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This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. All organizations sense competitive pressure intuitively, but most, says the author, do not do a good job of managing it. That is, in part, because it is often difficult to see the overall pressure system--a complex, shifting pattern of overlapping contacts among rivals that continually alters the climate of an industry. Illustrates how pressure systems can be mapped and controlled to a significant extent. A map based on measured pressures has important implications for an organization's market and competitor selection, growth plans, product portfolio and diversification strategy, resource allocation priorities, competitive-intelligence system, merger and acquisition strategy, and scenario-planning process. In any industry, companies can develop competitive strategies by using a pressure map to answer two critical questions: If the current pressure pattern continues, what position will my company ultimately hold? How can my company stabilize or shift the direction of pressure to reduce (or enhance) the predicted impact of the current pressure system? Through detailed discussion of different industries, the author demonstrates how pressure maps can reveal the underlying competitive dynamics of an industry. He then offers a variety of mechanisms by which organizations can and do affect their competitive landscapes.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Executives make few moves more critical than their decisions about which technology infrastructure investments will promote future strategic agility. To pinpoint best practices, three IT experts marshaled 10 years of data from 89 leading enterprises. One finding was that when companies describe their IT infrastructure capabilities as services instead of equipment (say, the provision of a fully maintained laptop computer with access to all company systems and the Internet), they do a better job of putting a value on what they are buying. Understanding the 70 IT infrastructure services that emerge consistently from the research can help executives identify which investments will make sense for which strategic business initiative. And understanding whether the contemplated initiative is supply side, internally focused, or demand side can help managers decide whether to make the infrastructure investment on a business unit level or enterprisewide. The authors find that leading companies are making regular, systematic, modular, and targeted IT infrastructure investments on the basis of overall strategic direction. If other companies can learn to recognize which IT infrastructure capabilities are needed for which kinds of initiatives, they can have some assurance that the investments they make today will serve the strategies of tomorrow.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. In an article written well before Enron became a euphemism for corporate irresponsibility, the authors make the case that such misdeeds, so prevalent in recent months, are symptoms of a syndrome of selfishness that has taken hold of our business institutions, our societies, and our minds. Drawing on history, literature, philosophy, and management thinking, they argue that the syndrome is built on a series of half-truths--or fabrications--each of which has driven a debilitating wedge into society. Our narrow view of ourselves as "economic man" has driven a wedge of distrust between our individual wants and our social needs. A distorted view of shareholder value has driven a wedge of disengagement between those who create economic performance and those who harvest it. Our obsession with heroic leadership has created a wedge of disconnection between leaders and everyone else. The glorification of the lean and mean organization has driven a wedge of discontinuity between short-term and long-term goals. And the convenient, widely held notion that "a rising tide lifts all boats" has ratified a wedge of disparity between the prime beneficiaries of stock-price increases and the large numbers of people disadvantaged by the corresponding actions. The authors challenge and deconstruct each of these flawed premises and offer an alternative. Real prosperity, they say, combines economic development with social generosity--and that requires a new philosophy of social and managerial engagement.

Sell-side financial analysts are important to a firm because they affect both investor behavior and the firm's reputation in the business community. The effective implementation of strategy requires that the firm effectively communicate with these analysts regarding its strategy. Here, the focus is on the relationship that exists between companies and analysts, as well as its implications, from a communication strategy standpoint, for companies' investor relations activities.

Quality award-winning firms use seven key activities that dramatically improve the contribution of customer value and satisfaction (CVS) data. Although CVS as a management process cannot be reduced to just these seven keys, the goal here is to help firms focus on the most important applications and elements of CVS programs. A research study was undertaken to examine these leading-edge firms and find out how they apply their best practices: a customer-focused culture; executive support, persistence, and intensity; a set of customer listening tools; training, training, and more training; linking performance measures; identifying improvement opportunities; and evaluating and rewarding CVS performance.

Co-branding is an important strategy for the transition of brands. For multinational companies with global brands, it raises the chances of success in local markets. For local firms with strong brands, it secures their future through foreign investment and access to technology while maintaining consumer franchise and loyalty. In this review of co-branding and its relationship to consumer choice behavior, two case studies in the food industry lead to a set of guidelines for managers who want to use a co-branding strategy in brand transitions.

It's common sense that managers should deliver on promises and demonstrate the values they preach, but what's the real cost when bosses fail to "walk the talk?" A hotel-industry study shows a stunning association between profitability and how workers perceive their managers' behavioral integrity.

