Business structures

Your organization can become more decisive—and can implement strategy more quickly—if you know where the bottlenecks are and who’s empowered to break through them.

A study of pharmaceutical firms finds that it leads to valuable collaborations.

When a crisis forces outside directors to navigate major changes, investors and directors must adopt new roles. The case of Royal Dutch/Shell provides...

Both have risks. Here's how to strike the right balance.

Five critical decisions to set it up for long-term success.

Three elements to focus on.

I’ll never forget my 25th Harvard Business School reunion, when Professor Howard Stevenson gave a lecture titled “Make Your Own Luck.” To a packed room he revealed this truth: If you want big success, build a business that responds to big trends. When he prompted us, the audience volunteered the biggest ones in the world: […]

Start by understanding why they might be reluctant to inherit it.

It’s smart to pool resources.

Despite the great potential for conflict, many companies routinely—and successfully—use joint ventures. With the increasing use of this form of management, business leaders must think about the more effective way of managing: shared management or dominant parent. This author, drawing from his research with 37 joint ventures involving mostly North American and Western European companies, […]

How big companies are joining forces to seize opportunities at their intersections

A case study.

One of the most agonizing experiences that any business faces is the moving from one generation of top management to the next. The problem is often most acute in family businesses, where the original entrepreneur hangs on as he watches others try to help manage or take over his business, while at the same time, […]

For years, managers assumed that the best way to take advantage of opportunities abroad was to ally with local companies. But a fundamental shift in the...

Six signs you're overindulging your heir apparent.

A guide to what it should do — and who should be on it.

Companies are just beginning to learn what nations have always known: in a complex, uncertain world filled with dangerous opponents, it is best not to go it alone. Great powers operating across broad theaters of engagement have traditionally made common cause with others whose interests ran parallel with their own. No shame in that. Entente—the […]

Toyota demonstrates how more-efficient supplier relationships can speed production and boost innovation.

Managing in the face of incomplete contracts.

It’s all about your mindset.