179 Posts found for Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little)

Information is not intelligence, and gathering information is not carrying out competitive intelligence. Many companies have mechanisms to accumulate large amounts of information; significantly fewer companies have mechanisms for conducting competitive intelligence.

Intelligence uses information as raw material, screening, sifting, sorting, verifying, analyzing, interpreting, and compiling it to create a useful output. And just as information is raw material for intelligence, intelligence is raw material for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Competitive Intelligence, Intelligence

Many executives are now realizing that building the learning capability of their organizations is critical to achieving their business strategy. But this recognition raises some difficult questions. With all the demands on already-scarce company resources, where will the energy come from to create a learning organization? And if you do manage to find – or create – the necessary energy, how can you sustain that … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Bryan Smith, Joel Yanowitz | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

“In the recently published Intentional Revolutions, A Seven Point Strategy for Transforming Organizations, my co-authors and I have developed a definition of organizational transformation and an approach that increases an organization’s ability to sustain that transformation. In the course of conducting research for the book, we discovered a remarkable similarity in the profiles of senior executives and the roles they played in initiating and sustaining … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Joan Lancourt | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

Many companies do not address the generation and management of good product ideas as an explicit process; rather, ideas tend to “float” around the organization, acquiring currency in proportion to the personal and political power of the champions who promote them. In this article, we outline a rational, objective, and highly productive approach that we call Structured Idea Management (SIM). By adopting an SIM process, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Lucy Rowbotham, Nils Bohlin | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Innovation

China is the new “New Economy”. The rate of expansion may have slowed after years of double-digit growth, but there is still room for optimism. So what does China mean for business? In spring 2004 Arthur D. Little conducted a survey asking CEOs how they see their chances in China, looking particularly at the impact on multinational corporations. In this article Gerhard and Lau present … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Arnold Lau, Thorsten Gerhard | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: International – China

In a balanced technology portfolio, short-term projects must meet the immediate needs of the business, while longer-term investments should address the strategic priorities of the future. These include investments in pacing technologies, i.e., those that will create future competitive advantage. However, although most new technologies require at least a decade of development, today’s strategic plans rarely devote significant attention to timeframes beyond three to five … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: C. Gail Greenwald, Stephen E. Rudolph | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Please accept the fact that the human race is split three ways: some people can take in information by looking at figures, some by looking at graphs, and a third group only by touching it, feeling it, or writing it.

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Information, Organizational Behavior

The outside figures will always remain unsatisfactory for the simple reason that the important things that happen outside the business happen at the margin, and so they are not expressed in figures until it’s too late. They are qualitative changes. You can quantify them, but you don’t really understand the relationship quantitatively. I’ve been struggling with this for 40 years, and I’m not the only … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Information, Knowledge

Although I invented the term “profit center” 40 years ago – one of my lesser contributions – a subsidiary of a division is not a profit center, but a cost center. The only profit center is the customer. Until the customer has paid his bill, there are only costs, and until the customer has come back with a repeat order there is no customer.

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Business Rules, Customer Related

Risk has its place in a calculus of probabilities. It lends itself to quantitative expression – as when we say that the chances of finding a defective part in a batch are two out of 100. In the framework of benefit-cost analysis, the risk of an innovation is how much we stand to lose if we fail, multiplied by the probability of failure.

Uncertainty is quite … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Risk Management

Men involved in technical innovation in a corporation confront a situation in which the need for action is clear but the action itself is not…. So long as this situation exists, the corporation cannot function effectively, because it is not designed for uncertainty – a situation in which there are no clear objectives to reach, no measures of accomplishment, and no proper concept of control. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Risk Management

Business managers are trained for action and speed – hence the “ready, fire, aim” mentality now prevalent in so many organizations. Far too often, thinking is seen as a luxury, and collective thinking as an aberration. The link between shared understanding and effective collective action is not widely understood or recognized. Under these circumstances, asking managers to accelerate shared learning is asking them to unlearn … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Action, Thought

Grow or die – it’s a call to arms spreading throughout America’s corporations. Growth is appearing at the top of many management meeting agendas. It’s prominently featured in glossy annual reports and confidential strategic plans. It’s optimistically discussed with investment analysts. Its pros and cons are debated around the water cooler and on e-mail.

This article, excerpted from the book Go for Growth! Five Paths to … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Robert Tomasko | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Empowerment is one of the buzzwords of the ’90s. Yet most organizational empowerment efforts fall short of making any substantive impact. Why? We believe alignment is the key. Empowerment without alignment is dysfunctional. It doesn’t help. In fact, it often exacerbates existing conflicts and counterproductive behaviors. Well-intentioned, committed people make escalating errors and become progressively more frustrated and disenfranchised. And then the leadership responds by … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

What’s the easiest way to get rid of emotional tension? You can do it in less than a minute. Just diminish your vision. Revise it so it’s easier to attain – or abandon it altogether. However, when you relieve emotional tension, you also compromise creative tension. We call this the structure of compromise, or the structure of mediocrity. You could explain all the mediocrity in … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Achievement, Vision

In the past, product development teams were often insulated from other disciplines within the company. Too often, products were developed without adequate input from marketing about customer needs, from manufacturing about realistic and cost-effective production, from the environmental group about potential negative impacts, or from other functions about their unique perspectives on key product attributes. The negative impacts of this insulation included product-introduction delays, lack … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Jonathan Shopley, Robert D. Shelton | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Operations, Social Responsibility (ESG)

As new market economies around the world take off, their environmental performance continues to lag far behind environmental leaders in North America, western Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. Even so, foreign companies and investors that have pioneered business ventures in these markets have learned that environmental issues can help make or break a project’s success.

Content: Article | Authors: Alan E. Marples, Bernhard H. Metzger, Paul D. Boehm | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: International, Social Responsibility (ESG)

“In reviewing the field, it’s clear to me that the business community today is more sensitive to the subject of leadership than we were 20 years ago. It is also clear that the dramatic increase in writing on the subject has not produced a corresponding increase in leaders or made existing leaders much more effective. Why? I think our basic notion of leadership is flawed … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Charles F. Kiefer | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Leadership

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