amount of the ingredient to make a local product. Once the real motivation surfaced, a compromise quickly followed. Understanding the other side's motives and goals is the first principle of investigative negotiation. The second is to figure out what constraints the other party faces. Often when your counterpart's behavior appears unreasonable, his hands are tied somehow, and you can reach agreement by helping overcome those limitations. The third is to view onerous demands as a window into what the other party prizes most--and use that information to create opportunities. The fourth is to look for common ground; even fierce competitors may have complementary interests that lead to creative agreements. Finally, if a deal appears lost, stay at the table and keep trying to learn more. Even if you don't win, you can gain insights into a customer's future needs, the interests of similar customers, or the strategies of competitors.

A critical new battleground is emerging in China: It's the "good-enough" market segment--home of reliable-enough products at low-enough prices to attract the cream of the country's fast-growing cohort of mid-level consumers. Traditionally, foreign multinationals have dominated China's premium segment, while a plethora of domestic companies have served the low end, often unprofitably. But as middle-class buying power increases, and the tolerance for high markups at the top end wanes, the middle market is growing quickly. Thriving in a market so big is clearly important in itself. But, argue Bain chairman Gadiesh and Bain partners Leung and Vestring, competition in this particular arena has more far-reaching implications. Companies that flourish in China's middle market today are learning valuable lessons they need to compete worldwide: multinationals are discovering how to focus products downscale to break out of the premium tier, and domestic firms are building scale and marketing expertise to move up. Both are positioning themselves to export their China offerings to other large emerging markets such as India and Brazil--and, after that, to the developed markets. Ultimately, the authors warn, the good-enough space, where multinationals and Chinese firms are going head-to-head, is the one from which the world's leading companies will emerge. The authors describe three strategies for entering and prevailing in this strategically vital space. Multinationals can attack domestic players from above, Chinese firms operating in the low end can burrow up from below, and both can acquire their way into it. The experiences of such players as Colgate-Palmolive, GM, GE, Huawei Technologies, Haier, and Ningbo Bird show how challenging it is to gain a foothold in the middle market but also how much potential there is to use it as a springboard for global expansion.

When a CEO takes office, stakeholders dissect his or her intellectual, physical, and emotional capacities as they try to gauge whether the new leader will help them fulfill their aspirations and protect them from trouble. For the heir to a family business, the challenge of turning stakeholders into followers is particularly thorny: he or she must manage many constituencies--family members, directors, senior executives, investors, trade unions--that may not be convinced the successor has earned the right to hold the top spot. Making matters worse, says Lansberg, a family business expert, corporate scions usually ignore or greatly underestimate stakeholders. They don't realize that, particularly after they are formally anointed as CEOs, they must establish their credibility with and authority over these spheres of influence. Smart CEOs understand that their success depends on how well they respond to the iterative testing process that stakeholders use to make judgments about would-be leaders. This article offers a road map for managing the four kinds of tests that constitute iterative testing: Qualifying tests are assessments based on criteria--such as formal education, work experience, and professional awards--that executives can cite as evidence of suitability for the top job. Self-imposed tests are expectations that leaders themselves set and against which they assume stakeholders will measure their performance. Circumstantial tests are unplanned challenges or crises, during which stakeholders can observe the leader coping with the unexpected. And political tests are challenges from rivals who want to enhance their own influence, often by undermining the leader.

Global account management (GAM)--which treats a multinational customer's operations as one integrated account, with coherent terms for pricing, product specifications, and service--has proliferated over the past decade. Yet according to the authors' research, only about a third of the suppliers that have offered GAM are pleased with the results. The unhappy majority may be suffering from confusion about when, how, and to whom to provide it. Yip, the director of research and innovation at Capgemini, and Bink, the head of marketing communications at Uxbridge College, have found that GAM can improve customer satisfaction by 20% or more and can raise both profits and revenues by at least 15% within a few years of its introduction. They provide guidelines to help companies achieve similar results. The first steps are determining whether your products or services are appropriate for GAM, whether your customers want such a program, whether those customers are crucial to your strategy, and how GAM might affect your competitive advantage. If moving forward makes sense, the authors' exhibit, "A Scorecard for Selecting Global Accounts," can help you target the right customers. The final step is deciding which of three basic forms to offer: coordination GAM (in which national operations remain relatively strong), control GAM (in which the global operations and the national operations are fairly balanced), and separate GAM (in which a new business unit has total responsibility for global accounts). Given the difficulty and expense of providing multiple varieties, the vast majority of companies should initially customize just one--and they should be careful not to start with a choice that is too ambitious for either themselves or their customers to handle.

Supply chain management (SCM) is a competitive differentiator for many types of businesses, and CEOs who neglect it may be putting their firms in jeopardy. So say Slone, the executive vice president of supply chain at OfficeMax, and two of his colleagues at the University of Tennessee. The authors identify key areas where CEOs can influence their supply chains and show them how to assess the influence they currently exert. Good SCM starts with finding the right people to lead a company's supply chain operation, from the most senior on down the ranks. CEOs need to participate in hiring a top-notch supply team that will use customer-focused metrics and best-practice benchmarking to bring about cross-functional alignment and achieve efficiencies, which the CEOs should personally review. Articulating the strategies to reach those goals--including effective use of supply chain technologies--and rewarding the employees, suppliers, and customers who make positive contributions are part and parcel of SCM success. Sales and operations planning (S&OP) is an essential component of SCM. A well-devised S&OP process can eliminate cross-functional disconnects and thereby reduce product complexity and obsolete inventory--two serious threats to the supply chain. This approach should also extend to business planning, promotional programs, and customer-contract negotiations, with their inherent supply chain ramifications. Even the best supply chain planning can be undermined, however, if its scope is only short-term. For example, sales strategies that don't align monthly and quarterly goals with long-term SCM objectives can lead to end-of-period surges, with potentially costly consequences for your company and its suppliers, partners, and customers. Attention to the supply chain requires attention to the long haul.

