Over the last 40 years, a gradual shift in the shape of winning and losing has been playing out. The best performing firms have seen their profitability surge. The worst performing are doing worse than ever. In the middle, however, performance is in decline even as the asset base controlled by ever more mediocre firms relegates ever greater quantities of assets to stagnation.

Bob Sutton discusses the questionable value of books about how to build great companies.

Gallup’s World Poll reveals new findings on the “great global dream” and how it will affect the rise of the next economic empire.

The basis of trust may be changing. It used to be based on reciprocity and as such was fragile and personal. Because of technology, trust is now based on reputation among people who don't know each. It is both less personal and more robust.

Marc Andreessen discusses the difference between "spaces" (or trends) and markets, focusing on the Web 2.0 trend.

Converging trends are creating a new technology ecosystem that will address concerns ranging from hardware, applications and infrastructure to systems development and worker enablement. Net result: Enterprise agility will be the next basis of competition.

The open source model can play an important role in innovation, but know its limitations.

Market economies need regulation to facilitate fair competition and to protect consumers, the environment, and vulnerable workers from unfair practices. Too often, however, regulation has the opposite effect: hindering competition and protecting some groups at the expense of others, which is what happens when, for example, minimum-wage regulations limit the creation of jobs for low-skilled workers. A report by the McKinsey Global Institute highlights the damaging effects of three types of overzealous regulation and offers guidelines for getting it right.

Where is the intersection between personal meaning and business value? Unless we engage in a conversation about what meaning is, we can't hope to integrate it into our work processes, goals, or solutions.

Over the past five years, companies invested a lot in IT just to stay in place. Although CRM, ERP, inventory control, and other applications generated huge efficiencies in core processes and practices, businesses are seeing diminishing financial returns from these improvements as competitors race to match incremental gains and customers reap most of the value in lower prices or improved service. As a result, strategic opportunities are spreading to the edges of the corporate ecosystem, where they have direct connections to, and influence on, products, customers, and markets in their reach.

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

The term "hydrogen economy" is the title of a recent book [Rifkin, 2002], but the concept of using hydrogen as fuel for transportation systems has been advocated by environmentalists and others for at least three decades. There is no universally accepted definition of the "hydrogen economy," but it is generally viewed as the replacement of the vast majority of petroleum fuels used by transportation vehicles of all kinds (automobiles, trucks, trains, and aircraft) with hydrogen that is burned in internal-combustion engines, external-combustion (jet) engines, or preferably, used in fuel cells to more efficiently generate power for transportation.

Why should it take more than a quarter of a century to achieve the hydrogen economy? One can postulate many reasons - such as the difficulty of the technologies involved, the high costs involved, and competition for public funds with other worthy programs. Before hydrogen can achieve its promise, all stakeholders must work together to overcome an array of technical, economic, and institutional challenges. This article attempts to clarify and put in perspective these challenges.

Editor's Note: a bit technical at points, but still readable by the layperson...

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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It's not just weak organisations that spiral into decline and fail. Managerial arrogance and inflexibility can bring even great companies to their knees.

The failure of the Cancun trade talks is not the only sign that globalization could be running out of steam. This new report by Deloitte Research identifies 10 forces that could reverse the trend toward global economic and political unity. This report points to warnings about globalization's future by experts on trade, politics and military affairs. Until recently, naysayers about globalization have been in the minority, but the failure of the Cancun talks coupled with disagreements over the war in Iraq give new weight to the pessimistic point of view, Deloitte Research shows. The report also identifies numerous corporate strategies that will need to be revised if the international business environment sours. These include operating factories, stores and offices abroad; importing and exporting key materials; outsourcing overseas; selling to foreign governments; and, tapping foreign capital markets.

Marketing has finally become a conversation. Not, in most cases, as was intended, BETWEEN corporations and consumers (that would make too much sense), but rather a global conversation involving millions of consumers ABOUT corporations.

Why now? Because they finally can. For decades, consumers have been saving up their insights and rants about the stuff they consume, simply because there were no adequate means to interact with companies, or with other consumers for that matter. No longer. These fickle, wired, empowered, informed, opinionated and experienced holders of a MC (Master in Consumerism) are getting used to 'having it their way', in ANY way imaginable, which includes wanting to have a direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them.

