Operations

As CEOs increasingly turn to technology to help them cope with a rapidly changing business environment, chief information officers (CIOs) are no longer simply ‘the IT guys’. Increasingly, they are expected to play a more strategic role.

Small and large businesses have been searching for decades for the holy grail of organisational change: the perfect way to motivate employees to change their old ways for what management (or consultants!) deem to be better, new ones.

“I think one of the basics of transcultural leadership is empathy,” says Carlos Ghosn, the man who is credited with turning around major Japanese car maker Nissan.

Sustainability is becoming an increasingly hot topic in business circles, but when it comes to grasping the sense of urgency surrounding the issue, many of the current generation of business leaders aren’t very good at ‘getting it’. That’s according to the outgoing CEO of BT plc, Ben Verwaayen.

A new INSEAD-European Business Summit report on climate change has highlighted a surge in ‘green’ activities by US entrepreneurs, backed by venture capital.

Tackling climate change for Europe is “an incredible opportunity to innovate and compete with the rest of the world.” That’s the view of Microsoft International President Jean-Philippe Courtois, speaking at the recent European Business Summit in Brussels, which was devoted to climate change.

When companies look for a manager, they should look for experience, right? Well, maybe not. INSEAD professors Kishore Sengupta and Luk Van Wassenhove say their research has revealed what they call the ‘experience trap.’