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If you're looking for companies with the greatest global market share, throw away the usual top ten lists. The real superperformers are what Hermann Simon calls "Hidden Champions", firms that relish their anonymity and approach success in unconventional ways. In this article, he summarizes highly contrarian findings in nine points: 1. Authoritarian-Participative Leadership 2. Overambitious Goals 3. Reliance on Own Strength 4. More Work Than Heads 5. Extreme Innovation 6. Narrow Market Focus 7. Rigorous Globalization 8. Little Marketing Professionalism 9. Closeness to Competitors

Most companies underestimate the importance of intangible assets such as knowledge, creativity, ideas, and relationships. All these account for more value in our economy than the tangibles. Yet it's difficult for companies to get their arms around intangibles, so they rarely protect them as carefully as they do bricks and hardware. What would you do if your smartest people suddenly left? How can you ensure that what one department or division learns is widely shared throughout the company? The discipline of knowledge management (KM) was designed to answer questions such as these.
Here are four proposed steps.

Can hundreds of research teams working together rewrite the way we manufacture? [A look at the Intelligent Manufacturing Systems (IMS) - program]

Intel averages 3 million email messages per day. That's enough to choke even the fastest-moving company. Here's a short course on how the Silicon Valley giant gets the most out of those messages.

Interesting look at QVC's online retailing operations and the lessons the company has learned about marrying their two primary channels.

Note: Darwin Magazine is now dead. Some articles are moving to CIO. I will try to update the links when I have time...

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This interesting article can be thought of as an industry piece (Gambling), a marketing piece (how a company/industry famous for poor service and nonexistent customer loyalty turned things around), and an IT piece (the undertaking discussed was major in IT terms). Worth a read.

Editor's Note: read "Gambling on Customers" in The McKinsey Quarterly, which interviews Harrah's CEO Gary Loveman
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/links/5676

Units let retailers expand offerings and provide customers with more information.

Start with the people who are closest to the customer, then alphabetize, organize, summarize, save time and tempers, finalize, publish, sign and celebrate.

Shigeo Shingo is credited with creating the concept of zero defects and the techniques of poka-yoke (Japanese for mistake-proofing). The approach seeks to remove the causes of defects, or, where this is impossible, to inspect each item simply and inexpensively to determine that it passes the quality threshold - with no defects.

What can be done to ensure that the CKO unlocks a company's latent potential? To find out, we asked CKOs at various companies for their views about the make-or-break factors. Although the CKOs had different experiences, all concurred that success depends on two things: first, on the ability of senior management to agree about what it hopes to gain from managing knowledge explicitly and from creating a performance culture (which raises the staff's demand for knowledge) and, second, on how well the CKO develops and executes a knowledge-management agenda.

Under the leadership of Mike Ruettgers, EMC bounced back from a near-death experience to become one of the "four horsemen of the Internet." At the heart of EMC's rise has been its fanatical devotion to customer service. The company has benefited from this critical insight: If you want service to pay off, don't treat it as a profit center.

Drawing on military wargames to simulate battlefield conditions, commercial wargaming simulates a set of business conditions and challenges executives to design successful strategies that are able to evolve with the changing nature of the environment. In a corporate war game, senior managers play their own company, a select group of their competitors and the marketplace. A control team plays all other entities that affect the industry. The game begins with a prepared set of business conditions and, when the whistle blows, anything goes - that is, anything that can happen in the real world, including mergers & acquisitions and natural disasters. When the dust has settled, the authors say, managers look back on these simulations as one of the most challenging and stimulating exercises of their careers. The sessions actually last several days.

To be most effective, war games should include certain specific real world conditions. These include a strongly competitive market, so that players must react to each other's actions. Another is unpredictability, illustrated by changing technologies and shifts in market demand. A long-term perspective is also required, to show how decisions made now will affect profits later on. One important result that makes wargames supremely worthwhile: managers learn the importance of being absolutely clear in their communications with the market.