Sure, some companies ARE now engaging creative customers in new ways. These companies are clearly aware that tapping into the collective intellectual capital of their customers yields great creative and 'real' content. However, let's not make the mistake to think that in the end these conversations will all be about communications and branding: how about extending this cooperation with consumers to virtually everything a corporation does, by making the customer an integral part of ALL creative and creational processes?

TRENDWATCHING.COM has dubbed the latter "CUSTOMER-MADE": the phenomenon of corporations creating goods, services and experiences in close cooperation with consumers, tapping into their intellectual capital, and in exchange giving them a direct say in what actually gets produced, manufactured, developed, designed, serviced, or processed.

Experiences are fast becoming a new economic entity like goods and services. Companies that understand the value customers place on experiences can differentiate themselves from competitors and increase profits.

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.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the demise of the IT consultant have been exaggerated.

Traditionally, two roles have been associated with consultants: Superman, the expert who can do it faster and/or better than anyone else; and Prometheus, who brings the fire of innovation to the ambitious enterprise. In the realm of information technology in particular, neither of these roles is going to disappear. Indeed, the need for consultants to help identify, extract and refine IT-based value has perhaps never been greater.

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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Every so often a technological innovation, social revolution or geopolitical shift fundamentally changes the business landscape, providing the nimble with new opportunities for profit and the complacent or foolhardy with threats to their survival. But how can CEOs and other members of the top team distinguish a mirage from the real thing? Where should we be looking? Is technology the only source - or at least the main one? What does history teach us about those who succeed in spotting the right trends and those who fail?

These are some of the questions addressed by EBF's distinguished panel of contributors - a mix of academics, business advisors and business executives. Their rich variety of perspectives are broadly grouped into three main themes:
1. Dangers of Next Big Thing thinking (Thomas Davenpor, Enrique Dans)
2. The Next Big Thing and Technology (Will Hutton and Gwendolyn Carpenter, Peter Cochrane, Josephine Green, Bo Parker)
3. Next Big Thing case studies (Julian Perkin, Tim Harper, Michael Mainelli)

Editor's Note: I found the articles by Thomas Davenport, Peter Cochrane, Tim Harper, and Michael Mainelli to be the most interesting.

The world's most populous nation has become a capitalist's paradise, supplanting Asia's "tiger economies" - and soon, perhaps, the West.

"Silverstein and Fiske [authors of Trading Up]...say people buy New Luxury items because of a 'relatively small set of emotional drivers, both positive and negative.' They describe four 'emotional spaces' that influence consumption: Taking Care of Me, Connecting, Questing, and Individual Style. Home furnishings are typically Taking Care of Me goods, while Connecting goods (food, liquor, jewelry) help buyers to impress a potential mate or show affection. Questing is about adventure -- traveling to exotic locales or sampling the latest new cuisine. Individual Style is about consumption as self-expression. Silverstein and Fiske say consumers increasingly split their purchases between commodities and items they really care about. The authors convincingly predict companies that focus on selling conventional midprice goods -- things that are neither great values nor compelling -- will suffer 'death in the middle.'"

Editor's Note: read a similar, more detailed discussion in the article, "The Price is Right" at
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/76/priceisright.html

They used to say that the only thing worshipped in business was money, but these days, religion is making inroads into the corporate world. How did that happen--and what will it mean?

Editor's Note: this article would have been much more interesting had it taken a look at this "trend" from an international perspective...

There is growing evidence of a set of 10 high-value marketing processes that the marketing function of 21st-century-leading enterprises will have to master. The specific processes that will prove to be most valuable to an enterprise will vary, depending on the development stage of the marketing function, as well as the enterprise's business model or vertical market. Listed in order of increasing sophistication and, hence, required mastery, these marketing processes are:
1. Marketing operations management
2. Marketing visibility, accountability and value measurement
3. Customer and market insight generation
4. Customer-value-based segmentation
5. Portfolio and capacity-based resource allocation
6. Product development and introduction
7. Customer-needs-based trigger identification
8. Orchestrated customization
9. Orchestrated cross-channel dialogues
10. Customer-value-based network management

More and more companies say the COO is no longer necessary, but a few still find it essential.

Learning to manage your organization's scarcest asset.