Creating a Customer-Centered Organization A Harvard Business Review Insight Center Report sponsored by The HBR Insight Center is an interactive resource that highlights the emerging thinking around today’s most important issues. In this installment of the series, Harvard Business Review focused on how managers are turning their companies into customer-focused organizations. The growing obsession with customer excellence is driven, in part, by technology. Today customers can obtain and exchange
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wildly oversold. To make matters worse, the Asian and Latin American financial crises have greatly diminished the attractiveness of emerging markets. As a consequence, many MNCs worldwide slowed investments and began to rethink risk–reward structures for these markets. This retreat could become even more pronounced in the wake of the terrorist attacks in the United States last September. The lackluster nature of most MNCs’ emergingmarket strategies over the past decade does not change the magnitude
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players are almost entirely absent from even the largest retail markets. And every grocery retailer that has ventured overseas has failed as often as it has succeeded. Moreover, our research shows that on average, the extent of internationalization does not have a significant effect on retailers’ revenue growth rates or their profit margins. Some industries clearly can’t travel across borders as well as others. A few grocery retailers have succeeded in globalizing by developing strategies that
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The global manager operates as an "insider" in every market Managing in a Borderless World by Kenichi Ohmae Most managers are nearsighted. Even though today's competitive landscape often stretches to a global horizon, they see best what they know best: the customers geographically closest to home. These managers may have factories or laboratories in a dozen countries. They may have joint ventures in a dozen more. They may source materials and sell in markets all over the world. But when push
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Spotlight on LeadershIp Spotlight Artwork Adam Ekberg Country Road, 2005 Ink-jet print HBr.orG Michael D. Watkins is a cofounder of Genesis Advisers, a leadership development firm specializing in onboarding and transition acceleration, and a professor at IMD. He is the author of The First 90 Days and Your Next Move (both from Harvard Business Press). The seven seismic shifts of perspective and responsibility by Michael D. Watkins How Managers Become Leaders June 2012 Harvard
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Stick to the Core—or Go for More? “Cut!” Spike Sanchez stomped toward the stage, his arms waving the music to a stop. Wearing black from head to toe, sporting dark glasses, and sweating under the heat of the lights, he was losing his patience. A highly respected music video director, Sanchez was starting to wonder if taking on this advertising gig was such a great idea. “How many times do I have to tell you to point the logo on the can toward the camera during that move?” On stage was Maygan M
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Introduction: In 1979, Harvard Business Review published “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy” by a young economist and associate professor, Michael E. Porter. It was his first HBR article, and it started a revolution in the strategy field. In subsequent decades, Porter has brought his signature economic rigor to the study of competitive strategy for corporations, regions, nations, and, more recently, health care and philanthropy. “Porter’s five forces” have shaped a generation of academic research
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The Great Intimidators Since when has being a difficult boss been a disqualifier for a job?” asked Nightline’s Ted Koppel after several abrasive, intimidating leaders of major corporations—Disney’s Michael Eisner, Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein, and Hewlett-Packard’s Carly Fiorina—fell from their heights of power. Picking up on what seemed to be a new trend in the workplace, the business media quickly proclaimed that the reign of such leaders was over. From now on, the Wall Street Journal predicted
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Organization as machine – this imagery from our industrial past continues to cast a long shadow over the way we think about management today. It isn’t the only deeply-held and rarely examined notion that affects how organizations are run. Managers still assume that stability is the normal state of affairs and change is the unusual state (a point I particularly challenge in The End of Competitive Advantage). Organizations still emphasize exploitation of existing advantages, driving a short-term orientation
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HBR.ORG THE PRICE OF INCIVILITY LACK OF RESPECT HURTS MORALE AND THE BOTTOM LINE. BY CHRISTINE PORATH AND CHRISTINE PEARSON January–February 2013 Harvard Business Review 115 The Price of inciviliTy R udeness at work is rampant, and it’s on the rise. Over the past 14 years we’ve polled thousands of workers about how they’re treated on the job, and 98% have reported experiencing uncivil behavior. In 2011 half said they were treated rudely at least once a week—up from a quarter in 1998
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