Journal of Business Strategy articles from March 1999

Journal of Business Strategy archives from March 1999

Put Time Back in the Bottle.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... We're still in the longest peacetime expansion in U.S. history. Isn't it too good to last? Maybe not, according to Joseph H. Haimowitz, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. After analyzing more than 100 years of data,...

Just the Facts.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Y2K: In a survey of 109 companies, Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI Inc. found that the median cost of Y2K compliance was $3.75 million, and the average cost was $15.18 million. Most of those surveyed chose to upgrade to compliant enterprisewide...

Information Technology: The Business Challenge.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... From The Information Paradox: Realizing the Business Benefits of Information Technology, by John Thorp & DMR's Center to Strategic Leadership, McGraw-Hill, Toronto, 1999. Organizations must recognize that they are no longer making IT...

Strategy: The Master's Voice.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... From Management Challenges for the 21st Century, by Peter F. Drucker, HarperBusiness, New York, 1999. There is a great deal of talk today about "the innovative organization." But making an organization more receptive to innovation-even...

Knowledge Management: The Man-Machine Meld.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... From "Managing Professional Intellect: Making the Most of the Best," by James Brian Quinn, Philip Anderson, and Sydney Finkelstein, in Delivering Results: A New Mandate for Human Resource Professionals, edited by Dave Ulrich, Harvard...

Personal Investment: Market Watching.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Quotes excerpted from the chapter entitled, "Peter Lynch: Former Manager of Fidelity Magellan Fund," in Forbes Great Minds of Business, Forbes, Inc., Gretchen Morgenson, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1999. "A lot of people buy stocks and...

Leadership: Be Careful What You Wish For.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... From Comeback: How Seven Straight-Shooting CEOs Turned Around Troubled Companies, by Martin Puris, Times Business, New York, 1999. While there are many talented people, few of them truly wish to be leaders. Sure, everyone chafes under...

Unpleasant Surprises.
March 1, 1999... Richard W. Oliver "The date which will live in infamy," December 7, 1941, is branded in our consciousness as the day the most famous surprise attack of the 20th century was launched. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation...

Is Our Vision Any Good?
March 1, 1999... Alan Brache and Mike Freedman You've descended from the mountaintop having visualized, scenarioed, segmented, core competencied, value chained, and discontinuitied. You've exercised both hemispheres of your brain to the point at which...

Fun for Everyone.
March 1, 1999... Harvey Meyer If you're competing in a very tight labor market, consider what others have done-everything from dishing out ice cream to giving away BMWs. Fun at work? An oxymoron, right? Not any more. In growing numbers, U.S....

Put More Fun in Your Company.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Here are tips for adding fun to the workplace from some "fun company" veterans: * Involve top management. Reduce, and even eliminate, employees' suspicions about introducing fun activities by making sure supervisors participate regularly....

Knowledge Is Power.
March 1, 1999... JoAnn Greco Jealously guarding the information you held was once essential to the acquisition of power. Today, it pays to share. In 1991, Ikujiro Nonaka created a stir when his article, "The Knowledge-Creating Company," appeared in...

What Is a CKO-And Should You Have One?(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... As a company undertakes a knowledge management program, new roles and job titles are likely to surface. "The valuation people in companies-folks like those in intellectual property, the mergers and acquisitions people-are going to become...

Creating a Successful Knowledge Management System.
March 1, 1999... Laurence P. Chait When knowledge is your product, you'd best be able to manage it. Here's what one consulting firm has done. Effective knowledge management is an area that we at Arthur D. Little see as critical to the ongoing success...

The Growth Imperative.
March 1, 1999... Jude Rich Your company can either grow or die. Which result are you pursuing? The economics of corporate life and death lead to one inescapable conclusion: In the long run, it's grow or die. Growth is imperative not only for...

The Best Little Warehouse in Business.
March 1, 1999... Sunny Baker and Kim Baker If you're awash in information you don't have time enough to analyze, invest in a data warehouse. It can give you access to data riches you didn't realize you had. Ever since Hammurabi codified the first...

Data Warehouse Glossary.
March 1, 1999... If you're new to data warehousing technology, here are some common terms you should understand: Aggregates. Pre-calculated and pre-stored summaries that are stored in the data warehouse to improve query performance. For example, for...

Data Warehousing Solutions.
March 1, 1999... Sunny Baker and Kim Baker Data warehousing solutions actually require two different types of products: the data warehouses themselves and the tools for accessing the information in them. Leading Database Companies These are the...

Leveraging the Rewards of Strategic Alliances.
March 1, 1999... Gabor Garai Mergers are big news, but they're not the only news. More and more companies are entering into temporary alliances to gain competitive advantage. Rising earnings pressures, accelerating global competition, and increased...

