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Between 1991 and 2001, the average number of joint-venture deals announced each year increased from 1,000 to 7,000. Executives are clearly setting great store by these temporary partnerships as a way of achieving both short-term and longer-term goals. As with any type of alliance, however, success can be elusive, and a poor relationship between the partners is often at the root of difficulties within a venture. A negative cycle frequently develops in which poor partner relations lead to poor performance, which in turn puts the partner relations under greater pressure. In the course of her work with executives from joint ventures and their parent companies, the author identified five minefields that can explode and damage the relationships in an otherwise fruitful operation. Since joint ventures are here to stay -- they are still sometimes the only way for a company to enter a new market or to gain access to key technology or people -- managers must learn to avoid the minefields if they are to realize the full potential of these strategic partnerships.

In an often overemphasized focus on efficiency, many companies turn to packaged information-technology systems to manage business processes. University of Michigan Business School professors C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan suggest they should be more concerned about strategy & #8212; and getting line managers and IT managers to use information systems in ways that facilitate strategic change. A new applications-portfolio scorecard helps managers assess information infrastructure before making investments. Six key considerations are each IT application’s role in strategy, whether the knowledge embodied in the application (say, salaries in a payroll application) is stable or evolving, how much change will be needed, where the application will be sourced, whether the data is proprietary or public, and the application’s freedom from conformance defects. Those parameters differ for different functions. Managers may not need the latest software for a stable function. They may decide not to purchase a customized package, because it could be out of sync with the vendor’s future software. Only those companies that deeply analyze what they need from each IT application will acquire the right portfolio. The authors’ work with 500 executives revealed that few managers believed their information infrastructure was able to handle the pressures from deregulation, globalization, ubiquitous connectivity and the convergence of industries and technologies. Though fully aware their organizations lacked rapid-response capability or flexibility, the managers rarely knew how to fix the disconnection between the quality of IT infrastructures and the need for strategic change. Considering that information-infrastructure expenditures are generally 2% to 8% of companies’ revenues, new measures to address the disconnection are essential. A corresponding change in the mind-sets and the skill sets of smart line managers and IT managers also is helping improve overall competitiveness.

As adapting to globalization becomes increasingly necessary, business customers are pressuring suppliers to accept global-pricing contracts (GPCs). So far, most of the benefits of GPCs have redounded to the business customer. Although purchasers may promise a supplier access to international markets, guaranteed production volumes and improved economies of scale and scope, too often they fail to deliver. They may not buy as much as planned, may demand customization that the supplier cannot leverage with other customers, may force the supplier to drop the customer's competitors -- or may fall on hard times and have to scale back commitments. That is why, before signing a contract, suppliers should do due diligence. According to Das Narayandas of Harvard Business School, John Quelch of the London Business School and Gordon Swartz of Oxford Associates, suppliers must fully understand the customer's global strategy and the business conditions in its respective markets. They also need a firm grasp of their own strategy and local practices. Which GPCs would be suitable and which would be detrimental? Suppliers don't want to turn down all GPCs. They recognize that their global customers may be both their largest customers and their fastest growing ones -- and understandably, they want to share in the benefits of growth. Using data collected from interviews with global-account managers in diverse industries on four continents, the authors bring the global concepts down to earth to help suppliers navigate the uneven terrain. By exploring why customers want GPCs, under what circumstances the contracts are likely to profit suppliers, and how to successfully implement contracts, Narayandas and his colleagues identify preparation as the key to success. The more information suppliers can gather (for example, about variances in their own pricing in different markets, about the cost to serve the customer, about exchange rates and local regulations), the better their negotiating position. During negotiations, it might be useful to know whether the customer demands the same price in every market regardless of the supplier's varying costs -- yet continues to charge its own customers varying prices. A carefully negotiated GPC can be a winning outcome for both supplier and customer and can serve as the foundation for a broader, mutually advantageous relationship that extends beyond price.

Distorted information along a supply chain can lead to tremendous inefficiencies. How can companies mitigate them?

Blaine attributes the U.S. trade deficit to the declining capacity of the United States to satisfy domestic demand for manufactured products with domestic production. Every year, more Americans buy more from other countries than foreigners purchase from the United States. U.S. companies have contributed to the problem by shifting their manufacturing to companies overseas. At the same time, foreign firms are exporting more goods to the United States. Thus, says Blaine, the bulk of trade occurs between foreign units of companies rather than between independent companies located in foreign countries. According to Blaine, in his study of extensive data from a multitude of sources, multinational corporations will have a greater role in shaping international trade flows than will nations themselves. This, in turn, diminishes the efficiency of traditional macroeconomic policies. And countries like the United States that rely on the exchange rate to give firms an incentive to increase exports are less successful than countries like Japan that develop policies to give firms an incentive to increase export activities. Thus, says Blaine, changes in the value of the dollar will have only minimal effect on the trade deficit. The only way to correct the trade imbalance, then, is for U.S. firms to increase domestic production and stop satisfying U.S. demand with products made abroad.

