The 20 tech-savviest business schools. 49 straight-to-the-point executive-ed courses. 25 books, gurus, conferences, journals, and corporate training programs that get it -- and will make sure that you do too.

A convincing business case for CSR continues to prove elusive despite a welter of academic studies. BT Group, however, believes it has quantified a highly significant link to the bottom line.

E-commerce is down but hardly out. It's now up to CIOs to lead online tactics and strategy. And when the economy finally rebounds, so will business units' interest in e-commerce.

Despite widespread optimism among their leaders, many companies were unable to turn the last recession to their advantage. What separated the winners from the losers? Research by the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change found that innovative perspectives on existing knowledge, tools and relationships drove sustained post-recession competitive advantage. Read about what actions the winners took to strengthen their positions.

You've got a great idea for a new company and a top-flight team to launch it. But do you know how to write a winning business plan?

The mobile phone is the hot new and powerful marketing channel that savvy marketers are all talking about. It's already huge in the UK and parts of Europe and is about to unleash itself in the US too. So what's it all about?

Despite high failure rates, Mergers and Acquisitions continue to be a popular strategy for achieving corporate growth and diversification. In this new Working Paper, Professors Stahl and Pablo, and Research Associate Chei Hwee Chua, suggest that human factors - psychological, cultural and social - play a more important role in post-integration success than previously thought.

There are two standard schools of advice on how to make decisions under pressure: Use your head, or go with your gut. A third option-the experiential approach-combines the best of the rational and the intuitive.

Can you predict a business disaster? In this Harvard Business Review excerpt, professors Michael D. Watkins and Max H. Bazerman outline the keys for disaster prevention: recognition, prioritization, and mobilization.

Editor's Note: mostly pure common sense with no actual prescriptions for improvement...

As the concept of "lifetime employment" becomes obsolete, many organizations are finding that they have more former employees than current ones. They are also beginning to recognize the bottom-line benefits of cultivating ongoing relationships with their "alumni."

Managers can do a far better job if they understand how each process they manage adds value. SVA is a tool for gaining that understanding.

Editor's Note: this article will be most interesting to those who care about the oil & gas industry but the SVA concept seemed to me to be poorly elaborated and more useful as a hindsight analytical tool rather than a piece of a proactive management toolkit.

If you don't analyze your value chain first, you may outsource IT functions that are core to your business or base decisions on the wrong metrics.

Finding solutions to some of the most common managerial problems can prove surprisingly tough. Awareness is a great place to start the process.

Despite the disappointing results of many CRM initiatives, CRM is still one of the best strategies for growing revenue and increasing market share. A new set of customer expectations and competitive demands calls for applying fresh thinking to traditional programs. This article from Accenture's Customer Relationship Management service line offers a set of guiding principles and components around which companies can organize their CRM initiatives.

The pace of change associated with the ‘new economy' has left many organisations wondering how to harness the benefits of the internet. A study of small and medium-sized enterprises highlights the key points firms need to consider if they want to successfully combine e-commerce and their traditional business practices.

Editor's Note: This article may seem elementary to those who have been reading up on EC and IT issues over the past several years.

A brief history lesson on why "reengineering" was such a hit a decade ago- and
why it's so last-millenium thinking now.

Marketing sage Regis McKenna on why smart companies are spending through the recession.

Is the Internet a direct response medium or a branding/awareness medium?
This question, which not too far back into the past was used as a means of somewhat eruditely suggesting that, perhaps, there is more to Internet Advertising than clicks and immediate conversions, has now become part of a wider phenomenon of over-generalizing that has hindered progress in the Internet Advertising space over the last two to three years.

Few are quicker to point out this fact than Rudy Grahn, a key Analyst covering Internet Advertising, and specifically, online branding at Jupiter Media Metrix - one of the world's foremost independent Internet Research and Audience Measurement firms.

Over the last months, Jupiter Media Metrix has released important research findings authored by Grahn, concluding that Internet Advertising has significant branding effects, the majority of which go unmeasured by Internet advertisers.

In what follows, avant|marketer speaks to Rudy Grahn to get his thoughts on the direct response versus branding debate, the future of brand/awareness advertising in the online medium, whether this form of Internet Advertising will soon overtake the various forms of direct response marketing that have come to define Internet Advertising since its inception, and what advertisers need to do to better harness and understand the branding capabilities that the online medium offers.

Editor's Note: You can also download a complimentary report entitled "What Works In Internet Advertising" (I didn't so I don't know how good it is).

How an irrelevant index survived the tech meltdown.

Editor's Note: If you don't know what the DJIA really is (or if you're not sure), read this...it's really interesting. For more instruction on the basics of market indices finance, visit
http://www.financeprofessor.com/introcorpfinnotes/marketindicies.html

In all the talk about brand in business and marketing today, there is a distinct lack of discussion about one of the most powerful drivers of brand: Design.

Companies need to understand and manage design to achieve maximum brand-building results. From the design of their corporate identity to retail, web, packaging and products, design is the key that ties it all together.

This very in-depth study, which includes information through Q4 2002, covers everything a marketer needs to know, from the continuing development of advertising technology (animated gifs, ubiquitous pop-ups and embedded advertising methodology) to the statistical analysis of media purchasing trends, and much more. Of special interest is the overall conclusion that online advertising is increasingly direct marketing (as opposed to branding) focused.

In addition, the report contains good information on email delivery rates and high failure-to-deliver statistics. NetZero rings in with a 27 percent non-delivery rate, Yahoo! has a 22 percent failure rate, and 18% of AOL email does not get through. Quite significant information as you contemplate your next email campaign. [WDFM Annotation]

A growing headache for many executives is how to achieve a fair market valuation for their company. Success in courting shareholders requires the same professionalism as in other parts of the business.

The five A's vs one R and a conversation with the authors of The Trusted Leader.

The annual budget cycle is out of synch with the real-time world of business.

"Economic value added" has received a great deal of attention as a management tool. It is effective, but are all E.V. A.'s alike? And how do companies employ the technique to achieve their goals?

Editor's Note: I found the value creation grid to be especially insightful...