The New Battle Plans.(Bibliography)
March 1, 1999... Bristol Voss It's probably been at least a decade since any strategist actually believed he'd spend the rest of his career plotting the campaign of a great corporate army- from a nearby ridge. In the intervening years, platoons have...

Growth.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Growth, as Alice found, is not always an unalloyed delight. For business, maintaining consistent growth is an ongoing challenge. We read of companies that expanded too rapidly-all the way into Chapter 11. And there are those who were so...

Betcha I Know Something You Don't.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... In 1962, John F. Kennedy invited 49 American Nobel laureates to dine at the White House. He greeted his guests saying, "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the...

Put Time Back in the Bottle.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... We're still in the longest peacetime expansion in U.S. history. Isn't it too good to last? Maybe not, according to Joseph H. Haimowitz, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. After analyzing more than 100 years of data,...

World Economic Growth, 1999.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 1999... World Economic Growth, 1999 GDP Growth (%) World 1.3 North America 1.6 Western Europe 1.8 Asia & Australasia 0.7 GDP Growth...

Y2K.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... In a survey of 109 companies, Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI Inc. found that the median cost of Y2K compliance was $3.75 million, and the average cost was $15.18 million. Most of those surveyed chose to upgrade to compliant enterprisewide software...

Corporate Good Citizenship.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Nice guys don't always finish last, according to a Conference Board study. Assets managed in "socially screened" portfolios (comprised of stocks from companies that meet specific hurdles for corporate social performance) grew a rate of 227%...

The Unfriendly Skies.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... The national Headache Foundation found that nearly three-quarters of business travelers polled blame airlines for travel stress. They saw missing luggage, long lines, or lack of air conditioning on flights as stress producers. Of those polled,...

CFOs Catch the Wave.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 1999... What do CFOs do after hours? About 62% of them surf the Net. In a poll of 1,400 CFOs. RHI Management Resources found that 28% very frequently accessed the Internet for personal use; 34% surfed somewhat frequently. Only 14% didn't access the...

Child's Play.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 1999... If you need daycare, don't settle in Boston, New York, or Washington, D.C. You'll be much better off in Tampa, New Orleans, or Casper. Wyo According to Runzheimer International, monthly daycare in Boston averages $718: New York, $661, and...

Take Two Aspirin.(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 1999... Health care benefits are going up again-perhaps as much as 13% this year. And prescription drug benefits will increase nearly 15%, according to a survey of health care providers by Buck Consultants. Average cost increases for HMOs will be 5.6%;...

The Business Challenge.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
March 1, 1999... From The Information Paradox: Realizing the Business Benefits of Information Technology by John Thorp & DMR's Center to Strategic Leadership, McGraw-Hill, Toronto, 1999. Organizations must recognize that they are no longer making IT...

The Master's Voice.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... From Management Challenges for the 21st Century, by Peter F. Drucker, HarperBusiness, New York, 1999. There is a great deal of talk today about "the innovative organization." But making an organization more receptive to innovation-even...

The Man-Machine Meld.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 1999... From "Managing Professional Intellect: Making the Most of the Best," by James Brian Quinn, Philip Anderson, and Sydney Finkelstein, in Delivering Results: A New Mandate for Human Resource Professionals, edited by Dave Ulrich, Harvard Business...

Market Watching.
March 1, 1999... Quotes excerpted from the chapter entitled, "Peter Lynch: Former Manager of Fidelity Magellan Fund," in Forbes Great Minds of Business, Forbes, Inc., Gretchen Morgenson, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1999. "A lot of people buy stocks and...

Be Careful What You Wish For.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... From Comeback: How Seven Straight-Shooting CEOs Turned Around Troubled Companies, by Martin Puris, Times Business, New York, 1999. [W]hile there are many talented people, few of them truly wish to be leaders. Sure, everyone chafes under...

Unpleasant Surprisesr.
March 1, 1999... "The date which will live in infamy," December 7, 1941, is branded in our consciousness as the day the most famous surprise attack of the 20th century was launched. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation into joining a war many...

Is Our Vision Any Good?
March 1, 1999... You've descended from the mountaintop having visualized, scenarioed, segmented, core competencied, value chained, and discontinuitied. You've exercised both hemispheres of your brain to the point at which you are seriously considering watching...

FUN FOR EVERYONE.
March 1, 1999... It you're competing in a very tight labor market, consider what ethers have done--everything from dishing out ice cream to giving away BMWs. FUN AT WORK? AN OXYMORON, RIGHT? NOT ANY MORE. In growing numbers, U.S. companies are...

CREATING A SUCCESSFUL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.
March 1, 1999... When knowledge is your product, you'd best be able to manage it. Here's what one consulting firm has done. EFFECTIVE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IS AN AREA that we at Arthur D. Little see as critical to the ongoing success of our firm. After all,...

