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In the wake of a series of gross corporate abuses around the turn of the century, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was intended to make corporate governance more rigorous, financial practices more transparent, and management criminally liable for lapses. The first year of implementation was costly and onerous, far more so than companies had been led to expect. In the view of a few open-minded firms, however, the second year of compliance turned out to be not only less costly and less onerous (as doing something for the second time usually turns out to be), but a source of valuable insights into operations, which management has translated into improved efficiencies and cost savings. The areas of improvement go well beyond technical statutory compliance. They include a strengthened control environment; more reliable documentation; increased audit committee involvement; better, less burdensome compliance with other statutory regimes; more standardized processes for IT and other functions; reduced complexity of organizational processes; better internal controls within partner companies; and more effective use of both automated and manual controls. The result is not only shareholder protection, the official purpose of the act, but also enhanced shareholder value. More than a year since the first deadline arrived, Sarbanes-Oxley still inspires fear--of enforcement actions, of the stock market's reaction to a deficiency, and of personal liability. Fear can be a powerful generator of upstanding conduct. But businesses run on discovering and creating value. Companies need to start viewing Sarbanes-Oxley as an ally in that effort.

It's conventional wisdom that the Internet has made the world flatter. But we're not necessarily smarter, and many people have been left behind.

Each profession has its own vocabulary. Knowing how to talk the talk is critical--in some fields more than others.

In emerging markets, contracts must be both flexible and rigid. "Shock absorber" and "safety net" clauses offer firms a living, breathing solution.

Today's consumers crave variety. A new approach to providing luxury gives the superaffluent access to a range of big-ticket items.

New products don't always mean increased profits. At Clorox, a formal process for determining which products to cut has boosted SKU sales and margins.

Ferrari depends on a creative workforce to build its gorgeous cars. Companies can take a lesson from its unique approach to inspiring employees.

Companies aggressively research what customers want. Yet most vendors just don't understand what customers expect of their salespeople.

Corporate refugees dream of running small firms. The realities of the job, though, can be humbling.

What's the rationale for dividing the roles of chairman and CEO? Studies show that, usually, doing so has no effect on the company's performance.