What does it take to grow shareholder value at world-class rates? For many years companies have successfully focused their efforts on cost reduction through increased labor and asset productivity and have achieved short-term increases in shareholder value as a reward. Today, with their businesses re-engineered and running efficiently, these companies have refocused their energies into developing long-term growth strategies. Aggressive revenue-oriented strategies are the most common approach to creating long-term value for shareholders. These strategies typically include acquisitions, new products that extend the line and marketing programs to improve customer loyalty and retention. Unfortunately, our research indicates that these strategies can cause more harm than good because superior long-term value for shareholders results only from a specific type of revenue growth: growth that results when a company delivers an order-of- magnitude increase in value to its customers (what we call "10X value").

3M has taken the whole "innovation company" thing one step farther. It has found an innovative way to be innovative, applying the Lead User process (developed by Eric von Hippel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management).

Studies reflect fewer than 30 percent of downsizing efforts have achieved anticipated profitability. This statistic suggests the real downsizing losers are organizations and stockholders.

Use this quick quiz to check out your perceptions and intentions vs those of those who report to you. Compare the perceptions; talk about the differences; identify the opportunities; and close the important gaps.

Considering a major change? Identify potential problem areas first with this quick assessment.

A look at yet another one of the interesting best practices of the US Marine Corps - this time their practive use of HR.

A 25-employee company, fittingly called Best Practices, routinely plunders big-company ideas and prunes them for its own use. Its methods for doing so are yours for the taking, too

This transcript of a presentation by Denis Nayden of GE Capital discusses how that organization approaches e-business. Offers some interesting insight into large businesses or "titans" and the e-world.

Note: Business 2.0 is now part of CNNmoney and some older articles are no longer available

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Until it attains godlike profitability, reduces costs to zero, and hears the pathetic mewling of its last, defeated competitor, Dell Computer won't stop remaking its business. Its three-part strategy for ultimate victory? Web, Web, and Web.

Find a wide selection of interviews with business luminaries in our Interviews Section

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Why does an entrepreneur reshuffle his entire management team at the peak of his company's success?

Want to find one area where Internet technology is delivering more than expected? Look within. Intranets are boosting efficiency and creativity, and changing work patterns. Here are seven steps to the ultimate intranet.

For a searchable repository of market data check out our Market Research Center

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First, focus groups were cool. Then they became the loser's club. Now, thanks to the Web, they've become obsolete.

Skip the PowerPoint. Forget the whiteboards and butcher paper. If you want to organize an off-site that is energetic and memorable -- an event that actually makes a difference -- then follow our seven-point guide.

Fast Company offers a 5-part look at the "Life Themes" approach to candidate selection and hiring decisions.
1. How to Hire by wire - http://www.fastcompany.com/online/00/hirewire.html
2. The Theory Behind Life Themes - http://www.fastcompany.com/online/00/lifethemes.html
3. The Art and Science of Evaluation- http://www.fastcompany.com/online/00/evaluation.html
4. Stryker Makes It Work - http://www.fastcompany.com/online/00/stryker.html
5. Hiring with a Power Tool - http://www.fastcompany.com/online/00/powertool.html

Note that FC doesn't offer links to all 5 parts in its TOC but they do all exist on their site. Thus I have included the URLs.

How many times have you heard someone say, "you must listen to your customers in order to succeed?" Scandinavian Airline SAS piloted a scheme that has shown how observing and listening to customers really can lead to successful product development and relationship building.

Toyota's reputation for sustaining high product quality is legendary. But the company's methods are not secret. So why can't other carmakers match Toyota's track record? HBS professor Steven Spear says it's all about problem solving.

"Building a sustainable organization is one of a leader's primary responsibilities. When the challenges of today have been met, will your organization have the vigor to grow tomorrow? When the roll is called in 2010, will your organization be present? To meet the challenges and opportunities of the years to come requires hard work. My checklist -- not for survival but for a successful journey to 2010 -- includes the following points..."

Bill Howes, CEO of Inland Paperboard and Packaging, believes that, given the right environment, ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things - even in a stubbornly cyclical industry. He's on his way to achieving this vision - and it all began with a story.