個案總覽

A new statistical technique, called Bayesian shrinkage, can help manufacturers better analyze retail sales data and target marketing programs.

Conventional wisdom says that companies from the periphery of the global market can't compete against established global giants from Europe, Japan, and the United States. Companies from developing countries have entered the game too late; they don't have the resources. But Christopher Bartlett and Sumantra Ghoshal disagree. The problem for most aspiring multinationals from peripheral countries, say the authors, is that they enter the global marketplace in low-margin businesses at the bottom of the value curve, and they stay there. But it doesn't have to be that way. They studied 12 emerging multinationals based in such countries--from emerging markets like Brazil to relatively more prosperous yet still peripheral nations like Australia to developing countries like the Philippines. These companies now enjoy global success because they treated global competition as an opportunity to build capabilities and move into more profitable segments of their industry. The path to globalization isn't easy, but the authors show that it is possible. Each company in the study overcame the same core challenges. They broke out of the mind-set that they were unable to compete successfully on the global stage. They adopted strategies that made being a late mover a source of competitive advantage. They developed a culture of continual cross-border learning. And they all had leaders who drove them relentlessly up the value curve. The companies discussed in this article are models for the thousands of marginal companies in peripheral economies that have the potential to become legitimate global players.

Why didn't a single minicomputer company succeed in the personal computer business? Why did only one department store--Dayton Hudson--become a leader in discount retailing? Why can't large companies capitalize on the opportunities brought about by major, disruptive changes in their markets? It's because organizations, independent of the people in them, have capabilities. And those capabilities also define disabilities. As a company grows, what it can and cannot do becomes more sharply defined in certain predictable ways. The authors have analyzed those patterns to create a framework managers can use to assess the abilities and disabilities of their organization as a whole. When a company is young, its resources--its people, equipment, technologies, cash, brands, suppliers, and the like--define what it can and cannot do. As it becomes more mature, its abilities stem more from its processes--product development, manufacturing, budgeting, for example. In the largest companies, values--particularly those that determine what are its acceptable gross margins and how big an opportunity has to be before it becomes interesting--define what the company can and cannot do. Because resources are more adaptable to change than processes or values, smaller companies tend to respond to major market shifts better than larger ones. The authors suggest ways large companies can capitalize on opportunities that normally would not fit in with their processes or values; it all starts with understanding what the organizations are capable of.

If you think the Internet has changed the shape of business, just imagine what genetic engineering is going to do. In this groundbreaking article, Juan Enriquez and Ray Goldberg explain how advances in genetics will not only have dramatic implications for people and society, they will reshape vast sectors of the world economy. The boundaries between many once-distinct businesses, from agribusiness and chemicals to pharmaceuticals and health care to energy and computing, will blur, and out of that convergence will emerge what promises to be the largest industry in the world: life science. And as scientific advances continue to accelerate, more and more businesses will be drawn, by choice or by necessity, into the life-science industry. Companies have realized that unlocking life's code opens up virtually unlimited commercial possibilities, but operating within this new industry presents a raft of wrenchingly difficult challenges as well. Companies must rethink their business, financial, and M&A strategies. They must make vast R&D investments with distant and uncertain payoffs. They must enter into complex partnerships and affiliations, sometimes with direct competitors. And perhaps most difficult, they must contend with a public that is uncomfortable with even the thought of genetic engineering. The optimal structure of the life-science industry--and of the companies that compose it--is as yet unknown. But the actions that executives take now will go a long way toward determining the ultimate role their companies play in the world's largest and most important industry.

A leader's singular job is to get results. But even with all the leadership training programs and "expert" advice available, effective leadership still eludes many people and organizations. One reason, says Daniel Goleman, is that such experts offer advice based on inference, experience, and instinct, not on quantitative data. Now, drawing on research of more than 3,000 executives, Goleman explores which precise leadership behaviors yield positive results. He outlines six distinct leadership styles, each one springing from different components of emotional intelligence. Each style has a distinct effect on the working atmosphere of a company, division, or team, and, in turn, on its financial performance. The styles, by name and brief description alone, will resonate with anyone who leads, is led, or, as is the case with most of us, does both. Coercive leaders demand immediate compliance. Authoritative leaders mobilize people toward a vision. Affiliative leaders create emotional bonds and harmony. Democratic leaders build consensus through participation. Pacesetting leaders expect excellence and self-direction. And coaching leaders develop people for the future. The research indicates that leaders who get the best results don't rely on just one leadership style; they use most of the styles in any given week. Goleman details the types of business situations each style is best suited for, and he explains how leaders who lack one or more of these styles can expand their repertories. He maintains that with practice leaders can switch among leadership styles to produce powerful results, thus turning the art of leadership into a science.

