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A homogeneous workforce can be a hindrance when it comes to innovation. In this interview, Chris Anderson--the chairman and host of the annual Technology, Entertainment, and Design brainfest--argues for more diversity in the workplace.

It's easy for corporate strategists to get bogged down by the vast amount of data available to them. The trick is to separate the wheat from the chaff--and that's where a sophisticated early warning system comes into play. Building one takes three steps: Anticipate specific futures, appoint sentries, and expedite decision making.

Ignorance management is arguably a more important skill than knowledge management. Mastering nescience requires learning four basic principles.

Managers are told: Be global and be local. Collaborate and compete. Change perpetually, and maintain order. Make the numbers while nurturing your people. To be effective, managers need to consider the juxtapositions to arrive at a deep integration of these seemingly contradictory concerns. That means they must focus not only on what they have to accomplish but also on how they have to think. When the authors, respectively the director of the Centre for Leadership Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom and the Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal, set out to develop a master's program for practicing managers, they saw that they could not rely on the usual MBA educational structure, which divides the management world into discrete business functions such as marketing and accounting. They needed an educational structure that encouraged synthesis rather than separation. Managing, they determined, involves five tasks, each with its own mindset: managing the self (the reflective mindset); managing organizations (the analytic mindset); managing context (the worldly mindset); managing relationships (the collaborative mindset); and managing change (the action mindset). The program is built on the exploration and integration of those five aspects of the managerial mind.

What stands between you and the yes you want? According to negotiation experts David Lax and James Sebenius, executives face obstacles in three common and complementary dimensions: tactics, or interactions at the bargaining table; deal design, or the ability to draw up a deal at the table that creates lasting value; and setup, which includes the structure of the negotiation itself. Each dimension is crucial in the bargaining process, but most executives fixate on only the first two: 1-D negotiators focus on improving their interpersonal skills at the negotiating table, and 2-D negotiators focus on diagnosing underlying sources of value in a deal and then recrafting the terms to satisfy all parties. In this article, the authors explore the often-neglected third dimension. Instead of just playing the game at the bargaining table, 3-D negotiators reshape the scope and sequence of the game itself to achieve the desired outcome. They scan widely to identify elements outside the deal on the table that might create a more favorable structure for it. They map backward from their ideal resolution to the current setup of the deal and carefully choose which players to approach and when. And they manage and frame the flow of information among the parties involved to improve their odds of getting to yes. Lax and Sebenius describe the tactics 3-D negotiators use and cite examples from business and foreign affairs.

Most multinationals see globalization as a matter of replication--spreading a single business model as widely as possible to maximize economies of scale. From this perspective, the key strategic challenge is choosing how much of the model to keep standard and how much to grudgingly adapt to local tastes. But focusing exclusively on that choice is a mistake, for it blinds companies to the very real opportunities they can still gain from arbitrage--from exploiting differences as opposed to similarities. Indeed, the scope for arbitrage is as wide as the differences that remain among countries, and those differences continue to be broad and deep. They can, in fact, be divided into four main categories: cultural, administrative, economic, and geographic. In each category, old opportunities persist and new ones are arising. Consider the continued cachet of French culture in its wines and haute couture or how swiftly the Finns have become known for their expertise in wireless communications. Clearly, legal and other administrative differences, particularly in tax laws and the cost of capital, remain large. So do purely economic wage differentials. Both the differences that make arbitrage valuable and the similarities that make replication important will remain with us for the foreseeable future, and combining the two, while necessary, is tricky.

