Fabrication and manufacturing

Competing in overcrowded industries is no way to sustain high performance. The real opportunity is to create blue oceans of uncontested market space.

Everyone agrees that managing change is tough, but few can agree on how to do it. Most experts are obsessed with "soft" issues, such as culture and motivation,...

Before they have received even a day of training, the best salespeople already have two seemingly incompatible qualities in abundance: empathy with customers and a need to overcome their hesitation to buy.

In many companies, sales forces and marketers feud like Capulets and Montagues—with disastrous results. Here’s how to get them to lay down their swords.

Your organization can become more decisive—and can implement strategy more quickly—if you know where the bottlenecks are and who’s empowered to break through them.

A hybrid-automotive supplier worries about losing its intellectual property.

Atida Motors’ decades-old complaint policy may be no match for unhappy customers who threaten to take their case to YouTube.

Powerful brands have distinct personalities: Duracell’s batteries last a long time. Volvos are safe in a crash. But even dominant brands can fade if they fall prey to multiple personality disorder. Consider General Motors. What’s the difference between a Chevrolet, a Pontiac, and a Buick? The company has recently woken up to the problem; last […]

It pays to be big in a global economy, right? Wrong. The rush toward huge cross-border mergers is based on a faulty understanding of economics. There are better ways to address globalization than relentless expansion.

There are opportunities and challenges.

Strong personal networks don’t just happen at the watercooler. They have to be carefully constructed. Here’s how to strengthen your connections.

Worldwide, the company is a champion for “Made in Canada.”

Many assume that China’s cost advantage in manufacturing comes from cheap labor. But in China’s burgeoning steel industry, our research suggests, massive government energy subsidies, not other factors, keep prices down. These subsidies have broad implications for how companies compete and collaborate with Chinese businesses. In 2005, Beijing designated steel as a pillar industry for […]

It won’t replace standard manufacturing anytime soon.

The cumulative impact of the allocation of resources by managers at any level has more real-world effect on strategy than any plans developed at headquarters.

With workers defining their own job standards, quality and productivity at the Fremont plant went from worst to best.

Companies searching for a way to navigate the changes in Mexico would do well to study Vitro, Sociedad Anonima, an 84-year-old Mexican company with roughly...

Green initiatives can, by reducing costs, enhance a company’s bottom line. Actions that harm the environment can have the opposite effect. Now, thanks to a burgeoning market in greenhouse gas emission credits put into effect by the Kyoto Protocol, environmental considerations will increasingly affect not only companies’ income statements but also their balance sheets. A […]

An educational-gaming firm rethinks its talent strategy.

Much of the time, executives use analogies to make strategic choices. The best strategists know both the power and peril of such comparisons.