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Managing intellectual property rights used to be straightforward. A company produced great innovations, obtained as many patents as possible and exploited those patents in the marketplace. But the intellectual property world has changed argue the authors. Today, leading companies are focusing on securing only the essential protections they need to exploit their innovations. Most businesses, though, continue to pursue the old "more is better" strategy. In effect, they're flying blind when it comes to managing their IP portfolio. The authors identify three key areas where leading companies drive profits and effectively manage their intellectual property. First, they have a strong market focus, which provides them a clear sense of the "freedom of action." Second, the leaders can articulate how they will derive value from each potential patent and ruthlessly prune patents that cannot generate an attractive overall return. Finally, top-tier organizations hire only the best talent to lead their IP efforts. Following this blueprint will allow companies to successfully manage a more complicated IP landscape.

The place of multinational corporations in China has rapidly changed since the 1970s. No longer expected to bring cash and management expertise to China, the authors argue that MNCs have taken on a new role as teachers and role models. However, recent high-profile mistakes including a McDonald's Corp. (of Oak Brook, Illinois) ad that over 80% of Chinese surveyed found offensive, show that MNCs are not entirely up to this task. They illustrate the consequences of this inability to cope and suggest eight strategies for improving MNC's success in China: Think local-act global, don't apply double standards, don't bend the rules, avoid making "symbolic" acquisitions, avoid employing aggressive tactics over intellectual property rights, guard against management insensitivity, don't "strip mine" profits and don't use China as a lab. The authors then go on to show how these strategies can be executed to increase MNC's profits and standing in China.

Why publicly praised executives tend to underperform.

How environmental cues influence consumer behavior.

Over the last decade, the Internet has transformed many aspects of the way business is conducted -- from how goods are bought and sold to where work is done. To explore what might constitute the next generation of Web technologies and what effect they will have on the nature, purpose and management of organizations, MIT Sloan Management Review contributing editor Martha E. Mangelsdorf talked with two leading experts: Erik Brynjolfsson, director of the MIT Center for Digital Business and the George and Sandra Schussel Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Andrew P. McAfee, associate professor of business administration in the Technology and Operations Management Unit at Harvard Business School. Brynjolffsson and McAfee are confident that the future emphasis of some businesses will be on the use of Web 2.0 technologies to support innovation, creativity and information sharing rather than just to achieve cost cutting. They discussed the complementary relationship between traditional managerial tools, such as ERP and CRM, and the evolving modes of collaboration and communication, such as wikis. McAfee pointed out that one set of tools allows good ideas to percolate upward, after which the very structured process-management technologies can be used to replicate the innovation -- with brutal efficiency in some cases. Companies in very turbulent, information-intensive industries tend to be the ones that have gone the furthest with deploying the new Enterprise 2.0 infrastructure and the mindset that goes along with it, said McAfee. There are "softer cultural things" that companies can do to promote creativity among employees, Brynjolfsson said, which gives them the freedom to work laterally or diagonally within their organizations. The cultural shift away from the classic notions of productivity and output, such as billable hours, is more difficult for some companies to manage, and neither Brynjolfsson nor McAfee sees any technology that by itself will resolve this dilemma. According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, technology innovation is engendering a whole set of complementary innovations in organizations that actually heighten the role of managers and executives. In fact, they said, it will be managers who will have to increase the ambient level of participation in and contribution to these Enterprise 2.0 environments. Companies cited in the discussion that are integrating the new technologies and cultivating the complementary cultural changes include Google, retail pharmacy chain CVS, Spanish fashion retailer Zara and Canadian software developer Cambrian House.

A company’s policies provide insight into its culture.

Societal consequences give power to formal sanctions.

Most companies segment their markets by customer demographics or product characteristics and differentiate their offerings by adding features and functions. But the consumer has a different view of the marketplace. He simply has a job to be done and is seeking to & #x201C;hire” the best product or service to do it. Marketers must adopt that perspective.

IBM discovered decades ago that adding programmers to a software project that was late did not help. Indeed, progress slowed even more. The "resource-driven mindset," sometimes known as "throw more money at the problem," is limited, the authors argue. Yet this mindset has so dominated the research agenda that it has clouded our consideration of many situations in which scarce resources (precisely because they are scarce) are desirable, potentially leading to breakthrough performance. Resource constraints fuel innovation in two ways: through entrepreneurial, social-network approaches to securing the missing funds or the required personnel, and because teams often produce better results as a direct result of the constraints. The human mind is most productive when restricted, the authors maintain. Limited -- or better focused -- by specific rules and constraints, we are more likely to recognize an unexpected idea. Witness the outcome of a Cold War-era race between General Electric and BMW teams to design adequately cooled jet engines. The U.S. team had a virtual blank check, used the most advanced materials and spent nearly twice as much as the Manhattan Project did. The German team, which had significantly less funding at its disposal, came up with a simple yet elegant design principle that remains in use to this day.

What is the optimum growth rate to maximize total return to shareholders? This is a critical question facing both managers and investors. An answer is found in the concept of a company's growth corridor, which is set by the upper bounds of a financially sustainable growth rate and the lower bounds of the competitive growth rate. Using data from Fortune Global 500 companies, the authors find that those companies that grow within their respective growth corridor create above average total shareholder returns. Drawing examples from companies such as AES, BMW, Marks & ; Spencer, Nestle, and Wal-Mart, they show how managers can identify their growth corridors, and how they can restore healthy and smart growth.