South america

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.

A survey shows a wave of growth in inbound marketing.

Companies often resort to lobbyists and lawyers to fight unfair trade policies. But sometimes there are easier alternatives. Consider the case of Chiquita and Dole, organizations that faced restrictive new trade policies in the early 1990s that limited banana exports into Europe. Following World War II, Chiquita became Europe’s main banana provider, exporting to Germany […]

Over the last decade, Semco has successfully extended its business from manufacturing to services to the Internet. Here’s what it has learned: transformation is easy—if you throw away your plans and let your people lead you.

Rather than just cut jobs, Ricardo Semler set up workers as private entrepreneurs—in his own factories.

When a promising project doesn’t deliver, chances are the problem wasn’t the idea but how it was carried out. Here’s a way to design projects that guards against unnecessary failure.

The brutal, 52-year war that has uprooted more than 6 million people is ending.

As emerging markets generate greater shares of global supply and demand, companies need better methods to weigh political risk against financial reward.

It opens up a whole new world of digital marketing.

How hard-liners got their way.

Our annual survey of emerging ideas considers the single most important trait of future leaders, the marketing potential of digitally split personalities, a challenge tougher than managing risk, and the best hope for oil-importing countries.

To win in the world’s fastest-growing markets, transnational giants have to compete with increasingly sophisticated homegrown champions. It isn’t easy.

Globalization—the defining term for the economy of the 1990s—is today a misnomer. True, the economies of industrialized nations have become increasingly intertwined through “global trade” and “global products.” But globalization has largely left out two huge regions of the globe, encompassing more than 60 countries that account for roughly 20% of the world’s population and […]

The liberalization of markets is forcing executives and social activists to work together. They are developing new business models that will transform organizations and the lives of poor people everywhere.

Fast-growing economies often provide poor soil for profits. The cause? A lack of specialized intermediary firms and regulatory systems on which multinational companies depend. Successful businesses look for those institutional voids and work around them.

Alegre Hotels has traditionally left promotion to each of its diverse properties. But a looming crisis may call for a new strategy.

Editor’s note: This post is part of a three-week series examining innovation in health care, published in partnership with the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University. Health systems are at a crossroads. Throughout the world, countries at all levels of economic development and with all types of political systems have embarked in a creative search […]

Internet entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky applies what he does best--building high-tech companies--to improving education in Argentina.

There’s strength in numbers.

Huge business opportunities are rare, and their timing is almost never under the control of an individual company. So it’s important to be ready when they come and to manage smart during the long periods of business as usual.