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

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“Say you’ve just been appointed the CKO – Chief Knowledge Officer – of your organization. You are responsible for managing the company’s knowledge capital, including how it is created, maintained, and used. You understand the principles of learning organizations and believe that effective learning is the pathway to accelerated performance improvement. Now you need to know what the pathway looks like and how you can … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Nils H. Bohlin, Paul Brenner | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Knowledge Management, Organizational Behavior

Robert W. Galvin is chairman of the Executive Committee of Motorola, Inc. He started his career at Motorola in 1940 and held the senior officer’s position in the company from 1959 until January 1990. Under his leadership, in 1988 Motorola became the first large company to win the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. This article is based on a presentation made by Mr. Galvin at … [ Read more ]

Content: Thought Leader | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Management

“How can teams function optimally? And why do they become dysfunctional in the first place? In many cases, a team stagnates despite persistent and well intentioned attempts to address key issues. Or, interventions appear to help initially, but short-term progress quickly evaporates. To create long-term improvement, teams need a more systemic discipline of team learning – one that integrates existing approaches and tools while providing … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: David Kantor, Joel Yanowitz, Steven Ober | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

This article sets forth Arthur D. Little’s our current understanding, based on more than a century of work with leading organizations around the world, of the concepts, philosophy, mindset, tools, and methodologies that support effective change and learning in organizations.

Editor’s Note: contains some excellent insights…

Content: Article | Authors: Arun N. Maira, David A. Garvin, Joan L. Bragar, P Ranganath Nayak | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

Innovation, or new business creation, is the process by which a company builds insights about its customers; identifies and evaluates unique market opportunities and prepares a bold game plan to seize them; and develops a stream of winning products. The process of new business creation can generally be split into two parts: an upstream process – sensing and creating opportunities – and a downstream process … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jean-Philippe Deschamps | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Innovation

We estimate from our research that, far from being worth more than the sum of their parts, well over half the world’s multibusiness companies are actually worth less than this. They are value destroyers. The lack of clear corporate-level strategies shows up in the portfolios of unhappy bedfellows, well-intentioned but damaging corporate initiatives, and strings of acquisitions that create more wealth for bankers, lawyers and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Andrew Campbell, Marcus Alexander, Michael Goold | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Strategy

As functional effectiveness increases, the greatest opportunity for corporate performance improvement will come from cross-functional integration. Organizations worldwide are recognizing how departments that strive for their own optimal performance can combine to produce sub-optimal results for the business.

Interestingly enough, the focus of management improvement trends in this century follows a similar pattern, from task efficiency to functional excellence to cross-functional integration. The logical next step … [ Read more ]

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

It is conventional wisdom that Western companies are better at inventing and developing new technologies than at producing and commercializing them, while Japanese companies are particularly skillful at commercializing technology. Convincing arguments have been made for a continuous exchange of knowledge between Design and Manufacturing as a way to improve the entire product development process – from conception to commercialization. This article, based on extensive … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sigvald Harryson | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Best Practices, Innovation

“The principles of Minimalism can be distilled into a simple recipe for manufacturing management. Step one, decompose the manufacturing process so that disruptions are not propagated throughout the system. Step two, manage the difference between actual performance and what is theoretically possible, what we term “the competitive gap,” for a process, a manufacturing cell, or an entire plant. Step three, empirically validate the differences, isolate … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Ramchandran Jaikumar | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Operations

In our view, too many companies are still designing organization structures on the basis of principles that are no longer appropriate. Companies today must operate in complex and fast-changing environments – particularly if they want to compete on a global scale. In this article, we outline a new way of organizing people for effective performance in just such environments.

Content: Article | Author: Arun N. Maira | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Organizational Behavior

What can top management teams do to ensure successful large-scale transformations efforts? Early analysis of data from a major research study – the Developing Global Organizational Capability project – along with interviews with CEOs who have led successful transformation efforts suggest that top teams should implement two linked approaches simultaneously:

1. Take the 10 steps that will bring about successful transformation.
2. Align the 5-M’s™: meaning, mindset, mobilization,

… [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Douglas A. Ready | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

For individuals and teams who want to master complex skills, practice is essential. Practice enables athletes to excel at sports, musicians to master music, and actors to enchant audiences. Practice works by allowing people to use skills in multiple low-risk experiences in special settings known as “practice fields.” Here demands for superb performance, credibility, and confidence are temporarily suspended, exploratory inquiry is allowed, and “not … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Cliff Bolster, Jennifer M. Kemeny, Jimmy Carter, Marilyn Paul, Richard H. Gregg | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

This article outlines some of the thinking expressed at a recent gathering of Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) by Arthur D. Little. The discussion covered a wide range of issues, from whether “stale” companies should just be allowed to die and make way for new ones, to the role of governments in encouraging innovation. Participants looked at what motivates companies and individuals to continue looking for … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Floyd, Frank Morris, Geoffrey Marlow, Jean-Philippe Deschamps | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Innovation, Management

Although among our client firms we see a wide range of technological sophistication, we’ve noticed that many companies – even the most sophisticated – make similar mistakes. In this article we highlight 13 technology management “pitfalls” we often see in the process industries, but which are common in a range of other industries as well.

Content: Article | Authors: Martin Trewhella, Pat Clarke | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

The consumer buying process is complex and can demand a great deal of effort. As a marketer, imagine that you could minimize both the consumer’s effort and your own – creating demand and sales leads in a coordinated fashion, while simultaneously enhancing customer loyalty and increasing positive word of mouth. This is the principle behind dialogue marketing – a structured program of ongoing, two-way communication. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Allan Steinmetz | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subject: Marketing / Sales

The first thing a leader needs to understand is how the organization is feeling – is it very proud of what it is achieving? And that’s a contact issue and a “smell” issue as you “go walkabout.”

The second thing you notice when things are going right is that people take more risks. People understand that we’re in a risk business. Capitalism is about taking risks … [ Read more ]

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

What actually drives the organization to change – irrespective of what a so-called leader or change leader does, in my view – is its pride in performance. You see change in many, many companies. It can come through fear. It can come through stimulation. It can come through the need to turn failure into success. But to my mind the most continuously effective way of … [ Read more ]

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

Leading manufacturers of capital goods are blurring the increasingly artificial distinction between “industrial” and “service” industries. These manufacturers are turning themselves into service providers, as service provision is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of their customer management strategy.

Today, no product company can afford to ignore the potential benefits – and risks – of making the transition from manufacturing to manufacturing-plus-service-provision. However, to make this transition … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel Deneffe, Herman Vantrappen, Koen Bouckaert | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

What do I look for in our leadership? I look for curiosity. I look for competence. I look for humanity. And I look for commitment. To me, those things are very, very important. I like people to enjoy getting out of bed every morning and coming to work. I like them to feel that they’re committed to solving problems and contributing, and that every day … [ Read more ]

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