Car sales in India are going through the roof as the country continues to grow and prosper. More people with money means more goods and services and more cars to transport them. While prosperity is a welcome addition to the India economy, the impact on the environment is not. In fact, the environmental challenge raises some important questions: How can India minimize the environmental impact caused by the transportation sector without impacting the country's growth momentum? Which automotive technologies are environmentally friendly? How can Indian automakers sell "green" cars at a price that will suit cost-conscious Indian consumers?

To answer these questions, A.T. Kearney and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) conducted a joint study to identify and prioritize key actions for cost-effective green mobility. This report explores various options available to India to move toward a green mobility paradigm with lower carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) emissions—and therefore less impact on global warming—and lower emission of regulated pollutants such as particulate matter (PM), monoxides of nitrogen (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and unburned hydrocarbon (HC).

This report examines the opportunities available for a more cost-effective, greener mobility future for the consideration of all stakeholders: industry, government, and consumers.

Standards are the rules, guidelines, and definitions that describe repeatable ways of doing things. Standards are a crucial element in the EU's industrial strategy as Europe seeks to remain a shaper of global standards rather than a follower.

The European Round Table of Industrialists worked with A.T. Kearney to study the issue of developing and implementing standards. We found six recommendations for establishing standards in European industry:

• Establish performance targets to foster innovation. Standards spread collective knowledge, bringing together industry players in a working environment of sharing and collaboration. The use of standardized parts and business processes can reduce early investment costs and risks, and provide a platform from which industries can innovate.
• Consult with experts. Involving technical and industrial experts, even when standards are initiated by governments, can help build standards on solid foundations.
• Coordinate industry players. European standardization bodies can play a larger role in facilitating standard-setting along the value chain and across industries.
• Balance speed and consensus. Standards must be put in place quickly in the face of accelerating technological change and market competition, and they must be built on a foundation of consensus to broadly address the requirements of all players.
• Encourage a global approach. European companies that adopt and participate in setting global standards increase their market access to other countries.
• Encourage SME participation. Despite their importance to the European economy, few small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are actively involved in setting standards.

Executives from leading financial institutions and think tanks joined policy makers, academics, and management consultants at the Brussels campus of Vlerick Business School for three spirited panel discussions on financial-services regulations in the European Union. Held under Chatham House Rule, this paper does not offer specific attribution on points raised, but draws selectively on the many valuable contributions.

The gist of the debate is that scale and regulatory costs have increased dramatically in the European Union, and that while governments want to tighten control over the financial sector in general, financial institutions as a whole and banks in particular warn that more regulation threatens to become counterproductive, eroding their ability to lend and thus undermining the prospects of new investment and growth.

Everyone seems to agree that strict regulations are both required and desirable, but they must be appropriate, adaptive, sufficient, and transparent. There is widespread doubt that current regulations embrace these qualities. Indeed, regulations really aren't all that appropriate, given the excess focus on retail banking and less on other financial industry segments, such as shadow banking. They may be adaptive, but in the wrong way, as pre-crisis regulations slowly enabled global integration, but post-crisis national tightening has led to fragmented, inward-looking and contradictory policy. Sufficiency is difficult to define, but the current approach may lead to overkill. Lastly, transparency—less since the involvement of various regulators in a single financial institution—leads to contradictory effects. Overall, the equilibrium between free market and regulation remains elusive—and the continuing crisis may affect it even more.

Europe’s public sector has a problem. Government spending in the 27 member countries of the European Union (EU27) was almost 50 percent of gross domestic product in 2011. The result is a GDP gap of €247 billion—in other words, the amount governments overspent.

What’s more, compared with other regions, Europe’s ratio of government spending to GDP is 9 percentage points higher than the nearest contender (the United States) and more than double that of China, primarily because of social security.

The question is whether it will be possible for European countries to survive while preserving social security. To answer this, A.T. Kearney performed preliminary research on government spending in the EU27.

The research finds that governments can take steps forward by closing the GDP gap through economic development initiatives, balancing public spending and GDP by reducing operating costs, optimizing procurement, improving employee productivity, implementing lean processes into the public sector, and incorporating shared services.

Some EU27 countries face tremendous challenges dealing with the crisis, but the picture is not all bad. Many issues can be solved by optimizing procurement and improving productivity. Wise leaders will help their governments put the right strategies in place for a sustainable future for Europe.

As we know by observing other countries, effective healthcare systems are both possible and affordable. For Russia, such a healthcare system presents the government with a golden opportunity to provide a social and economic breakthrough for its people.

Russia isn’t alone in its problems, and the lessons learned from the country’s current dilemma are instructive for countries seeking to reshape healthcare policy as a way to drive and support sustainable economic development. This paper examines a major aspect of the healthcare policy debate taking place in Russia today—national drug insurance (NDI).

On the Richter scale, the quake is 9.0, the most powerful ever to strike Japan. Even as the aftershocks rumble, none of us imagines the approaching tsunami traveling behind the quake, across the Pacific, toward Japan's eastern coast. When the waves break, the news is immediately horrifying, and only grows more so. More than 20,000 people are dead or missing.

The catastrophe is not over. Three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant flood and suffer core meltdowns. Radiation levels rise. An estimated 150,000 people move out or are evacuated while municipal officials impose a 20-kilometer exclusion zone around the power station. Around the world Fukushima becomes a household name for the worst possible reasons.

A.T. Kearney's Global Cities Index—which measures the degree of openness, relevance, and global integration of cities around the world—underscores how cities are addressing the wave of globalization that has swept the world. City leaders, however, have many objectives, some far more pressing than globalization. Number one is to be a successful leader of a successful city and, thus, get reelected.

Yet whatever the goals, achieving them requires a vision for the future—one that is inspiring, compelling, and credible. When outlining such a vision, city leaders face two distinct but interconnected goals: to protect and improve their citizens' well-being, and to become attractive to the external resources that are so vital for long-term growth. How to make this two-pronged vision a reality?

In emerging and mature markets worldwide, economic clusters have jumpstarted industries and accelerated economic development by creating ripe environments for business, academia, and innovation. Next generation economic clusters are emerging.

Globally, economic clusters (ECs) are abundant in a variety of forms: special economic zones, industrial zones, free zones, economic cities, and technology clusters. Yet, too many ECs have started without a clear strategy to meet their economic development objectives.

In many cases, world-class infrastructure and business and industrial facilities have been built, and tenants have filled the space to different degrees, taking advantage of favorable business conditions and local market demand. However, to become true incubators of economic development, many ECs face an opportunity to clearly define their playing field and truly differentiate themselves.