THE GROWTH IMPERATIVE.
March 1, 1999... Your company can either grow or die. Which result are you pursuing? THE ECONOMICS OF CORPORATE LIFE AND DEATH LEAD to one inescapable conclusion: In the long run, it's grow or die. Growth is imperative not only for companies in growth...

THE BEST LITTLE WAREHOUSE IN BUSINESS.
March 1, 1999... It you're awash in information you don't have time enough to analyze, invest in a data warehouse. It can give you access to data riches you didn't realize you had. EVER SINCE HAMMURABI CODIFIED THE FIRST LAWS ON clay tablets and then had...

IBM DB2 UNIVERSAL DATABASE.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... IBM's DB2 Universal Database Product Family spans AS/400 systems, RISC System/6000 hardware, IBM mainframes, non-IBM machines from Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems, and operating systems such as Windows NT and 95/98, OS/2, AIX, HP-UX, SCO...

INFORMIX SOFTWARE, INC.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Informix specializes in technologies that help enterprises maximize their data to gain strategic business advantages, run global businesses, and generate additional revenue through advanced analytics and Web channels. The company offers...

MICROSOFT CORPORATION SQL SERVER.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Microsoft's SQL Server is a scalable, reliable, flexible, and high-performance relational database management system for Windows NT server-based systems. The new Microsoft SQL Server, Enterprise Edition 7.0 extends the capabilities of SQL...

ORACLE CORP.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Oracle is the world's second largest software company, and a leading supplier of software for enterprise information management. The company has two major businesses: one aimed at providing the lowest cost information technology infrastructure,...

SYBASE, INC.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Sybase is one of the 10 largest global independent software companies. Its products, combined with its professional services and partner technologies, provide a platform for delivering deliver-ing end-to-end solutions for mobile and embedded...

ARDENT SOFTWARE, INC.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Ardent develops and markets embedded databases and software tools for enterprise-scale applications and data warehouses. Its family of database systems and warehouse development tools addresses the spectrum of data management issues, including...

BMC SOFTWARE INC.,.
March 1, 1999... BMC is an industry leader in delivering Application Service Assurance (ASA) solutions--enterprise-level software and support that improves the availability, performance, and recovery of critical applications and data in complex computing...

BRIO TECHNOLOGY.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... By combining anytime, anywhere information access with flexible I/T control, the Brio Enterprise product family gives the broad array of end users access to critical business information which adapts to their individual needs.

BUSINESS OBJECTS, SA.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Business Objects is active in four areas of the decision support tools market: data warehouse and data marts applications; packaged applications, to provide DSS access into the databases supporting popular packaged applications; Internet-based...

COGNOS, INCORPORATED.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Cognos, a Canadian player in the data warehousing market, offers an approach to data warehousing that helps maximize ROI from data warehouses or data marts. Business intelligence tools from Cognos provide access to both OLAP and relational...

EMBARCADERO TECHNOLOGIES. INC.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Embarcadero Technologies develops an integrated line of database tools for Windows NT and Windows 95 to design, develop, deploy, and manage databases. These database tools inter-operate with major SQL databases, including Oracle, Informix,...

INFORMATION ADVANTAGE.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Information Advantage provides query, OLAP, and enterprise reporting business intelligence solutions that can be used with the Internet, intranets, or extranets. The company's product line, MyEureka!, combines easy data access and scalable...

NEXT ACTION TECHNOLOGY.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... AnswerSets from this British company is an open client-server tool running on a range of client-server databases and integrating with all leading query and reporting tools to simplify ad-hoc and production reporting and to accelerate query...

PINE CONE SYSTEMS.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Pine Cone Systems was founded by Bill Inmon, the "father of data warehousing." The company offers a full suite of software products, including Content Tracker for capacity planning, data demographics, data quality, growth forecasting, change...

QUERYOBJECT SYSTEMS CORPORATION.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... QueryObject Systems Corporation (formerly CrossZ Software) was a pioneer in the preparation of data for analysis. The company offers a multi-dimensional business intelligence system for distributed data mart management. The QueryObject System...

LEVERAGING THE REWARDS OF STRATEGIC ALLIANCES.
March 1, 1999... Mergers are big news, but they're not the only news. More and more companies are entering into temporary alliances to gain competitive advantage. RISING EARNINGS PRESSURES, ACCELERATING GLOBAL competition, and increased consolidation are...

The New Battle Plans.
March 1, 1999... It's probably been at least a decade since any strategist actually believed he'd spend the rest of his career plotting the campaign of a great corporate army--from a nearby ridge. In the intervening years, platoons have been reengineered...

Growth.(Brief Article)
March 1, 1999... Growth, as Alice found, is not always an unalloyed delight. For business, maintaining consistent growth is an ongoing challenge. We read of companies that expanded too rapidly--all the way into Chapter 11. And there are those who were so...