European Business Forum articles from June 2007

European Business Forum archives from June 2007

CEMS an authority in management education.
June 22, 2007... COMMUNITY OF EUROPEAN MANAGEMENT SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES www.cems.org The Community of European Management Schools and International Companies (CEMS) is an alliance of leaders in business and higher education. Founded...

Letter from the editors.
June 22, 2007... The past, as the British writer LP Hartley once said, is another country. If that is true, then the future must be another planet. Everyone wants to know what is going to happen in the future. Second-guessing future developments in...

The world's largest middle class.(Observations)
June 22, 2007... Until the mid-1990s China's retail market was dominated by large, single-city, state-owned enterprises and by "mom-and-pop" shops, street stalls and open-air markets. The entry of global hypermarket retailers such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart,...

Confucian myths.(Observations)
June 22, 2007... The phenomenal rise of the Chinese economy means many Western business plans now involve either selling to China or competing with Chinese-supplied competitors. It follows that an understanding of the success of the ethnic Chinese is important...

Good and bad staff monitoring at the call centre.(Observations)
June 22, 2007... In a technology-accelerated world where activities, work times and outcomes are instantly measurable and even emotional expression can be calibrated, monitoring in the workplace is increasingly controversial. Popular culture offers a steady...

Four ways to build a powerhouse.(Observations)
June 22, 2007... Judged against the hopes and expectations of a decade-and-a-half-ago, Europe's recent economic performance has been disappointing. But what is strange is the palpable and dangerous lack of crisis among policymakers. The rise of India and...

Economic power: the West will still enjoy the highest living standards, but real economic power will have moved steadily eastwards.(Debate The world in 2025)
June 22, 2007... The long boom of the world economy, driven by what we call globalisation, will carry through to 2025, transforming the living standards of billions of people and shifting the balance of economic power in the world. There will be bumps on the...

Energy: renewable energy, hydrogen fuel technology and the "smart power grid" will form the building blocks of a wholly new energy infrastructure.(Debate The world in 2025)
June 22, 2007... It is becoming clear that we are approaching the sunset of the oil era in the first half of the 21st century. The price of oil on global markets continues to climb and peak global oil is within sight in the coming decades. At the same time, the...

Risk: Mega-threats like terrorism and global warming have changed how we conceive risk. Developing a detached view of the future will be a challenge.(Debate The world in 2025)
June 22, 2007... The way we conceptualise risk follows the way we imagine the future. Apprehensions about the future are a roundabout way of expressing concerns about taking risks. In recent years, the belief that the present provides little guidance to...

David Bodanis: Science: the greatest leaps forward occur when scientists have fertile areas to explore and good research tools. Happily, both are now in good supply.(Debate The world in 2025)
June 22, 2007... One afternoon in the early 1990s, in the research labs of one of the top hi-tech firms in America, I was part of a discussion on what the future of graphical user interfaces would be. Everyone knew of Microsoft's old DOS approach, with its...

Leyland Pitt & Bodo B Schlegelmilch.(Debate The world in 2025)
June 22, 2007... Trends: In eras past, trends were largely linear; the paradoxical nature of today's trends makes managing the future very complex indeed. Throughout the 1980 and 1990 trend-spotters such as John Naisbitt and Faith Popcorn established major...

Demographics: The next two decades provide an opportunity to do something about a range of key population trends before they become overwhelming.(Debate The world in 2025)
June 22, 2007... The 20th century was characterised by Wolfgang Lutz, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, as the century of population growth. But the 21st century will be the century of population ageing. While the world's...

Debate the world in 2025.
June 22, 2007... Infrastructure: Economic growth will strain global infrastructure to the limit, forcing governments to turn increasingly to the private sector for capital investment. The power outages experienced not so long ago in North America,...

Interdependency: outsourcing, joint ventures and various forms of partnership--often across borders--will leave companies increasingly open to systemic disturbances.(Debate The world in 2025)
June 22, 2007... Globalisation, outsourcing and ever-leaner supply chains will mean a highly efficient economy by 2025. But the world will also be very interdependent and therefore increasingly vulnerable to systemic shocks. Companies have to create...

