Government

The widely held notion of “Japan, Inc.” is exaggerated; there is no monolithic business-government link. Even so, the cooperation (without incorporation) between the large corporate combines and the government bureaucracy is impressive in its strength and focus on the common economic good—especially in view of its achievements worldwide. As the economic power of the United […]

By pooling the resources of the poor and by sharing information, religious and financial institutions can work together to change inner-city economies.

The best change agents almost never realize when it’s time to stop. That’s what makes them so good.

Some countries have solutions in place, but too many don’t.

A framework to help you understand the backlash and stay true to your values.

Why should that be a surprise?

A senior manager at Cisco once suggested to me that there are two types of challenges in organizations - capacity problems and complexity problems. Capacity...

The federal government can and should play a much bigger role in helping American companies regain the lead in manufacturing. We need to invest a commensurate amount of federal R&D dollars in advanced manufacturing technologies as we do in other areas of science, technology, and engineering. The last administration created an assistant secretary for manufacturing […]

When Ben Franklin wrote Poor Richard’s Almanac and the words, “A little neglect may breed great mischief,” he did not have price fixing in mind. To the 47 executives in companies in the folding-box industry convicted of price fixing, however, the words seem tailored to fit. In those companies convicted under antitrust laws in 1976, […]

A country’s competitiveness, like a company’s, is not primarily a matter of sales: it is a matter of incomes, and incomes earned, not borrowed. To be competitive means to raise incomes as rapidly as competitors do and to make the investments necessary to keep up competitively in the future. From this perspective, U.S. competitiveness is […]

Executives who want to make their organizations better corporate citizens face many obstacles: If they undertake costly initiatives that their rivals...

I’ve just been rereading Daniel Pink’s famous 1997 Fast Company article on “Free Agent Nation.” It has withstood the test of time pretty danged well. In 1997, Pink had recently left a job as Vice President Al Gore’s speechwriter to strike out on his own, and discovered (or decided, if you prefer) that he was […]

Neutrality is no longer a viable option.

In many countries, diversified business groups substitute for the institutions that support effective markets in capital, labor, and goods and services. Their capacity for doing this must be strengthened through restructuring, not destroyed through dismantling.

The turmoil at OpenAI offers five lessons - and one dire warning.

Three important trends are emerging in the U.S. and EU.

A former U.S. treasury secretary reminds CEOs to focus on the long term.

Working parenthood was hard before Covid-19--now it's an all-out crisis. In "A Way Forward for Working Parents," Daisy Dowling argues that it's time to...

The Denver office of Clarion Co., a $30 million, full-service marketing firm, has always been a politics-free zone. Nonwork conversations revolve around...