Executive Agenda
Volume IX, Number 1, 2006

Features

Resources for Growth
Today's world is a modular one, where joint ventures, alliances, pooling, shared services, offshoring and outsourcing are common topics. Growth no longer requires optimally managing a firm's resources - it requires having access to competitive resources, internal or external, exclusive or shared.
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Multisourcing: Managing a Portfolio of Deals
Multisourcing has risen to the top of the CEO agenda as more companies pursue a best-of-breed sourcing strategy.  But before breaking that big outsourcing deal into a bunch of little ones, get to know your true strategic requirements.
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Stop Chasing Your SKU Tail
Your fast-moving products are the source of volume and profitability. And if you're like most, you regularly eliminate the weakest performers. But taking the same approach time and again is, well, a little like chasing your tail: Despite the effort, the results are always the same—and always disappointing. For a real impact, you have to take aim at some of your unnecessary, high-volume products as well.
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Management Agenda

The Next Power Play: Online Retailers Catch Up to Their Customers
The company website is an entirely different beast than a physical store, both in terms of how customers approach it and how they make their decisions.
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The Volatility Advantage: How to Manage Commodity Price Swings
What will jet fuel cost next month? What will electricity cost in 2008? Can anyone accurately predict commodity prices?
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Vertical View

Battling the Beast: Complexity vs. Customization
In some ways, the financial services industry is where the automakers were in the 1970s, when every feature of a car was custom designed.
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Make Your Move: Taking Clinical Trials to the Best Location
Pharmaceutical executives are finding that taking clinical trials offshore is not only less risky than it once was but also that the opportunities are too attractive to ignore.
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Viewpoint

Selling the World on Modern Retail
As more foreign retailers enter emerging markets, what is their real impact? On one hand, modern retail increases productivity and reduces prices. On the other, it displaces workers and puts local stores out of business. Does the truth fall somewhere in the middle?
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Research Reports

Emerging Market Priorities for Global Retailers
A.T. Kearney's Global Retail Development Index™"
As the pace of globalization continues to pick up, retailers are moving into emerging markets faster than ever. True competitive advantage, however, does not always go to the swiftest — it goes to companies that make the right moves at the right time.
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Global Services Location Index™
As executives explore sending business functions offshore, the good news is that there's a world of choice. That's also the bad news. Sifting through a growing number of increasingly qualified potential markets is a daunting task. To aid decision-makers in this complex process, A.T. Kearney developed the Global Services Location Index™.
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Investment Firms Improve, Retail Banks Slip
A.T. Kearney's Financial Institutions Organic Growth Index, 2006
Investment firms are outperforming banks in the highly competitive race to increase profitability and gain market share, according to results of A.T. Kearney's annual Financial Institutions Organic Growth Index. Seven of the 10 top-scoring financial institutions included in the Index are investment management firms.
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Is Past Prologue?

Global integration and capitalism in the late 19th century transformed societies. Today, we struggle with the same forces, only now we have history to offer direction.
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