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Transforming Rural India Through Agricultural Innovation

Harvard Business Review

Subramaniam is widely acclaimed as the Father of the Green Revolution in India, because in the mid-1960s, as the Minister for Food and Agriculture, he successfully handled a major food crisis). On my last trip to India, I witnessed an innovation experiment, National Agro Foundation (NAF) , that addresses this wicked problem.

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Volkswagen and the End of Corporate Spin

Harvard Business Review

Other managers see parcelling out information on a need-to-know basis as an operational maxim, important to maintaining efficiency. In response to its quality crisis in the 1990s , the pharma giant significantly adjusted its culture around clarity and communication. Novo Nordisk was an early convert to radical honesty.

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At Amazon, It’s All About Cash Flow

Harvard Business Review

For example, if you sell a service that you’ll be delivering for the next twelve months, the costs and revenues are supposed to be parceled out over those twelve months, regardless of when the cash changes hands. Super-efficient retailers such as Walmart and Costco have been able to bring their CCC down to the single digits.

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Outwitting America's Broken Political System

Harvard Business Review

Even as the world economy lurches from crisis to crisis, Americans at every socioeconomic level could prosper. Their plan's main theme was that government should require industries to clean up the environment more thoroughly than to date, but let companies seek out the most efficient ways to meet these tougher standards.