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A selection of business articles and feeds
(see Archives for Axekap's full articles) :

» Sloan Management Review :

• Mobilizing for Growth in Emerging Markets

  Through Nokia Money, a cell-phone based service, Nokia aspires to offer mobile banking solutions to millions of Indian consumers who currently don’t have relationships with a bank or are underbanked. Image courtesy of Nokia. As growth in developed economies such as the United States, Japan and Europe continues to languish, the fastest engines of global [...]
  Published on February 21st, 2012 by lrosano

• Skills That Will Remain in Demand In a Computer-Rich World

  Skills such as applied math and statistics, negotiation and group dynamics, and persuasion can help you prepare yourself for careers in a fast-changing economy filled with ever-faster, ever-smarter computers, write MIT Sloan's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee.
  Published on February 16th, 2012 by Leslie Brokaw

• Is Your Information Diet Full of Junk Food?

  Clay Johnson's new book "The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption" makes the case that "much as a poor diet gives us a variety of diseases, poor information diets give us new forms of ignorance — ignorance that comes not from a lack of information, but from overconsumption of it."
  Published on February 13th, 2012 by Leslie Brokaw

• GE Talent Management: Aligning Hiring With Strategy

  New research shows that aligning recruiting efforts with overall corporate strategy is a key principle of effective talent management. One company particularly good at it: General Electric.
  Published on February 10th, 2012 by Leslie Brokaw

• How to Trigger CEO Interest in Social Networking

  Featured this month in the Social Business Innovation Hub.
  Published on February 7th, 2012 by David Kiron

• What Sells CEOs on Social Networking

  Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, MIT Center for Digital Business From his base at the Center for Digital Business at MIT, Andrew McAfee‘s job these days is, he says, to “try to understand all the different things that technology is doing to the business world, all the different ways that it’s changing innovation and productivity [...]
  Published on February 7th, 2012 by lrosano

• Social Business Survey: Social Software and Employee Development

  A recent survey on social business that MIT Sloan Management Review conducted in collaboration with Deloitte asked how important social software is to an organization’s activities in a number of internally oriented areas, including employee development. MIT SMR and Deloitte have sorted the nearly 3,500 responses by respondents’ roles in their organizations and noticed some interesting differences: One of the [...]
  Published on February 7th, 2012 by Nina Kruschwitz

• Should More Stores Charge Admission?

  How will you make a profit when customers know everything about your costs? The answer could be about putting a dollar value to access and charging admission to your store.
  Published on February 7th, 2012 by Leslie Brokaw

• “Mapping the TV Genome” at Bluefin Labs and Big Data’s Big Stats

  Big Data is now a $64 billion business, says McKinsey Global Institute. Among the start-ups in the fray: Bluefin Labs, which analyzes what we say in social media about TV.
  Published on February 2nd, 2012 by Leslie Brokaw

• The Power of Introverts, the Power of Quiet

  Susan Cain's new book "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking" argues that introverted people who value quiet and solitude to be creative are as able as extroverts to be transformative leaders.
  Published on January 30th, 2012 by Leslie Brokaw

» Strategy on Insead Knowledge :

• Cathay Pacific takes off cautiously to brighter skies

  At its Annual General Meeting recently, IATA (International Air Transport Association) predicted that the industry will recover faster than expected, with Asia-Pacific carriers powering the upturn. INSEAD Knowledge takes a closer look at the performance of one of these airlines: the flag carrier of Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific.
  
  

• Making room for life’s unexpected setbacks

  In sports as in life, it’s perhaps best to accept that the best-laid plans can often be upset by the unexpected. That is certainly the approach that Essar Gabriel (MBA ‘96D), head of the Youth Olympic Games at the International Olympic Committee (IOC), advocates and adopts.
  
  

• Advice to direct marketers: let the people do the talking

  The explosion of social networking sites has been a boon for direct marketers. For the hundreds of millions of users of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and so on, they are fun ways to communicate with their friends and make more friends. But for marketers they are huge databases of consumer information.

• Sustainable practices: engaging consumers and suppliers

  Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) is one firm that knows very well that its environmental and economic impact extends well beyond its factory gates. This starts with the ingredients it needs for its products to the natural resources required to make the packaging, "extending all the way to the people who buy and consume our drinks and handle the packaging," says CCE Europe's Communications Director, Shanna Wendt (YMP Sep '05).

• Doing it the Chinese way: Disney's strategy for a lucrative ride in China

  Last year Beijing gave the green light for Disney to build a theme park in Shanghai which is estimated to cost $3.5 billion. The resort, which is expected to open in five or six years, will include a local version of a Magic Kingdom-style theme park, hotels and shopping areas. It will be slightly larger than Disneyland in California, taking up 1,000 acres in Shanghai’s Pudong district.

» Networking & organizations on Insead Knowledge :

• How do you measure success at the top?

  Perhaps at no other time in history has CEO compensation come under such scrutiny. What makes these business leaders, who are more often than not men, worth so much money?

• Viral marketing: tell a woman?

  Traditional marketing wisdom has it that if you want to use “word of mouth” you’d better be sure the people doing the talking are knowledgeable about the product. But a new large-scale field experiment on viral marketing by INSEAD Assistant Professor of Marketing, Andrew Stephen, puts paid to that age-old concept.

• Social media analysis: a new way of listening

  Social networking is a fast-growing online trend that is changing the media landscape, particularly in the way in which consumers and companies interact with each other. These sites enable community participation and include blogs, discussion forums, social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as consumer review sites. No editor is required, which means the content is not controlled and publishing costs are always near zero.

• Communicating your way to the top

  Good communication skills outrank other core business competencies as the number one skill for corporate recruiters looking to hire MBA graduates. That rather surprising conclusion comes not from communications specialists, but from an organisation that has all the relevant data at its fingertips, The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), which runs GMAT testing for MBA applicants.

• Organise, simplify and socialise: an entrepreneur’s vision of online social networking

  With the fast-growing proliferation of social networking sites on the internet, it’s become common for many people to spend time at work and at play socialising and making new friends online. Indeed, having several social networking accounts on popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Flickr is par for the course for many, such as Singapore-based Danish entrepreneur Thorben Linneberg.