Companies still spend lots of money on research from analyst firms, but they're not always thrilled with the results.

Success will come to financial services companies that have the courage to dismantle outdated business paradigms and to successfully leverage the industry's new competitive dynamics. The need for new models to generate profitable growth is clear. This demands a strategy for building customer and shareholder value that takes into account the critical variables-like customer behavior and technology-that shape today's competitive environment.

A failure to focus on revenue may explain why so many mergers don't succeed, for while they are in progress, many companies largely ignore it, expecting that it will just keep rolling in. In fact, most companies lose their revenue momentum while concentrating on cost synergies or failing to focus systematically on postmerger growth. Yet in the end, stalled growth hurts a company's market performance far more than a failure to cut costs.

Trends and drivers in the automotive industry as well as an outlook on the years to come.

An overview of the business valuation process for business owners and chief executives.

Corporate governance can be difficult enough—but what happens when your board of directors is comprised of your cousins? Or when your CEO is your sister? Harvard Business School's John Davis discusses governance issues unique to the family-run business.

Find Part 2 at:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/pubitem.jhtml?id=2630&sid=0&pid=0&t=family

Major changes such as mergers, reengineering, enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), and restructuring often result in downsizing. It doesn't have to be that way. Here are proven alternatives that can help you cut costs while ensuring the commitment of valued employees.

Nonprofits and business have a long history of collaboration, and the benefits run both ways. In this excerpt from HBS professor James Austin's latest working paper, three levels of collaboration are detailed. Plus: Austin Q&A.

Why does an entrepreneur reshuffle his entire management team at the peak of his company's success?

How a consumer is influenced by atmospheric factors - music, colours, smells - is the subject of much conjecture. What follows is a guide on how to monitor these effects and how some factors can influence spending patterns.

Tough "360" reviews and employee ranking are gaining fans. Competency-based performance management is the backbone of most of the alternative approaches.

This article takes a look at the differences between organizations that are treated as mechanical systems and those treated as adaptive systems; also considers characteristics of adaptive leaders (term coined by the author).

Author offers his system of performance review, termed RABOHA (Review and Appraisal Based on Human Attributes).

The single secret of internet marketing success is this: ideas that spread, win. Every site that's ever succeeded has done so not with Super Bowl ads or even banner ads, they've done it by creating an ideavirus. Successful songs, brands, political campaigns, they all work because of the ideavirus.

An ideavirus is an idea that spreads with a power far greater than word of mouth. Aided by digital networks, an ideavirus moves from person to person, reaching far more people than advertising ever could.

So how do you create and start an ideavirus?

The fundamental promise of e-commerce is to empower the customer. In transportation, logistics and other "behind the scenes" aspects of e-commerce, new services and capabilities are beginning to fulfill this promise, not just for Fortune 500 companies but for small and medium firms and for those with specialized requirements as well. This article outlines some of the latest developments in this fast-moving field, and provides some background and context to help companies better understand the alternatives available to them today.

Vendors are linking tools with CRM, content-management, and other IT systems.

The Internet's ability to span borders, destroy distance and unite the world's computer networks into a seamless whole looks wonderfully elegant to engineers, but awfully messy to lawyers. Previously cut-and-dried questions of legal jurisdiction—such as what country a particular transaction took place in - have now become horribly murky. Buy something in a shop, and you are clearly bound by the laws of the country where the shop is physically situated. But make a purchase from the same shop over the Internet from a foreign country, and it is not at all clear whose laws apply. Untangling this legal Gordian knot is the unenviable goal of a proposed treaty called the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments.

This article (along with an earlier one by the same author) takes a look at W. Edwards Deming's famous "14 Points". Though focused on applying these points to data management, the discussion also serves as a good introduction for those unfamiliar with this hallmark of the TQM movement.

Even though the easy-money days for 'dot-coms' are gone, here are five ways to still win.

Too often, management teams that face the daunting challenge of corporate transformation don't move far enough, fast enough, or broadly enough to truly reposition their businesses. Instead, they implement half-cures that can be worse than the disease: round after round of restructuring, strategic redirection, or layoffs, none of them sufficient to heal the wounds. Author Stan Pace uses powerful examples to show that the companies that implement "fast, focused, and simultaneous" change programs are the ones with the best chances to create enormous and long-lasting shareholder value.

What makes the difference between a good finance environment and a great one? We asked the Association for Financial Professionals and Hackett Benchmarking & Research to help us find out. CFO's survey of more than 100 corporations reveals best practices for financial workplaces.

Investment pioneer Bill Hambrecht foresees an entirely new way for companies to go public. His vision amounts to nothing less than an IPO revolution -- for founders and investors alike.

See related article, 'A Better, More Honest IPO' at:
http://www.forbes.com/2002/10/17/1017ipo.html

What to do when your share price flounders? The tool of choice for many companies is a value-based management (VBM) program tying an economic profit metric to compensation. The problem: Results have been mediocre.

An interesting look at teams, including a detailed list of needs of both team members and the team as an entity. Also offers a "FAMILY VALUES" acronym:
F - FOCUSED
A - ADAPTIVE
M - MISSION-ORIENTED
I - INVOLVED
L - LED
Y - YOUTHFUL

V - VALUE-ORIENTED
A - ASSESSED
L - LINKED
U - UNIFIED
E - EMPOWERED
S - SATISFIED

Before you embark on any kind of team development, it is critical that you understand the implications of the differences between teams and work groups. Then the group can proceed with appropriate planning for its own development in concert with what the organization needs it to be.