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| December 2007 |
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We invite you to discover the Knowledge website's new look. In addition to our range of articles and podcasts (video and audio) highlighting INSEAD’s cutting-edge business research, you’ll also find a series of mini-sites featuring ’hot topics’ such as Leadership, Blue Ocean Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation. If you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to contact us. Stuart Pallister | ||
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Putting leaders on the couch When INSEAD Professor Manfred Kets de Vries coaches leadership teams, he effectively puts them on the couch – treating them not so much as rational actors but as emotional ones. A clinical professor of leadership development, Kets de Vries says “the autocratic leadership style doesn’t work so well any more in a knowledge society.” |
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Relationship building: A key driver for securing repeat business A study into consulting firm Celerant has found that relationship building is key to bringing in repeat business, which accounts for up to 70 per cent of its revenues each year. The study into Celerant Consulting, conducted by INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour Tom D’Aunno, also found that 91 per cent of clients surveyed would like to work with Celerant again. |
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Social innovation: Creating products for those at the bottom of the pyramid A growing number of global companies are being drawn to the seductive idea that money can be made by developing and marketing products for those at the bottom of the pyramid, some four billion people around the world who eke out a living on about two US dollars a day. Not only are companies attracted by the prospect of discovering markets with untapped growth potential, but they’re also aiming to have an impact, in a global society characterized by deep divisions between the haves and the have-nots. But those developing new products for those living in poverty are finding that cost alone isn’t the most important factor. |
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Buying companies for new competencies: Is it worth it? In fast-moving industries, large companies are increasingly using acquisitions as a strategy to obtain new competencies from smaller firms. When Rahul Kapoor, a PhD candidate in strategy at INSEAD, became interested in acquisitions, he noticed that although many promising hi-tech start-ups were being acquired, technological progress seemed to stall after the acquisition. |
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In search of blue oceans: AOL (Europe) Internet business America Online (AOL) has had a chequered history since its marriage to the US media giant Time Warner in 2002. Yet, despite the challenges it faces, AOL Europe’s current CEO Dana Dunne is bullish about the relevance and importance of Blue Ocean thinking to the company. |
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The brand imperative “There are only two advantages in life which are proprietary: technology and branding. Since I’m not a technologist, I decided that whatever business I was going to do next had to have a strong brand.” Having left journalism to join the family business, Ho Kwon Ping, Founder and Executive Chairman of the luxury hotel Banyan Tree Group, realised that his family’s various contract manufacturing companies were stuck in constant competition on the basis of cost alone, and that the hotel business could provide a vehicle for such proprietary brand creation.
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New media: The online evolution of newspapers In September, the New York Times did an about-face of sorts. It ended its paid-for online subscription model, under which it had been charging for access to premium content by columnists and commentators. Len Apcar, deputy managing editor of the International Herald Tribune and a former editor-in-chief of NYTimes.com, says enabling free and unfettered access to the online paper has "proven to be a very successful advertising model by itself."
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Healthcare 2020: Managing new health markets Are conventional healthcare models still relevant, especially in rapidly-growing economies such as India’s, what will be the economics of the healthcare business and who will be the players of the future? Harpal Singh, chairman of Fortis Healthcare, says “we need to stop fighting globalisation - it’s here, and we need to focus on how we can make it beneficial.” Singh also argues that countries like India could provide unprecedented opportunities both as a market and as a solutions provider.
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