Business services sector

The Internet promises to give marketing the same boost in productivity that new operational strategies have given to manufacturing.

Kondo, the head of a successful consulting business and the author of several best-selling books about tidying, talks about her motto--"Keep only what...

As commissioner of the New York City Police Department, Lee P. Brown faces two enormous challenges. The first is crime. In 1989 in New York City, 712,419 crimes were reported, including 1,905 murders, 93,377 robberies, and 3,254 rapes. As Brown is quick to point out, the situation has grown so severe that people in cities […]

During economic slowdowns, consulting, law, and accounting firms often start offering services and taking on clients they really shouldn't, just to keep...

Author’s note: Alistair Hanna, Michael Reopel, and Stuart Flack, all of McKinsey & Company, contributed to this article. The U.S. defense industry is struggling to reorganize itself for growth, if not for survival. The disappearance of the communist threat and the desperate need to revive the U.S. economy have taken the defense industry for a […]

How marketers can maximize returns.

America’s banking crisis presents choices both perilous and promising. Perilous, because the failure to act intelligently will lead to the most serious economic collapse since the Great Depression. As much as 25% of the U.S. banking system—representing assets of more than $750 billion—has begun to post such massive loan losses that it must focus on […]

If you're not careful, you'll end up "acquiring" existing customers.

A holistic approach to offboarding

The new system in a day-care center is producing biased results--setting off an alarm when some dark-skinned parents enter the lobby. The director of...

In this collection of short essays, six executives describe their sales-related success. Jim Koch, of Boston Beer, remembers visiting bars with cold beer...

Adam Baker is a promising young COO at Straus Event Specialists and the protege of CEO Merwyn Straus, who acquired him along with his failed company,...

Most businesspeople will serve on the board of a nonprofit organization at some point. But the governance of nonprofits can differ dramatically from the governance of businesses. Even the best intentions can prove disastrous when new board members fail to understand that their traditional business experience can carry them only so far.

Companies are spending more money than ever on advertising. So why are the results so disappointing?

On December 7, 1990, U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills appeared before the press in Brussels to announce the collapse of the four-year-long Uruguay Round of world trade talks. Casting blame on others, particularly on an intransigent European Community that refused to retreat on agricultural subsidies, she warned of dire consequences: world trade conflicts, global depression, […]

Which one should you invest in?

High-definition televisions (HDTVs) should, by now, be a huge success. Philips, Sony, and Thompson invested billions of dollars to develop TV sets with...

For ten years, Jeff Patterson's firm, Flynn Fuller Consulting, has worked on projects for financial services giant GloBank. Now Jeff's contact, Bill Holland,...

Reports of the “eclipse of the public corporation” underestimate its institutional staying power and unique capacity for renewal. In his recent HBR article, Michael C. Jensen, a distinguished scholar of corporate finance and governance, argues for a revolution in the structure of ownership and control in the U.S. economy.1 I share many of his criticisms […]

AT&T, which built the U.S. communications infrastructure in the past century, could once claim to be the company "where the future was invented." But...