This article discusses professional (as opposed to purely social) networking and applies an investments-based approach. The goal is to achieve social capital - the thoughts, feelings and behaviors contained within a group of people that can be called upon to create value.

This article reviews the various forms of online advertising available and some of the relevant research about the effectiveness of those formats. A good introduction and big-picture look at the field for marketers and site-owners alike.

For an organization to be truly entrepreneurial, Accenture research shows, leaders need to adopt a new role.

See a related article, "Entrepreneurship Around the Globe: Adapting to Different National Environments" at:
http://www.accenture.com/xd/xd.asp?it=enweb&xd=ideasoutlookpovpov_entrepreneurship.xml

No product really has to be a commodity. The trick is to know what services your customers want - and to charge more.

Maximizing the value of IT investments and boosting customer satisfaction should take the company outside its own borders.

Note: CEO Refresher articles are no longer free...

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Without a crystal clear understanding of how the value determiners, your customers, perceive and value what you offer, the ability to effectively, profitably, and consistently meet their needs becomes an uphill battle.

Editor's Note: the meat of the article are the lists of questions.

For many organizations, innovation is solely associated with "out of the box" thinking where a structured approach is unheard of. However, as more and more businesses realize that formalizing this process will ensure a steady stream of new ideas, a number of procedures and laws are coming into play. We take a look at one legal document that could help protect your innovative strategic alliances.

To finish first, you have to work fast. Ray Evernham - NASCAR's top crew chief and the man behind race-car champ Jeff Gordon - offers lessons from the pit on teamwork, surprise, and the pursuit of perfection.

"Welcome to the 'good enough' economy, where the likelihood that a technological innovation will be taken up depends on how well it answers six critical questions."

What makes some companies so much better at managing customer relationships than their competitors? Put a different way, how are companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Pioneer Hi-bred Seeds, Fidelity Investments, Lexus, Intuit, and Capital One able to stay more closely connected to customers than their rivals, in ways that significantly influence the profitability of the firm? It's a question that Wharton marketing professor George Day answers in a new paper. His research notes, among other things, three distinct approaches to customer relationship management (CRM), each with dramatically different results.

Information-technology investments can be assessed in a new way that lines them up with a company's overall strategy.

Advocates of corporate social responsibility think their time has come, but there are still cynics on all sides. ATB looks at the rise of this phenomenon and the hurdles it still has to face.

Everyone says that before you launch a company, you've got to write a business plan. So how come so many Inc 500 CEOs skipped that sober exercise?

The world's economies can grow more secure and more humane if chief executives and boards accept and execute a five-point corporate citizenship agenda.

Editor's Note: the five points are interesting reading but you may want to just skip the introductory first 2 pages of the article...

Vendors continue to tout business intelligence as the next big thing in corporate computing. And in fact, sales of BI products rose to nearly $4 billion last year -- and could hit $6 billion by 2005.

But while the virtues of BI tools are plenty (including huge ROI numbers), big-bang rollouts of the software may be a mistake. Indeed, some business intelligence vendors say the smart way to deploy BI software is to take it step-by-step. And where to start in that process? Many consultants say BI rollouts should begin in finance.

In this buyer's guide, Contributing Editor Russ Banham looks at the trends in the BI market that are shaping the industry -- and how smart executives are installing BI products.

Build the business case for improving your supply chain on three pillars: customer needs, strategic sourcing, and information flows.

Note: CEO Refresher articles are no longer free...

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This article (part 2 in a series) takes a look at the difference between criticism and feedback and offers some useful tips for offering constructive and well-received performance feedback.

See other articles in this series:
Part 1: Why We Shoot the Messenger
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=2222&file=links
Part 3: Getting the Message
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=2542&file=links

Also see, "Everyone's A Critic"
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=3824&db_table=links

Voice-over-IP technology still has problems, but now may be the time to buy.

Equity markets judge mergers, acquisitions, and alliances quickly-and often harshly. The authors' study of 2,100 companies shows that the stock market responds sharply to announcements of mergers or alliances, that it favors some types of transactions over others, and that this market response is a good indicator of a deal's long-term prospects. In volatile, fast-moving industries, such as electronics, software, and the mass media, alliances were heavily favored over mergers and acquisitions. They were also favored for building new businesses, entering new markets, and developing new capabilities.

The take-away
Managers are often pressed to "do an alliance"-and strategic agreements can indeed confer quick benefits on the partners. But nearly half of all alliances fail. It is necessary to know whether and when alliances, mergers, or joint ventures create the greatest amount of value.

As the debate continues over what constitutes good corporate governance, one suggestion has proved particularly intriguing - that the positions of chairman and chief executive officer be held by different people. The idea has both defenders and detractors, but everyone agrees that new checks and balances are necessary to prevent the types of abuses that have allowed some senior executives to virtually bankrupt their companies.

The real meaning of success -- and how to find it.

A company's decision on where to locate a facility must take more into account than simple labor costs, says Harvard Business School professor Michael E. Porter. The new Cluster Mapping Project, developed at Porter's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, reveals detailed patterns of growth, resources, and competitiveness in forty-one regional clusters in the United States.

John P. Kotter, Harvard Business School professor, award-winning author of more than a dozen books on leadership and management, was recently rated by Business Week as America's Number One "leadership guru." In his best-selling book, Leading Change, he demystified the change process by distilling an eight-step process for implementing successful organizational transformations: 1. Increase Urgency, 2. Build the Guiding Team, 3. Get the Vision Right, 4. Communicate for Buy-In, 5. Empower Action, 6. Create Short-Term Wins, 7. Don't Let Up, and 8. Make Change Stick. His new book, The Heart of Change, written with Dan Cohen of Deloitte Consulting, shows how to use the power of feelings effectively to navigate each of the eight steps. Leader to Leader recently talked to Kotter about today's challenges to leaders and the need to pay careful attention to feelings in implementing change.

Editor's Note: see related article, "Winning at Change" at
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=3483&file=links

and "Leading With The Heart" at
http://www.mbadepot.com/redir.php?ID=3484&file=links

This email newsletter ad network was launched by List-Universe.com in April, 2000. Since then it has grown quite rapidly, as has the popularity of cost-effective email advertising. More than 1,000 email newsletters, totaling more than 106 million subscribers, are part of the Opt-Influence network. What does this mean for you? Rather than contacting email newsletters one by one to advertise, you can contract to advertise in multiple newsletters at once via Opt-Influence. Special interest categories range from Arts and Entertainment to Business, Family, Health, Sports and Self-Improvement. [WDFM Annotation]

One year ago, at the height of the fall recruiting season, MBA Jungle posed a simple question to the B-school students of the world: What confusing or unexpected parts of the recruiting process do you wish someone had briefed you about ahead of time? The magazine went to experts for their wisdom.