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OPERATION

This category is Operation, exploring strategies for optimizing business processes, improving efficiency, and ensuring seamless execution. It features expert insights on supply chain management, resource allocation, and innovative approaches to operational excellence.

The Decoupling Effect of Digital Disruptors

By Thales S. Teixeira & Peter Jamieson A new wave of Internet startups is disrupting established businesses by the process of “decoupling”. In this article,...

Making 3D printing work for you: Defining Business Models for Additive Manufacturing

By Matthias Holweg, Kai Hoberg, Frits K. Pil, Jakob Heinen   Companies struggle to define the value proposition 3D printing brings: While the opportunities for...

Building the Everything Store: Amazon’s Cycles of Creativity and Circles of Destruction

By Sean Culey In just 20 years, Amazon has grown from an online startup focusing on selling books, to a devastating multi-platform, multi-industry technological disruptor,...

Leveraging Collaborations to Create Shared Value

By Hervé Legenvre, Francois Bacalou & Hugues Schmitz In this article the authors discuss how the competitiveness of an organisation and the health of the...

Managing People in Mergers and Acquisitions Part 2: Integration and Survival

By Guido Stein and Marta Cuadrado In Part One, we addressed the key reasons why companies decide to pursue merger, the reasons why many...

Where do you Begin with your (Big) Data Initiative?

By Joe Peppard While “Big data” has garnered a lot of attention over the last number of years, many managers struggle in deciding where to...

Market Makers… Innovate your market, then innovate your business.

By Peter Fisk Peter Fisk explores how the next generation of businesses innovate from the future back, and outside in. They start by finding the...

Managing People in Mergers and Acquisitions Part 1: Reasons and Reality

By Guido Stein and Marta Cuadrado In Part One of this article we will address a number of issues related to mergers. First, we will...

Change Capability Building

By David Miller and Audra Proctor The volume and complexity of change that organizations are facing continues to increase, and they cannot risk the negative...

Structure Follows Strategy – But May not Look Like You Imagined

By John Sutherland In the world of structural design, one size does not fit all. It pays massive dividends to get the structure fit for...

Change as Strategy

By Walter McFarland This article suggests that some traditional approaches to organisational change are obsolete – and recommends a new approach focused on creating new...

Alphabet International: How today’s companies can achieve sustainable Business Mobility

Sustainability is the modern day buzzword. Sounds great in theory, but what about the practice? Sustainability relating to fleet management goes beyond merely decreasing...

The Tears in the Deep Tiers

By Yossi Sheffi Many leading companies have well-developed risk management and crisis management systems for their own operations. Yet for all their prowess of risk...

A Transformation Manifesto

By Richard Lynch and Jack Calhoun Transformation is not about external forces, they are inevitable. It’s not about reorganisations, they don’t work. There are more...

The Impact of Becoming Demand-Driven

By Karin Bursa Becoming demand-driven enables companies to knock down organisational silos and create an integrated planning platform that ensures all teams involved are aligned...

Solving Marketing’s Inventory Crisis

By Paul F. Nunes and Joshua Bellin Just-in-time manufacturing was adopted shortly after World War II to save companies from drowning in excess inventory as...

Talent Management 2.0: Transformation Powered By People

By Amber Román and Richard Lynch In “Moving Beyond the Anecdotal: What Will It Take To Create Your Digital 2.0 Business Model,” we discussed our...

The 4 P’s: Saving 25% of Meeting Time

By John Sutherland Ineffective meetings are the bugbear of many organisations. In this article, John Sutherland, Director of Strategic resource introduces and discusses the 4...

The Practice Of Strategy

By Carlos Rey Peña and Joan E. Ricart What is strategy? In this article, the authors view strategy as a discipline that harmonizes business model...

S&OP Made Practical

By Karin Bursa The biggest obstacles to S&OP excellence stem from the complexity of managing the process which requires amongst other things, identifying, gathering and...

The Digital Revolution is an Evolution for the Outsourcing Industry

By Mike Salvino Digital technology has transformed virtually every industry, affecting the way companies serve customers, manufacture products,

Innovation Strategy

By Christoph Loch and Stelios Kavadias Many top level executives are still hopelessly behind when it comes to designing an effective innovation strategy in the...

Preparing for Uncertainty: How to use Creaction at Work

By Len Schlesinger and Charles Kiefer In an excerpt from their book, Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future, the authors Len Schlesinger...

Improving Digital Innovation in Large Enterprise: Strengthening e-Leadership at C-level

By Joe Peppard, Simon Robinson and Tobias Hüsing If your company doesn’t want to miss out on the new opportunities IT offers for business innovation,...

What We Can Learn from the Collision of Supply Chain and Retail

By Karin L. Bursa Traditionally, Supply Chain Planning and Retail Planning organisations have operated independently of each other, to the detriment of both. But, Karin...

