The first step toward aligning IT and business priorities is to understand where communication breaks down, says Luftman, a professor at Stevens Institute. A tool based on work done at Carnegie Mellon can help CIOs assess how well their IT systems are with their companies' goals.

To judge by the example of Canada, which began an experiment in free trade with the United States in 1989, the proposed U.S. free-trade agreement with Mexico is a threat to the social comity on which prosperity depends.

Editor's Note: this was written back in 1992 but the analysis it provides is really interesting and of long-lasting value when evaluating free trade concepts (thanks to FinanceProfessor.com for alerting me to this article).

As part of our ongoing research, Arthur D. Little has explored many of the key barriers, enablers, and drivers for innovation management in a wide variety of companies and industries. The firm has also examined many of the key dimensions of the next-generation enterprise, from cross-functional teams and global networks to external sourcing and partnering.

The key findings can be clustered around six critical pathways to accelerated and sustainable high-value innovation and product/technology leadership.
1. Infusing the passion and mindset for sustainable innovation across the extended enterprise
2. Building an integrated strategic portfolio of projects, programs, platforms, competencies, sources, and partners that is well aligned with the ambition-driven strategic intent of the enterprise
3. Energizing a seamless innovation process from concept to market - deriving its energy from both high-value product pipelines and robust technology pipelines
4. Implementing a highly leveraged resource-deployment and investment system within the current budgeting process - accessing and deploying people, money, and intellectual capital from the extended enterprise worldwide
5. Developing a highly charged yet fluid and networked organization - harnessing, driving, and nurturing the inherent ambiguity and complexity of innovation
6. Creating the motivators and metrics to stretch the organization beyond continuous improvement to sustainable innovation - particularly in the areas of leadership, value creation and capture, return on assets, and innovation behavior

In this challenging economic climate, many firms are focusing on cost-cutting and on gaining short-term efficiencies. Our study of more than 3,500 consumers suggests, however, that innovation geared toward actual consumer preferences and incomes may be the best tool to achieving valuable long-term results.

Note: Older EBF articles are not currently online. I'm not sure if this is temporary or permanent. If you click you will be taken to the Archive.org site to find an archived copy.

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In the third issue of EBF (autumn 2000) the question was posed: Will the internet encourage more responsible business? The debate provoked interest not just because of the 'new' economy angle but because Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) slowly seems to be moving from the periphery of corporate strategy into mainstream European thinking. Here EBF publishes more contributions to that debate. Valérie Swaen and Isabelle Maignan impressively review some of the recent research in the area and outline a wide variety of definitions and measurement methods useful for executives. Next, Viscount Etienne Davignon describes an important campaign to gather and spread best practice in CSR across Europe, Jane Nelson of the Prince of Wales Business Leaders Forum reviews the obstacles to further progress, and
Judy Kuszewski and Peter Zollinger of Sustainability introduce new research on corporate sustainability reporting. Finally Josep Lozano, a Professor at Esade, Barcelona argues that companies need to go beyond social responsibility and embrace social innovation.

Editor's Note: I found the contributions by Valérie Swaen & Isabelle Maignan, Jane Nelson, and Judy Kuszewski & Peter Zollinger to be the most worthwhile.

A controversial Delaware Supreme Court decision knocks down a tactic for sealing a merger agreement.

What are the critical skills global managers need today compared to ten years ago? An interview with Harvard Business School professor Christopher A. Bartlett.

David Allen, one of the world's most influential thinkers on personal productivity, offers his unique advice on how to keep up the pace -- without wearing yourself down.

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

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The word "leader" stands for someone who leads, enables, articulates, decides, encourages, and rewards. Although these are not the only traits exhibited by successful leaders, they do epitomize those characteristics shared by nearly all those who successfully influence others. Besides applying the general guidelines noted above, those seeking to become effective leaders should ask themselves critical questions as part of an on-going effort to improve their leadership skills. Indeed, those who exercise responsibility for leadership must never fail to critically examine their leadership skills and remedy their deficiencies. One useful tool for accomplishing this goal is the following leadership survey based on the work of T.M. Georges.

It's not vision that makes a company successful. What sets the top performers apart is the organizational models they develop to realize their aspirations.

"Whether in a corporation, a Scout troop, a public agency, or an entire nation, constituents seek four things: meaning or direction, trust in and from the leader, a sense of hope and optimism, and results. To serve these constituent needs -- and ultimately to unleash an organization's intellectual capital -- leaders can foster four supporting conditions, which in turn can create four respective outcomes."

OK we've heard all about shareholder-manager conflicts over the past few years (see Enron, Adelphia, Tyco etc.). And as a result we've heard all about corporate governance. But how does it tie back to the classroom in a concrete manner? One of the most frequent ways is to focus on the problems of managerial risk aversion. (For instance: due to risk aversion managers have incentives to use less debt than is optimal through shareholder eyes (Fama 1980)). Kayhan gives us evidence that this conflict exists. She investigates about 1200 firms per year from 1990-2002 and finds that "entrenched managers" have lower leverage than their industry peers (consistent with Mehran 1992). Interestingly she finds the lower leverage is achieved by both more equity issuances as well as lower dividend payouts. [FinanceProfessor.com Annotation]

In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that some of the key teachings of classic economic theory do not fit today's business environment. Though firms try to follow economic logic, the nature of innovation strains their capacity to do so. From the inadequacy of classic economic theory to explain the constraints acting on firms, New Institutional Economics (NIE) was born. Combining several approaches, including property rights, transaction cost economics (TCE), evolutionary reasoning, the contractual nature of the firm, and allocation of common resource pools, NIE offers a new approach for understanding firm behaviour. Given bounded rationality, information impactedness and the tacit nature of knowledge, innovation is a tricky task. How firms overcome these problems and bring new products to market can be best understood comparatively, using the NIE framework. Professors Erin Anderson and Hubert Gatignon present their ideas in this new Working Paper.

