Learn critical IP strategies from Silicon Valley attorneys Michele Liu and Dennis Fernandez.

The secret to successful copy is in all the thought, work and research you do before you write a single word.

The following 10 tips lift the curtain to reveal the backstage mechanics you can leverage for more effective copywriting.

The growing interest in HR's contribution to business performance is also evident in the prevalence of transformation efforts and companies' increased investment in them. Despite a promising picture, there is evidence that key challenges still face the HR function in its quest to be aligned integrally with the organization's strategic planning and leadership. Increasingly, signs point to a significant gap between what is expected of HR leaders and what they deliver.

Being able to get a job is more important than stable prices to people's sense of satisfaction and happiness. So says research on the effects of inflation and unemployment by Justin Wolfers, assistant professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His findings, based on analysis of over half a million individual surveys, show that unemployment outweighs inflation by a ratio of five to one when it comes to a sense of personal well-being. In other words, the unemployment rate rising 1 percentage point causes as much misery as the rate of inflation rising 5 points.

From discussions with finance chiefs and business-development heads at six frequent acquirers - Dover, Wells Fargo, Charles River Laboratories, VF, Clear Channel Communications, and CRA International - CFO magazine distilled the following advice. Their hard-won lessons can cut through the clutter of acquisition statistics and theory and serve as practical deal-making guidelines. Call them the secrets of the M&A masters.

CEOs are making more than ever, while their employees' real wages are falling. Why is no one leaping to the barricades?

As deconstruction spreads, integrated value chains break apart into stand-alone businesses, or layers. Some of these layers have the potential to become the "sweet spots" of the deconstructed value chain�the places where the most value is concentrated and where the highest profits and returns can be found.

Editor's Note: although this article was written in early 1999 and cites Enron as an example, it is still an interesting read...it also might be interesting to consider how the concepts of this article might apply to Google/eBay/IPTV, etc.

The usual loyalty-building strategies for consumer markets may backfire in business markets. In this excerpt from Harvard Business Review, marketing specialist and HBS professor Das Narayandas describes how to better serve business customers.

Some new approaches to hiring can help you snag and keep top talent.

Editor's Note: this was written in 1999 during the labor shortage, but some of the advice offered is of long-lasting value.

This article lays out the formal IPO procedural process and discusses the purpose and requirements for the "roadshow," a grueling two to three week marathon of presentations to investor groups about your company. The approximate cost is also be discussed, as well as the pros and cons of being a public company. Finally, a list of useful web sites is provided should you want to do additional research on your own.

Editor's Note: this is part 2 of a series but part 1 was topical in content and can be skipped without missing much.

The headline is unquestionably the most important element in most advertising. Likewise-it is also the most singularly important element of any selling message "live or recorded, in person or by phone, audio or video" your company ever uses. This article offers advice for and examples of good headline writing.

"Satisfaction guaranteed" is still promised by many retailers today. But what happens to those returned products? How do the retailer and the manufacturer handle them? Both have traditionally focused on delivering goods to customers, not on managing their return in an efficient manner. The handling of returned products, often called reverse logistics, is an often-neglected part of an otherwise efficient supply chain.

Pressures to improve customer service and satisfaction and demands from environmental groups are just a few of the factors pushing reverse logistics higher up on the supply chain agenda. And for good reason: Efficient reverse supply chains can mean happier customers and higher profits. Many companies, however, still consider reverse logistics to be of relatively low importance.

In this article, the authors discuss why reverse logistics is such a significant issue and offer suggestions for reducing the need for returns and improving the reverse logistics supply chain.

In a new study, Harvard Business School professors Anthony J. Mayo and Nitin Nohria identify the attributes of great leadership -- and nominate the best bosses of the 20th century.

Picking the right new technology -- and then developing and marketing it correctly -- can catapult a company ahead of its competition, expand its customer base and boost profits. For decades, top minds in research and development have relied on the S-curve theory to help them make those decisions. But research by Ashish Sood, an assistant professor of marketing at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, and a colleague indicate that the theory is flawed and a new approach is much needed.

An interesting dialectic is currently being played out in China: The state is continuing its age-old tradition of preserving order while a much newer force, free-market capitalism, and a previously unheard of phenomenon, a middle class, are slowly creatin

How do the Top 20 Companies grow great leaders? This is just one of the many critical questions answered in Hewitt's Top Companies for Leaders research. The report identifies the combination of factors that allow financially successful companies to consistently produce great leaders. It examines the variables that influence a leader's growth in an organization, including developmental experiences, senior leader interaction, compensation, organizational culture, and succession planning processes. The research uncovers a link between financial success and great leadership practices, and identified the few differentiating elements found uniquely at top companies.

Companies that send their back-office jobs offshore often cut their labor costs by as much as half. But new research by the McKinsey Global Institute finds that these companies risk leaving billions of dollars in savings behind if they merely replicate what they do at home in countries where labor is cheap. The savviest operators redesign business processes to exploit automation and take full advantage of the new environment's potential.

After conducting thousands of marketing research studies and asking hundreds of thousands of questions, the author has come to understand one thing: There are no bad questions, only irrelevant ones.

In other words, the majority of questions asked are irrelevant. That is, they don't result in answers that lead to actions.

You want to concentrate and collaborate, but how can you get the best of both worlds in your current office set-up? An excerpt from Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers.

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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Businesses aren't based around relationships, as current theories of organisation would have us believe. They are based around physical things. So what are the implications for leaders, managers and employees?

Why the power of integrated search engine strategies is greater than the sum of their parts.

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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This article distinguishes 11 Power Sources. The combination of power sources that yield success differs by organisation. It is important to consider what matters most in your own organisation. The 11 power sources are:
* Role
* Network
* Dedication
* Expertise
* Process
* Customers
* Market
* Leadership
* Safe Hands
* Creativity
* Politics

Vision creates intent. Culture determines action. Often the two are out of sync. When they are, culture can actually undermine vision and prevent a company from achieving essential business goals.

Nathaniel Mass has devised a metric to help finance executives make more-informed spend-or-cut decisions. Known as the relative value of growth (or RVG), the metric compares the amount of shareholder value a company creates through revenue growth with that generated by margin improvement. In theory, this helps managers align their decisions more closely with investor expectations and create more shareholder value.

User surveys offer an excellent way to determine the level of satisfaction among employees who rely on IT support services. But to get accurate and useful results, it's important to develop a clear and simple assessment form. This revamped version of our sample survey offers a mix of easily answered check box questions designed to gauge user satisfaction with regard to both equipment and support. It also includes a number of open-ended questions to solicit feedback, specific concerns, and suggestions for improvement.