Articles

Should executives make decisions based on what their "gut" tells them? Lately that idea has lost some favor, as technology's ability to accumulate and analyze data has rapidly increased -- supplanting, according to some accounts, the high-level manager's need to draw heavily on intuition. But intuition needs some rescuing from its detractors, and the place to start is by clarifying what it really is, and how it should be developed. Intuition is not a magical sixth sense or a paranormal process; nor does it signify the opposite of reason or random and whimsical decision making. Rather, intuition is a highly complex and highly developed form of reasoning that is based on years of experience and learning, and on facts, patterns, concepts, procedures and abstractions stored in one's head. In this article, the authors draw on examples from the worlds of chess, neuroscience and business -- especially Austria's KTM Sportmotorcycle AG -- to show that intuitive decision making should not be prematurely buried. They point out that although the study of intuition has not been extensively explored as a part of management science, studies reveal that several ingredients are critical to intuition's development: years of domain-specific experience; the cultivation of personal and professional networks; the development of emotional intelligence; a tolerance for mistakes; a healthy sense of curiosity; and a sense of intuition's limits. Companies should, of course, continue to exploit their abilities to mine data as a means of obtaining a competitive edge. But they shouldn't overlook the continuing value of experienced executives who can draw on their intuition to make decisions when the numbers yield a question rather than an answer: Now what do we do?

Solid principles for navigating the 21st century.

Organizations can teach themselves to grow.

In the past, emerging countries like India and China relied on cheap labor to compete at the bottom of the pyramid. Not any longer. Their competitiveness is already reaching the high end, including knowledge-intensive sectors like biotechnology and information sciences. As a result, U.S. and Western European companies are finding it increasingly difficult to attract the best global talent, especially at the senior-executive level. Nevertheless, the author contends that organizations can improve their ability to hire and retain top global talent by doing three fundamental things. First, they need to adopt a new mindset. Specifically, they need to be aware of the realities of the hottest emerging markets and the aggressive talent practices that are already taking place there. For example, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. in India has begun to make blanket offers to every individual in the graduating class of certain colleges. Second, companies need to cut the red tape. In the old world of low hiring needs and abundant candidates, businesses used to focus almost exclusively on making sure that they would not hire the wrong person. Now, because the best candidates are in very low supply and the demand for them is extremely high, they need to expedite their hiring processes. Third, companies need to implement best practices, particularly in the area of recruiting. Unfortunately, making people decisions is still one of the weakest of all key organizational processes. Already, a number of multinational corporations like SAP and Nokia have begun to make the transition to competing for talent on a global basis. Given the numerous challenges, the edge will go to those companies that are proactive in mastering their people decisions so they can hire, develop and deploy the best talent on a worldwide basis. In the future, such organizations will be able to adapt faster and not only survive but prosper in this new environment of increased globalization.

To measure brand health -- and, contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors contend, it can be measured -- is to obtain a 360-degree view of a brand in its marketplace, a wide-angle view of consumers and competitors. What is required, they say, is isolating underlying elements that matter, measuring them and linking them to business performance. Based upon quantitative survey data collected in 2007 from consumers in large sectors of the U.S. economy -- food and grocery, wireless services and banking -- drawn from major geographic markets nationwide, the authors offer a statistically reliable set of brand-health elements for companies to measure and to use as leading indicators of sales risk and potential: brand leadership, attractiveness, distinctiveness, satisfaction and liabilities. They then map those elements to four revenue-related expressions of customer commitment: current customer spending, risk of sales loss, revenue momentum and likelihood of referrals. The resulting framework allows marketers and investors to "connect the dots" between key elements of brand health and business performance and to reconcile previously separate notions: brand and operations, the short term and the long term, investment and return. In the research, the number of companies consumers named as having strong brands was surprisingly small. Fifteen companies accounted for fully 50% of the mentions and only three companies -- Apple, Coca-Cola and Microsoft -- accounted for 25% of mentions. The authors conclude with a set of best practices that are implied by the brand-health framework and also characterize companies that are perceived as having the strongest brands.

Innovation in developing markets has less to do with finding new customers than addressing issues of product acceptability, affordability, availability and awareness.

Companies have four ways of building businesses from within their organizations. Each approach provides certain benefits — and raises specific challenges.

Consumer dissatisfaction can be far more potent than satisfaction.

Has enterprise software become too complex to be effective?

Consumer preference is determined by how their options are presented.