A panel of marketing executives and consultants discuss how companies can get closer to their customers.
Major league companies devote significant resources to shaping raw talent into executive all‐stars.
With the Cold War faded to a memory, the renowned national lab has joined the business revolution.
The subject of this issue's cover story, NCR, is 113 years old, which might be regarded as venerable for a U.S. company. Of course, some firms are older—Eleuthére Irénée du Pont…
Abstract
The subject of this issue's cover story, NCR, is 113 years old, which might be regarded as venerable for a U.S. company. Of course, some firms are older—Eleuthére Irénée du Pont de Nemours set up shop to produce black powder in 1802, and William Procter and James Gamble established their partnership in 1837. But only shortly before John H. Patterson founded the National Cash Register Company in 1884, did General Electric (1876), and Exxon (as Standard Oil of New Jersey in 1882) come into being. And just two years later, in May 1886, Dr. John S. Pemberton sold the first sip of Coca‐Cola in Atlanta.
Read enough management books, listen to enough gurus, and you'd think there's no way any company is going to survive too far into the next millennium. The world's just moving so…
Abstract
Read enough management books, listen to enough gurus, and you'd think there's no way any company is going to survive too far into the next millennium. The world's just moving so fast, they all say, that executives must ever be poised to leap through windows of opportunity that pop open at unpredictable moments. And they've got to pick the right windows and leap at precisely the right time. It sometimes seems as if enduring the next decade will demand that executives be embued with measurable levels of extrasensory perception.
Cheaper by the Dozen, a book I read when I was a kid, came to mind the other day. It is a memoir about growing up in the early part of this century as one of 12 children of an…
Abstract
Cheaper by the Dozen, a book I read when I was a kid, came to mind the other day. It is a memoir about growing up in the early part of this century as one of 12 children of an “efficiency expert.” The story focused on Frank Gilbreth's attempts to apply the principles of time management to raising a dozen children. So the kids bathed and dressed with Father holding a stopwatch over them, and all 12 had their tonsils out at once, because that was more efficient. Needless to say, time management techniques did not translate flawlessly from factory floor to home use.
“When my boss handed me the company's new mission statement,” my brother Mark said, “he made me promise not to laugh when I read it. But I did get a chuckle out if it.” Now, Mark…
Abstract
“When my boss handed me the company's new mission statement,” my brother Mark said, “he made me promise not to laugh when I read it. But I did get a chuckle out if it.” Now, Mark is an exemplary human in most ways, but he's pretty much Everyman Employee in his reaction to mission statements.
Germany's biggest bank has done business in the United States since 1892, but you'd never know it from the low profile Deutsche Bank maintained in its first 100 years here.
Some years ago, a nurse was mugged on a New York City subway platform. The thief pulled a very large knife, demanded the nurse's jewelry and handbag, and then brutally shoved her…
Abstract
Some years ago, a nurse was mugged on a New York City subway platform. The thief pulled a very large knife, demanded the nurse's jewelry and handbag, and then brutally shoved her to the ground, nearly into the path of an oncoming train. After the mugger fled, other commuters helped the frightened and bruised nurse to her feet and summoned the transit police. As soon as the police arrived, the nurse, still shaken, said, “Quick! My address and keys are in the handbag—he'll probably rob my apartment next!” So, the nurse and the police sped off to her home, where, just as she had predicted, they surprised the subway mugger in the process of denuding the apartment of its salable contents. When asked how she had managed to keep her head after such a terrifying experience, the nurse replied, “I work in the emergency room. I've been trained to stay cool in a crisis.”
Peter Schwartz, Lawrence Wilkinson and Sean Baenen
Four different scenarios of the world a decade from now provide insight into how companies can prepare for an uncertain future.