Europe

Only 5% of big-data investments are in human resources.

A few years back, travelers flew into Budapest on cranky, Soviet TU-134 airliners that were noisy, smelly, and cramped. Good-sized male and female Hungarian attendants strolled up and down the narrow aisles doling out salami, pickles, fattening snacks, and lots of drinks without ice. Now these Soviet machines are gone, and you fly from Zurich […]

According to a study of German firms.

Lincoln assumed that its manufacturing prowess and fabled culture would allow it to succeed anywhere in the world. The company’s former CEO recounts how that thinking was put to the test.

Most American managers have a hard time making sense of Germany. It has a fraction of the resources and less than one-third the population of the United States. Labor costs are higher, paid vacations are at least three times as long, and strong unions are deeply involved at all levels of business, from the local […]

Academic–industry alliances have been around long enough to sprout their own ivy, yet these staples of technology innovation have undergone little innovation themselves. Now a few companies are pioneering ways to get more out of university research. One particularly successful model comes from Porsche, which has brought academic brainpower inside. A few years ago, Porsche, […]

It's a different way to approach regulation.

It's a lot of computer-to-computer collaboration.

Despite the best efforts of senior executives, major change initiatives often fail. Those failures have at least one common root: Executives and employees...

Freshwater economists take notice: Greece is as saltwater as it gets.

When most organizations strive to increase collaboration, they approach it too narrowly: as a value to cultivate--not a skill to teach. So they create...

According to several criteria, the UK is a digital star.

A tale of two regulatory regimes.

To the trained eye, even a quick plant tour can reveal a lot about a company. Here’s how to tell if a factory is truly lean—in as little as 30 minutes.

And other things your company should care about this year.

Photography: Courtesy of Prada / Costantino Ruspoli The Idea: While rival fashion houses have struggled and been acquired by conglomerates, Prada has prospered. Its CEO says that has a lot to do with the company’s culture. At Prada we have had to cope with our fair share of the unpredictable and the unexpected. Originally we […]

The most successful leaders understand that trust is a function of relationships as well as integrity and expertise. And they know that relationship-based, “structural” trust changes depending on where people stand on the organizational map.

Strategy is the art of creating value. It provides the intellectual frameworks, conceptual models, and governing ideas that allow a company’s managers to identify opportunities for bringing value to customers and for delivering that value at a profit. In this respect, strategy is the way a company defines its business and links together the only […]

No, it’s not eBay or FreeMarkets. It’s not even on the Net.

Social media can help you better map the customer journey.