The McKinsey Quarterly articles from March 2001

The McKinsey Quarterly archives from March 2001

From the Stock Market to the Stockroom
March 22, 2001... It has been a year since the NASDAQ crash. Many of last year's darlings, such as Kibu.com and Pets.com, have gone our of business; others, such as Priceline and Webvan, may be dead by the time you read this. Even longstanding companies, such as...

Brazil's Head Start in On-Line Banking
March 22, 2001... When the talk turns to the growth of the Internet, South America hardly ever looms large. Yet in Brazil, the use of the Internet for consumer banking not only is much more common than it is in Asia (Exhibit 1) but also approaches the level...

Selling Internet Banking to Asians
March 22, 2001... Will Internet banking ever take off in Asia? Although much of the region is wired, obstacles remain. Customers are concerned about security; the banking products available so far tend to be unexciting; and in the wake of Asia's recent economic...

Giving Europeans an On-Line Push
March 22, 2001... Why are so many on-line banking ventures--start-ups and incumbents alike--foundering? A business that can conduct such a high proportion of its transactions electronically would seem well suited to move on-line rapidly. Yet, perversely, the rate...

A Broadband Future for Financial Advice
March 22, 2001... In theory, Europe already has a single market in financial products. European Internet customers can buy long-term investments from financial institutions outside their local areas, but few of them actually do; most people want to get...

Is the Third Time the Charm for B2B?
March 22, 2001... The first two waves of B2B e-marketplaces generally failed to prosper. But the next wave may benefit all of their participants--even the markets themselves. During the months since "B2B" (business to business) became the password to success...

Getting Smart about Supply Chain Management
March 22, 2001... B2B exchanges can't improve the efficiency of every element of the supply chain. An improved information flow is what they really have to offer. Some investors continue to believe that on-line business-to-business (B2B) exchanges could...

Building Enduring Consortia
March 22, 2001... Consortium-based vertical marketplaces were supposed to have high liquidity, but their real advantage is information. Neither benefit will materialize until their members make more than a nominal commitment. At the beginning of last year,...

A Buyer's Guide to B2B Markets
March 22, 2001... Only if B2B e-marketplaces collect and disseminate information that isn't available elsewhere can they provide long-term benefits. The two preceding articles--"Getting smart about supply chain management" and "Building enduring...

A Seller's Guide to B2B Markets
March 22, 2001... For sellers, B2B e-marketplaces embody the Internet's least attractive tendencies. Is there an alternative? Sellers in all product categories, from raw materials to highly engineered machinery, have approached the Internet reluctantly....

Thinking out of the boXX
March 22, 2001... An interview with Stephen Winterhalder. Even in the best of times, big companies find it hard enough to create new businesses, so the advent of the World Wide Web and the attendant stock market hoopla put even greater pressure on top...

Getting Prices Right on the Web
March 22, 2001... Two widely disparate approaches to pricing have dominated the sale of goods and services on the Internet. In the rush to capture first-mover advantage, many start-ups have offered untenably low prices. Because the Internet, the reasoning...

Putting Citizens On-Line, Not in Line
March 22, 2001... Electronic government can provide faster, more convenient, and more accurate services that will improve the lives of the people. Although governments hardly stand at the forefront of Internet innovation, their use of the Net to deliver...

Late Edition: Another Chance for Newspapers on the Web
March 22, 2001... The sooner newspapers act, the more likely they are to succeed in offering pointers to other kinds of company that also missed the narrowband boat. So far, newspapers have made less of the Internet than they might have. Although they are the...

Magazines' Home Companion
March 22, 2001... Although few magazines make money from their World Wide Web sites, the Web is still an important opportunity. Magazines know that they can't ignore the World Wide Web, but few of them are doing well there. Of the 100 leading print magazines...

A Future for E-Alliances
March 22, 2001... Mixed results from the first wave of e-alliances offer lessons for deal makers who are negotiating the next one. Not so long ago, e-commerce alliances were being struck at an amazing pace: in 1999 alone, companies announced approximately...

Valuing Dot-Coms after the Fall
March 22, 2001... Investment values always revert to a fundamental level based on cash flows. Get used to it. It was inevitable. Last year's decline in the NASDAQ composite index brought a sudden halt to a heady--some would say reckless--time for investors and...

Organizing for Growth
March 22, 2001... Sir John Browne of British Petroleum puts it simply: "Our strategy is our organization." Nokia executives are even more laconic: "Strategy = Structure = Implementation." These sayings indicate a change in the way complex global firms discern...

