Commentaries

A Million-Person Marketing Department
The social media craze is in full swing—with companies that don’t have Twitter feeds or Facebook fan pages by now clearly in the minority. But what does it really mean to participate in social media? Is it a fad or a revolution?... [more]

Banks and Risk: The Rocky Relationship Persists
For many banks, the rocky relationship with risk continues despite all the admonitions and public handwringing. Perhaps it would help to re-review what we call “The Seven Tenets of Risk Management” to see why the paradigm has neither been altered nor fundamentally changed in this new world order... [more]

The Coming of “The Ten”
Emergent economies are becoming, with remarkable speed, a whole new motor for the global economy... [more]

Why Copenhagen Matters Less than You Might Think
The thing to remember about Copenhagen’s success or failure is that the concern for a sustainable future that drives policymakers is the same concern displayed by customers, investors and employees every day... [more]

SKU Optimization: A Parable and 10 Provocations for Action
Effective SKU optimization takes fresh thinking and counterintuitive approaches. This Parable and Ten Provocations for Action can help companies think anew about reducing the cost of SKU complexity... [more]

The Asia Pacific Mobile Observatory
As the global mobile market grows beyond 4 billion connections, 2009 is expected to be a landmark year for Asia Pacific as it crosses the 2 billion connections mark for the first time... [more]

Vision 20/15: Leading Through a Fundamental Business Transformation
Today, the global economy is tentatively recovering from its biggest fall since the Great Depression. We face uncertainty around every corner, and while good news is certainly on the rise, a steady drumbeat warns us that there is more quicksand ahead... [more]

Pharma: Reaching the Tipping Point
An unprecedented number of “blockbuster” drugs are going off patent, and the lack of replacements in the pipeline is leading to near flat growth projections in major markets. Productivity in R&D is declining, as are yields on sales and marketing investment... [more]

Hedging Your Bets
What was once a rather simple paradigm—commodity prices rise and fall in gradual, rather predictable cycles, according to supply and demand—has been replaced by a world in which prices can climb to record highs and plunge to stunning lows in a matter of months... [more]

The Right Variety
The point of “smart complexity” is not that we need to have fewer products or less variety in order to cut exploding supply-chain costs. Rather, the point is how to develop and efficiently deliver the right variety to improve your products’ “shopability.” How can we look at complexity reduction as a way to stimulate sales first and as a cost-reduction effort second... [more]

A Sustainable Future for the Oil Industry
National oil companies—those owned by governments—hold 85 percent of the world’s reserves. They are developing their own technology to become more self-sufficient, with the hope of reaping larger profits from their reserves. The nationalized companies, the investor-owned firms and the oilfield service providers have a strong, natural interdependency that offers benefits to all parties. Together, these groups can meet the “triple bottom line” of economic, social and environmental imperatives that will guarantee a sustainable energy future, one in which all parties forego some short-term gains for a more secure future... [more]

Happier Times Ahead for Auto Suppliers?
The U.S. government has stepped in now several times to prop up the automotive industry, yet the prognosis for the American auto industry remains, at best, uncertain... [more]

Taking the Long View on Sustainability
As the global economy continues to sputter, it is sustainability-focused companies that are performing better in the financial markets than their industry peers—a sign, perhaps, that the market is redefining value in this uncertain economic environment... [more]

Telecom: Time to Lose the Bunker Mentality?
The current financial panic is largely taking place minus a major industry player — telecom. But this bunker mentality can't prevail. Alex Liu offers a few predictions about the changing landscape... [more]

Obamanomics and Its Prospects
An assessment of the global economy and President Obama's plan to save it... [more]

Rebuilding the Will to Believe
The daily recitation of problems U.S. President-elect Obama faces as he takes office is inescapable, the litany beginning with an economy on the brink. And while he won the American presidency on a simple and powerful message of "change we can believe in," the irony is that a failure to believe is now protracting our economic problems... [more]

Fixing Global Finance
In an interview with Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator for the Financial Times, he discusses global finance and the economic challenge for an integrated world economy... [more]