July–August 2000

It pays to be big in a global economy, right? Wrong. The rush toward huge cross-border mergers is based on a faulty understanding of economics. There are better ways to address globalization than relentless expansion.

As Kodak has discovered, it’s now possible to establish Western-style corporations in China.

It’s an old and familiar way of doing business, especially in new product development and manufacturing. People rush from one crisis to the next, never really fixing problems, just stopping them from getting worse. But a set of principles can actually prevent most fires.

Entrepreneurs have always needed imagination and daring. What’s different today, says one of the architects of the new economy, is that they have to move a lot faster than ever before, with a lot less room for error.

Top-down leadership may very well be necessary during a crisis. But when the crisis has passed, what’s needed is a leader who can create an environment where every employee is responsible for sustaining success.

Here’s a short course on an Internet technology that’s helping to shape the future of e-business.

They can be demanding. Fickle. Uncommitted. Not to mention hungry for ever more money. Could it be that the millions of millionaire employees at work today are the best thing that ever happened to American business?

First there were shopbots, now pricebots. Is your company ready for the agent economy?

In the rush to build Internet businesses, many executives concentrate all their attention on attracting customers rather than retaining them. That’s a mistake. The unique economics of e-business make customer loyalty more important than ever.

Extremism and emotion have dominated the debate about global climate change. It’s time to cool off and take a level-headed business view of the risks and opportunities associated with the problem.

Is your company in shape?

Six years ago, IBM was a has-been. Today, it’s an e-business powerhouse. It didn’t turn around by imposing change from the top. It let ideas, initiatives, and enthusiasm bubble up from below. Maybe your company should do the same.

Organizations have to change to stay alive. That’s a given. But change doesn’t always have to create anguish. Sometimes change is more effective when it hurts less. That’s where a new approach to change—dynamic stability—comes in. Here’s how it works.

Internet entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky is applying what he does best—building high-tech companies—to improving education in Argentina.

The short answer is no, says the head of the U.S. patent office, but you can patent specific ways of doing business. And that, he contends, is a good thing for innovation.

Robert Putnam explores the idea of social capital to argue that the United States is becoming a nation of loners. Could the same construct be used to improve the performance of organizations?

Offering the right product in the right place at the right time for the right price is retailing’s formula for perfection. The ideal remains elusive, but an elite rank of retailers is getting closer to it every day. There’s much to be learned from what they do.