Leadership & Organisations
Leadership & Organisations
Strategy and Organization in Sony
Sony now has designated its next chief executive – Kazuo Hirai, whose credentials include running the US game division and then turning the overall game division back from a precipice of potentially enormous losses. With Sony’s long slide from leadership in multiple businesses (think TVs, portable music, and games), there is a lot of second-guessing of their strategies so far.
Leadership & Organisations
Is “Command and Collaborate” the new leadership model?
The theme at Davos this year was “The Great Transformation: Shaping New Models.” One of the models up for discussion was leadership. Panels with titles like “Leadership Under Pressure” and “New Leadership Models from China” abounded.
Leadership & Organisations
Corporate governance: managing the known unknowns
Raising corporate governance and oversight standards is easier in theory than in practice. How should companies balance increased supervision with efficient execution? INSEAD professor Ludo Van der Heyden, tells us how.
Leadership & Organisations
There’s no place like where?
The more you move around, the harder it is to know where home is – but the more important it feels to have roots. The international communities of Asia offer interesting lessons on resolving this paradox.
Entrepreneurship
How to benefit from closed networks?
Let’s continue reviewing basic topics in inter-personal networking. We learned that an individual with open inter-personal network is a person whose friends don’t know each other. This individual is considered to be a broker, because he or she can combine information and knowledge from some of his/her network contacts and create something new and innovative. We also know that some people are simply hardwired in their brains to become brokers, because they are more manipulative with their network contacts than the others (see the previous post on self-monitoring).
Entrepreneurship
Kodak versus Fujifilm
The news about Kodak’s entry into Chapter 11 was paired with a Wall Street Journal story on how Fujifilm faced the same threat of digital photography, but were able to successfully adapt to the new challenges. To me, Kodak’s descent into bankruptcy is almost unimaginable, because I remember how dominant it was in film sales. I worked some summers in a photo store selling film and cameras. At the time, Kodak films were the most expensive, followed by Fuji and then Agfa.
Entrepreneurship
The imitator’s dilemma
I have enjoyed the book “The Innovator’s DNA” by my INSEAD colleague Hal Gregersen with Jeff Dyer and Clayton M. Christensen. It made me recall the earlier book “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, and realize that part of my own research has been on a complementary issue. These books document the difficulties in maintaining and directing innovation efforts, and one possible response to them would be to say: Why bother innovating if I can wait for others to innovate and focus on being the best at implementing the innovation?
Leadership & Organisations
The Iron Lady’s failed mid-career transition
With the recent movie, The Iron Lady, leadership scholars like myself have seized the opportunity to reflect on the lessons of her life and career. In the film we see an old and diminished Maggie flashing back to Thatcher at the pinnacle of her power. But, perhaps the most important and the least obvious lesson— for Thatcher herself as well as for us— is about the midlife transition she failed to make; victim, as many of us, of her own success.
Leadership & Organisations
Being a Bridge
Anyone who loves Apple products should profusely thank Bill Fernandez.
Leadership & Organisations
When spending hurts
You’d think that creating a more equitable distribution of wealth would curb the urge to spend on status symbols – be they designer handbags or flat-screen TVs – as the “have-nots” try to keep up with the Jones.” But new marketing consumer research shows that the people will pay the price to stand out, even if they can’t afford it.
Leadership & Organisations
Leading During Downturns
Continuing on the theme of what the current market uncertainties may mean for leaders and their organizations…
Leadership & Organisations
Value Creation Logic – Not Budget Logic – Is Key to Successful Turnarounds
Profits come from the gap between revenues and costs. So it is not surprising that when a downturn hits (typically in the form of lower demand and revenues), the typical emergency response is to develop plans to (a) increase revenues, and (b) decrease costs. How this is done, however, explains the difference between successful turnaround strategies and incremental, cosmetic responses.
Leadership & Organisations
Locked out of the boardroom
When new rules mandating seats for women on corporate boards go into effect in Europe next year, on which side will you be sitting?
Leadership & Organisations
Women on Boards: First, Diversity
For companies to be competitive, they should think strategically and unconventionally about the composition of their board.
Leadership & Organisations
Fortis Healthcare: Moving beyond India
Healthcare needs are almost desperate in many parts of Asia and one company is ambitiously ramping up its services across the region.