Industrial sector

Challenged by world-class competitors, manufacturing companies in the United States have greatly improved their product development efforts as well as...

Competing in overcrowded industries is no way to sustain high performance. The real opportunity is to create blue oceans of uncontested market space.

When Ben Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac and the words, “A little neglect may breed great mischief,” he did not have price fixing in mind. To the 47 executives in companies in the folding-box industry convicted of price fixing, however, the words seem tailored to fit. In those companies convicted under antitrust laws in 1976, […]

Femtosecond lasers emit pulses of light that last just a millionth of a billionth of a second. These lasers enable surgery so precise that a single mitochondrion can be removed without harming the rest of the cell, and machining so controlled that structures can be micromachined within a piece of glass. Eric Mazur, a professor […]

A superior driving experience will not be enough in the future.

Colossal County Hospital was coming apart at the seams. With dozens of newly hired doctors, nurses, and technicians, millions of dollars of equipment on the road, and patient appointments backed up for months, the new facility was impossible to use. For one thing, construction wasn’t finished, and much of what was complete was faulty. Worse […]

While Tesla and others focused on bigger batteries and faster charging, Nio invested in customer experience, infrastructure, and leasing programs.

The more networked a market is, the harder it is for an innovation to take hold. Smart innovators learn to orchestrate marketwide change by starting from the endgame they desire.

Three ways to minimize risk.

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, […]

For decades the difficulty of motivating salespeople has been frustrating sales and marketing managers. To the most effective ones, two things are clear: one, the job is difficult; two, there is no one simple solution. Believing that “good salespeople are born, not made,” many managers recognize that recruiting is important. Others holding that “if you […]

It's a different way to approach regulation.

When corporate leaders or the organizations they represent mess up, they face the difficult decision of whether to apologize publicly. A public apology...

At this large GM plant the union and management jointly seek to change the meaning of work itself

High-stakes projects need all-star teams. But all-stars often play by their own rules—and fight like cats and dogs.

Let the market rule instead.

Lessons from car dealerships.

Now that Toyota is on the ropes, people are lining up to get their punches in. Analysis and advice are coming from people who’ve probably never visited the company, let alone have deep expertise in the Toyota Production System. The result is a growing mythology about what went wrong at Toyota and what other companies […]

When companies are blocked from moving upmarket, entire industries stagnate.

A defense of Haystack, the controversial parking app.