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Good writers who are consulted early enough can improve the product development process and, potentially, the products themselves.

Henry Jenkins, the director of comparative media studies at MIT, talks about the influence of video games in and on the workplace.

Researchers have identified four cultural tensions that will influence how Chinese leaders develop over the next 15 years.

As part of its R&D efforts, Porsche taps the resources and expertise of nearly 600 graduate students--saving innovation costs in the process.

Low turnover--typically a sign of organizational health--seems to increase a company's vulnerability to the effects of losing social capital.

The highway logo signing program has existed for over 20 years. Since its inception, most motorists have become accustomed to relying on these blue signs to provide information on services available at each highway exit. However, there is little, if any, literature that examines the program as an advertising source and no formal literature that addresses the signing program from the perspective of the independent business owner. Provides service business owners with information about the highway logo signing program. Describes a five-step process that owners can follow to determine whether the venue is viable and the investment value added.

Companies spend enormous amounts of energy and capital creating value for customers, but less regard is given to capturing the value they have created. Segmentation based on buying behavior uncovers a tremendous differential in willingness to pay for subjective product attributes such as convenience, status, and quality. Purchase decisions are made through an assessment of a myriad of factors, balancing perceptions of value components against price in a subtle, complex, and often subconscious decision matrix. Customer-centric pricing requires the simultaneous and continuous assessment of product attributes, customer perceptions, and the circumstances of time and place by listening to customers' actions. It is a means of assuring that companies assess the value they create for customers and extract that value from the marketplace.

Coaching is a frequently cited, but less often effectively implemented, developmental tool for enhancing managerial performance at all levels. Identifies and explores the practices junior managers consider to be most critical for senior managers to employ when implementing coaching as a performance improvement practice. The research engaged 45 focus groups consisting of 225 middle managers from over 20 different U.S. organizations to explore the issue of managerial coaching and its implications for organizations and individual managers.

Culturally attuned and emotionally sensitive global leaders need to be developed: leaders who can respond to the particular foreign environments of different countries and different interpersonal work situations. Two emerging constructs are especially relevant to the development of successful global leaders: cultural and emotional intelligences. When considered under the traditional view of intelligence as measured by IQ, cultural and emotional intelligences provide a framework for better understanding cross-cultural leadership and help clarify possible adaptations to leadership development programs of multinational firms. Posits that emotional intelligence, analytical intelligence, and leadership behaviors are moderated by cultural intelligence in the formation of global leadership success.

As the field of employee branding has begun to unfold, more and more executives have become interested in how this process can help them achieve a competitive advantage for their organizations. Explains how employee branding works and how it can be utilized to position the organization in the minds of customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Presents a contextual analysis of its use as a source of sustainable competitive advantage at Southwest Airlines. Also, identifies key success factors.

The idea of the garage entrepreneur--who starts businesses in garages (or basements or dorm rooms or kitchens)--is a highly popular contemporary legend, but not quite accurate. Academic research now claims that entrepreneurs are often organizational products: They typically acquire confidence, business knowledge, and social connections via prior experience at existing organizations. These psychological and social resources aid entrepreneurs in forming companies. Although the belief of the garage entrepreneur contributes to the preservation of the American ideals of opportunity and upward social mobility, it offers misleading insights to would-be entrepreneurs because it suggests an undersocialized view of the entrepreneurial process. Individuals, companies, policy makers, and business schools will benefit from recasting the garage as a contemporary legend and focusing instead on the lessons that can be derived from an understanding of entrepreneurs as organizational products.

As surveys highlight, most senior business executives are dissatisfied with the value their organizations are deriving from investments in information technology. What is often forgotten is that IT in itself has no inherent value. This value must be unlocked, and only business executives and users can do this. Although most IT investments are often accompanied by a technology implementation plan, few organizations ever construct a plan focused on realizing the business benefits. Explores how organizations can unlock business value from their IT investments by adopting a two-stage view of implementation. This model distinguishes between "problem-based" interventions and "innovation-based" interventions. Unlocking business value from IT investments is a journey not a destination and this journey requires careful planning.

To manage the business cycle to gain competitive advantage over rivals, firms must develop a "business cycle orientation." Such an orientation must include five important capabilities: the "business cycle literacy" of the top management team; the skillful deployment of various forecasting tools; an organizational structure that facilitates the timely acquisition, processing, and dissemination of macroeconomic information; application of a set of business cycle-sensitive management principles; and an organizational culture that supports business cycle-sensitive management activities. Successfully managing the business cycle does not necessarily depend on the ability to forecast its movements accurately. Rather, all that is required in many cases is for a firm to strategically or tactically respond more swiftly than its rivals.

Major shifts in the business environment can make whole investment strategies obsolete. To anticipate such shifts, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies uses scenario analysis, a method it pioneered three decades ago. Given that most investments are irreversible, scenario planning can be combined with real options analysis to help identify options in the future; help time the decision to exercise a real option; and provide an important input in the process of evaluating real options.

Marketing tends to view technology as a means to meeting customer needs and desires. This view has led some marketers to focus perhaps too exclusively on the customer to the detriment of a deep understanding of technology and its interaction with society. Drawing on the ideas of the philosophers Heidegger and Popper, this article contends that technology is more than a means to the end of satisfying consumer needs and wants--it is an active force that frequently escapes the control of the marketer. Explores the ways in which technologies, firms, customers, and society interact and suggests how firms might adopt different strategies toward technology to take advantage of these emergent interactions.

While many researchers have made contributions to the now extensive literature on service quality, there is much less research on what constitutes delight in service quality and how organizations can delight customers. Examines the differences between customer satisfaction and customer delight, notably the benefits of delighting rather than merely satisfying customers. Describes how to delight customers and outlines how to implement a successful customer delight program as well as how to measure customer delight. Also discusses the potential pitfalls of doing so.

If managers always acted on their values, heroic whistle-blowing might never be required. But, research shows, people don't think that doing the right thing is part of their jobs.

Because of high turnover, CFOs have less and less time to learn the ropes--yet they're shouldering more and more responsibility. A reallocation of time is in order.

The most dubious business plans can appear solid, even smart, when illustrated with snappy circle-and-arrow graphics. Look closely, though, and you'll see that many of these diagrams are full of it.

Fixing a dysfunctional plant isn't easy, but it can be done if you involve everyone in the overhaul.