Increasingly, companies are measuring customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and other nonfinancial areas of performance that they believe affect profitability. But they've failed to relate these measures to their strategic goals or establish a connection between activities undertaken and financial outcomes achieved. Failure to make such connections has led many companies to misdirect their investments and reward ineffective managers. Extensive field research now shows that businesses make some common mistakes when choosing, analyzing, and acting on their nonfinancial measures. Among these mistakes: They set the wrong performance targets because they focus too much on short-term financial results, and they use metrics that lack strong statistical validity and reliability. As a result, the companies can't demonstrate that improvements in nonfinancial measures actually affect their financial results. The authors lay out a series of steps that allow companies to realize the genuine promise of nonfinancial performance measures. First, develop a model that proposes a causal relationship between the chosen nonfinancial drivers of strategic success and specific outcomes. Next, take careful inventory of all the data within your company. Then use established statistical methods for validating the assumed relationships and continue to test the model as market conditions evolve. Finally, base action plans on analysis of your findings, and determine whether those plans and their investments actually produce the desired results.

Every company makes choices about the channels it will use to go to market. For instance, traditionally, customer demographics guided the decision to sell through a discount superstore or a pricey boutique. It was a fair assumption that certain customer types were held captive by certain channels. The problem, the authors say, is that today's customers have become unfettered. As their channel options have proliferated, they've come to recognize that different channels serve their needs better at different points in the buying process. The result is "value poaching." For example, certain channels hope to use higher margin sales to cover the cost of providing expensive high-touch services. Potential customers use these channels to do research, then leap to a cheaper channel when it's time to buy. What does this mean for your go-to-market strategy? The authors urge companies to make a fundamental shift in mind-set toward designing for buyer behaviors, not customer segments. A company should design pathways across channels to help its customers get what they need at each stage of the buying process. Customers are not mindful of channel boundaries--and you shouldn't be either.

Procter & Gamble has long been regarded as a major power of the marketing world and a prime training ground for marketers. But in the summer of 2000, with half of P&G's top 15 brands losing market share and employee morale in ruins, company executives realized that the marketing organization was in trouble. In an attempt to rebuild P&G's marketing strength, James Stengel, the heir apparent to the chief marketing officer position, began working with University of Cincinnati professors Chris Allen and Andrea Dixon on a new training program to fix the weaknesses in the marketing organization. But when the two professors began interviewing P&G senior executives, they discovered that the plans in motion for mapping out the marketing group's recovery were based not on data but on the intuition of a few individuals at corporate headquarters. So began the most comprehensive internal research endeavor in P&G marketing's history. Using the company's existing process for consumer research, Allen and Dixon shadowed employees, conducted one-on-one interviews, held focus-group sessions, and surveyed 3,500 members of the marketing staff to learn what the company was doing right--and wrong--and what mattered most to its people. The results led to the most sweeping redesign of P&G's marketing organization in 60 years.

In late 2001, the directors of Pfizer asked that very question. And with good reason. After its 2000 merger with rival Warner-Lambert, the New York-based pharmaceutical giant found itself sitting on a net cash position of $6 billion, which seemed extraordinarily conservative for a company whose products generated $30 billion in revenues. Most large companies with revenues that healthy would increase leverage, thereby unlocking tremendous value for shareholders. But knowledge-intensive companies like Pfizer, this author argues, are in a class apart. Because their largely intangible assets (like R&D) are highly volatile and cannot easily be valued, they are more vulnerable to financial distress than are firms with a preponderance of tangible assets. To insure against that risk, they need to maintain large positive cash balances. Only by investing in their intangible assets can knowledge-based companies hope to preserve the value of those assets.

Deutsche Post World Net, the German postal monopoly, faced significant challenges as it began the process of integrating three businesses: Deutsche Post Euro Express, its own ground-based parcel delivery service, and two companies it had acquired--DHL, the worldwide express delivery service, and Danzas, a worldwide air and ocean freight company. The cultural differences alone were imposing. Enter EuroCup. For 20 years, DHL employees had held a soccer tournament to strengthen company culture across national boundaries. Canceled the previous year due to budget constraints, the EuroCup tournament was revived in 2003--in part to help with the postmerger integration. But did the event really help? HBR senior editor Paul Hemp attended EuroCup 2003. He set out to answer a number of questions relevant to any company staging an ambitious off-site intended to encourage teamwork and boost morale. How does a company determine whether such a large-scale event, even one that generates goodwill, is worth the investment? Does the team building extend to those back home who don't get to attend? Can intense competition between teams begin to overshadow the spirit of cooperation that such an event is meant to engender?

