More women in top management = more success as a company
Experts and observers have long argued that there is a benefit to firms of having more women in senior decision-making roles. The reasons are many, including the importance of diversity, the fact that senior women more readily represent female customers (the majority of buyers in many industries), and a general openness to talent. Some new research done at Columbia finds that companies with women in the top team do enjoy a performance benefit. Interestingly, this doesn't apply to firms that have a female CEO (rare though they are). Worth a look.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 26, 2011
Does doing good mean doing well? Research from colleague Ray FIsman
In a recent piece in Columbia Ideas at Work, my colleague Ray Fisman summarizes some research he has done on whether promising to donate a portion of one's proceeds to charity means more profits for eBay sellers.
Among their findings:
Turns out — based on our eBay evidence — the champions of corporate philanthropy have gotten the story at least half right. Take a Giving Works item advertising that 10 percent of proceeds will be given to charity. It’s nearly 20 percent more likely to sell than its noncharity twin at a price that’s about 2 percent higher. (Items where 100 percent is donated to charity — hardly a sustainable business strategy — are nearly 50 percent more likely to sell and result in sales prices that are 6 percent higher).
They also found that sellers new to eBay benefitted more than experienced sellers. He hypothesizes that this is due to the signal of trustworthiness sent by being engaged with charity.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 26, 2011
Strategic Innovation Does Not Equal Dollars Spent
My colleague Gray Hammond sent along this interesting coverage of innovative companies, and I thought it might be of interest to my readers as well.
Booz & Company’s latest annual study of global innovation, The 2010 Innovation 1000: How the Top Innovators Keep Winning, surveyed more than 400 executives at companies worldwide to find out the characteristics of the most innovative firms. Here are the top 10 most innovative companies:
- Apple
- 3M
- GE
- Toyota
- Microsoft
- Procter & Gamble
- IBM
- Samsung
- Intel
Reporting on the study in Forbes, study co-author Barry Jaruzelski shared some of the findings. One finding that might surprise you: Money does not equal innovation. Seven of the top 10 innovators were not in the top 10 spenders on innovation. In fact, many companies identified as top innovators spent well below the average for their industries on R&D.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 09, 2011
An Internet Kissing Machine? Oh brother, what’s next. Wait, Maybe I Don’t Want to Know…
Believe it or not, reports have surfaced that a group of Japanese researchers are hard at work on an Internet Kissing Machine. Yes, apparently, two people equipped with the devices can exchange more than just emails if they happen to be separated. And I've evidently been hiding under a rock somewhere, because this is proclaimed to be the latest in whole industry of such devices, under the umbrella name teledildonics, which is code word for cyber sex toys. This could be rather awkward if those companies decide to pursue an advertising model...
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 04, 2011
Say It Ain’t So: The Shortening Half Life of the Business School Case Study
We in business school just love to use examples. It's examples, stories and personal insights that make what we teach accessible, inspiring and sometimes game-changing. Along the way, many of these great stories get written up as cases, either formal ones like those created by the Harvard Business School, or less formal ones, such as those captured in articles, stories and books. There is just one problem with all this - the companies lauded as examples of greatness don't keep it up. I've had this experience myself - no sooner do you think a practice or process in an organization is interesting and useful for others to learn about than some strategic disaster befalls them and refudiates all the other great stuff that the company did.
I find the current situation over at Nokia to be particularly poignant. As a recent FT article points out, Nokia was the poster child of high-tech stategic success throughout the 90's and even into the early parts of this century. There must be hundreds of cases written about the company and how it manages everything from training to supply chains to design. Personally, I've worked with and enjoyed interacting with Nokia people for years. Unfortunately, the company missed a few strategic pivot points - lack of progress in the USA and being overtaken by the twin combination of Apple and Android in phones being two notable ones - and it is now facing the grim prospect of radical downsizing and a fight for its future. Will they pull it off? I hope so - I admire the company and think they are now making the tough decisions they probably should have made some time ago. Will their eventual success resurrect the value of those old case studies? Probably not.
Which brings me to an interesting point -- just because a company isn't perennially successful doesn't mean we can't learn anything from them. But it probably means that case studies, like other kinds of perishable goods, probably have to be issued with an expiration date.
For a chart of Nokia's stock price relative to its sector, click here.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 02, 2011
