Management

Harvard Business Review McKinsey Award winners 2006

Go to Harvard Business Review and download the two winning articles free of charge through April 24.

Winners 2006: The 48th Annual McKinsey Awards: Recognizing Excellence in Management Thinking
Longtime readers of Harvard Business Review will know that the McKinsey Awards, now in their 48th year, recognize the articles most likely to have a lasting influence on management. Every year, a panel of judges—distinguished leaders from business, the nonprofit sector, and the academy—select the two best articles out of a field of around 90.

Harvard Business Review is pleased to announce that Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer, the coauthors of “Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility,� have won the first-place 2006 McKinsey Award. Gary Hamel, the author of “The Why, What, and How of Management Innovation,� is the second-place winner.

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Branding Strategy Xbox360: Less Hulk, More Bruce Lee

Less Hulk, More Bruce Lee – Michael Jager – JDK Design – Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft had invited three brand designers to Redmond, Washington, in 2004 to present a new identity for the upcoming Xbox 360

Landor, the incumbent, was an obvious choice as it had created the packaging for Windows and attained legendary marketing status for transforming Federal Express into FedEx, including the slogan “The world on time” and the masterpiece logo. Turner Duckworth, out of London and San Francisco, authors of the Amazon.com identity (with its “logo that smiles from A to Z”) was also a contender. And then there was David: JDK Design.

First up was Michael Jager, JDK’s creative director. Standing before the tribunal, Jager (pronounced like the Rolling Stone) illustrated his vision through a combination of street theater, design psychology, and cultural fluency. Comparing the original Xbox with the Incredible Hulk, Jager used a razor to slash an X in a sheet of paper and then thrust his head through the hole. “X today is all AARGGHHH!” he bellowed. Pure aggressive power.

Jager acknowledged power as a critical component separating Xbox from its competitors but urged the company to see it–and express it– differently. “Our approach was to transition Xbox from this hulk of escaping power into this quiet power that is lurking, something still incredibly dangerous but with more of an elegance and grace,” he recalls. “The analogy we used was Bruce Lee.”

Indeed, Jager’s illustrative shorthand became a mantra for the 360 team as it created the look and feel of the new system. “Whenever we evaluated our work in terms of guiding our decisions for Xbox 360,” Hall says, “it was like, ‘This is too Hulk’ or ‘We need more Bruce Lee.'”

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E-Plus-Chef Krammer: Mobilfunkpreise in drei Jahren halbiert

heise online – E-Plus-Chef Krammer: Mobilfunkpreise in drei Jahren halbiert

Mir gefällt die klare Strategie Ausrichtung vom neuen Chef bei E-Plus. E-Plus als schlanke und effiziente Wholesale Plattform auszubauen und über, nennen wir sie, MVNOs den Endkundenmarkt bearbeiten zu lassen. Wachstum ist in Deutschland angesichts der Mond Preise bei einer Preiselastizität von >1 auf jeden Fall noch vorhanden.
Für die anderen drei Netzbetreiber wird die Luft dünner werden, jedoch besteht auch weiterhin viel Luft zu atmen. Mal ein paar ungeordnete Punkte die mir in den Kopf schiessen:

  • Wie weit können O2, TMO und Vodafone ihre Marken “strecken”? Kann man mit einem Mono-Brand Ansatz verschiedene Marktsegmente abdecken oder stoßen die Drei langfristig hier an ihre Grenzen. Wenn ich mir das MVNO’s Konzept ansehe, dann sehe ich da eine Stärke um Nischen-Segmente zu bearbeiten.
  • Aufgeblassene Kostenstrukturen. Ich bin mir nicht sicher, ob sich die Netzbetreiber langfristig mit ihrer riesigen Marketing Maschinerie am Leben halt können. Da wurde und da wird sicherlich noch weiter abgespeckt werden müssen.
  • Walled-Garden vs. Netz-Neutralität. Seit nun mehr zig-Jahren warten die Netzbetreiber auf die Geburt der Daten Cash-Cow. Wenn man jedoch prohibitiv neue Dienste bepreist, dann darf man sich nicht wundern, wenn die Adaptionsrate kaum über die Early-Adaptors hinausgeht. Der Ansatz alles zu kontrollieren, sprich Dienst & Content, war bislang leider nicht erfolgreich und führt meiner Meinung nach auch nicht zum Erfolg. TMO geht mit Web’n Walk da schon in die richtige Richtung.

Ich kann der Walled-Garden Ansatz der Mobilfunker ja verstehen, schließlich möchten die z.B. nicht das Instant Messaging Dienste die teuren SMS & MMS substituieren oder das Dritte das Content Geschäft alleine abgreifen

An dieser Stelle kommt man jedoch unweigerlich immer wieder bei der Diskussion “Intelligent Bit-Pipe” vs. “Pure Bit-Pipe” an. Um mal ein paar Ansatzpunkte und Ideen in die Runde zu werfen, verweise ich an dieser Stelle mal auf den VisionMobile Blog der dieses Thema in einem sehr spannenden Artikel aufgreift.

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Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer

At my next project assignment i will make a hardcopy of the article for the project manager. 🙂

Companies today glorify the executive who logs 100-hour workweeks, the road warrior who lives out of a suitcase in multiple time zones, and the negotiator who takes a red-eye to make an 8 a.m. meeting.

…corporations have all kinds of policies designed to protect employees–rules against smoking, sexual harassment, and so on–but they push people to the brink of self-destruction by expecting them to work too hard, too long, and with too little sleep.

We now know that 24 hours without sleep or a week of sleeping four or five hours a night induces an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of .1%.

Czeisler recommends that companies institute corporate sleep policies that discourage scheduled work beyond 16 consecutive hours as well as working or driving immediately after late-night or overnight flights.

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The Art of Acquisition – Tech giant Cisco

Cisco is one of the few companies that have found a way to succeed in this risky business. Since it made its first acquisition in 1993, the world’s No. 1 maker of computer networking equipment has gobbled up a total of 110 companies–an average of about one every six weeks for 13 years. It has had its fair share of flubs and failures, of course, but since 2002, more than 90 percent of the workers acquired by Cisco have stayed with the company.

USNews.com: Tech giant Cisco has mastered the art of acquisitions; some examples

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