Research indicates that effective innovation is correlated with better total returns to shareholders. But to see whether their innovations are translating into corporate success, executives need measures they can trust and track.

This document provides a template that lists the critical steps for creating a change management process, a high-level process flow for planned change management, an emergency change process flow, and a general method to evaluate the success of the process that one has implemented. [BNET Annotation]

Editor's Note: the material is focused on the computer networking world but the process described is broadly applicable.

Consumers often say they want to be socially responsible when it comes to buying food, clothing, office supplies, and the like. But consumers' noble sentiments are not often reflected in their actions at the checkout. In fact, a number of corporations have seen their efforts to sell socially responsible products fall flat because consumers failed to buy them in any significant numbers. There are, however, a variety of strategies that corporations can take to increase their odds of success.

CEOs shake hands and strike deals. But who do the deals benefit - the company or the chief executive? Researchers have recently uncovered evidence of CEOs' ability to influence the board of directors and to obtain favorable contractual conditions such as golden parachutes and accelerated cash outs, which are not necessarily in line with shareholders' interests. In the paper "CEOs Social Capital and Corporate Governance Provisions," doctoral candidate Erica Salvaj and Professor Fabrizio Ferraro study CEO-board relations and corporate governance processes by investigating the social position of CEOs and board members in the corporate elite.

Readability scales can help you make your persuasive copywriting more accessible to your audience.

Twelve characteristics to provide standards and metrics that create accountability for marketing decisions.

This clever and entertaining essay from Paul Graham discusses how outsiders, free from convention and expectations, often generate the most revolutionary of ideas.

Editor's Note: I really enjoyed reading this and highly recommend it...

Demand-driven innovations can, at best, develop and extend existing markets incrementally. These innovations usually come in the form of product extensions or process innovations. While valuable, they do not create disruptive new markets. Evidence shows that disruptive new markets are actually created in a haphazard manner when a new technology gets pushed onto a market. This kind of innovation process is called "supply push" by economists, and it has a peculiar property: Since innovation leads demand, inventors have to aim at a very imprecise target. The individuals or companies that create radically new markets are not necessarily the ones that scale them into mass markets. This paper examines the characteristics of colonizers and consolidators and explains the market role of each one. [BNET Annotation]

To get what you want in life requires constant negotiation. Discover the Six Laws of Negotiation and how to communicate persuasively.

Roughly 30% of all companies, including big names like Wal*Mart and General Motors, subject their applicants and employees to some sort of personality test. Judicial decisions, however, illustrate the risks employers assume by using and relying on such tests for employment decisions. This article surveys the use of personality tests historically, their purported benefits to employers, and the potential liability associated with the tests. [BNET Annotation]

"Negotiation is increasingly a way of life for effective managers," say HBS professor James Sebenius and colleague David Lax. Their new book, 3-D Negotiation, describes how you can shape important deals through tactics, deal design, and set-up, and why three dimensions are more powerful than one. Here's a Q&A and book excerpt.

Companies are what they are, not what their executives want them to be perceived as being. But management can improve the match between share prices and intrinsic value.

Team members work in increasingly diverse environments. They include age, gender, race, language, and nationality. Beyond these differences, there are also deeper cultural differences that influence the way conflict is approached. One reason that teams fail to meet performance expectations is their paralysis through unresolved conflict. The paper discusses the impact of culture on the prevention and resolution of conflict in teams and suggests seven ways to resolve problems.

n 2004, The American Finance Association Board approved a project to record aspects of the History of Finance. Stephen Buser was appointed Historian with the mission to produce video interviews with important contributors to financial economic knowledge. Links to streaming videos of edited versions of interviews with Harry Markowitz, William Sharpe, Paul Samuelson and Robert Merton are posted below. Transcripts of the full texts of these interviews will be available in due course. Additional interviews with other seminal scholars in the field are planned. [Hat Tip to FinanceProfessor.com]

In work days filled up by highly demanding, multitasked schedules, meetings often feel like a drain on valuable time, yet they keep multiplying. It surely makes sense to manage meeting so that each one pays back more than it costs. How to do ensure that this happens?

One of the most thorough and promising answers to that question has been provided by Patrick Lencioni in his 2004 business fable, Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable. According to Lencioni, bad meetings are "the most painful yet underestimated problem of modern business." He distills the badness of meetings down to two main problems: meetings are tedious, unengaging, and dry; and the time spent together by the top executives is used ineffectively. An overview of Lencioni's cure for these bad meetings is offered in this ManyWorlds summary.

Much has been written on how leaders can build partnerships. This article draws upon research sponsored by Accenture and focuses on why the leader of the future will need to be a builder of partnerships. Six different types of partnerships are explored: three inside the organization (direct reports, co-workers and managers) and three outside the organization (customers, suppliers and competitors).

John Ehrenfeld proposes a radically different conversation about sustainability, one that moves away from mere problem solving, demands a new definition and envisions infinite possibilities.

Managers, directors, and investors are all blamed for corporate missteps. David Larcker, who heads the School's new corporate governance program, says GSB researchers are positioned to temper strong opinions with more facts.

Is competition within your company healthy? It can be. Here's how to highlight its benefits and minimize its risks.

The goal of a recent Air Force research project was to study teams in realistic time-sensitive situations to understand what kinds of tasks people do in these collaborative environments, why those tasks are so challenging, how they are currently done, and ways to better support team performance. This paper describes a framework, ITSE, developed as part of this research effort, intended to guide observation and analysis of team performance data.

Wharton researchers have developed a mathematical model that they say will allow companies, for the first time, to predict at what pace new products will gain acceptance in markets where purchasing decisions by knowledgeable, influential customers sway the buying habits of others. Wharton marketing professor Christophe Van den Bulte and doctoral student Yogesh V. Joshi say their model can be put to use in industries as diverse as movies, music, pharmaceuticals and high-technology. Their findings are presented in a paper titled, "New Product Diffusion with Influentials and Imitators."

Compensation committees are under pressure to keep CEO pay high, even as shareholders and the media agitate for moderation. The solution? Boards of directors need better competitive information and an ear to what shareholders are saying, says Jay Lorsch.

Ed Sim offers this blog post about globalization, referencing some interesting sources and graphics.

Brad Feld postulates a different way to view the Pareto principle.

Editor's Note: you'll probably want to read the prior and external posts he mentions to get the full benefit of this entry.

As the traditional advantages of scale and scope begin to lose their potency, the familiar concept of internal collaboration represents a powerful new source of competitive advantage for multinational companies.