The Nobel Prize-winning economist parses the roles of emotion, cognition, and perception in the understanding of business risk.

The region is falling behind its rivals. Turning it into a true single market would boost its competitiveness and help restore its economic luster.

A big question for Web site designers continues to be this: what is the optimal number and placement of marketing call-outs on a Web page?

The self-service quality of the Web has led to page designs that all too often serve myriad marketing goals. A single page can have any number of callouts in its layout, trying to catch the attention of a variety of consumers in different states of need.

It is very easy for this messaging complexity to overwhelm consumers. But what if we deployed a genetic algorithm on a site to optimize the placement and numbers of callouts within a page layout to grow, on an ongoing basis, a page's marketing gains?

Paid search is a complex game of keywords, click-throughs and conversion rates. Top ranking doesn't always mean you've hit the jackpot. Here's how to increase your odds of winning.

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

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Customer loyalty is often viewed in terms of the strength of the relationship that a brand enjoys with the customer. This is definitely true in mass markets, now termed B2C. However, in the B2B space there is another component that is equally important and that is the relationship between the people involved in the transaction.

One of the toughest challenges that governments and companies face is encouraging economic growth in harmony with environmental and social goals rather than at their expense. This was the theme of a recent conference organized by Wharton and Turkey's Sabanci University in partnership with the United Nations. This special report, which Knowledge@Wharton has prepared in collaboration with SRiMedia, covers several issues that came up at the conference, ranging from building sustainable startups to the impact of globalization in Africa.

Many companies are keenly interested in learning how they can find out what their customers really want. But discovering what customers really want is far from simple. Arthur D. Little has done considerable work in this area, and from that work the authors have distilled several observations about how to classify customer needs, how to probe for them, and how to organize internally in order to support these efforts.

Today, there are literally thousands of outsourcing providers scattered around the globe looking to serve companies everywhere, with a primary focus on the US and European markets. The multitude of different outsourcing providers, each with their own message or business proposition makes the selection process very confusing and somewhat overwhelming. Many companies, especially small to midsize companies, do not have any experience with outsourcing. They typically have few or no available resources to research the market and have a lot to lose from a failed outsourcing effort. On the other hand, a successful outsourcing relationship can yield tremendous benefits, significant cost savings, and allow the company to spend more of its energy focusing on its core competencies. Here is a guide for selecting an outsourcing provider.

When research on leadership pays more attention to financial results than a person's ability to give the company a sense of purpose, something crucial is lost. Three Harvard Business School scholars are working to change the debate. A Q&A with Joel M. Podolny, Rakesh Khurana, and Marya Hill-Popper.

This report is a very comprehensive look at the various issues involved with IT corporate governance. It provides frameworks, toolkits, analysis and more. In the course of analyzing governance much in the way of strategy and management is considered. The report is a bit long (66 pages) but well worth the read. I highly recommend it.

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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New thinking is needed on the relationship between corporate centre and business units.

A collection of marketing-related articles from Capital Ideas. Includes:
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Weighing the Options
Research by Christopher K. Hsee and France Leclerc

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The Market for Personal Digital Assistants
Research by Pradeep K. Chintagunta and Jean-Pierre Dubé

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Why High Demand Doesn't Always Mean High Price
Research by Anil Kashyap and Peter E. Rossi

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Marketing Prescription Drugs
Research by Puneet Manchanda, Peter E. Rossi, and Pradeep K. Chintagunta

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Why Responsiveness to Retail Promotions Varies Across Retailers
Research by Sanjay K. Dhar and Peter E. Rossi

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Progressively Predicting New Product Performance
Research by Pradeep K. Chintagunta

Contrary to popular belief, most industries evolve slowly and in predictable ways, says strategy expert Anita M. McGahan. Here's how to align strategy with your "industry trajectory."

Editor's Note: the sidebar is more useful than the article...

Sometime in the last decade, IT passed a major risk inflection point at most companies. Today, it's almost universally true that the cost of potential IT-related failures and other risks is far greater than the cost of the investment in IT itself.

