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In this edition of Knowledge, we highlight a six-year-long study into the 'discovery' skills that innovative entrepreneurs need to develop. We take a look at INSEAD's Africa Initiative and, with the Copenhagen climate change talks in the headlines, energy issues take centre stage.
On the Knowledge site, you'll find the ranking of the Top 200 CEOs. This study, the first global ranking of CEOs based on company performance during their time in office, has been created by three INSEAD professors. The ranking is based on a global data set of some 2,000 CEOs of 48 nationalities and from companies in 33 countries. We'll have more on this in next month's edition of the newsletter.
As ever, we hope you'll forward our articles, or even this newsletter, to your friends and colleagues.
We wish you all a prosperous New Year.
Regards,
Stuart Pallister
Editor, INSEAD Knowledge |
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The innovator's DNA |
Breaking the bank: finding value amid the debris |
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Shedding light: INSEAD initiatives seek to foster growth, development in Africa |
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A major new study has highlighted the key skills that innovative and creative entrepreneurs need to develop. According to Hal Gregersen, an INSEAD professor and co-author of a six-year-long study into disruptive innovation involving some 3,500 executives, there are five 'discovery' skills you need but, he says, you don't have to be 'great in everything.' |
A whole new industry is springing up as a result of the financial crisis to deal with a central issue: how to handle failing banks. INSEAD Professor of Banking and Finance Jean Dermine has taken his quarter-century's worth of research and turned it into something a bit more forward-looking: a book entitled 'Bank Valuation and Value-Based Management. |
Listen to INSEAD faculty, alumni and associates talk, and you realise that Africa is no longer just a story of disease, poverty, misery and humanitarian aid. Or of China's hunger for raw materials and energy, while the Japanese and Koreans buy land in Africa to grow their own food. Today, Africa is also a story of investment and growth on a global scale. |
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Leadership today: less charisma, more consensus
When you think of words to describe good leadership, 'charisma' usually comes somewhere near the top of the list. After all, all the good ideas in the world won't get anywhere if you aren't compelling enough to get people to listen to you. But not all successful CEOs are charismatic and today's complex and profound economic crisis has created a real challenge both for executives and for the professionals who train them.
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How to save banks without using taxpayers' money
In the recent financial crisis, taxpayers in many countries had to pick up the bills that resulted from governments bailing out banks, say Theo Vermaelen and Christian Wolff. The idea that the government will save you if you make mistakes encourages excessive risk-taking. Bailouts have created popular resentment against bankers' compensation, which makes it difficult to pay competitive salaries after a bank is rescued. So bailouts, which also add to the government deficits and crowd out other government spending plans, have many undesirable characteristics.
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Visual equity: being front and centre increases sales
"Unless you're Coca-Cola," says INSEAD Associate Marketing Professor Pierre Chandon, "it's important to be visible on the shelves."
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A new global currency should replace the US dollar as the international reserve currency, as the long-term deterioration of America's economy and the greenback is fuelling a "currency-regime crisis", says Martin Wolf, associate editor and chief economics commentator of the Financial Times.
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SME financing: small businesses struggle to survive the downturn
When it comes to securing financial support, entrepreneur Jack Ma, chairman and CEO of China's Alibaba Group, has this advice for small and medium-sized enterprises: don't rely on the government and the banks; rely instead on your family and friends.
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Infrastructure private equity: investors seek returns in 'mid to high teens' in Asia on growth potential
Investors putting their money into emerging Asia's infrastructure are looking for better returns than they'd get in developed economies, although they're not looking for 'PE-style' returns.
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What's next after Copenhagen?
Was there too much riding on the United Nations Climate Change Conference which concluded in Copenhagen at the weekend? Two energy experts, who recently took part in International Energy Week in Singapore, seem to think so.
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Copenhagen: what should investors be demanding from companies?
The outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference may have disappointed some business leaders and may not be the 'Global Deal' that many, including the UK's Carbon Trust, had been hoping for, but it is being touted as another small step forward in the long process towards reducing carbon emissions.
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A nuclear renaissance?
In an age of dwindling natural resources and expanding economies, more countries are turning to nuclear power. According to Mark Fitzpatrick, Senior Fellow for Non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, not since the Cold War has there been such renewed interest in nuclear -- though this time, the agenda is different.
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Energy-friendly: how one investment company is giving clean energy entrepreneurs a boost to mitigate climate change
E+Co is not what you would call a typical investment company. For starters, it's not a large company with a huge amount of capital. Second, it's focused exclusively on energy and third, it invests in only small and growing clean energy businesses from developing countries.
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With the collapse of external demand in the wake of the global financial crisis, China needs to reduce its dependence on exports and investments, and shift towards internal private consumption, says Stephen Roach, a leading economist and Hong Kong-based chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia..
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China and the debt crisis
The author of a new book on China warns that if 2010 is another difficult year for the US economy, Washington could "come under a lot of pressure to impose tariffs on Chinese products."
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The Indian Renaissance
Economics examiners must love China and India. What a perfect pair of rising economic Asian giants to use for a compare-and-contrast question for their students. A thousand years ago, both countries were civilised and technologically advanced while Europeans huddled in draughty castles and gnawed meat off bones. Both countries missed out on the Industrial Revolution, and seemed bewildered by the rise of the barbarian West. But they succumbed to its domination, shook it off in the 1940s, then embraced socialism, before reforming their economies along market lines to power ahead in the 1990s and the new millennium.
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