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

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Presume/assume. Complement/compliment. All right, already. If you hesitate before choosing the correct word to use in this list, you're not alone. And judging by most websites and instruction manuals, you have lots and lots of company.

In the wake of accounting scandals at companies like WorldCom, Tyco and Enron, Congress and regulators focused on the apparent conflict between accountants who were doing audits while earning high-margin consulting fees at the troubled firms. In a burst of reform, most accounting firms were forced to separate their auditing and consulting businesses. A new Wharton paper, however, challenges the idea that lucrative consulting contracts routinely lead auditors to look the other way when preparing financial audits. The paper, by Wharton accounting professors David Larcker and Scott Richardson, is titled "Fees Paid to Audit Firms, Accrual Choices and Corporate Governance."

Less than a fifth of public companies have been able to consistently grow shareholder value in one of the most volatile business climates in memory, according to Accenture research. These companies know how to deliver results against current expectations, and know how to create future growth. In short, they appear able to balance today and tomorrow, when measured against multiple time horizons.

Accenture evaluated high performance in individual companies by both qualitative and quantitative measures. Despite their differences to the generalist eye, our research shows that these companies share common characteristics. They:
- Adopt innovative approaches to growth.
- Effectively allocate IT resources to drive increases in market capitalization.
- Implement integrated merger, acquisition and alliance strategies that quickly capture market and cost benefits.
- Know how to extract value from intangible assets.
- Have an extraordinary ability to sense shifts in their competitive environment, and the agility to respond with strategies and tactics that will drive the greatest return to shareholders.

Accenture calls companies that demonstrate superior mastery of these disciplines "high-performance businesses."

Can multimedia multiply your odds of landing a job?

Note: Older EBF articles are not currently online. I'm not sure if this is temporary or permanent. If you click you will be taken to the Archive.org site to find an archived copy.

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From being a platitude to being a pre-requisite, being ‘market driven' has been the secret behind many of the success stories - Shell, Dell, Honda, Intel, Boeing, Novartis, Merck, Cisco - of recent years.

Editor's Note: I thought the excessive dwelling on real-life examples was of little value but there is some useful information in this article.

Buyers and merger partners assume that the new, integrated company will be more competitive and create more shareholder value than the separately owned companies. Usually, announcements of mergers and acquisitions are made with great fanfare, and solemn promises are given that the synergies and the good strategic fit will increase shareholder value.

Reality suggests otherwise. A 1999 study published in the Harvard Business Review found that only 21 percent of acquisitions in several industries could be viewed as clear successes. In other words, nearly 80 percent of those acquisitions were either disappointing or clear failures. How can such a commonly practiced, promising business strategy so often end in disaster?

Creating strategy today requires a new toolkit. This article discusses the development of the Ambition-Driven Strategy approach, which supports innovation and growth - and a few thoughts on why traditional strategic planning isn't working very well.

Measuring visitors, page views and actions on your Web site is finally settling down and becoming a manageable task.

As we get accustomed to the tools and the terminology, the prospect of tracking things online is no longer as frightening as it used to be. At least that was the case until November 20, 2003.

Companies can run their IT systems more efficiently by creating new organizational structures in which IT departments and business units share responsibility.

10 (plus a bonus) suggestions for improving your site's checkout process.

Banner advertising helps companies retain customers by bringing them back to a company's Web site faster and encouraging them to spend more.

Abstract:
We will assess how governance and incentive problems contributed to Enron's rise and fall. A well-functioning capital market creates appropriate linkages of information, incentives, and governance between managers and investors. This process is supposed to be carried out through a network of intermediaries.

We show that despite this elaborate corporate governance and intermediation network, Enron was able to attract large sums of capital to fund a questionable business model, conceal its true performance through a series of accounting and financing maneuvers, and hype its stock to unsustainable levels. While Enron presents an extreme example, it is also a useful test case for potential weaknesses in the U.S. capital market system. We believe that the problems of governance and incentives that emerged at Enron can also surface at many other firms, and may potentially affect the entire capital market. We will begin by discussing the evolution of Enron's business model in the late 1990s, the stresses that this business model created for Enron's financial reporting, and how key capital market intermediaries played a role in the company's rise and fall.

FinanceProfessor.com Annotation:
Haley and Palepu have done it again! Another smash hit. This one looks at the Fall of Enron. His is the paper that I had wanted to do but never had the time. GREAT! Almost reads as a novel but is encompassing to look at not just what happened, but how it was allowed to happen, and how to prevent it in the future. Look for it coming to a publication near you!