Consumer services

How to build trust in a new era.

They have to tightly align their practices and clients.

Professional services firms typically have a 24/7 on-call culture. But one management consulting company is getting better results by experimenting with downtime—even in this economy.

Novartis, the $33 billion Swiss pharmaceutical company, is opening a pioneering biomedical R&D facility in China. The $100 million plant, scheduled to begin operations in May, will increase the company’s long-term access to the huge Chinese pharmaceutical market and attract top Chinese scientific talent. But CEO Daniel Vasella says there’s more to the story. Novartis, […]

In 2004 the biggest problem the online shoe retailer Zappos faced was how to staff its customer call center with dedicated, high-caliber service reps....

The best executive and professional jobs may no longer be full-time gigs.

Innovation is all about finding and filling people's unmet needs. But even innovators and organizations renowned for their scanning capabilities often...

Many felt pressure to lie about their personal lives.

They can play a valuable role at first, but then quickly bow to the desires of ruling elites.

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...

Roman L. Weil is appalled by what he doesn’t see on boards. Weil is an accountant on a mission: to expose financial illiteracy on corporate boards and fix it. As a chaired professor of accounting at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business; a consultant to the SEC, the U.S. Treasury, and the Financial […]

Long-standing human resource practices invest heavily in youth and push out older workers. This must change—and public policy, too—or companies will find themselves running off a demographic cliff as baby boomers age.

As a consultant, I learned the hard way that companies take control of the future by examining the past, that they change by looking in, not out.

Working product by product and country by country to develop the region’s digital economy

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...

In the four years since Rob Miranda became CEO of Growing Places, a provider of on-site child care for companies in the Midwestern United States, he has...

It is over fifteen years now since I met my first really dumb multimillionaire, and it made quite an impression on me. Up till then I had thought that you needed brains to make money: I was used to being asked “If you’re so clever, why aren’t you rich?” but this was the first time […]

By building on a hierarchy of goals, consultants and managers can work toward mutual interests.

When the biotech pioneer had to get a blockbuster drug to market fast, it didn’t lock itself into a rigid supply chain. It joined with partners to become a virtual manufacturer.

Humans have perpetually sought new tools and insights to help them make decisions. From entrails to artificial intelligence, what a long, strange trip it’s been.