The Road Ahead for Telematics
March 22, 2001... Vehicles are now being transformed by a wireless revolution that will substantially enlarge the elematics market over the next decade. [1] But carmakers are unlikely to win much of the revenue from this expanding market unless they aggressively...

War for Talent, Part Two
March 22, 2001... The war for management talent is intensifying dramatically. Last year, McKinsey updated a 1997 study in which researchers surveyed 6,900 managers (including 4,500 senior managers and corporate officers) at 56 large and midsize US companies. The...

Insuring Profits
March 22, 2001... It is becoming harder to make money selling auto and home owners' insurance, for retail property and casualty insurers, which purvey these financial products, are sacrificing profit for market share in an already saturated industry. At the same...

Splicing a Cost Squeeze into the Genomics Revolution
March 22, 2001... Last year's announcement that scientists had sequenced the human genome highlighted both the potential of genomics-related technologies and the speed with which they are evolving in the biopharmaceuticals industry. Most observers and analysts...

The Innovative Organization
March 22, 2001... Why new ventures need more than a room of their own Companies can grow quickly without sacrificing performance discipline. The trick is to balance partitioning and integration. The idea that new businesses prosper best when separated from...

Teamwork at the Top
March 22, 2001... When the top team isn't working well, the whole company suffers. How can top teams fix themselves? The popular business press on both sides of the Atlantic is infatuated with chief executive officers who have drunk from the Holy Grail of...

Lawyers Get Down to Business
March 22, 2001... New pressures are hitting the legal industry. Now is the time to think through your strategy. Over the past 30 years, globalization, deregulation, and technological change have reconfigured many service industries, such as banking and...

Building Blocks for Capital Projects
March 22, 2001... The makers of the New Beetle and the Walkman have a lot to teach the builders of oil rigs and chemicals plants. Companies in the business of building large capital projects--power stations, chemicals plants, oil rigs, amusement parks, and the...

Unlocking the Value in Big Pharma
March 22, 2001... Size can benefit drug manufacturers, but only if they manage it. In the pharmaceuticals industry, bigger doesn't always mean better: the largest companies haven't necessarily produced the highest long-term returns, and pharma remains one of...

Hospitals Get Serious about Operations
March 22, 2001... The income statements of hospitals have been ailing. The cure? Serious attention to operating efficiency. Walk into most hospitals in the United States today, and you observe NW a true logistical anachronism. Patients arrive in the admissions...

New Tools for Negotiators
March 22, 2001... A few simple ideas make it possible to construct powerful strategies for even the most complex deals. Negotiations are the stuff of business life, and volumes of advice tell managers how to prepare for and conduct them. But most of the advice...

Measuring What Matters in Nonprofits
March 22, 2001... Every nonprofit organization should measure its progress in fulfilling its mission, its success in mobilizing its resources, and its staff's effectiveness on the job. Most nonprofit groups track their performance by metrics such as dollars...

Home Is Where the Network Is
March 22, 2001... During the next few years, home networks will leap off the pages of science magazines and into the households of millions. But who will pay, and how? Ever since the Internet entered the popular culture, futurists and technophiles have been...

Mobile Portals Mobilize for Scale
March 22, 2001... Most of today's mobile portals are likely to fail. The winners will build the right partnerships and alliances. Mobile portals are set for battle, and the stakes are high indeed. In Europe alone, the market for mobile consumer services is...

Programmers Abroad: A Primer on Offshore Software Development
March 22, 2001... Developing software in foreign lands can save time and money--but only if companies do it right. More and more companies are going offshore to develop and maintain their software: GE, Bank of America, Target, and American Express, for...

The Alchemy of LBOs
March 22, 2001... How can investment bankers achieve better results at chemicals companies than engineers and chemists do? No, it isn't black magic. Over the past two years, big chemicals corporations seeking to improve shareholder returns by running more...

Banking on US Social Security
March 22, 2001... Private Social Security accounts will challenge financial institutions, but the opportunity is huge--and may be replicable in other countries as they reform their retirement systems. Last year's presidential campaign in the United States...

In defense of the US current-account deficit.(Brief Article)(Abstract)
March 22, 2001... Technological change generated both prosperity and the trade gap. Neither its continuation nor its decline would be likely to have catastrophic effects. Last year, for the third year in a row, the US current-account deficit set a...