This article traces the rationale, features, development and application of the BSC in the past few years, and then provides a critical review of its key problematic effects on firms and their stakeholders in today's changing business environment. Five major problem areas are identified and discussed, with selected business examples. An alternative to the BSC is proposed and motivated, involving drastic change in both the underlying assumptions of the BSC and moving from a systematic, single enterprise focus to a systemic, dynamic framework - a systemic management system, including a systemic scorecard. [BNET Annotation]

GAAP, EPS and P/E are dead. The days of financial astrology are numbered. Here's how leading investment thinkers measure real performance.

The psychology at the heart of customer buying patterns is far more complex than previously thought. The different variations of customer loyalty must be understood if a company is to win the long-term battle for customers, increase market share and achieve high performance.

Mohanbir Sawhney's thought leadership in the marketing arena continues with this ManyWorlds' exclusive presentation. The basis for this 52 slide presentation is in exploring how a corporation can transform its research organization from "producing research" to "generating insights". By asking some fundamental questions about the nature of insights and the process that produce them, we are taken on an exploration through the definition, creation and management of customer insights.

London, October 26, 2006 -- The world's most successful companies have discovered that to maximize the effect of corporate innovations, they must first identify an overarching framework, or purpose, for internal innovations. This conclusion is backed by a Booz Allen Hamilton study of 1,000 corporations, which showed little correlation between R&D spending and corporate success. Without a clear strategy it's difficult to succeed regardless of how much money is set aside for innovation. In this article, excerpted from the book Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies, author Nikos Mourkogiannis argues that purpose helps leaders improve the quality of innovation and counter the natural risk aversion that large companies have to it.

In the global economy, treasurers increasingly need to know how and when to hedge against foreign exchange exposures.

Practitioners and academics have argued that an engaged workforce can create competitive advantage. These authors say that it is imperative for leaders to identify the level of engagement in their organization and implement behavioural strategies that will facilitate full engagement. In clear terms, they describe how leaders can do that.

Errors in corporate strategy are often self-inflicted, and a singular focus on shareholder value is the "Bermuda Triangle" of strategy, according to Michael E. Porter, director of Harvard's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. Porter, who recently spoke at Wharton as part of the school's SEI Center Distinguished Lecture Series, challenged managers to stop trying to be the best company in their industry and instead deliver "a unique value" to their customers.

Without question, the easiest way to find relevant email addresses is to ask every consumer who visits your Web site for theirs. Download this White Paper to learn the most effective methods for capturing site traffic, and using email marketing to turn these browsers into long-term, repeat buyers. [BNET Annotation]

Today's smart companies are turning selling into science. But they're not depending on the native talents and gut instincts of their best and brightest to do so. Nor are they hiring extra salespeople. By adding scientific systems to the sales process, top-performing organizations are responding more effectively to new market environments.

Marketers aiming for strong returns should start seeing themselves as investment managers for their marketing budgets. That may be more difficult and time consuming than relying solely on old rules of thumb or new analytic approaches, but it is the only answer in today's marketing environment.

Why do so many successful entrepreneurs feel like fakes?

Marketing professionals widely use the 4 Ps for marketing a product. But how do you market yourself when YOU are the product? How do you make your own accomplishments believable?

As the SEC shines a light on executive compensation, will companies clean up their acts or find new ways to hide excess?

CIOs look beyond ROI to gauge customer interactions, sales impact, and tech-driven innovation.

Most senior managers will step into a new job at some point within the next five years. Many will be recruited or promoted to the top post in their companies. A strong report card during the first 100 days can set the tone for the next 1,000. We asked 20 CEOs to come up with the agenda they would follow if they could start over in their jobs today. This publication details the ten actions that consistently came up.

Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work.

A lot, says the author of Vital Friends: The People You Can't Afford to Live Without. In fact, he says they're so valuable that managers should actually be fostering close relationships in the office.

How market beta can make hurdle rates look artificially low.

If you are less successful at work than you could be, you might be your own worst enemy for being too individualistic.

China's 1.3 billion consumers are at a crossroads. They are embracing new economic ideas and habits, and devouring goods that have long been unavailable, unaffordable or forbidden. At the same time, they are part of a culture and an economic system that remain quite different from those of developed countries. In this special report, experts from Wharton and Boston Consulting Group offer insights on how Chinese consumers are evolving as the market develops; what companies need to know about navigating China's convoluted sales and distribution systems; and the advantages emerging Chinese companies have over Western competitors, even as these firms face their own difficulties in entering the global marketplace. Also, Deepak Advani, chief marketing officer of Lenovo, and Hal Sirkin, senior vice president of BCG and leader of the firm's Global Operations Practice, discuss the advantages of tailoring products and messages to local markets in China.

Being able to make decisions rapidly, wisely, and accurately is getting harder every day. Many of the traditional complications and confusions of business decision making are intensifying while new factors are adding to the cognitive challenge. Given that psychologists and decision experts have uncovered numerous biases and distortions in our normal thinking and deciding processes, we have cause for great concern.

In this wide-ranging survey of a highly complex and rapidly developing field, Max More maps out a diverse range of solutions. For anyone who resonates with Winston Churchill's worry that "We are shaping the world faster than we can change ourselves, and we are applying to the present the habits of the past", this paper aims to find the right new habits of decision making. The text is best approached as a rich menu of tools for effective executive thinking, to be followed up on specifics through other content that you will find related to this piece.

You don't have to be a genius to deliver a project on time, nor do you have to be steeped in a mystical project management methodology to be a project manager. This straightforward guide covers key principles and successfully planning and implementing a project. It includes the purpose of the project plan, the fine art of scheduling, risk management, and staying on track. [BNET Annotation]

Seth Godin's advice on starting a business with no money.

Capitalism is often defined as an economic system where private actors are allowed to own and control the use of property in accord with their own interests, and where the invisible hand of the pricing mechanism coordinates supply and demand in markets in a way that is automatically in the best interests of society. Government, in this perspective, is often described as responsible for peace, justice, and tolerable taxes. This paper defines capitalism as a system of indirect governance for economic relationships, where all markets exist within institutional frameworks that are provided by political authorities, i.e., governments. In this second perspective capitalism is a three-level system much like any organized sport. Markets occupy the first level, where the competition takes place; the institutional foundations that underpin those markets are the second; and the political authority that administers the system is the third. While markets do indeed coordinate supply and demand with the help of the invisible hand in a short-term, quasi-static perspective, government coordinates the modernization of market frameworks in accord with changing circumstances, including changing perceptions of societal costs and benefits. In this broader perspective government has two distinct roles, one to administer the existing institutional frameworks, including the provision of infrastructure and the administration of laws and regulations, and the second to mobilize political power to bring about modernization of those frameworks as circumstances and/or societal priorities change. Thus, for a capitalist system to evolve in an effective developmental sense through time, it must have two hands and not one: an invisible hand that is implicit in the pricing mechanism and a visible hand that is explicitly managed by government through a legislature and a bureaucracy. Inevitably the visible hand has a strategy, no matter how implicit, short sighted or incoherent that strategy may be.