Women tend to be less enthusiastic than men about hierarchies, says Kim Campbell, Canada's first female prime minister and minister of national defense, and that can be good for business. When women join leadership teams, hierarchies become less rigid and can lose their power to protect bad leaders.

A temporary discount can generate a lot of customer excitement, but the revenue effects can be short lived. Price promotions commonly increase manufacturer revenue and depress retailer revenue in the short term but have no persistent effect. Promotions are tactical, not strategic, and they need to be managed that way.

Groom your executives to leave--enhance the skills that make them attractive in the marketplace--and they'll remain committed to their jobs. This counterintuitive finding, based on a study of 400 midlevel executives, has an important corollary: Fall short on your promises to develop executives' employability, and loyalty will diminish.

By stimulating commerce and development at the bottom of the economic pyramid, multinationals could radically improve the lives of billions of people and help create a more stable, less dangerous world. Achieving this goal does not require MNCs to spearhead global social-development initiatives for charitable purposes. They need only act in their own self-interest. How? The authors lay out the business case for entering the world's poorest markets. Fully, 65% of the world's population earns less than $2,000 per year--that's 4 billion people. But despite the vastness of this market, it remains largely untapped. The reluctance to invest is easy to understand, but it is, by and large, based on outdated assumptions of the developing world. Although individual incomes may be low, the aggregate buying power of poor communities is actually quite large, representing a substantial market in many countries for what some might consider luxury goods like satellite television and phone services. Because these markets are in the earliest stages of economic development, revenue growth for multinationals entering them can be extremely rapid. Business leaders must confront their own preconceptions--particularly about the value of high-volume, low-margin businesses--for companies to master the challenges or reap the rewards of these developing markets.

When struggling companies look for a new chief executive today, the one quality they prize above all others is charisma. But once they've recruited a larger-than-life leader, they often find that their troubles only get worse. Indeed, as the author's new research painfully reveals, the widespread belief in the powers of charismatic CEOs can be problematic. Why? First, Khurana says, there's no conclusive evidence that charismatic leadership affects an organization's performance. Second, the insistence on finding a charismatic leader, combined with the undefinable nature of charisma, results in selection processes that are overly conservative and even irrational. Boards end up considering only candidates who have already achieved the rank of CEO or president at a high-performing, high-profile company, even if they are not right for the job. Third, charismatic leaders deliberately destabilize organizations. This can result in a more vibrant company, as it did at General Electric during Jack Welch's tenure, but it can also leave a troubled legacy for the organization to overcome, as GE, Ford, and Enron have all found. Faith in a company, a product, or an idea can unleash tremendous innovation and productivity.

Your company knows its investors pretty well, right? But do you know how they'll react to any particular strategic decision your company might make? Probably not. The consequences of not knowing can derail your strategy, leading you to miss out, for example, on acquisition opportunities. Authors Coyne and Witter claim that in most companies, the decisions of fewer than 100 investors typically account for about 70% of the changes in a company's share price. They also claim that a new approach to investor relations, drawing on the one used to manage customer relations, can help companies paint a more complete picture of their investors' behaviors and motivations. Investor-based finance first has you identify four groups of actual and potential key investors: large shareholders that suddenly become active, past shareholders that seem to be buying back in, smaller shareholders you think are poised to increase their holdings, and potential shareholders that own shares in comparable companies but not yours. By analyzing the patterns in the buying and selling behaviors of investors in those groups, you can ascertain which investors have the power to move your share price. Once you've determined who your key investors are, compare their horizon of analysis (long, medium, or short term) and the dominant content they analyze (information about organizational structure, strategy, or financials). In doing so, you'll come to understand what's most important to those investors, and you'll be able to predict how they'll likely react to different kinds of news and thus buy or sell shares in your company.

Traditionally, the people responsible for positioning brands have concentrated on the differences that set each brand apart from the competition. But emphasizing differences isn't enough to sustain a brand against competitors. Managers should also consider the frame of reference within which the brand works and the features the brand shares with other products. Asking three questions about your brand can help: Have we established a frame? A frame of reference signals to consumers the goal they can expect to achieve by using a brand. Are we leveraging our points of parity? Certain points of parity must be met if consumers are to perceive your product as a legitimate player within its frame of reference. Are the points of difference compelling? A distinguishing characteristic that consumers find both relevant and believable can become a strong, favorable, unique brand association, capable of distinguishing the brand from others in the same frame of reference.