Stock option grants have come to dominate the pay of top executives. But while they've made many people wealthy, their impact on business in general remains controversial. Critics say options motivate corporate leaders to boost stock values in the short run rather than build companies that will thrive over the long run. Drawing on an extensive analysis of the real-world impact of options, Brian Hall argues that the critics are wrong. Option grants are the best compensation mechanism we have for getting managers to act in ways that ensure the long-term success of their companies and the well-being of workers and stockholders. But because options tend to be poorly understood, companies often end up with counterproductive plans. The author explains the three types of option plans that can be used. Fixed value plans, for which executives receive options of a predetermined value every year, are ideal for companies that set pay according to compensation surveys, but they weaken the link between pay and performance. Fixed number plans, which stipulate the number of options executives will receive over the plan period, provide a much stronger link. The lump-sum megagrant is the most highly leveraged type of grant because it not only fixes the number of options in advance, it fixes the exercise price as well. The type of plan must be carefully matched to the company's strategy. The article is accompanied by several exhibits, including a chart entitled "Which Plan?" that succinctly sets out the weaknesses and strengths of each type of option program.

For years, partners at professional service firms considered the leap from professional to partner a function of "natural selection"--a test of survival of the fittest. But that model is on the verge of extinction: in today's firms, securing and retaining talent is becoming paramount as young MBAs, once willing to log years of hard labor in hopes of being made partner, are leaving in hordes for hot new Internet companies. So how can companies keep the talent they've worked so hard to cultivate? One way, Ibarra says, is to have partners take a more active mentoring role in helping junior professionals create a partner persona. She explains the three steps that senior colleagues can take to guide junior professionals on this journey. The first has to do with observing role models. By taking a collage approach, young professionals can survey a broad range of personalities and so accumulate a larger repertoire of possible styles to choose from. For their part, partners can assist in this observation process by communicating explicitly what styles work for them and why. The second step partners can take is to encourage professionals to develop a repertoire of role models; by working with many senior professionals, junior colleagues are more apt to find just the right mix of mentors. And third, senior people can take extra care to support young professionals at the most difficult moments in the process. Indeed, the leap from professional to partner is difficult--even trying at times. But for those willing and daring enough to take the leap--and for those who've already made it--understanding the associated psychological and emotional obstacles is critical to success.

Like every other ambitious, Ivy League-educated baby boomer, Randy Komisar wanted to climb the corporate ladder--any corporate ladder. But he just couldn't bring himself to play the traditional career game. Instead, Komisar made up his own rules, taking a series of jobs that sparked his passions and made him happy--and successful. Today, the charismatic 45-year-old is a "virtual CEO"--an off-site but supercharged consultant to flesh-and-blood CEOs at a number of start-up companies in Silicon Valley and beyond. But that was only after he'd worked his way through 11 companies in 25 years--a crazy quilt of jobs as a music promoter, corporate lawyer, CFO at a software start-up, and chief executive at a video game company, just to name a few. Komisar's success came by not having a career--at least, not in the traditional old-economy sense of the word. He realized there were alternatives to marching your way straight up the corporate ladder and that success in the new economy can involve a series of twists and turns. In this first-person account, Komisar describes why a nontraditional career path such as the one he unintentionally took may appeal to more businesspeople than might suspect it themselves. He tracks his professional journey along a sometimes tense, often enlightening, and ultimately prosperous course. He shares lessons learned along the way. Komisar also makes a strong business case for pursuing the passion-driven career; such a career, he says, makes supreme sense in the new economy because it's flexible and challenging--both for an individual and for the companies he chooses to work for.

Price wars are a fact of life, whether we're talking about the fast-paced world of knowledge products, the marketing of Internet appliances, or the staid, traditional sales of aluminum castings. If you're a manager and you're not in battle currently, you probably will be soon, so it's never too early to prepare. The authors describe the causes and characteristics of price wars and explain how companies can fight them, flee them--or even start them. The authors say the best defense in a pricing battle isn't to simply match price cut for price cut; they emphasize other options for protecting market share. For instance, companies can compete on quality instead of price; they can alert customers to the risks and negative consequences of choosing a low-priced option. Companies can reveal their strategic intentions and capabilities; just the threat of a major price action might hold rivals' pricing moves in check. And, finally, companies can seek support from interested third parties--governments, customers, and vendors, for instance--to help avert a price war. If a company chooses to compete on price, the authors suggest using complex pricing actions, cutting prices in certain channels, or introducing new products or flanking brands--each of which lets companies selectively target only those segments of the market that are under competitive threat. A simple tit-for-tat price move should be the last resort--and managers should act swiftly and decisively so competitors will know that any revenue gains will be short-lived.