Six Months on: Have we Learnt from our Heartbleed Mistakes?

By David Sandin Here David Sandin, product manager at Clavister, looks at whether we have heeded the lessons of the Heartbleed bug, the implications of...

Technology Innovation the New Currency of the Digital Age

By David Stokes The advent of the internet changed modern day lives irreversibly but the new game-changer is already here: mobile digital technology is changing...

Disruptive Digital Technologies Can Help Europe Recapture Competitiveness

By Mauro Macchi European countries have long lagged behind other developed economies in productivity and innovation, even prior

The Road to Sustainable Business Mobility

Interview with Carsten Kwirandt In this day and age, sustainability must be on the agenda of every organisation – particularly when it comes to their...

Clarifying Strategy is Simple. Aligning Your Organisation is Not

By R. Lynch, A. Roman and G. Mac Criosta A clearly defined and accessible business strategy is crucial to any organisation’s ability to optimally align...

Growth Through Innovation: Innovation Principles for the Technology-Driven Enterprise

By R. Boutellier and M. Heinzen Technology is the key to our growth, but with it comes many risks. Below, Roman Boutellier and Mareike Heinzen...

International Facility Management

By Kathy O. Roper Kathy O. Roper discusses the growing field of Facility Management and charts how it has evolved over the last 25 years...

The Spreadsheet Sabotage and its Impact on Supply Chains

By Karin L. Bursa Although many employees are not properly trained to use them, spreadsheets are used by the a huge number of businesses worldwide...

Transforming Procurement to Achieve Competitive Advantage in the Coming Decade

By P. Spiller, N. Reinecke, D. Ungerman & H. Teixeira In this article, the authors argue that procurement must be transformed to meet the challenges...

Analytics Drive Informed Supply Chain Decisions

By Karin Bursa Supply chains are overflowing with data, and even the most advanced organizations struggle to keep up with the ever-accelerating flow of information....

The Gospel of Information Management

By Sherilyn Casiano Information management is not the most fashionable of subjects. Yet as Sherilyn Casiano puts forseth in her article, it is the...

Different Types of Risk in Your Supply Chain, and How to Avoid Them

By Cathy Johnson, Hitachi Consulting There are different types of supply chain risk, and nowadays, these can be very easily exposed due to the power ...

Boards Face Leadership Crisis in Changing Times

By Andrew Kakabadse Boards can prove easy targets for their critics. Below, Andrew Kakabadse discusses how to make boards work, and argues that directors should...

Identifying the Factors for Successfully Managing Supply Chain Risks

By Sime Curkovic & Thomas Scannell The decision to manage supply chain risks constitutes a major undertaking for most firms. In this study, Sime Curkovic...

The New Supply Chain Challenge

By Cathy Johnson, Hitachi Consulting Supply chain alignment is demanding a different paradigm of roles, responsibilities and accountabilities and with that, how performance is managed....

Tools for Success

By Gwynne Richards and Susan Grinsted Supply chain management and logistics is taking centre stage in many companies today. Until recently the areas of warehousing...

The Limits to Outsourcing: Beware of the Consequences for Market Success!

By Masaaki Kotabe, Michael J. Mol, Janet Y. Murray & Ronaldo Parente Over the past few decades, outsourcing, in particular offshore outsourcing, has become a...

Logistics Clusters: The Feedback Loop Leading to Economic Growth and Jobs

By Yossi Sheffi Governments around the world are investing in logistics clusters to encourage economic growth and create jobs. While the advantages of high-technology, knowledge-based...

The Globally Integrated Enterprise: Developing Enterprise Integration as a Strategic Capability

By Maximilian Chowanetz and Sia Siew Kien Many large enterprises have embarked on enterprise integration (EI) initiatives in recent years. Below, Maximilian Chowanetz and Sia...

Achieving Demand Planning Excellence

By Karin L. Bursa Demand planning excellence is the foundation for any successful business. Below, Karin Bursa argues that the demand plan is essential for...

Putting Supply Chain Performance at Your Fingertips

By Karin Bursa Leveraging supply chain analytics to boost corporate performance Is your company run on intuition? Or do you have a set of metrics that...

Eight Types of Corporate Crisis and the Role of National Culture

By Kai Hammerich & Richard D. Lewis A crisis is a defining moment in any organization’s life. Below, Kai Hammerich and Richard D. Lewis consider...

The Strategy-to-Execution Process: A Critical Component of Transient Competitive Advantage

By Jack Calhoun It’s not simply having a good idea that separates marketplace winners from losers – it’s possessing the ability to execute. In fact,...

The Hidden Costs In Business Processes

By Richard Ward Most businesses are affected by hidden costs in procurement, distribution, order processing, sales and finance.  Organisations can benefit from a careful review...