461 Posts found for Source: Knowledge@Wharton

Wahaha, whose main products are milk drinks, bottled water and mixed congee, is the number one beverage company in China, with revenues of 11.4 billion yuan ($1.37 billion) and profits of 1.35 billion yuan ($162.7 million) in 2004. The company was started in 1987 by Zong Qinghou, its 60-year-old chairman and CEO. In an interview with Wharton marketing professor John Zhang, Zong talks about his … [ Read more ]

Content: Case Study | Authors: John Zhang, Zong Qinghou | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Industry Specific, International – Asia | Industry: Food Products/Service | Company: Wahaha

You can view the evolution of technology…as the shift from process automation to practice enhancement. In the past couple of decades, the primary focus of IT investment certainly by large enterprises has been to automate and standardize the core operating processes of the business. The net result is, if you look at where the headcount of the enterprise is focused, it is on handling exceptions … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

How do you lead an increasingly diverse, creative and eclectic workforce? It’s a question that senior executives at this month’s Wharton West Leadership Conference tried to answer based on their own leadership experiences. In the following stories, Knowledge@Wharton reports on presentations by Michael Crooke, president and CEO of Patagonia; Anne Livermore, executive vice president of Hewlett-Packard; Vivek Paul, vice chair and president of Wipro Technologies; … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Leadership

At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, one particular topic drew unusually strong support — the need for organizations across the board to contribute more to the war on global poverty and illness. Part of this push towards greater social advocacy is directed squarely at corporations, whose resources are seen as necessary to address such specific problems as the AIDS crisis in Africa and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

The initial headlines announcing mega-corporate mergers and acquisitions typically focus on Wall Street’s appreciation for improved finances, less duplication of services and staff, the ability to grow faster, and the anticipation of higher returns for shareholders. Yet, as Wharton professors point out, companies that fail to factor in the costs of layoffs, declining morale, and the chaos that comes from restructuring are headed for trouble. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Organizational Behavior

What differentiates a winning company from an also-ran? For many analysts and investors, the answer involves technology, which increasingly permeates every step of a business’s operations. But according to a Wharton professor and an Israeli venture capitalist, a company’s ability to understand its customers’ philosophical outlook may be as vital to its success as R&D and other efforts.

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Miscellaneous

According to Wharton marketing professor Leonard M. Lodish, “positioning and pricing are the most important entrepreneurial marketing decisions that you can make … Before you go out and raise a lot of money, before you invest in research and development, before you start spending serious money, you must find out if there is a demand for your product and whether or not you can price … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Leonard M. Lodish | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Marketing / Sales

I think there are too many people who try to change consumer behavior. That’s really expensive. When an entrepreneur tells me he or she wants to educate the market, I run the other way.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Entrepreneurship

In a new study that compares Fortune 100 executives in 1980 with their counterparts in 2001, Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources, and colleague Monika Hamori document what many CEOs and other senior managers have no doubt already witnessed: The road to the executive suite and the characteristics of the executives who get there have changed significantly over the last two decades. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Career

Testifying in a Delaware court last month, Stanley P. Gold, a former Walt Disney Co. director, joined a long list of company executives who had dirty laundry to air regarding the 1995 hiring of Michael Ovitz as Disney’s president and his subsequent firing in 1996. “This was two big volatile egos banging against each other and they just didn’t get along,” Gold testified, referring to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The globalization of services, as represented by the sustained growth of business process outsourcing (BPO), continues to thrive. In this special report prepared in collaboration with consulting firm A.T. Kearney, Knowledge@Wharton explores several emerging trends in the BPO landscape. Among them: new competitive models that BPO providers are using to drive growth; the shifting geography of BPO locations; and the challenges and risks that constitute … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Outsourcing / BPO

One of the toughest challenges that governments and companies face is encouraging economic growth in harmony with environmental and social goals rather than at their expense. This was the theme of a recent conference organized by Wharton and Turkey’s Sabanci University in partnership with the United Nations. This special report, which Knowledge@Wharton has prepared in collaboration with SRiMedia, covers several issues that came up at … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: International, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Milton Friedman used to remind us that a long-term tax cut isn’t a long-term tax cut at all unless it’s accompanied by a long-term spending cut. It’s essentially a deferred tax, a tax increase on the future.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Economics, Government

Last month Edward C. Prescott and Finn E. Kydland won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for two important papers they coauthored that advanced the field of dynamic macroeconomics. As the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences put it, Prescott and Kydland’s work “has not only transformed economic research, but has also profoundly influenced the practice of economic policy in general, and monetary policy in … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Economics, People

Marketers are happy speaking their own language, replete with jargon like “awareness,” “share of requirements” and “customer satisfaction.” Such terminology works fine in the marketing department and with the advertising professionals who execute marketing plans. But there’s a translation problem between that language and the language of profitability and stock price which is the mother tongue of corporate CEOs. “CEOs want to know what a … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Customer Related, Marketing / Sales

People who are brilliant spend their entire lives never being wrong…A little bit of insecurity is a good thing.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personality / Behavior

In two separate talks at Wharton recently, Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Pete Peterson, chairman of The Blackstone Group, lamented what they see as the sorry state of the U.S. economy, and then presented their views on how to fix it. Not surprisingly, the answers offered by Stiglitz, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton, and Peterson, former Secretary of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Economics, People

Richard Branson knows the value of being a global personality. The founder and owner of The Virgin Group told a satellite telecast audience last month that “when you can pick up the phone and call the President of Nigeria, it cuts a lot of corners. You can get things done that you couldn’t otherwise.” Speaking to a global audience during the telecast, Branson, who was … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Management

While it is revealing to consider what constitutes a leader, your search for understanding, for some kind of leadership formula, is apt to end in frustration. It is like studying Michelangelo or Shakespeare: You can imitate, emulate, and simulate, but there is simply no connect-the-dots formula to Michelangelo’s David or Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I suppose, when all is said and done, it really comes down to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subject: Leadership

Eventually everything shows up in earnings and cash flow, but it shows up late.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Accounting, Finance