A golden statue of a winged youth once perched on the roof of AT&T's old headquarters. But when AT&T lowered the 24-foot-high statue for regilding so that it could be placed in the company's new headquarters, the chairman was shocked to discover that the figure was anatomically correct. So he decreed that it also be gelded. The altered "Golden Boy" thus became a metaphor for AT&T's recent embattled history, and it serves as a cautionary symbol for all companies operating in today's brutal business environment, where perception can be as important as reality. While image consultants and executives work to gild a company's image, special interest groups and the media can geld a company with countless little cuts. The author, a former executive vice-president of public relations for AT&T, provides an insider's view of some of the company's most painful public relations scrapes. The author offers four lessons: Don't become hypnotized by your own buzz; understand the way the business media think; address the needs of all your stakeholders; and be sensitive to the possible emotional resonance of what appear to be straightforward facts.

The past decade may well be remembered as the era of the high-flying, aggressive leader. Corner-office titans like Kenneth Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, and Bernard Ebbers graced the covers of business magazines. Then scandal set in, and the stars fell to earth. In this article, social psychologist Roderick M. Kramer asks an important question: Why do so many leaders--not just in business, but also in politics, religion, and the media--display remarkable adeptness and ability while courting power, only to engage in even more remarkable bouts of folly once that power has been secured? Kramer, who has spent most of his career researching how leaders get to the top, says that the systems through which we select our leaders force executives to sacrifice the attitudes and behaviors that are essential to their survival once they have reached the top. Society has learned to consider risk taking and rule breaking as markers of good leadership. As a result, leaders come to believe that normal limits don't apply to them and that they are entitled to any spoils they can seize. The leaders who do remain grounded exhibit five common psychological and behavioral habits: They simplify their lives, remaining humble and "awfully ordinary." They shine a light on their weaknesses instead of trying to cover them up. They float trial balloons to uncover the truth and prepare for the unexpected. They sweat the small stuff. And they reflect more, not less.

As China's economy grows and opens further, the opportunity it presents to multinationals is changing. Foreign companies are moving to country development and new strategic choices. Now, foreign firms can actually go after the Chinese domestic market, and it's worth going after. Improvements in China's infrastructure, workforce, and regulatory environment are making it possible for companies to lower their costs to reap new competitive advantages. However, the reforms required for admission into the World Trade Organization will be politically difficult for China to implement, and its progress will be slowed by the scarcity of resources for the country's shaky banking system, the inadequacy of the social safety net, environmental problems, and local governments' cash shortage, among other things. But for at least the next ten years, multinationals should be the biggest winners in China. To reap the benefits, a multinational must properly nest its effort into its overall organization, show "one face to China" at the national level but also tailor local strategies, be wary of joint ventures, and mitigate risk, in particular the theft of intellectual property.

Most Westerners preparing for a business trip to China like to arm themselves with a list of etiquette how-tos. Such advice can help get companies in the door and even through the first series of business transactions. But it won't sustain the prolonged, year-in, year-out associations Chinese and western businesses can now achieve. During the authors' work with dozens of companies and thousands of American and Chinese executives over the past 20 years they have witnessed communication breakdowns between American and Chinese businesspeople time and time again. The root cause: the American side's failure to understand the much broader context of Chinese culture and values. Americans see Chinese negotiators as inefficient, indirect, and even dishonest, whereas the Chinese see American negotiators as aggressive, impersonal, and excitable. Such perceptions have deep cultural origins. Yet those who know how to navigate these differences can develop thriving, mutually profitable, and satisfying business relationships. Four cultural threads have bound the Chinese people together for some 5,000 years and these show through in Chinese business negotiations: agrarianism, morality, the Chinese pictographic language, and wariness of strangers. Ignore them at any time during the negotiation process, and the deal can easily fall apart.

