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In business and in personal life, people look for easy solutions to solve complex problems. Unfortunately, most quick fixes don't work because the problem is rarely fed by a single cause. If you want to confront persistent problems, the authors argue, you need to apply several different kinds of influence strategies simultaneously. Their approach is based on three separate studies -- two examining organizational issues within companies and a third exploring destructive individual behaviors such as smoking, overeating and excessive alcohol use. The authors document the success of this multipronged approach across different problem domains (from entrenched cultural issues in companies to leader-led change initiatives to stubborn personal challenges). They found that those who employed only one influence strategy (for example, managers offered training, redesigned the organization or held a high-visibility retreat) were far less likely to achieve significant results than those who used four or more sources of influence in combination. The same went for those tackling personal challenges. Many had attempted to alter their behavior by using a single approach (joining a gym, following prescriptions in a book or attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings) -- but nearly all had failed. Using examples from such companies as AT&;T, Lockheed Martin, OGE Energy and Spectrum Health Systems, the authors describe six influence strategies. The first two, personal motivation and ability, relate to sources of influence within individuals that determine their behavioral choices. The next two, social motivation and ability, relate to how other people affect an individual's choices. And the final two, structural motivation and ability, encompass the role of nonhuman factors, such as compensation systems, the role of physical proximity on behavior, and technology. "Too often," the authors argue, "[leaders] bet on a single source of influence rather than tapping a diverse arsenal of strategies. We have learned that the main variable in success or failure is not which sources of influence leaders choose. By far the more important factor is how many."

Many companies have established technology-based platforms or virtual customer environments to partner with their customers in innovation and value creation. In pursuing such initiatives, most companies seem to focus primarily on customers' innovative contributions, paying limited attention to customers' interaction experiences in the VCE. But the VCE experience has broader and more profound implications -- particularly for customer relationship management. In this article, the authors offer a framework to help companies understand and evaluate customers' VCE experience profile. The authors describe five customer roles in innovation and value cocreation: product conceptualizer, product designer, product tester, product support specialist and product marketer. Each role has something to offer. However, depending on the customer innovation role, the nature of the customer interactions and the technologies used in the VCE will vary. The VCE customer experience is made up of four components: the pragmatic experience (its ability to provide information), the sociability experience (how it promotes group discussion), the usability experience (defined by the quality of the human-computer interactions) and the hedonic experience (relating to mental stimulation and entertainment). Drawing on examples from companies including Microsoft, SAP, Samsung, BMW, Volvo and Ducati, the authors suggest strategies and practices to enhance customer experiences in VCEs and ensure favorable outcomes in terms of both innovation management and customer relationship management. Designing and implementing the right system can help companies improve innovation and customer relationship management. Therefore, managers should view their VCE initiatives as an integral part of their overall innovation and customer strategies. What's more, the costs of implementation can vary widely. Therefore, companies need to be careful about selecting and implementing a portfolio of strategies and practices that meets the needs of the types of customers they want to engage in value cocreation.

All corporations engaged in multiple lines of business face a paramount strategic imperative imposed by the stock market: Maximizing the profitable growth that is possible from their constituent businesses. Meeting this imperative over the long term requires such corporations to develop new strategy-making capabilities. So how can company leaders identify and exploit the opportunities that take the fullest advantage of their companies' capabilities and potential to pursue new strategies? In their attempts to meet the stock market's imperative, multibusiness companies in the past have pursued operational efficiencies by integrating business activities and have extended their existing strategies by combining resources from various business units. But that is not enough, say Robert A. Burgelman, professor of management at Stanford University, and Yves L. Doz, professor of global technology and innovation at INSEAD. Multibusiness corporations need to develop a capability for what the authors call complex strategic integration, which involves the discovery and creation of new business opportunities by combining resources from multiple units within the firm -- each with its own perspective and vested interests -- in order to extend the corporate strategy in new directions. Only a few multibusiness companies are currently trying to develop a CSI capability. But the challenges and imperatives for all companies are the same. Company leaders need to manage the evolving tension between reinforcing the company's core business and redirecting strategy in new directions, as well as the sharing and transferring of resources. They also must ensure that senior executives develop the political and entrepreneurial skills necessary to effectively pursue CSI initiatives, along with the ability to conceive of these new strategies. Above all, company leaders have to create a corporate context that facilitates CSI as an ongoing institutionalized process rather than as an infrequent occurrence that depends on the ad hoc championing efforts of some highly dedicated senior managers. That includes developing the appropriate organizational structures, control systems and incentives.