Most of the advice on organizational learning, change, and employee commitment does not work and, worse, often leads to counterproductive results. That's the argument of Chris Argyris's Flawed Advice and the Management Trap, and Eileen Shapiro finds it convincing. A consultant to venture capitalists, Shapiro lauds Argyris's dissection of some leading popular works on leadership. Examples from their own books suggest that Stephen Covey, Jon Katzenbach, and John Kotter may preach the virtues of openness and respect, but in practice they aren't averse to using deception and unilateral control. Similarly, Argyris shows the dishonesty behind most empowerment programs. Too many companies, he finds, ask workers to act like owners without truly giving them the authority or the incentives to do so. The underlying trouble is a deep-seated mind-set of winning at all costs that keeps managers from fully engaging with their subordinates. While agreeing with Argyris's diagnosis, Shapiro is skeptical of his remedy, a program of coaching aimed at getting executives to see the contradictions between their intentions and their behavior. Some companies do fully empower their people, she finds, but only because they compete in high-growth industries where employees need to make quick decisions to capture big opportunities. Like the milk in a cup of cappuccino, she says, these enterprises are swirling around in the economy, far above the slow-moving traditional companies that Argyris has studied. Managers and employees in these fast-moving companies share power not because they were trained to do so, but because that's the only way they can reap the great rewards they seek.

There is much euphoria about the possibilities offered by e-commerce. Consumers envision lower prices and easy shopping; investors imagine cashing in on Internet IPOs; and start-ups want their business model to be the one that transforms an industry. But beneath all the excitement lies a sobering reality: the Internet represents the biggest threat thus far to a company's ability to brand its products, extract price premiums from buyers, and generate high profit margins. Indrajit Sinha explains that this threat comes from what economists call cost transparency, a situation made possible by the abundance of free, easily obtained information on the Internet. Pricing information is the most prevalent, but consumers can also find a wealth of material about product quality, supplier reliability, service offerings, and much more. All that information makes sellers' costs more transparent to buyers. It lets them see through manufacturing costs and determine whether those costs are in line with the prices being charged. That will make it much harder for companies, whether they are on-line or not, to impose large price premiums. What can companies do to fight back? Sinha suggests several options. One is to implement creative pricing strategies that go beyond traditional price cutting. Another is bundling--packaging a product with other goods and services in order to obscure the product's costs. But the best way of countering cost transparency is through innovation, Sinha says. Consumers will always reward makers of new and distinctive products that improve their lives.

Back in the prehistoric days of information technology--say, about 15 years ago--many companies opted to deal with the frighteningly complicated matter of "machines and men" by creating a new position: chief information officer. This newfangled executive, companies hoped, would protect and prepare them for the coming technology revolution. But now that the revolution is upon us, and as more and more companies integrate e-commerce into their corporate strategies, the role of the chief information officer is undergoing intense scrutiny. Should the CIO participate fully in strategy formulation? Is the position evolving from a technical manager to a general manager? If, in fact, the CIO role is becoming largely strategic, how much will the job overlap with that of the CEO? And what of the operational responsibilities that traditionally go along with the CIO title? Commenting on these issues are: Dawn Lepore, CIO and vice chairman at Charles Schwab; Jack Rockart, director of the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT; Michael J. Earl, professor of information management at London Business School; Tom Thomas, chairman and CEO at Vantive Corporation; and Peter McAteer and Jeffrey Elton, consultants at Giga Information Group and Integral, respectively.

