GETTING A MAJOR GROWTH INITIATIVE UNSTUCK Big companies need big wins to move the needle on growth. As the largest firm of its kind in Asia, with $15 billion in revenues and 300,000 employees, Tata Consultancy Services launched iON in 2011 with the ambition of penetrating India’s small and medium business (SMB) market first and… Read More


Professional services firms are increasingly facing disruptive threats from data analytics solutions. Consider, for example, new pricing analytics software that gives operating companies real-time access to revenue transparency – and no longer requires them to hire a team of management consultants for months to re-crunch their sales data in Excel. Or, take new predictive project […]… Read More


GETTING INNOVATION BACK Over its 200-year history, Citi had established a long history as an innovator in global banking, from funding the transatlantic cable to establishing the first Foreign Exchange Network to the pioneering of ATMs. But senior leadership acknowledged that the company had lost its footing in the years leading up to 2008 as… Read More


In this HBR article Wessel and Christensen, both of Harvard Business School, introduce a way to work out how dangerous a disruption may be to your business. They say it’s not enough to know that a threat is coming. You need to know whether it’s coming right for you.… Read More


Even the best-performing companies eventually stall. Sustaining momentum — and remaining a great growth company — takes a system. Scott Anthony and David Duncan call this system a “Growth Factory.”… Read More


Before launching a new round of brainstorming sessions in search of the next great idea, executives should seek out something altogether different – the bottlenecks that choke innovations before they see the light of day.… Read More


A recent report by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation raises serious questions about the degree to which venture capital deserves emulation. The report, provocatively titled “We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us” [PDF], summarizes its findings thus: Limited Partners — foundations, endowments, and state pension funds — invest too much capital in underperforming… Read More