To bring out the best from teams, leaders can draw from a toolkit of strategies that prioritize connection, organization, and vision.

There’s a great deal of enthusiasm about platform strategies these days. Entrepreneurs pitch their startups as the next Uber, the next Facebook, or the next Airbnb, while executives in established companies are retooling their strategies around platforms to drive growth and compete digitally. But creating a successful platform business is not easy — as economists Richard Schmalensee and David S. Evans explain in this MIT Sloan Management Review interview.

Phil Fernandez, President and CEO, Marketo, interviewed by Renee Boucher Ferguson,, Data Analytics researcher and editor at MIT Sloan Management Review. A serial entrepreneur he's taken two marketing-oriented companies public and is looking to do the same with his current endeavor Marketo president and CEO Phil Fernandez knows a thing or two about social business. Marketo utilizes social media, data analytics and Web site traffic to help companies find prospects, interact with them and ultimately, sell to them. His track record to date is impressive. Since Marketo started in 2006, Fernandez and his team have raised $107 in venture capital (yes, in this climate) earned $33 million in subscription revenue in 2011 alone revenue is expected to double that in 2012 -- and signed more than 2,000 customers, including the likes of Intel, LinkedIn, PayPal and McKesson. As a 30-year veteran in Silicon Valley and the author of Revenue Disruption, a book that outlines strategies for companies to transform their sales and marketing organizations to accelerate growth, Fernandez has seen a few shifts in marketing strategies. He believes we're in the midst of another big one. A shift that has many companies, particularly in the business-to-business sector, caught off guard. "We see it playing out over and over and over again, where social is everywhere in B2B, but a lot of people are in denial," says Fernandez. "They're not quite matching up that all those same themes and trends that are affecting them in their consumer lives, are affecting their businesses, too." In a conversation with Renee Boucher Ferguson, a researcher and editor at MIT Sloan Management Review, Fernandez discussed the changing social business landscape and how companies can start to think about and capitalize on those changes.

For several years now, marketers have been urged to embrace one-to-one marketing and to offer microsegmented consumers customized products and services through targeted outreach. While the "market of one" approach can pay off, says the author, it requires a significant upfront investment, including: implementing customer relationship management software applications; filtering, enhancing and cleaning customer data; and personalizing interactions (e-mail, billing, offers and so on). These activities take time and coordination of multiple parts of the organization (marketing, customer service, sales, information technology), which can be daunting for companies trying to react quickly to a changing environment. In addition, those systems have often produced disappointing results because their use was not well integrated with corporate strategy. Also, micro-marketing strategy, on its own, is too narrow. Companies still need to reach broad groups of people with messages that are not dependent on an individual's decision to open an envelope (whether virtual or physical), pick up the phone or click on a box. But broad-based, broadcast media is ineffective and expensive. Fortunately, there are alternative solutions, such as one-to-one targeting and the broadcasting of 30-second television spots. The author's research on trends in marketing spending and consumer attitudes about advertising reveals four strategies available to companies that want to reach broad groups of people without breaking their marketing budget. The strategies are liberally illustrated with examples of Nike, Microsoft, UBS, Delta, Sony, Procter & Gamble, Citibank, Nextel, Honda, Nokia and McDonald's, among others.

Green marketing has not lived up to the hopes and dreams of many managers and activists. Although public opinion polls consistently show that consumers would prefer to choose a green product over one that is less friendly to the environment when all other things are equal, those "other things" are rarely equal in the minds of consumers. For example, when consumers are forced to make trade-offs between product attributes or helping the environment, the environment almost never wins. And hopes for green products also have been hurt by the perception that such products are of lower quality or don't really deliver on their environmental promises. And yet the news isn't all bad, as the growing number of people willing to pay a premium for green products -- from organic foods to energy-efficient appliances -- attests. How, then, should companies handle the dilemmas associated with green marketing? They must always keep in mind that consumers are unlikely to compromise on traditional product attributes, such as convenience, availability, price, quality and performance. It's even more important to realize, however, that there is no single green-marketing strategy that is right for every company. The authors suggest that companies should follow one of four strategies, depending on market and competitive conditions, from the relatively passive and silent "lean green" approach to the more aggressive and visible "extreme green" approach -- with "defensive green" and "shaded green" in between. Managers who understand these strategies and the underlying reasoning behind them will be better prepared to help their companies benefit from an environmentally friendly approach to marketing.