Most multinational corporations are fascinated with China. Carried away by the number of potential customers and the relatively cheap labor, firms seeking a presence in China have traditionally focused on selling products, setting up manufacturing facilities, or both. But they've ignored an important development: the emergence of Chinese firms as powerful rivals--in China and also in the global market. In this article, Ming Zeng and Peter Williamson describe how Chinese companies like Haier, Legend, and Pearl River Piano have quietly managed to grab market share from older, bigger, and financially stronger rivals in Asia, Europe, and the United States. As the government's policies about the private ownership of companies changed from forbidding the practice to encouraging it, a new breed of Chinese companies evolved. The authors outline the four types of hybrid Chinese companies that are simultaneously tackling the global market. China's national champions are using their advantages as domestic leaders to build global brands. The dedicated exporters are entering foreign markets on the strength of their economies of scale. The competitive networks have taken on world markets by bringing together small, specialized companies that operate in close proximity. And the technology upstarts are using innovations developed by China's government-owned research institutes to enter emerging sectors such as biotechnology. Zeng and Williamson identify these budding multinationals, analyze their strategies, and evaluate their weaknesses.

During the soar-and-swoon days of the late 1990s, many people believed that information technology, and the Internet in particular, were "changing everything" in business. A fundamental change did happen in the 1990s, but it was less about technology than about competition. Under Director Diana Farrell, the McKinsey Global Institute has conducted an extensive study of productivity and its connection to corporate IT spending and use during that period. The study revealed that IT is important--but not central--to the fate of industries and individual companies. The primary factors in the productivity surge were competition and innovation. In those industries that saw increases in competitive intensity, managers were forced to innovate aggressively to protect their revenues and profits. Those innovations--in products, business practices, and technology--led to the gains in productivity. In fact, a critical dynamic of the new economy--the real new economy--is the virtuous cycle of competition, innovation, and productivity growth. During the 1990s, IT was a particularly powerful tool for three reasons: IT enabled the development of attractive new products and efficient new business processes, it facilitated the rapid industrywide diffusion of innovations, and it exhibited strong scale economies.

Companies selling multiple products in multiple territories face the difficult question of how to allocate marketing resources. But comparing the profit potential of, say, razors in Germany with batteries in the United Kingdom is a difficult analytical task that demands reams of data. Finding the optimal answer is only half the battle. The rest involves the political and organizational challenge of shifting the money around. One company, Samsung, overcame these challenges by using hard data, not intuition, to allocate its marketing dollars. Marketing executives undertook an intensive 18-month project to gather diverse and detailed information about more than 400 possible product-category and country combinations. It collected all that data in a single, easy-to-access site and used the software's analytical power to predict the impact of different allocation scenarios. Such what-if testing enables management to find the budget allocation that will yield the highest total marketing ROI. Samsung also worked to anticipate and defuse organizational resistance to change.

Jefferson Pilot Financial (JPF), a life insurance and annuities firm, was looking for new ways to grow. Its top managers recognized that JPF needed to differentiate itself in the eyes of its customers, the independent life-insurance advisers who sell and service policies. To establish itself as these advisers' preferred partner, it set out to reduce the turnaround time on policy applications, simplify the submission process, and reduce errors. JPF's managers looked to the "lean production" practices that U.S. manufacturers adopted in response to competition from Japanese companies. Lean production is built around the concept of continuous-flow processing--a departure from traditional production systems, in which large batches are processed at each step. JPF appointed a "lean team" to reengineer its New Business unit's operations, beginning with the creation of a "model cell"--a fully functioning microcosm of JPF's entire process. This approach allowed managers to experiment and smooth out the kinks while working toward an optimal design. The team applied lean-manufacturing practices, including placing linked processes near one another, balancing employees' workloads, posting performance results, and measuring performance and productivity from the customer's perspective. The results were so impressive that JPF is rolling out similar systems across many of its operations.

Managers who pride themselves on giving employees what they request may be shortchanging women, simply because men ask for a lot more than women do. This can be costly for companies, and it requires management intervention.