This survey of more than 800 MBAs from 11 leading North American and European schools found a substantial number were willing to forgo some financial benefits to work for an organization with a better reputation for environmental and social responsibility and ethics. The research was by David B. Montgomery of Stanford and Catherine A. Ramus of UC Santa Barbara. In the study, reputation for ethics and caring about employees both rose to the top third of the list of attributes studied, proving to be approximately 77% as important as the top criterion of intellectual challenge. Moreover, more than 97% of the MBAs in the sample said they were willing to forgo financial benefits to work for an organization with a better reputation for corporate social responsibility and ethics.

Robert K. Greenleaf 's idea of servant-leadership, now in its fourth decade as a concept bearing that name, continues to create a quiet revolution in workplaces around the world. Since the time of the Industrial Revolution, managers have tended to view people as tools, while organizations have considered workers as cogs in a machine. In the past few decades we have witnessed a shift in that long-held view. In countless for-profit and nonprofit organizations today we are seeing traditional, autocratic, and hierarchical modes of leadership yielding to a different way of working--one based on teamwork and community, one that seeks to involve others in decision making, one strongly based in ethical and caring behavior, and one that is attempting to enhance the personal growth of people while improving the caring and quality of our many institutions.

In an uncertain world where competitive advantage is insecure, setting strategy must become an existential exercise.

Editor's Note: an atypical, but very interesting article...

Searching far and wide, the Fast Company team has identified 101 ideas, people, and trends that will change the way we work and live in 2005. Most year-end best-of lists look to the past -- what was. Fast Company 's Fast Forward project looks into the future -- what's next? The future is something to get excited about again. Here's the people, products, and projects that will make the future real.

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

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Jim Stovall contemplates:
Training
When Life Defies Definition
Knowledge and Wisdom
The Prominence of Problems

Boardrooms have replaced barricades as the new front line in the debate over globalisation. Companies, governments and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) are engaged in ongoing discussions nowadays about the risks and opportunities of global business expansion. It seems a long way from the clashes marked by protestors shouting in the streets. Yet the new civility hasn't yet cracked some vital questions: How will these groups now work together to increase security and prosperity as globalisation plays out? And who will pay for the added costs of greater accountability? Today's defining issue comes down to this: To what extent are businesses responsible for bad things that happen along their value chains - even among remote suppliers over which they have no control? Bain & Company's James Allen, Jean-Pierre Felenbok and Martha Stack, explain how companies can effectively manage this new "brand tax"

More and more companies around the world understand the importance of really knowing how their customers and prospects view their organizations. They also realize that viewpoints can change quickly.

So how do you keep informed of your customers' opinions? How do you know they're continually satisfied? How do you know that they value your company? Or that they feel appreciated?

Gathering this data objectively, accurately and quickly can be difficult. Yet it's critical in today's competitive marketplace.

Expectations placed on directors have moved beyond selecting the CEO; they must now wrestle with the larger issues of redefining the board's role, culture and operations-of preserving and increasing value on behalf of the company's stakeholders.

Filling the CEO's Chair offers a summary and analysis of the major findings of A.T. Kearney's 2004 Corporate Governance Effectiveness survey of S&P 500 independent directors. It also examines changes boards have made either in the past 12 months or since our 2002 survey-and, in some cases, changes boards have not made despite external pressures. Finally, it explores how corporate boards can work better and smarter.

To realize the benefits of interactive technology, broadcasters and mobile carriers must work on their own interaction.

We have discovered that a trick to creating a great scorecard is to "rough it in" first, just like building a house. Use the team to create the framework for a great scorecard, like the framing of a house, and then quickly release it to the organization with the request for them to provide the details around the roughed-in scorecard.

In the house metaphor, the scorecard team members are just the framers - putting up the wood frame of the structure. The organization's job is to put in the plumbing, electricity, walls, paint, wallpaper, etc.

Attracting, satisfying and retaining customers in the ever-changing e-commerce arena requires a flexible but lightning-quick customer care center.