This series of articles from CMP's Network Computing presents the results of an exhaustive effort to compare leading Web analytics packages head-to-head by running them through their paces on the CMP universe of websites. IBM, Intellitracker, Manticore Technology, NetIQ, NetRatings, Omniture, ThinkMetrics, Watchfire, WebAbacus and WebSideStory agreed to the challenge. The results are distilled in an 18-page report, which is must-reading for any Internet marketer, whether or not you plan to use any of the participating vendors' products. As part of this feature, you will also find a summary of Web analytics service criteria gathered from the readership as well as an illuminating and sometimes hilarious travelogue detailing reader experiences with Web analytics software. [WDFM Annotation]

The media plays a crucial role in shaping the public image of corporate managers, and in doing so can pressure them to behave according to social norms.

A high salary doesn't necessarily mean that a CEO is more competent than his or her peers, say researchers. And the pattern of job effectiveness not matching pay levels seems to affect more CEOs of large firms than small ones.

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a treasure trove of best practices. Comprised of several thousand pages, it is a daunting challenge when printed and stacked on a desk! The downside is that it is "descriptive" of the processes it documents meaning that it tells what to do but not necessarily why or in what order. The purpose of this article will be to present an example of a unified ITIL implementation and the benefits surrounding such an implementation.

Organizational change is a fact of life in today's companies, but why is it such a challenge? In a paper titled "Asymmetric Adaptability: Dynamic Team Structures As One-Way Streets," Henry Moon of Emory University's Goizueta Business School and coauthors look into the factors at play when moving from one organizational set up to another. The findings, published last year in the Academy of Management Journal, provide insight into why people behave the way they do in organizations.

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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Geopolitical uncertainty, rapid globalisation and faster business cycles mean that companies must be more flexible and responsive to changing conditions.
* But what does this mean for strategy?
* How should strategy be defined and, importantly, who should define it?
* What is the role of the CEO?
* How can leaders bridge the gulf between strategic thinking and implementation?
* How do operations influence strategy?
* Can strategy be taught or is it more a matter of experience?
* Are emerging economies like Brazil pointing the way to a different approach to strategy?

These are just some of the questions addressed by a distinguished panel of academics, consultants and business people in the EBF spring 2005 debate on strategy. Contributors include:
- Dan Schendel
- Michael Hammer
- Jim Scholes
- Katherine Beatty and Richard Hughes
- Jeffrey Kohles
- Joseph Lampel
- Henry Mintzberg
- Valerie-Ines de La Ville and Eleonore Mounoud
- Bjorn Ambos and Bodo Schlegelmilch
- Donald Sull

The onus of recruiting the best for an organization lies on the shoulders of the HR professionals. Of late, it has been noticed that organizations are not doing enough to judiciously manage the human capital. As a result, the organizations are facing a tough time, recruiting talented people, and molding the existing ones. The HR department is usually more focused on ‘how' well the department is working rather than ‘what' the department is doing to enhance the manpower. Thus, talent search is a major decision-making process, which should be taken carefully. The paper examines the concept of talent management.

A business degree is the best investment when it comes to an IT executive's salary.

The art of leading deep corporate change can be learned. The trick is to help each member of the company discover a new reality.

Booz Allen Hamilton's annual study of CEO succession aims to identify patterns in the relationship between chief executive officer tenure and corporate performance that can provide insights for managers, board members, and their advisors. Following the methodology used in previous years, we identified chief executives at the 2,500 largest publicly traded companies in the world (based on market capitalization as of January 1, 2003) who left their positions during 2003. Using the companies' public statements, as well as our review of press coverage, we determined whether a succession was voluntary or induced.

We used public data sources to help analyze these executives' entire tenure as CEOs, including personal demographic data (such as age at ascension and departure) and the financial performance of the companies.

In assessing performance, we measure total shareholder returns (TSR), including dividend reinvestments, and compare individual company performance with regional industry performance for the period of a CEO's tenure. A shareholder return of 1 percent therefore means that the CEO class in question - retiring outsiders, for example - delivered TSR 1 percentage point greater than the entire relevant market.

Thus, our study reviews the entire careers of CEOs at the point of their departure. In effect, we look back on the professional lives of each year's "graduating class" of CEOs, and, in the aggregate, try to determine factors that contribute to the success of some and the failure of others. To tease out information that might illuminate the relationship among boards, management, and corporate performance, this year, for the first time, we included data about whether CEOs held the title of chairman of the board throughout their tenure; whether they were named chairman during the course of their service; or whether they never held the title.

The long-term trend in CEO turnover reinforces the main conclusion reached in our previous succession studies: Aggressive shareholder capitalism has become the defining characteristic of 21st-century capitalism. The days when investors "hired" professional managers to run the firm and left it to the board of directors to oversee them - the de facto corporate governance model for much of the 20th century - now seem to be gone for good.

More companies than ever have experience with outsourcing. So why are deals still failing?

