Micromarket modeling fills an analytical void that plagues managers of growing service networks. Using relatively simple and available tools, this approach can provide previously inaccessible insights into the development of winning strategies for service businesses. It can help senior managers to make strategic decisions, such as whether new businesses should be created, and to devise tailored, market-specific strategies. And it can help managers work closer to their customers and improve their operational and strategic decisions both at individual locations and at the regional level.

"I have come to think that there are basically three universal factors that influence corporate culture. I have never seen an organization operate without them, but their characteristics vary dramatically from place to place. If you understand all three in a particular organization, you truly understand how to reinforce what the organization is doing right, or change its direction."

Editor's Note: you may want to skip over the Enron talk on page one and go straight to the good stuff on pages 2-4.

How do you know if you're working for the right company? Here are ten markers that all point to the same thing: a great workplace for finance managers.

Editor's Note: though written about finance managers, most markers identified apply not just to the finance world

Strong leaders connect and energize people. They work tirelessly to ensure that no ones loses sight of what it's all about.

Still far from mainstream, activity-based budgeting augments, rather than replacing, existing budgeting processes.

The failure to proactively develop competence in dealing with conflict is a form of mismanagement! Conversely, knowing how to develop effective working agreements is a fundamental competence for managing anything.

Editor's Note: I didn't think this article was really well written and recommend you skim/skip most of the first half. However, the 10 Element Agreement Template and the 7 Steps of the Resolution Process are quite worthwhile.

Determining the ROI on a newsletter program is not as straightforward as it is for a standard direct mail or direct email campaign. For most direct marketing campaigns, determining the ROI requires simply calculating the direct sales and costs for the campaign. With newsletters, direct sales are usually not the primary focus of the campaign, so the standard calculation neglects the principal objectives of the program. This article provides a blueprint and an online calculator tool.

When it appeared in the pages of the Harvard Business Review in May 1983, HBS professor Theodore Levitt's article "The Globalization of Markets" ignited a debate that still goes on twenty years later.

Levitt argued that technology such as television was a powerful force homogenizing the world's needs and desires, and that smart global companies could sell standardized products using standardized marketing approaches around the world. Think of the Big Mac and Ronald McDonald setting up shop in Guangzhou, China, for example. By contrast, Levitt argued, multinationals that customize products for local markets are becoming obsolete.

Much of what Levitt predicted did not come true-if anything, there has been a consumer uprising against homogeneity and the "Americanization" of the world. But the issues he raised were profound, and still carry important implications for companies selling products internationally.

To commemorate Levitt's work in his 1983 article and in path-breaking works such as "Marketing Myopia," HBS professor John Quelch organized a colloquium at HBS where some seventy faculty members and top executives convened to hear new research and discuss "The Globalization of Markets."

As the nonprofit sector grows and organizations become increasingly complex, more and more executives are being invited to lend their skills as board members. Here are eight principles for effective governance that can help a broad range of nonprofit groups be more successful.

U.S. corporate scandals such as Enron and Tyco have highlighted the fact that insiders enjoy benefits above and beyond those of the average shareholder-the so-called "private benefits of control." How widespread are these benefits? What effects do they have on the development of a country's securities market? Furthermore, how can such benefits be curbed? New research indicates that in spite of the recent corporate scandals in the United States, other countries face much greater hurdles in curbing these private benefits, and in developing effective systems of corporate governance.

There's a lot that can go right and wrong in a business. A lot of it out of your control. But the extent of your personal financial liability for what goes wrong is one thing you can and should control.

A quick checklist to see how well your organization is managing its current partnerships, from the author of Partnering Intelligence.

An ESOP is a retirement plan. No, it's an ownership investment. Wait - it's neither one.

Research at the Center for Business Innovation (CBI) demonstrates a dramatic shift in value creation over the past decade. Formerly, investors' understanding of a company's value resulted from analysis of audited financials such as a balance sheet and income statement. Today, however, a more accurate and comprehensive view of a company's value needs to account for intangibles such as brand value, alliances, and customer relations. Decisions that Matteris one report in a portfolio of research studies undertaken by the CBI. The purpose of this body of research was to determine which intangibles are most relevant to business managers, how to quantify their value, and strategies to manage and improve a company's intangibles.

Editor's Note: this brief article introduces the research and general findings but unfortunately it doesn't included the detailed findings.

Contingent work arrangements were supposed to help companies avoid mass layoffs. What went wrong?

Bringing managers into the forecasting process can dramatically improve performance management. But success depends on the quality of your software and on close collaboration between finance and line managers.

Marketers complain that their business colleagues and the public don't take their work as seriously as they would like. But marketers have only themselves to blame. They tend to set goals that cannot be fulfilled: sustained growth; brand differentiation; persuasive advertising; added values; maximizing profits or shareholder value; and instant new knowledge based on just a single set of isolated data.

Editor's Note: Warning! Many of you will find this article to be blasphemous...read it anyway.

Each metric you measure should be vetted in light of its reliability, validity, sensitivity, responsiveness, cost/benefit, comprehension, and balance.

Yeah, we know. Putting each of your metrics through the paces may not seem exciting. But it is those measures that are the basis for any business case you construct or objective you set.

Seth Godin offers nine ways to think about the task of organizing for ongoing growth.

Before the Reagan era (and sometimes after it) Republicans were the stewards of fiscal discipline, preaching the gospel of deficit reduction. Democrats were the Keynesian profligates, saying that deficits generally didn't matter. Now the parties' positions are (generally speaking) reversed.

The issue of deficit reduction is crucial to the question of whether Bush's proposed tax cuts will boost or retard economic growth. A recent paper by William Gale and Peter Orszag, two economists at the Brookings Institution, concludes that the Democrats (and the pre-Reagan Republicans) are right: deficits can be very bad for the economy, and therefore the tax cuts are dangerous.

This report is an excellent primer for anyone wanting to get up to speed on the ideas at play in the tax-cut debate. [The Atlantic Monthly annotation]

In a changing environment where even everyday activities are filled with risk, sometimes it's difficult to see that, when it comes to business, risk is neither bad nor the enemy.

Effective mobilizing and energizing goes well beyond "doing" programs to the "being" or culture of a team, organization, or any group including a family. That culture is a set of shared attitudes and accumulated habits around "the way we do things here."

This paper presents A.T. Kearney's perspective on the importance of asset productivity. It begins with an in-depth discussion on how good asset performance can increase shareholder value, drive profitable growth, help smooth an M&A and impel cost leadership. We then outline a three-dimensional approach to improving asset productivity. Rather than a typical patchwork-quilt solution, the approach is all-inclusive-looking at all aspects of the global firm; across sales, operations planning, operational efficiency and asset structures. Finally, within the approach is a discussion of best practices to enable companies to get higher productivity from existing assets and rationalize excess capacity - thereby helping to improve overall costs and aligning industry capacity with demand.

Are we spending too much on technology? This provocative Harvard Business Review excerpt suggests that IT no longer conveys competitive advantage, so invest your capital elsewhere.

Editor's Note: read a series of letters from business luminaries discussing the original controversial HBR article, along with the author's reply at:
http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/files/misc/Web_Letters.pdf

Ever-changing, 'dynamic' pricing may be the wave of the future, but many customers resist.