To achieve lasting competitiveness through IT, according to the authors, companies face three enduring challenges: focusing IS efforts to support business strategies and using IT innovations to develop new, superior strategies; devising and managing effective strategies for the delivery of low-cost, high-quality IS services; and choosing the technical platform on which to mount IS services. Three strands of research -- on the CIO's role and experience, the CIO's capabilities, and IS/IT outsourcing -- demonstrate that businesses need nine core IS capabilities to address these challenges: 1. Leadership. Integrating IS/IT effort with business purpose and activity. 2. Business systems thinking. Envisioning the business process that technology makes possible. 3. Relationship building. Getting the business constructively engaged in IS/IT issues. 4. Architecture planning. Creating the blueprint for a technical platform that responds to current and future business needs. 5. Making technology work. Rapidly achieving technical progress -- by one means or another. 6. Informed buying. Managing the IS/IT sourcing strategy that meets the interests of the business. 7. Contract facilitation. Ensuring the success of existing contracts for IS/IT services. 8. Contract monitoring. Protecting the business's contractual position, current and future. 9. Vendor development. Identifying the potential added value of IS/IT service suppliers. IS professionals and managers need to demonstrate a changing mix of technical, business, and interpersonal skills. The authors trace the role these skills play in achieving the core IS capabilities and discuss the challenges of adapting core IS capabilities to particular organizational contexts. Their core IS capability model implies migration to a relatively small IS function, staffed by highly able people. To sustain their ability to exploit IT, the authors conclude, organizations must make the design of flexible IS arrangements a high-priority task and take an anticipatory rather than a reactive approach to that task.

Managers must figure out when it's best to pursue strategies of position, leverage or opportunity.

The authors, including the Tata Group's former chairman, say companies need "a deeper purpose.”

Today's knowledge and service-based economy presents opportunities for well-run companies to increase profits through strategic outsourcing.

Leaders must shift from assigning blame to building shared narratives of accountability into day-to-day operations.

Forming close relationships with suppliers or customers is a popular business strategy, but such partnerships can develop problems. The authors observe that many close business relationships -- whether joint ventures or loose alliances -- fail. They describe a phenomenon they call the "dark side" of close relationships and maintain that close relationships that seem quite stable can, in fact, be vulnerable to decline and destruction. The authors draw both on their own surveys of business relationships and on other examples. The authors point out that the same factors that strengthen a partnership can also open the door to relationship problems. For example, when an automaker and a supplier built up personal relationships between employees at the two firms to facilitate their alliance and just-in-time manufacturing process, the trust and personal relationships also enabled the supplier more easily to cut corners in the production process. While observing that business relationships with problems can linger on for a surprisingly long time, the authors recommend strategies to prevent the "dark side" from taking over a business relationship. One such strategy is to ensure that both parties in the relationship make investments in it, in effect swapping "mutual hostages." If, however, damage to the relationship has already occurred, possible strategies include turning the crisis into an opportunity to improve the partnership, rotating in new personnel, reconfiguring the relationship or terminating it.

Which e-businesses will prevail? New research on e-fulfillment may hold the key. After all, getting a customer’s online order is not enough: E-businesses also must show that they can deliver products quickly and efficiently. Hau L. Lee and Seungjin Whang, professors of operations, information and technology at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, have studied a few successful online companies and their innovative ways of applying order-fulfillment strategies. Although the principles are not new, Internet technologies enable them to be applied in new and expanded ways. The two core concepts for improving e-fulfillment efficiency are making more use of information flows instead of physical product flows and capitalizing on existing pipelines and infrastructures. Those concepts underlie five key e-fulfillment strategies: logistics postponement, dematerialization, resource exchange, leveraged shipments and clicks-and-mortar. Whether the strategy expands on time-tested models or is a breakthrough, the trick is to determine the best one for a given situation. A computer company might use logistics postponement. By capturing more-accurate information, it could assemble final goods on demand and thereby save money by postponing delivery decisions until after receiving the final word on what the customer wants. Other companies might use dematerialization, converting physical products into information flows, just as a music CD can be converted to MP3 format or Egreetings.com substitutes digital flows for paper greeting cards sent by regular mail. With resource exchange, an e-company that needs to move a load from Hong Kong to San Francisco might borrow a ship from another company that needs a cost-effective way to return its empty vessel to California. Webvan uses the leveraged-shipment strategy, making the most of existing networks. With its clicks-and-mortar model, CVS covers the last mile by having customers pick up their online orders. Some online purchasers in Japan do the same: 7dream.com utilizes the ubiquitous 7-Eleven stores to enable a group of Japanese companies to do bulk deliveries. Pointing out ways that companies are extending e-fulfillment value beyond cost containment, the authors also demonstrate how secondary opportunities are taking companies beyond the last mile.