Old bad debt hasn't been fully resolved. New bad debt is piling up. Yet the problems can be cleared up without a systemic crisis.

Traditional pricing and promotion strategies are coming up short against the growing pressures from value retailers such as Wal-Mart and Costco. How can retailers improve their tarnished price image and offer customers the deals they want without giving away the store?

This paper discusses A.T. Kearney's approach to pricing and promotion. We offer a customer-focused strategy in which retailers identify and exploit the items most important to customers; items that will help build and sustain a positive price image. It is a rigorous strategy that builds on retailers' experience and historic perspective on pricing and offers help in making better, more fact-based and timely pricing decisions.

Now is a good time to take a fresh look at your sources of capability building, according to the new book The Only Sustainable Edge. Book excerpt plus Q&A with coauthors John Hagel III and John Seely Brown.

Grooming internal talent for senior positions is a surprisingly improvised hit-or-miss proposition at many companies, relying on instinct and biased judgments. A more effective alternative, the Group Evaluation Method, uses a structured and iterative discussion process to assess an individual's potential for leadership roles and predict which areas need development in order to ensure the candidate's progress. The nature of group participation means that colleagues have a vested interest in seeing the plan succeed.

There's no easy, "paint-by-numbers" way to create an effective marketing position. But there is a method to take you through the positioning process to the desired result. Throughout the process, success depends on gaining a thorough understanding of the three Cs-your Customer, your Competition, and your Channel. But what information do you need, and what's the best way to find it? This series of articles will explain how to use the three Cs to gather intelligence, challenge assumptions, and test your positioning.

Editor's Note: though written with a focus on B2B software or services markets, the material presented is broadly applicable...

Note: TWM articles ARE still available BUT: (1) you must be a member (free for existing members, not free for new members)   (2) you must be logged-in for the link to work. If you get an error page, visit the homepage, login and then try the link again.

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Important though it is, market research is often a misunderstood - and misused - discipline. Rather than enlightening, it sometimes confuses and misleads. It's often hijacked by talented technicians who focus so much on the methods that they lose sight of the purpose.

Can Martha Stewart regain the trust of her customers or could Enron's former chief Ken Lay get a new job under the clouds of suspicion left in the wake of their legal problems?

It depends upon the match between how they respond to the allegations and the extent to which the alleged offense is perceived to involve their integrity or their competence, according to a recent study by Washington University in St. Louis professor Kurt T. Dirks and three colleagues.

Kaplan and Norton, in their groundbreaking work The Balanced Scorecard, indicate that 16 weeks is an adequate timeframe to set up a Balanced Scorecard (BSC). Why, then, does 16 weeks so often become 16 months? And, if BSC processes have revolutionised organisations, why aren't all organisations, with more than say 20 staff, using them?

Set out below are 10 lessons based on my observations to help your organisation implement a BSC in 16 weeks. These rules will assist with the implementation BSCs and dashboards within a 16-week timeframe.

114 professionally developed and validated psychological tests, 111 Just-for-Fun tests, 230 mind games and quizzes ... Queendom has it all! A pioneer and leader in online testing, Queendom has served more than 400 million tests in nine different languages to help you grow, jump-start your career and improve your relationships.

HR professionals or entrepreneurs may want to check out the ARCH Profile, a complete employee testing center with an extensive collection of professionally developed tests. Powerful enough for large corporations, yet priced to cater to small businesses, ARCH Profile helps you make the most of your human capital.

With the global economy on the mend, companies are once again looking for growth. But this time, instead of growth at all costs, they want smart growth - the only way to really improve the bottom line. We lay out the 10 questions a company must answer to find out if it's heading in the right direction.

This is a great overview of the sort of characters that inhabit almost any online community (and many offline communities). [Brain Food annotation]

The doughnut or the celery stick ... go to a party, or study for an exam.... take the apartment close to the office, or the one with the stunning view and accept the nightmare daily commute. It might seem a given that most of us base our consumer choices between more overtly pleasurable, hedonic options and more practical, utilitarian concerns. But most pioneering work in behavioural decision theory has centred on the cognitive aspects of decision-making, largely neglecting the key emotional factors affecting individual consumer choice.

Associate Professor of Marketing Klaus Wertenbroch and co-authors U. Khan and R. Dhar appreciate that "to fully understand the pattern of choice, it is important that any explanation of consumer behaviour is accompanied by a complete understanding of the interplay between a consumer's functional goals and experiential preferences within the decision context". Their working paper considers the two different theoretical perspectives that attempt to clarify the reasons determining hedonic or instrumental purchases.

Far from damaging the economy of the United States, offshoring should enable its companies to direct resources to next-generation technologies and ideas-if public policy doesn't get in the way.

Editor's Note: I admit I am not smart enough to fully get my arms around all the issues involved in the debate over offshoring; this article presents one of the strongest and most detailed pro-offshoring (outsourcing) arguments I have read...

New product categories can subvert incumbent brands - or give them a new lease on life.