Articles

As companies use self-service technologies, responsibility for service quality shifts to customers.

Companies are incurring enormous losses from the misappropriation of their trade secrets. In a 2002 survey of more than 130 firms, 40% reported actual or suspected losses, and the data suggest the true figure might be significantly higher. The study also estimated that the companies represented by the survey participants -- the Fortune 1000 corporations and 600 additional small and medium-sized companies -- were likely to have experienced trade-secret and other intellectual-property losses of more than $50 billion during a one-year period. Research has shown that the biggest threat to a company's trade secrets comes not from spying competitors but from within: current and former employees. Consequently, the protection of trade secrets is largely a managerial issue, and firms need to take the appropriate measures to ensure that employees keep trade secrets from leaking. But many organizations make a number of crucial missteps, sometimes failing to implement the right precautions or relying on a well-intentioned but ineffective practice -- or worse, a wrongheaded policy that only leads to more information being divulged. The following are the most common mistakes: giving short shrift to new-employee orientations, not communicating regularly with employees, signaling to employees that they aren't trusted, punishing instead of helping employees, not practicing what is preached, forgetting to clarify who owns ideas, defining the scope of trade secrets too narrowly and failing to address the subject of departing employees. By avoiding such mistakes, companies can help ensure that their trade secrets indeed stay secret.

Fifteen best practices can accelerate learning and make outsourcing worthwhile.

To find out how well you are serving your customers, ask your employees.

AåÊframework called the "innovation radar" can help companiesåÊidentify opportunities for innovation.

The author examines the questions of why individuals behave the way they do and if there is a natural impulse to do good. This article discusses such issues as whether an individual, pursuing his or her own self-interest, can improve the general welfare and whether people have an innate intuition that leads them to do good. In coming to the conclusion that the pursuit of self-interest can produce a lot of good if it is balanced with a bit of societal guidance, the author brings to light issues of corporate governance, performance pay, legal and monetary incentives, and other forms of regulation. It is in these arenas, the author points out, that intuition, rather than a more empirical approach, can best be put to good use. He argues that intuition has been lacking from the more utilitarian view of economics and management and that, generally speaking, a blend of both approaches is optimal.

When targeted promotions appeal to non-targeted customers.

Multinationals are finding it increasingly important to match the strengths of their subsidiaries' host economics to their strategic needs.

Advanced tools like computer simulations can significantly increase developers' problem-solving capacity as well as their productivity, enabling them to address categories of problems that would otherwise be impossible to tackle. This is particularly true in the pharmaceutical, aerospace, semiconductor and automotive industries, among others. Furthermore, state-of-the-art tools can enhance the communication and interaction among communities of developers, even those who are "distributed" in time and space. In short, new development tools (particularly those that exploit information technology) hold the promise of being faster, better and cheaper, which is why companies like Intel and BMW have made substantial investments in these technologies. But that enthusiasm should be tempered: New tools must first be integrated into a system that's already in place. It is important to remember that tools are embedded both within the organizations that deploy them and within the tasks the tools themselves are dedicated to performing. Moreover, each organization's approach to how people, processes and tools are integrated is unique -- a result of formal and informal routines, culture and habits. All too often, companies spend millions of dollars on tools that fail to deliver on their promise, and the culprit is typically not the technology itself but the use of the technology. When new tools are incorrectly integrated into an organization (or not integrated at all), they can actually inhibit performance, increase costs and cause innovation to founder. To avoid this, companies should beware three common pitfalls: (1) using new tools merely as substitutes, (2) adding -- instead of minimizing -- organizational interfaces and (3) changing tools but not people's behavior.