Open competition for other companies' people, once a rarity in business, is now an accepted fact. Fast-moving markets require fast-moving organizations that are continually refreshed with new talent. But no one likes to see talent leave; when a good employee walks, the business takes a hit. It's futile to hope that by tinkering with compensation, career paths, and training efforts, you can wall off your company from today's labor market. But there is an alternative: a market-driven approach to retention based on the assumption that long-term, across-the-board loyalty is neither possible nor desirable. By taking a hard look at which employees you need to retain and for how long, you can use highly targeted programs to keep the required talent in place. Most companies today rely on compensation to build loyalty, but compensation is only one of many useful retention mechanisms. You can redesign jobs to reduce turnover: UPS kept many more drivers by shifting the tedious job of loading trucks to other employees. You can promote loyalty to particular projects or to work teams. You can hire people who aren't in high demand and place valuable employees in locations where they won't be constantly tempted by job offers. You can team up with other companies to offer cross-company career paths. And when there's no effective way to prevent attrition, you can learn to live with it: outsource, strengthen recruitment, standardize jobs, cross-train employees, and organize work around short-term projects. If managing retention in the past was akin to tending a dam, today it is more like managing a river. The object is not to stop water from flowing but to control its direction and speed.

Entrepreneur Charles H. Ferguson created FrontPage with the notion of establishing a proprietary software standard for the Internet. His company, Vermeer, did beat competitors to market with an authoring tool for Web pages; soon after, Ferguson sold the company and the technology to Microsoft for $130 million. In his book, High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars (Times Books, 1999), Ferguson, an industry analyst and government policy analyst, offers a detailed and extraordinarily honest account of his experiences in the world of high-tech start-ups. Reviewers J. Bradford DeLong and A. Michael Froomkin note that other books may present a more thorough account of the high-tech industry, but few contain the streetwise business philosophy Ferguson pumps into this book. His multiplicity of vision gives the book its depth--though his awareness of his own shortcomings does not give him humility in assessing others' actions. The reviewers take issue with Ferguson's narrative only when he argues that Microsoft's strategy of gaining proprietary control over software standards is the only game in town. Another approach is also worth considering: nonproprietary, "open source" software. Microsoft's principal competitive restraint--in the operating system business, at least--isn't Sun or Apple. It's open-source software, particularly the Linux freeware operating system. Ferguson concludes that Linux is unlikely to have more than a small niche in the market. But the reviewers suggest that some emerging aspects of the open-source movement mean that freeware still poses a threat to Microsoft.

The promise of synergy is the prime rationale for the existence of the multibusiness corporation. Yet for most corporations, the "1-plus-1-equals-3" arithmetic of cross-business synergies doesn't add up. Companies that do achieve synergistic success use a corporate strategic process called coevolving; they routinely change the web of collaborative links among businesses to exploit fresh opportunities for synergies and drop deteriorating ones. The term coevolution originated in biology. It refers to the way two or more ecologically interdependent species become intertwined over time. As these species adapt to their environment, they also adapt to one another. Today's multibusiness companies need to take their cue from biology to survive: They should assume that links among businesses are temporary and that the number of connections--not just their content--matters. Rather than plan collaborative strategy from the top, as traditional companies do, corporate executives in coevolving companies should simply set the context and then let collaboration (and competition) emerge from business units. Incentives, too, are different than they are in traditional companies. Coevolving companies reward business units for individual performance, not for collaboration. So collaboration occurs only when two business-unit managers both believe that a link makes sense for their respective businesses, not because collaboration per se is useful. Managers in coevolving companies also need to recognize the importance of business systems that support the process: frequent data-focused meetings among business-unit leaders, external metrics to gauge individual business performance, and incentives that favor self-interest.

Most managers recognize the value in building and properly managing a brand. But few can objectively assess their brand's particular strengths and weaknesses. Most have a good sense of one or two areas in which their brand may excel or may need help. But, if pressed, many would find it difficult even to identify all the factors they should be considering. To give managers a systematic way to think about their brands, Tuck School professor Kevin Lane Keller lays out the ten characteristics that the strongest brands share. He starts with the relationship of the brand to the customer: The strongest brands excel at delivering the benefits customers truly desire, he says. They stay relevant to customers over time. Pricing truly reflects consumers' perceptions of value. Keller then moves on to consider marketing strategy and implementation: Strong brands are properly positioned. The brand stays consistent. Sub-brands relate to one another in an orderly way within a portfolio of brands. A full range of marketing tools are employed to build brand equity. Finally, he looks at management considerations: Managers of strong brands understand what the brand means to customers. The company gives the brand proper support and sustains it over the long term. And the company consistently measures sources of brand equity. By grading a brand according to how well it addresses each dimension, managers can come up with a comprehensive brand report card. By doing the same for competitors' brands, they can gain a fuller understanding of the relative strengths of their own brands in the marketplace.

