CEOs dream of delivering efficient and sustainable growth - growth that would put serious distance between them and their competitors. Unfortunately, the way most large corporations generate growth is so expensive and inefficient that for most firms, meaningful, market-beating growth has remained just that - a dream. Until now.

Jean-Claude Larréché, the Alfred H. Heineken Chaired Professor of Marketing at INSEAD,spoke with INSEAD Knowledge and shared the results of his ten-year research project into what he calls "The Momentum Effect" a phenomenon that can lead to efficient self-sustaining growth.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/TheMomentumEffect080607.cfm?vid=52 »

Global information technology report: Making progress

Denmark and the Nordic countries again dominate the rankings in the Global Information Technology Report, but this year the United States and South Korea make progress in the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) for 2007-2008, which covers a record number of 127 developed and developing economies around the world.

“Today with the benefit of seven years of data, we have concrete, hard data to support the statement that technology does in fact make a country more competitive,” says Soumitra Dutta, the Roland Berger Chaired Professor in Business and Technology at INSEAD.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/GITR080608.cfm?vid=53 »

Crisis communications: The emergence of stakeholder media

When Le Monde exclaimed in a front-page headline: 'Danone prepares to shed 3,000 jobs in Europe, including 1,700 in France', on January 10, 2001, Danone -- France's national 'champion' and one of Europe's biggest food and beverage firms -- faced a major crisis. The announcement led to public and political protests, and a massive boycott of Danone's products.

Mark Hunter, INSEAD Adjunct Professor and a former investigative journalist, says "suddenly Danone, the most respected company in France, found themselves facing not only a social (or labour) crisis but also a societal crisis, unlike any other."

http://knowledge.insead.edu/CrisisCommunications080609.cfm?vid=54 »

Climate change

The economics of climate change

Rich countries have to take the lead in fighting global climate change. Lord Nicholas Stern, an economics professor from the London School of Economics, says that without a commitment from wealthy countries, carbon emissions will become “deeply damaging right across the economy and around the world.”

Stern was an advisor to the British government on climate change and published a 700-page report in 2006 now known as the Stern Report. It called for immediate action to reduce the risks of climate change.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/TheEconomicsOfClimateChange080605.cfm »

Climate change: How increasing energy consumption in the short term could bring benefits

The continued rise in food prices is just one example of the kinds of surprises we will be facing in the years to come. Ashok Khosla, a former director of the United Nations Environment Programme , says “there are many surprises coming up. I mean real surprises. Climate change was already a pretty big one.”

http://knowledge. insead.edu/ IncreasingEnergyConsumptionCouldBringBenefits080606.cfm »

Food crisis

Stemming the 'silent tsunami'

Over the past two years, approximately 100 million people have been pushed into poverty globally as a result of increased food prices. Gains in poverty reduction efforts in developing countries are at risk if governments fail to protect the poor from rising food prices, says Vikram Nehru, the World Bank’s Director of Poverty Reduction and Economic Management and Acting Chief Economist for East Asia.

“It’s like a silent tsunami in the sense that there’s no dramatic footage that can bring home to people the misery and the human suffering that such price increases can exert on the poor.”
 
http://knowledge.insead.edu/StemmingSilentTsunami080612.cfm?vid=55 »

Social responsibility

The business of positive change

“Profit-seeking is consistent with social entrepreneurship,” says Pamela Hartigan, the co-founder of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and author of ‘The Power of Unreasonable People: How Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World.’ Hartigan says social entrepreneurs see the profit motive as a means to the goal of improving society and not as an end in itself.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/PositiveChange080611.cfm »

The ‘learning journey’: Where social responsibility meets its match

An organisation based in the Netherlands is helping firms which want to make their mark in terms of social responsibility but aren’t sure how to go about it in a tangible way. EsteamWork started four years ago when its founder Machiel van Dooren observed that a growing number of companies wanted to take CSR seriously but didn’t know how to get the maximum impact. He also found that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at times needed outside expertise in areas other than their own, which is primarily in humanitarian aid.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/EsteamWorkLearningJourney080610.cfm »

Elsewhere on Knowledge

Riding the 'earning horse': Indian Railways

Indian Railways is the world's largest employer and one of the biggest and busiest rail networks in the world, carrying some 17 million people and more than one million tonnes of freight daily. It was, however, until very recently, a loss-making organisation, which was heading for bankruptcy. Starting his term in 2004 with a budget of just $200 million with which to save the national institution, India's Minister of Railways Lalu Prasad engineered a dramatic turnaround. Last year, Indian Railways' revenue came to $6 billion.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/IndianRailways080601.cfm?vid=47 »

The road to nationhood

Building a nation-state "out of the ashes of destruction is not easy," but the President of Timor-Leste (formerly East Timor), José Ramos-Horta, says his country will seek to become a viable nation by eliminating unemployment in the next two to three years by creating new jobs from its investments in infrastructure projects.

http://knowledge.insead.edu/RoadToNationhood080602.cfm?vid=49 »