A new campaign seeks to establish extended producer responsibility, life-cycle accountability, and clean production within the high-tech industry in the U.S.

It's now part of every executive's job description: Be good at TV.
In the past, the big challenge was to give a good speech. Enter corporate speechwriters, who could make sure that the words on paper at least made sense. Keep your head down, stick to the script, and you're home safe. But now that's table stakes. Now you have to be fast on your feet, smooth in your delivery, and sharp in your comebacks -- and do it live, on air, face-to-face with an interviewer. Are you ready for your 15 minutes of fame? Here are six tips from the best media trainers in the business.

"...for those companies with a genuine interest in doing the right thing, we present Seven Tenets for Enhancing the Relevance, Clarity and Transparency of your Corporate Communications"

A "virtuous cycle" of self-reinforcing benefits will permit certain companies to redefine-and control-the retail industry. Even so, retailers still have enough time to build cross-border positions and local-market defenses.

Editor's Note: This article will be of most interest to those in or interested in the retail industry, but some of the discussion has broader value, especially the introduction and use of the strategic-control map tool.

Work-at-home employees who link personal systems to corporate networks may expose enterprises to security risks. Four common assumptions make this a particularly dangerous practice. Get the details on each assumption, learn how it impacts security, and get suggestions for shoring up systems.

When it comes to technology, too often company executives cede decision making to the IT department. This excerpt from Harvard Business Review questions who should make decisions about long-term IT strategy.

"If end-to-end business processes are the focus of internal and cross-company integration, why not deal directly with the "business process, as application" instead of "data" and "applications"? Because business processes can no longer be cast in concrete the way they are in today's applications, the "business process" must supersede the "application" as a means of packaging software. In addition, companies must leverage existing IT investments as they build new process-aware information systems that understand the enterprise process design right across the value chain. Companies are demanding a breakthrough that shifts the locus of automation from the affairs of IT to the affairs of the business. They want to shift their efforts from further automating integration to make up for the limitations of IT, and move on to managing business processes. That breakthrough is the methodology of BPM and its technology engine-the business process management system (BPMS).

The third wave of business process management of which we speak is not business process reengineering (BPR), enterprise application integration, workflow management or another packaged application-it's the synthesis and extension of all these technologies and techniques into a unified whole. This unified whole becomes a new foundation upon which the enterprise is built, an enterprise more in tune with the true nature of business processes and their management."

Companies can't make the right decisions about which projects to green-light, expand, downsize, or cut unless they've put in place good processes to keep track of exactly how much they've invested in various deployments, how those installations are progressing, and how closely they track with strategic business goals...Portfolio-management software provides data and reports that help executives make smarter decisions.

You woo and persuade most effectively when you write with verbs. Useful nouns and lots of verbs. Not adjectives or adverbs. So *click* that link, *peruse* the incredibly insightful ideas and *see* how to *pack* more copy punch with a verb.

Companies can analyze, engineer, and elevate their own human networks, says the pioneering social scientist.

Editor's Note: This article discusses the concept of network analysis, a useful but as-yet underutilized management tool (one that doesn't even appear on Bain's management tools survey).

Travel and entertainment (T&E) is second only to payroll as the largest area of discretionary expense in a corporate budget. As travel costs continue to climb, this special report examines what CFOs and other finance managers can do to bring these expenditures back down to earth. In the report you'll find links to articles and a Web directory of associations, consultants, and T&E providers, as well as links to free white papers from CFO Research Services.

This is a very good question and answers on the web typically ends up being a lot of tactics, like advertising, brand management, sales, service, pricing, email marketing, etc. That's a good start, but far from complete.

And that's one of the problems with the web. If you go to search engines like Google and type in "marketing expert", you'll come up with over 27,000 web pages! When you've got that many people claiming to be experts in marketing, it's difficult to even know what marketing means.

Earlier this fall, Safeway, a food retailer based in Pleasanton, Calif., took out radio and television ads apologizing to customers of some recently-acquired grocery stores for changes in these stores' operations. Safeway joined what seems to be a long list of apologizers - from investment bankers to fast food corporations - who have recently expressed regret for a variety of mistakes. With a year full of apologies now coming to a close, Knowledge@Wharton looks at how effective apologies are, what they signal, when they should be offered and whether they can backfire.

With all the choices consumers are given, it stands to reason that we should feel pleased with our decision s if we have given them careful thought. But often we feel a sense of loss for the options that got away. Professors Ziv Carmon, Klaus Wertenbroch, and Marcel Zeelenberg look into this phenomenon and discover that it might not just be our natural fickleness that fuels this regret. In this recent working paper they reveal that consumers often become attached to the options offered, and in the deliberating process actually begin to feel a sense of ownership. When a decision is finally made, consumers experience a sense of loss for those not selected, a feeling that is often as powerful as the positive feelings for the option selected.

Imagine, for a moment, your progressive business vision. Does it have profit sharing? Does labor management collaboration exist? Does it support and assist associates in securing affordable, high quality housing? Is there participatory management? Are employees encouraged to tinker and invent? Does the firm provide and support continuous adult learning? Does it provide high quality child care, primary and secondary education? Are on-site recreation and entertainment provided? Is the firm's facilities pleasing to the eye? Believe or not, these questions were derived from a late 1800's firm. It manufactured plumbing supplies.

It's important to protect your company's intellectual property. But are some businesses going too far?

It's not enough to have a competitive advantage. You also need to hold onto it.

How social and sustainability reporting can make a real difference in changing business performance, impacts, and outcomes.

Tiny chips (Radio-frequency identification or RFID tags) may revolutionize all areas of supply-chain management.

Editor's Note: for a good overview of RFID, see the European Business Forum (EBF) article "Had a chat with your refrigerator lately?" at:
http://www.ebfonline.com/main_feat/in_depth/in_depth.asp?id=461

see also
"Silent Commerce: Breaking the Silence"
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=2652&db_table=links

"Smart tags for your supply chain"
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/links/7780

Budgeting software isn't the key to corporate finance reform, but it can help CFOs manage expectations in a sinking economy.

This buyer's guide will explain how some CFOs cope under the added stress of Sarbanes, in addition to provide a list of vendors for 2002 B&P software.

Thirty ways to get paid within 30 days.

This special issue of Forbes celebrates two forces that are bringing the world closer together: innovation and capitalism. The editors list their choices for the 85 most consequential innovations since 1917. Following are five essays on capitalism and invention, and then profiles of 15 outstanding innovators of today.

Created in 1992, the Balanced Scorecard has become an effective tool for managing strategy. Now authors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton propose using it to communicate values and vision to employees and partners. The payoff? Better strategic relationships with partners.

A simple onlide slide presentation covering the basic concepts of ABC with a simple example.

Though topical, this article does introduce/discuss the so-called clawback provisions in most venture capital partnership agreements and their implication when funds perform poorly.