Learning to share what everyone knows; Companies tend to know that knowledge sharing is important, but fail to really do it. Here is how.(Indepth)(Company overview)
June 22, 2007... A fundamental challenge for multinational corporations is how to make effective use of their collective knowledge. "Knowledge" here refers to the firm's practices and processes, and its innovative ideas and insights, as well as its underlying...

Large businesses.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Learning how to use knowledge effectively remains a major challenge for most large businesses.

learning disability.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Most businesses suffer from a "learning disability", and are very poor at sharing knowledge.

Knowledge sharing as a priority.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Evidence suggests that many managers simply do not see knowledge sharing as a priority.

Knowledge sharing.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * The link between knowledge sharing and value needs to be made more forcefully, in order to persuade firms to invest in knowledge sharing.

Financial fraud: the how and why: understanding the conditions in which fraud occurs is the key to its detection and prevention.(Indepth)
June 22, 2007... In recent years, it has been nearly impossible to open any business newspaper or magazine without seeing headlines relating to various types of corruption. One type of corruption has been especially prevalent - fraudulent financial statements....

Individuals commit.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Understanding why and how individuals commit fraud is the key to fraud prevention.

Pressure to commit fraud combined.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Pressure to commit fraud combined with opportunities to do so have led to many financial statement frauds in recent years.

Rationalise fraudulent actions.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Some people are also able to rationalise fraudulent actions by arguing that they will benefit themselves or their companies.

Necessary to reduce the pressures.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * To prevent fraud, it is necessary to reduce the pressures and opportunities, but also to hire people of sufficient integrity who will not rationalise fraud.

Acting to see: when disruptive times call for disruptive marketing; Marketers tend to be better selling to existing markets than creating new ones. In future, they will need to be more creative and hands-on.(Indepth)(Company overview)
June 22, 2007... It's supposed to be simple: the marketing department looks after your markets. But what about markets that don't exist? Very often, companies discover too late that while marketing was busy fighting incremental battles on existing markets, they...

"Disruptive" markets.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * "Disruptive" markets, often based on new technologies, are overturning old market certainties.

Traditional marketing.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Traditional marketing is very good at helping us sell to existing markets, but it cannot predict the emergence of new markets.

Marketers need to learn.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Marketers need to learn how to create markets where none currently exist.

Radical innovation.(In Brief)
June 22, 2007... * Radical innovation must become a creative process, based on trial and error.

Targeting the US market from Europe: Lapp Group; Faced with flat growth in a crucial subsidiary, Lapp Group embarked on a thorough analysis of its US strategy.(Case study)(Company overview)
June 22, 2007... Lapp Group is a large supplier of cables, cable accessories, connectors, and cable technology. The German family-owned enterprise generates a turnover of [euro]680m and has 2,500 employees in more than 50 companies. The company founded its...

In my opinion ...
June 22, 2007... Lapp Group faced the challenge of changing its US market development strategies. Increased competition had eaten into its US growth, and its original sales system, which divided the country into five regions, clearly had drawbacks. The...

Charles Babbage: the man who saw the future.(History lesson)
June 22, 2007... Mathematician, scientist and economist, Charles Babbage is usually described as the inventor of the modern computer. That alone has earned him a place in the management hall of fame. Much of what we now do in management relies utterly on...

The best of both worlds; A group of companies has shunned the business school system to develop its own executive training programme.(Learning)
June 22, 2007... Companies will naturally turn to a business school for management education, and in the main they will be happy with what they get. The array of open-enrolment courses and bespoke programmes now available ensures that most will find whatever...

Lars Rebien Sorensen.(Leaders)
June 22, 2007... The chief executive of one of Denmark's most important companies discusses the changing economics of the drugs industry, business ethics and atypical office spaces. Novo Nordisk's executive suite is an unusual sight. The area is...

Hungary's second-richest man built his fortune with a series of big developments in Central Europe. Now he is turning his attention to Romania and Russia.(Leaders)
June 22, 2007... The roaring cement mixers, forests of cranes and clouds of choking dust can feel an almost natural part of the citiscapes of Eastern Europe. Certainly from Bratislava to Bucharest, from Krakow to Kiev, few visitors can fail to notice the...

The author explains why China's economic development may not be as smooth as some people seem to think.(Last word)
June 22, 2007... * Your new book suggests that China must deal with some significant challenges if it is to maintain its rapid growth. Is this a "glass-half-empty" view? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] You can say "a lot done, more to be done", and that China...