The Capitalist's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen and Derek van Bever.

In spite of historically low interest rates, companies are sitting on cash rather than investing in innovations to foster growth. Are our current investment tools blind to new opportunities to create jobs and markets in a recovering economy? In this recent Harvard Business Review article, Harvard Business School faculty Clayton M. Christensen and Derek van Bever analyze new ways to measure potential and define success.

Read the article...:

Focusing Capital on the Long Term.

ince the 2008 financial crisis and the onset of the Great Recession, a growing chorus of voices has urged the United States and other economies to move away from their focus on “quarterly capitalism” and toward a true long-term mind-set. This topic is routinely on the meeting agendas of the OECD, the World Economic Forum, the G30, and other international bodies. A host of solutions have been offered—from “shared value” to “sustainable capitalism” —that spell out in detail the societal benefits of such a shift in the way corporate executives lead and invest.

It Doesn’t Matter If Competitors Know Your Strategy.

It’s tough for people to implement what they don’t understand. Communicating priorities to the front line, especially salespeople, is highly correlated with business performance. Conversely, this “middle ground” is where strategy execution often breaks down. Yet, many executives resist making strategy explicit. The most common reason is fear that this information will get to competitors. As a consequence, the organization tends to become a “global mediocrity”: good at many things, but not very good at any particular things.

The Fortune Global 500 Isn’t All That Global.

The 2014 DHL Global Connectedness Index that one of us (Ghemawat) prepares with Steven Altman, and that was released on November 3, indicates that global connectedness started to deepen again in 2013 after its recovery stalled in 2012. In other words, there’s now a higher volume of information, capital, people, and trade flows between countries.

The Core Incompetencies of the Corporation.

Large organizations of all types suffer from an assortment of congenital disabilities that no amount of incremental therapy can cure. First, they are inertial. They are frequently caught out by the future and seldom change in the absence of a crisis. Deep change, when it happens, is belated and convulsive, and typically requires an overhaul of the leadership team. Absent the bloodshed, the dynamics of change in the world’s largest companies aren’t much different from what one sees in a poorly-governed, authoritarian regime – and for the same reason: there are few, if any, mechanisms that facilitate proactive bottom-up renewal.

Boards Aren’t as Global as Their Businesses.

There’s a growing consensus that companies need strong, independent boards full of qualified directors if they are to sidestep risks and seize opportunities in our complex and dynamic international economy. Being generally “impressive” is no longer enough—investors and corporate watchdogs expect a well-defined rationale for each appointment, an articulation of how the board member will provide meaningful oversight and counsel on critical issues.

The Capitalist’s Dilemma – and Opportunity.

Investments to maximize short-term return on capital will not create long-term growth and jobs – and not even return on capital. This is a dilemma, but today’s super-dynamic tech industry might offer the unique combination of both fast capital returns, and simultaneous rapid new market creations from innovations.

The Aging of American Businesses.

Tom Hanks was awarded an Oscar for Forrest Gump, Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” was number one on Billboard, and a young undergraduate named Monica Lewinsky began a summer internship at the White House.

Elsewhere, Timothy McVeigh murdered 168 people in Oklahoma City, three years of war in the Balkans came to an end, O.J. Simpson was acquitted of double homicide, and the World Trade Organization was formally launched on New Year’s Day.

A lot has changed since then—the iPhone, Tivo, the Toyota Prius, Google, Facebook, YouTube, human genome sequencing, GPS navigation, Skype, mobile broadband, just to name a few.

Is America Becoming the Next Japan?

For much of its history, the U.S. has been a place of innovation, where new ideas and products could flourish. But that era may be coming to an abrupt end, warns Clayton Christensen, who coined the term “disruptive innovation” and teaches at Harvard Business School.

The Case for Corporate Disobedience.

If your company puts you in charge of developing a foreign market or a new line of business, your challenges are in many ways similar to those facing a startup. Before you can scale the business, you have to understand what your customers really want and value, and how to deliver it to them — and that process requires a lot of flexibility.

Idiomas

management