1160 Posts found for Source: McKinsey Quarterly

Used early in negotiations, a third-party clean team can help companies assess a deal and protect sensitive data.

Content: Article | Authors: Erik van Ockenburg, Seraf De Smedt, Vincenzo Tortorici | Source: McKinsey Quarterly

In “push” systems the core assumptions are that companies and other institutions can anticipate demand and that mobilizing scarce resources in previously specified ways is the most efficient and reliable way to meet it. But the efficiency of push systems comes at a stiff price, for they require companies to specify, monitor, and enforce detailed activities and tasks. This rigidity necessarily restricts the number and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John Hagel III, John Seely Brown | Sources: CFO Publishing, McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Innovation, Marketing / Sales

By building social issues into strategy, big companies can recast the debate about their role in society.

Content: Article | Author: Ian Davis | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Social Responsibility (ESG)

An awareness of the brain’s flaws can help strategists steer around them. All strategists should understand the insights of behavioral economics just as much as they understand those of other fields of the “dismal science.” Such an understanding won’t put an end to bad strategy; greed, arrogance, and sloppy analysis will continue to provide plenty of textbook cases of it. Understanding some of the flaws … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Charles Roxburgh | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Strategy

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For manufacturers, service plans can be a valuable second string, but only if they are properly designed and priced.

Content: Article | Authors: Russell G. Bundschuh, Theodore M. Dezvane | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Management

As global labor markets become increasingly integrated, rational action by companies and countries will help facilitate the efficient clearing of supply and demand for jobs.

Content: Article | Authors: Diana Farrell, Jaeson Rosenfeld, Martha A. Laboissière | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, International

Marketers aiming for strong returns should start seeing themselves as investment managers for their marketing budgets. That may be more difficult and time consuming than relying solely on old rules of thumb or new analytic approaches, but it is the only answer in today’s marketing environment.

Content: Article | Authors: David C. Court, Jesko Perrey, Jonathan W. Gordon | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Some of the best growth opportunities are found in fields loaded with ethical and moral difficulties, including biotechnology, providing public services for profit, serving low-income consumers in poor countries, and developing newly legal activities such as gaming. Companies working in these fields have had to make themselves more socially responsible to satisfy not only political activists but also their own shareholders. To make the most … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: David Cogman, Jeremy M. Oppenheim | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Miscellaneous, Social Responsibility (ESG)

Big corporations must make sweeping organizational changes to get the best from their professionals.

Content: Article | Authors: Claudia Joyce, Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Companies are what they are, not what their executives want them to be perceived as being. But management can improve the match between share prices and intrinsic value.

Content: Article | Author: Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management

China’s performance in meeting its key social challenges shows how far it has come and how far it has yet to go.

Content: Article | Author: Jonathan R. Woetzel | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: International – China

The country must develop its financial system in order to keep pace with China.

Content: Article | Authors: Aneta Marcheva Key, Diana Farrell | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: International – Asia

Market economies need regulation to facilitate fair competition and to protect consumers, the environment, and vulnerable workers from unfair practices. Too often, however, regulation has the opposite effect: hindering competition and protecting some groups at the expense of others, which is what happens when, for example, minimum-wage regulations limit the creation of jobs for low-skilled workers. A report by the McKinsey Global Institute highlights the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Diana Farrell, Scott C. Beardsley | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: International, Trends / Analysis

The emphasis on quarterly earnings at the expense of longer-term corporate health sometimes reaches absurd extremes: in one survey, executives said they would scale back investments in R&D and marketing to meet their quarterly forecasts–even if these cuts would hurt the long-term prospects of their companies. Since the capital markets value both immediate and sustained performance, companies should embrace a portfolio of initiatives over three … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Keith Leslie, Lenny T. Mendonca, Richard Dobbs | Sources: CFO Publishing, McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management

Discounted cash flow valuations are the best way to assess the value of projects, but they are only as accurate as the forecasts behind them. A careful review of a company’s multiples–and those of its competitors–can help verify those underlying forecasts. However, executives must be critical consumers of published multiples and probe unexpected differences.

Content: Article | Authors: David Wessels, Marc H. Goedhart, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance

The gray market thrives in Brazil, where the informal economy generates nearly 40 percent of the national income. Many companies don’t pay their taxes and ignore regulations, thereby gaining an unfair advantage over their law-abiding counterparts while hurting the nation’s productivity. Brazil’s onerous bureaucracy is partly to blame: burdensome regulations, high taxes, and weak enforcement conspire to encourage evasion because the benefits outweigh the relatively … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Heinz-Peter Elstrodt, Joe Capp, William B. Jones Jr. | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: International – Americas

The central challenge of a segmentation strategy isn’t how to develop one-a variety of approaches work-but how to make it useful and integrate it into a company’s ongoing planning and performance-management efforts. The segmentation must explicitly link corporate financial objectives to the behavior of people in a segment and to customer experience goals. This linkage allows general managers and marketers to understand how the experiences … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Marketing / Sales

Dramatic stock market gyrations during and since the 1990s have encouraged advocates of behavioral-finance theories, which hold that market values can systematically deviate from economic fundamentals. Evidence shows, however, that such events are limited and that market values eventually return to fundamental levels.

Content: Article | Authors: David Wessels, Marc H. Goedhart, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Finance