Although women have made enormous gains in the business world--they hold seats on corporate boards and run major companies--they still comprise only 10% of senior managers in Fortune 500 companies. What will it take to shatter the glass ceiling? According to Debra Meyerson and Joyce Fletcher, it's not a revolution but a strategy of small wins--a series of incremental changes aimed at the subtle discriminatory forces that still reside in organizations. It used to be easy to spot gender discrimination in the corporate world, but today overt displays are rare. Instead, discrimination against women lingers in common work practices and cultural norms that appear unbiased. Consider how managers have tried to rout gender discrimination in the past. Some tried to assimilate women into the workplace by teaching them to act like men. Others accommodated women through special policies and benefits. Still others celebrated women's differences by giving them tasks for which they are "well suited." But each of those approaches proffers solutions for the symptoms, not the sources, of gender inequity. Gender bias, the authors say, will be undone only by a persistent campaign of incremental changes that discover and destroy the deeply embedded roots of discrimination. Because each organization is unique, its expressions of gender inequity are, too. Drawing on examples from companies that have used the small-wins approach, the authors advise readers on how they can make small wins at their own organizations. They explain why small wins will be driven by men and women together, because both will ultimately benefit from a world where gender is irrelevant to the way work is designed and distributed.

Major business trends such as deregulation, globalization, technological convergence, and the rapid evolution of the Internet have transformed the roles that companies play in their dealings with other companies. Business practitioners and scholars talk about alliances, networks, and collaboration among companies. But managers and researchers have largely ignored the agent that is most dramatically transforming the industrial system as we know it: the consumer. In a market in which technology-enabled consumers can now engage themselves in an active dialogue with manufacturers--a dialogue that customers can control--companies have to recognize that the customer is becoming a partner in creating value. In this article, authors C.K. Prahalad and Venkatram Ramaswamy demonstrate how the shifting role of the consumer affects the notion of a company's core competencies. Where previously, businesses learned to draw on the competencies and resources of their business partners and suppliers to compete effectively, they must now include consumers as part of the extended enterprise, the authors say. Harnessing those customer competencies won't be easy. At a minimum, managers must come to grips with four fundamental realities in co-opting customer competence: they have to engage their customers in an active, explicit, and ongoing dialogue; mobilize communities of customers; manage customer diversity; and engage customers in cocreating personalized experiences. Companies will also need to revise some of the traditional mechanisms of the marketplace--pricing and billing systems, for instance--to account for their customers' new role.

Intellectual property? Five years ago, that phrase wasn't even in the vocabularies of many CEOs, let alone a part of their business strategies. Indeed, many chief executives still regard patents, trademarks, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property as legal matters best left to the corporate attorneys. But the burgeoning knowledge economy has given rise to a new type of CEO and a new type of business competition--one in which intellectual assets, not physical ones, have become the principal sources of shareholder wealth and competitive advantage. And therein lies one of the next great corporate challenges: figuring out how to unlock the hidden power of patents. In this article, authors Kevin Rivette and David Kline describe how the strategic management and use of patents can enhance a company's commercial success in three broad ways: by establishing a proprietary market advantage, by improving financial performance, and by enhancing overall competitiveness. They present real-world examples of effective and ineffective patent management strategies--for example, comparing Dell's aggressive patenting of its direct-sales business model with Wal-Mart's looser protection of its unique business systems. They describe common but effective patenting techniques such as clustering and bracketing, both designed to block out or hamper competitors in the market. For both traditional and new-economy businesses, such as Amazon.com and Priceline.com, leveraging patents properly can produce benefits such as reduced corporate risk, the ability to anticipate and react to market shifts, and, ultimately, increased shareholder value and profits.

A new organizational form is emerging in companies that run on knowledge: the community of practice. And for this expanding universe of companies, communities of practice promise to radically galvanize knowledge sharing, learning, and change. A community of practice is a group of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise. People in companies form them for a variety of reasons--to maintain connections with peers when the company reorganizes; to respond to external changes such as the rise of e-commerce; or to meet new challenges when the company changes strategy. Regardless of the circumstances that give rise to communities of practice, their members inevitably share knowledge in free-flowing, creative ways that foster new approaches to problems. Over the past five years, the authors have seen communities of practice improve performance at companies as diverse as an international bank, a major car manufacturer, and a U.S. government agency. Communities of practice can drive strategy, generate new lines of business, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop people's skills, and help companies recruit and retain talent. The paradox of such communities is that although they are self-organizing and thus resistant to supervision and interference, they do require specific managerial efforts to develop them and integrate them into an organization. Only then can they be fully leveraged. The authors explain the steps managers need to take in order to get communities going--and to sustain them so they can become a central part of their companies' success.