Reprint: R0410H The strength of the American economy does not rest on its manufacturing prowess, its natural resources, or the size of its market. It turns on one factor—the country’s openness to new ideas, which has allowed it to attract the brightest minds from around the world and harness their creative energies. But the United States is on the verge of losing that competitive edge. As the nation tightens its borders to students and scientists and subjects federal research funding to i...| Harvard Business Review
Today’s dynamic markets and technologies have called into question the sustainability of competitive advantage. Under pressure to improve productivity, quality, and speed, managers have embraced tools such as TQM, benchmarking, and re-engineering. Dramatic operational improvements have resulted, but rarely have these gains translated into sustainable profitability. And gradually, the tools have taken the place of strategy. In his five-part article, Michael Porter explores how that shift has...| Harvard Business Review
For the past 20 years, the theory of disruptive innovation has been enormously influential in business circles and a powerful tool for predicting which industry entrants will succeed. Unfortunately, the theory has also been widely misunderstood, and the “disruptive” label has been applied too carelessly anytime a market newcomer shakes up well-established incumbents. In this article, the architect of disruption theory, Clayton M. Christensen, and his coauthors correct some of the misinfor...| Harvard Business Review
‘Can you just tell us how other similar organisations in the industry are organised?’ Something that tends to come up in engagements with customers,| ON THE MARK
Reprint: R0907Q Traditional metrics don’t capture many of the challenges and opportunities in store for U.S. companies and the national economy. The authors, from Deloitte, present a framework for understanding the forces that have transformed business over the past 40 years—and an index for gauging their impact on performance.| Harvard Business Review
Big data, the authors write, is far more powerful than the analytics of the past. Executives can measure and therefore manage more precisely than ever before. They can make better predictions and smarter decisions. They can target more-effective interventions in areas that so far have been dominated by gut and intuition rather than by data and rigor. The differences between big data and analytics are a matter of volume, velocity, and variety: More data now cross the internet every second than...| Harvard Business Review
Research shows that 9% of companies come out of a recession stronger than ever. Here’s how they lay the groundwork for success.| Harvard Business Review
Despite a long-term decline in the circus industry, Cirque du Soleil profitably increased revenue 22-fold over the last 10 years by reinventing the circus. Rather than competing within the confines of the existing industry or trying to steal customers from rivals, Cirque developed uncontested market space that made the competition irrelevant. Cirque created what the authors call a blue ocean, a previously unknown market space. In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. There i...| Harvard Business Review