Most executives know how pricing influences the demand for a product, but few of them realize how it affects the consumption of a product. In this article, the authors argue that the relationship between pricing and consumption lies at the core of customer strategy. The extent to which a customer uses a product during a certain time period often determines whether he or she will buy the product again. So pricing tactics that encourage people to use the products they've paid for help companies build long-term relationships with customers. The link between pricing and consumption is clear: People are more likely to consume a product when they are aware of its cost. But for many executives, the idea that they should draw consumers' attention to the price that was paid for a product or service is counterintuitive. Companies have long sought to mask the costs of their goods and services to boost sales. And rightly so--if a company fails to make the initial sale, it won't have to worry about consumption. The problem is that masking how much a buyer has spent on a given product decreases the likelihood that the buyer will actually use it.

In the wake of meltdowns at WorldCom, Tyco, and Enron, enormous attention has been focused on the companies' boards. It seems inconceivable that business disasters of such magnitude could happen without gross or even criminal negligence on the part of board members. And, yet, a close examination of those boards reveals no broad pattern of incompetence or corruption. In fact, they followed most of the accepted standards for board operations: Members showed up for meetings; they had money invested in the company; audit committees, compensation committees, and codes of ethics were in place; and the boards weren't too small or too big, nor were they dominated by insiders. Corporate governance expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld suggests that it's time for some new thinking about how corporate boards operate and are evaluated. He proposes thinking not only about how to structure the board's work but also about how to manage it as a social system. Good boards are, very simply, high-functioning work groups. They're distinguished by a climate of respect, trust, and candor among board members and between the board and management. Information is shared openly and on time; emergent political factions are quickly eliminated. Members feel free to challenge one another's assumptions and conclusions, and management encourages lively discussion of strategic issues. Directors feel a responsibility to contribute meaningfully to the board's performance. In addition, good boards assess their own performance, both collectively and individually.

In an ideal world, a subordinate would accept critical feedback from a manager with an open mind. He or she would ask a few clarifying questions, promise to work on certain performance areas, and show signs of improvement over time. But things don't always turn out that way. Fearing that the employee will become angry and defensive, the boss all too often inadvertently sabotages the meeting by preparing for it in a way that stifles honest discussion. This unintentional--indeed, unconscious--stress-induced habit makes it difficult to deliver corrective feedback effectively. Insead professor Jean-Francois Manzoni says that by changing the mind-set with which they develop and deliver negative feedback, managers can increase their odds of having productive conversations without damaging relationships. Manzoni describes two behavioral phenomena that color the feedback process--the fundamental attribution error and the false consensus effect. Managers tend to frame difficult situations and decisions in a way that is narrow (alternatives aren't considered) and binary (there are only two possible outcomes--win or lose). And during the feedback discussion, managers' framing of the issues often remains frozen. Manzoni says that bosses need to consider an employee's circumstances rather than just attribute weak performance to a person's disposition.

Some organizations repeatedly come up with great ideas, even though each act of innovation is really a leap of imagination that can't be taught or predicted. But even if they can't exactly replicate those successes, can other organizations learn from them? HBR's editors asked 16 innovation experts--leaders but not necessarily inventors themselves--one question: "What's the one thing you've done that most inspired innovation in your organization?" Some of them--like Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari; CEO Michael Dell; and venture capitalist Esther Dyson--emphasize the importance of letting people experiment and take risks. Hal Tovin, an executive vice president of a financial group, and John Talley, a pharmaceutical researcher, believe that hiring people with widely divergent skills and talents sets the stage for increased innovation. Larry Keeley, the president of an innovation strategy firm, encourages others to innovate in customer service, business models, and networking. Luciano Maiani, the director general of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), states the case for pure science by claiming that it drives innovation as much as markets do. These experts and others pull back the curtain on the mysteries of innovation.

If you're like most managers, you've worked with people who swear they do their most creative work under tight deadlines. You may use pressure as a management technique, believing it will spur people on to great leaps of insight. You may even manage yourself this way. If so, are you right? Not necessarily, these researchers say. When creativity is under the gun, it usually ends up getting killed, the authors say. They recently took a close look at how people experience time pressure, collecting and analyzing more than 9,000 daily diary entries from individuals who were working on projects that required high levels of creativity and measuring their ability to innovate under varying levels of time pressure. The authors describe common characteristics of time pressure and outline four working environments under which creativity may or may not flourish. High-pressure days that still yield creativity are full of focus and meaningful urgency--people feel they are on a mission. High-pressure days that yield no creativity lack such focus--people feel they are on a treadmill, forced to switch gears often. On low-pressure days that yield creativity, people feel as though they are on an expedition--exploring ideas rather than just identifying problems. And on low-pressure days that yield no creative thinking, people work on autopilot--doing their jobs without engaging too deeply. Managers should avoid extreme time pressure when possible.