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

» Sloan Management Review :

» Strategy on Insead Knowledge :

• Buying companies for new competencies: Is it worth it?

  In fast-moving industries, large companies are increasingly using acquisitions as a strategy to obtain new competencies from smaller firms.
  
  When Rahul Kapoor, a PhD candidate in strategy at INSEAD, became interested in acquisitions, he noticed that although many promising hi-tech start-ups were being acquired, technological progress seemed to stall after the acquisition.
  
  

• Relationship building: A key driver for securing repeat business

  A study of consulting firm Celerant has found that relationship building is key to bringing in repeat business which accounts for up to 70 per cent of its revenues each year.
  
  The study of Celerant Consulting, conducted by INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour Tom D’Aunno, also found that 91 per cent of clients surveyed would like to work with Celerant again.

• Fast Strategy: Staying ahead of the game

  How can you make sure your company not only keeps its edge over its competitors, but also seizes new opportunities? In a new book called Fast Strategy: How strategic agility will help you stay ahead of the game, INSEAD professor Yves Doz and co-author Mikko Kosonen, a former senior Nokia executive, say the best way to do this is by making the most of what they call ‘strategic agility’.
  
  "I personally experienced how Nokia, as a leading company, gradually lost some of its strategic sensitivity and resource fluidity as a result of successful growth," Kosonen says. "In the early ‘90s it won over Ericsson and Motorola because of its strategic agility. But then over the years, some of these capabilities began to deteriorate and, when we tried to change, it became really difficult."

• Knowledge transfer: Use templates to pass on best practices, at least initially

  As corporations look to expand overseas – through franchising, outsourcing or setting up plants and offices elsewhere – they transfer best practices to maintain their competitive edge. But what’s the best way of doing that and how should they adapt these operational practices to local conditions? According to studies carried out by INSEAD Professor of Strategy Gabriel Szulanski and others, companies need to identify and validate actual examples that have been shown to produce results.

• The new deal at the top

  "Most companies have key managers reporting directly to the CEO on a one-to-one basis, with responsibility for their units or regions," says Yves Doz, who holds the Timken chair in Global Technology and Innovation at INSEAD. The Professor of Business Policy says the result is that "the businesses or regions tend to behave in an autonomous fashion similar to the way a baron would manage his fiefdom."

» Networking & organizations on Insead Knowledge :

• 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.

• China’s Babytree.com: how it achieved its growth spurt

  Just three years after starting up, Babytree.com, a social networking site for parents in China already boasts some 12 million visitors, a mammoth feat by any standards.

• Linking team diversity to extreme team performance

  During his time working at Vivendi Universal, Fabrice Cavarretta, a PhD candidate in Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, says "intuitively it felt that the company would either do extremely well or very badly. But it was not clear whether anyone could have predicted which way it would go. I became fascinated by Vivendi’s top management team’s composition, which was so homogeneous one could feel the situation turn out excessively well, or be a complete fiasco - one extreme or the other."

• Microsoft's Courtois: Using technology to tackle climate change

  Tackling climate change for Europe is “an incredible opportunity to innovate and compete with the rest of the world.” That’s the view of Microsoft International President Jean-Philippe Courtois. Technology can help by linking entrepreneurs to academics, venture capitalists and big business, Courtois says.

• Networking is vital for successful managers

  INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour Herminia Ibarra says managers who neglect to build their networks risk failing or remaining stuck in middle management. "What you know is who you know," she says.