China's Five-Year Plan is now called a Five-Year Guideline, reflecting the country's transition to a market economy.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. There is a new wave of business communication tools, including blogs, wikis, and group messaging software (which the author collectively calls "Enterprise 2.0") that allow for more spontaneous, knowledge-based collaboration. These new tools, the author contends, may well supplant other communication and knowledge management systems with their superior ability to capture tacit knowledge, best practices, and relevant experiences from throughout a company and make them readily available to more users. This article offers a paradigm that highlights the salient characteristics of these new technologies. The resulting organizational communication patterns can lead to highly productive and highly collaborative environments by making both the practices of knowledge work and its outputs more visible. Drawing on case studies and survey data, the article offers managers a set of ground rules for implementing the new technologies. First, create a receptive culture to prepare the way for new practices. Second, create a common platform to allow for a collaboration infrastructure. Third, plan an informal rollout of the technologies rather than a more formal procedural change. And fourth, secure managerial support and leadership. Even when implanted and implemented well, these new technologies will certainly bring with them new challenges. These tools may well reduce management's ability to exert unilateral control and to express some level of negativity. Whether a company's leaders really want this to happen and will be able to resist the temptation to silence dissent is an open question. Leaders will have to play a delicate role if they want Enterprise 2.0 technologies to succeed.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Customers are often involved in the design or delivery of services, and in this respect, they function as co-producers of the service. What happens when customers fail to perform their roles effectively? Customer failure is not uncommon; research indicates that customers cause about one-third of all service problems. To study the issue of customer failure and its prevention, the authors conducted interviews with managers and customers in a variety of industries about experiences of customer failure, developed case studies related to the topic, and conducted secondary research to identify examples of best practices in customer-failure prevention. The authors conclude that recovering from instances of customer failure is difficult and that companies should focus instead on preventing them. An effective three-step approach is: collect diagnostic data about where customer failures occur, analyze the root causes of cases of the failure (e.g., technology, people, process issues), and establish preventive solutions, such as process redesign. The authors cite examples of companies that try to prevent customer failures. For instance, Weight Watchers International Inc. customers may offer each other encouragement at meetings and, thus, help prevent one another from failing in their weight-loss plans.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For both manufacturing companies and service firms, the basis of competition is shifting fast. Manufacturers are finding they must compete by selling services; service firms now have to provide products as well as services. The emerging battleground is known as "integrated solutions," and it is where leading companies such as IBM, General Electric, Rolls Royce, and EDS already compete aggressively. However, the integrated solutions approach is not simply a matter of blending products and services. Customers are buying guaranteed solutions for trouble-free operations. So the key is to develop and deploy the right capabilities--and to structure the organization so these capabilities match customer needs. This article offers a blueprint for implementing integrated solutions, drawing on extensive research on such companies as Alstom Transport, Cable & Wireless, Thales, Ericsson, and Atkins. The article highlights the importance of four prerequisite capabilities and shows the organization structures necessary for success--structures that are no longer bounded by product, service, or geographic lines. The article then lays out three levels of organizational capability to chart the journey that integrated solutions providers must take.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Research and development projects fail more often than they succeed. In fact, of every 10 R&D projects, five are flops, three are abandoned, and only two ultimately become commercially successful. A principal problem is that many companies don't know how best to organize their labs to conduct R&D work. A classic hierarchical structure, for instance, tends to impede the rapid spread of knowledge. Matrix organizations, on the other hand, can lead to information logjams, confusion, and conflict among employees. To investigate how companies can best manage their efforts to innovate, the author conducted an in-depth study of six R&D projects at the laboratory of a Fortune 500 corporation. She found that highly successful R&D projects have four crucial factors that reinforce each other: strong and sustained corporate support; the presence of open communication patterns and a low degree of formal reporting (beyond this, R&D teams must be organized in specific ways so that informal social networks are reinforced--not thwarted--by the formal organizational structures); inclusion in R&D projects of a person who is central to the "technical-advice network"; and inclusion of someone key to the "organizational-advice network." An understanding of the interplay between informal social networks and formal organizational structures can help companies design and maintain learning organizations in which employees exchange pertinent knowledge efficiently and willingly, leading to more successful R&D efforts.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Global information technology networks can lower costs, increase quality, reduce response times, and disperse risks. But agile IT networks require an immense amount of hands-on management, and micromanagement can significantly increase transaction costs and erode any potential savings. Much of the micromanagement is a result of the learning curve and the labor-intensive nature of managing budding relationships with new partners. The authors use data derived from interviews with clients and suppliers to identify 15 emerging best practices in dealing with offshore suppliers of IT throughout each of the phases of development. In the early stages of developing an offshore IT network, the authors suggest that selecting the appropriate location for your offshore activities is critical and that it may be best to begin with several smaller pilot programs. As offshoring efforts become more mature, the authors recommend diversifying your supplier portfolio to spread risk and maximize competition. They also discuss how to structure contracts and break up projects in ways that provide incentives and protect intellectual property. The article describes several practices that allow for more value-added practices once a full and mature global network exists, including how to overlap networks to best facilitate supplier-to-supplier knowledge transfer.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Traditionally, executives are expected to create the vision for the organization they lead; the leaders' vision is then disseminated throughout the ranks. However, such top-down vision creation may mean that not all employees wholeheartedly embrace the vision they are given. An alternative approach to vision creation is found in the concept of "meaning-making." A meaning-maker is a member of a group who articulates what the group is trying to accomplish in its work. Meaning-makers are typically deeply engaged in their work settings, are observant people who listen well, and are in tune with a group's or an organization's rhythm. Using techniques such as images, humor, or a new perspective on a situation, they are able to express a group's collective insight. For example, a pizza restaurant company was floundering until one of the senior managers articulated the idea that the company was not in a restaurant business so much as in a distribution business. This new model galvanized the organization, and local managers sought new outlets to distribute the company's pizza. Managers who are meaning-makers also may help others to articulate the meaning of the group's work, and such managers tend to embody a flexible style of leadership that recognizes that leadership is expressed in how people interact.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. When people think of services, they often think about offerings that are neutral or routine. These tend to be services they use regularly--for example, dry cleaning, haircutting, or gardening. However, there is a third type of service that is not often considered or well understood. The authors refer to these as "negative" services because they are related to events most people hope they will not have to deal with: toothaches, leaky roofs, or collision repairs, for example. Because the events that trigger the need for negative services are not everyday occurrences, many people are not equipped to diagnose the needs or to make informed judgments about the solutions required; furthermore, even after the service has been provided, most people are in a poor position to judge its quality or the price they paid for it. Many kinds of companies in many industries, including health care, insurance, household repair, pest control, and ambulance use, offer negative services. Companies hoping to build positions in negative services face two major challenges: how to access inexperienced customers who are not in a strong position to evaluate the service being provided and may have a poor idea of its cost; and how to organize and deploy their services to meet customer needs when demand is unpredictable.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Faced with the prospects of slow growth, commoditization, and global competition, companies like General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp., and Ford Motor Co. have now emphasized innovation as critical to their future success. But what exactly is innovation? Although the subject has risen to the top of the CEO agenda, many companies have a mistakenly narrow view of it. They might see "innovation" as synonymous with "new product development" or traditional "research and development." But such myopia can lead to the systematic erosion of competitive advantage. As a result, companies in a given industry can come to resemble one another over time. In actuality, business innovation is far broader in scope than product or technological innovation. In fact, a company can innovate along any of 12 different dimensions with respect to its (1) offerings, (2) platform, (3) solutions, (4) customers, (5) customer experience, (6) value capture, (7) processes, (8) organization, (9) supply chain, (10) presence, (11) networking, and (12) brand. Nissan Motor Co., for example, has innovated along the platform dimension, using essentially the same small engine block to power a variety of models, including an upscale mid-size sedan, a large sedan, luxury sedans, a minivan, and a sports coupe. Enterprise Rent-A-Car has innovated along the customers and presence dimensions, placing car rental locations in the neighborhoods where people live and work rather than at airports. Together, the 12 dimensions of innovation can be displayed in a new framework called the "innovation radar," which companies can use to manage the increasingly complex business systems through which they add value.

Low birth rates, longevity, family disintegration, and other factors have reduced the size of the average household. At the same time household size is shrinking, new housing offers twice the floor space per occupant of old housing. Small households are inefficient users of space, utilities, furniture, and equipment. As these factors converge, the result is overconsumption of durables and vast stockpiles of possessions just awaiting disposal when the baby boom generation passes on. The rightful heirs to these possessions are themselves accumulators and will most likely have little use for what is left to them. What does the future hold for consumption, savings, and demand for housing? Booming flea markets, bigger homes as warehouses, a decline in consumption, or an epidemic of display and collection? Public policies have limited leverage on private behavior.