When Bruce Nolop was an investment banker, he saw only the glamorous side of acquisitions. Since becoming executive vice president and chief financial officer of Pitney Bowes, however, he's learned how hard it is to pull them off. In this article, he shares the lessons his organization has learned throughout its successful six-year acquisition campaign, which comprised more than 70 deals: Stick to adjacent spaces, take a portfolio approach, have a business sponsor, know how to judge an acquisition, and don't shop when you're hungry. Pitney Bowes's management and board of directors now use these five basic rules to chart the company's growth course. For example, when evaluating a potential acquisition, Pitney Bowes distinguishes between "platform" and "bolt-on" acquisitions to set expectations and guide integration efforts; the company applies different criteria, depending on the type. According to Nolop, any company can improve its acquisition track record if it is able to learn from experience, and he suspects that Pitney Bowes's rules apply just as well to other organizations. Buying a company should be treated like any other business process, he maintains. It should be approached deliberately and reviewed and improved constantly. That means mapping a complex chain of actions; paying attention to what can go right or wrong at different stages; and using standard, constantly honed, approaches and tools.

It has become all-too-apparent of late that when faced with tough decisions, managers often act in accordance with their vested self-interest. What is less understood is that in many social situations, self-interest is channeled into a group or a society's interests, which can lead to a considerable change in our interpretations of ethics or morality. The authors explain how organizations can achieve a reduction in unethical behavior by establishing social support for moral action; espousing wide-ranging consideration of the moral consequences of individual and group decisions; and emphasizing the need for moral awareness, judgment, intent and action.

The term 'success' means many things to many people, say the authors, but their conversations with over 200 individuals who have made a difference in their fields taught them that success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea or business model than it does with discovering what matters to us as individuals. Extraordinary people, teams and organizations are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things that matter to them, they say. Your co-workers or competitors who love their work will try harder, move faster, and contribute more than people who only do things for a paycheck. The authors explain why in this excerpt from their book, Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters (Wharton School Publishing, 2006).

The typical approach to reducing dishonesty - increasing the probability of being caught or the magnitude of punishment - isn't very effective. The authors argue that a psychologically-focused approach may be more effective. Whereas the standard economic perspective considers one cause for dishonesty - external reward mechanisms - and thus emphasizes the probability of being caught and the magnitude of punishment as the sole ways to overcome it, the authors uncover three other causes: they not only examine dishonest behavior caused by external rewards, but dishonest behavior caused by a lack of internalized social norms, by a lack of self-awareness, and by self-deception.

Economic indicators have for the most part served society well, say the authors. However, these indicators have glaring shortcomings as approximations of collective human well-being. Policy decisions at the organizational, corporate and government levels should be more heavily influenced by considerations related to well-being - people's sense of purpose and satisfaction with their lives. The authors define well-being and describe five of its key sources, then discuss possible ways to measure it going forward.

Integrative thinkers like Jack Welch, A.G. Lafley and Michael Dell share some common traits, which is good news for those who aspire to attain their level of decision-making prowess. Thes traits they share relate to three elements of their personal knowledge systems: their stance, tools and experiences. The author explains each of these in depth as well describing the decision-making process that integrative thinkers use.

Today's business leaders regularly face complex ethical challenges that impact them, their businesses, and other stakeholders. Unfortunately, they often unconsciously make decisions using underlying principles that predispose them to biases and errors in judgment. By recognizing some of these challenges, they can learn to avoid 'ethical danger zones' and become more effective leaders. The authors explain that developing a framework to improve ethical decision making entails a focus on three key areas: quality, breadth, and honesty. By identifying and confronting the biases outlined herein, managers can make more rational and ethical decisions

Much popular thinking in the business world is shaped by delusions--fundamental errors of judgment that distort our understanding about company performance. One of the most important delusions is the halo effect, which is the tendency to attribute many positive features to successful companies and to make the opposite attributions when companies falter. The halo effect, in turn, contaminates the data used in many large-scale studies of company performance, including some of the most popular studies of recent years. The result is a misplaced belief that companies can follow formulas to achieve high performance, when in fact performance is better understood as relative, not absolute. To achieve high performance, companies must do more than follow formulas--they must differentiate themselves from rivals by making choices under conditions of uncertainty.

In the past 15 years, IBM has undergone a remarkable transformation from a struggling seller of hardware to a successful broad range solutions provider. Underlying this change is a story of foresighted strategy and disciplined execution--of connecting knowing to doing. In strategic terms, the IBM transformation illustrates the ideas behind dynamic capabilities, showing how the company has been able to sense changes in the marketplace and to seize these opportunities by reconfiguring existing assets and competencies. We review the literature on dynamic capabilities and, using IBM as an example, show how their strategy process permits them both to explore new markets and technologies (e.g., life sciences, pervasive computing) as well as to exploit mature products and markets (e.g., mainframe computers, middleware).