Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 27, 2017

In reality, “handoffs” and transitions prove to be significant operational problems. The Autonomous Outsourcer. Business process outsourcing becomes business process algorithmization. As with traditional outsourcing, flexibility, responsiveness, and interoperability invariably prove problematic.

Outsourcing 8

Outsourcing Software CAPEX Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 26, 2016

Conventional wisdom holds that improving working conditions (which typically costs money) would undermine the competitive advantage these firms enjoy. Workers specialize in simple, highly routinized operations. They are incentivized to complete operations as quickly as possible. Operations in a Connected World.

Lean Manufacturing 9

Lean Manufacturing Supply Chain Apparel Compliance 9

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 26, 2012

To understand my point, let's think about how big companies have developed scale advantages through information systems. In the past three decades, managers have embraced off-shoring, outsourcing, and open innovation. Such information collection and distribution required massive scale and drove competitive advantage.

Porter 12

Porter Competitive Advantage Safe Harbor Efficiency 12

N2Growth Blog

APRIL 21, 2011

Most people tend to look at acquisitions from a rather myopic and traditional M&A perspective: making a strategic or synergistic purchase of an operating entity on an accretive basis. However restricting your view of acquisitions to operating companies is like playing a football game with only one play in your playbook.

Real Estate 302

Real Estate Company Brand Operations 302

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 8, 2013

Offshore Outsourced Product Development. In fact, these six Indian engineers were not employees of Otis at all, but rather on the payroll of an outsourced product development company headquartered in Andhra Pradesh, India. Our next two insights examine ways in which this lab-centric innovation model has changed.

Engineering 8

Engineering Globalization Innovation Marketing 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 18, 2012

This meant abandoning IBM's existing organization, in which product silos and geographic entities operated independently and frequently were more competitive than collaborative. Palmisano could not have succeeded at placing values at the center of IBM's operations without strong principles of his own. When the U.S.

Globalization 15

Globalization Golden Parachute Short-term Long-term 15

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

That means cracking down on tax shelters that give some businesses a competitive advantage. That means strengthening regulation where some businesses are putting competitive pressure on others by skimping on safety, by denying workers basic benefits, or by operating with dangerous degrees of leverage.

Class 8

Class Outsourcing Long-term Short-term 8

Strategy Driven

MARCH 18, 2011

Further, they need to limit their focus to, at most, six capabilities, and make those capabilities work together as a mutually reinforcing system that perpetuates competitive advantage. Assets are important, but they are, increasingly, table stakes in most competitive industries; everyone in the game has them.

Resources 52

Resources Industry System Strategy 52

Marshall Goldsmith

JANUARY 13, 2014

Future leaders will have to learn how to manage global production, marketing, and sales teams to achieve competitive advantage. Leaders who can make globalization work in their favor will have a huge competitive advantage. Organizations with technologically savvy leaders will have a competitive advantage.

Competitive Advantage 140

Competitive Advantage Globalization Diversity Technology 140

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 26, 2013

Companies fall into the Jordan fallacy when they ask their very best operators, who are skilled at executing a known business model, to transform overnight into entrepreneurs who are skilled at searching for an unknown business model. That doesn''t mean that companies should either outsource the task or bring in entirely fresh blood.

Ries 8

Ries Telecommunications Business Model Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 23, 2014

Rather it’s an on-going nipping and tucking of organizational resources to achieve both growth and efficiency at multiple levels: the company overall, the operating group level, and even within functional groups like human resources and information technology. What is the business’s value proposition and it sources of competitive advantage?

Ulrich 8

Ulrich Cost Efficiency Consultative 8

Strategy Driven

SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

Validate your worth to the overall company operation. Under the rules of supply chain dynamics, one must study your supplier relationships, formalize a plan of outsourcing and develop collaborations. Become top management’s partner in efficiency of operations. Continuous quality improvement within your own operation.

Budgeting 50

Budgeting Planning Strategic Planning Competitive Advantage 50

Strategy Driven

AUGUST 10, 2015

(If your firm outsources mobile app development to an agency or design firm, there’s your answer). How seriously do you take this competitive threat? Who is in charge of rethinking your company’s entire business model and operations? EVALUATE how StrategyDriven gives you a competitive advantage.

Strategy 50

Strategy Succession Software Industry 50

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 20, 2016

” Rather, this approach recognizes a fundamental shift in the sources of value creation and competitive advantage toward software. Disney has reinvented the customer experience by translating what it exclusively knows about park operations into software, substantively enhancing its customer value proposition.

Software 8

Software Company Airlines Business Model 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 19, 2015

Wall Street began charging a “conglomerate discount,” saying that diverse operations were hard to analyze with confidence. True synergies across the diverse operations were often hard to see. Rather than rely on in-house production farms, most businesses will just outsource production to independent printer farms.

Engineering 8

Engineering Learning Curve Fixed Costs Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 24, 2015

Executives are bombarded with bestselling ideas and best practices for achieving competitive advantage, but many of these ideas and practices contradict each other. Should you create a blue ocean, be adaptive, play to win — or forget about a sustainable competitive advantage altogether?

Strategy 8

Strategy Competitive Advantage Environment Execution 8

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 9, 2013

When the engineers and operators they hire lack real-world building experience, the organization has to teach them. Manufacturers are therefore faced with a daunting choice: outsource the design and testing to countries where tactile intelligence is still high, or fill the knowledge gap of new hires in the U.S.

Engineering 8

Engineering Competitive Advantage Knowledge Management Outsourcing 8

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 13, 2013

That was a distinction with an operational and organizational difference. If the right words can cognitively and creatively reorient enterprise conversations, executives need to think twice about the vocabulary they outsource to their ad agencies and HR. Linguistics should be a source of design insight and competitive advantage.

Ulrich 9

Ulrich Kaizen Innovation Competitive Advantage 9

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 27, 2015

For a product or service to be counted as innovative at Whirlpool, it must be unique and compelling to the consumer, create a competitive advantage, sit on a migration path that can yield further innovations, and provide consumers with more value than anything else in the market. This definition may seem somewhat generic.

Innovation 8

Innovation Company Engineering Supply Chain 8

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 23, 2015

The team is the company’s raw DNA, the purpose their religion, and culture their unique way of operating based on common principles, norms, and values. Like aiming a rocket ship into orbit, if you get this wrong from the start, your trajectory will only get worse over time. Have you rewarded them and thanked them?

Company 8

Company Self-aware Long-term Mission Statement 8