Ivey Business Journal Online

An Interview with Yves Doz

In an interview, Yves Doz, Professor of Strategic Management and the Timken Chaired Professor of Global Technology and Innovation at INSEAD, talked about the right strategy for a company to succeed in the current environment of globalization and and about his observations on how Chinese companies are competing. According to Doz, for a company to succeed, it has to make itself more resilient and more agile. Resiliency means relying more on outsourcing and off-shoring, making its new ventures l...

Canadian Executives, the Canadian Economy and U.S. Job Growth

It is hard to think of an economic indicator more important to Canadian executives these days than US job growth. To generalize, where US jobs go is where the US economy goes; where the US economy goes is where the Canadian economy goes. Unfortunately, US job growth is likely to be somewhere between marginally okay and grim for some time. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke acknowledged the hard reality of the US job situation in the fall: Although financial markets are for the most part fu...

Co-Creating Your Brand with Young World Consumer-Entrepreneurs

Emerging economies such as those of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, and others represent the fastest-growing middle class consumer markets in the world. Nearly one billion potential customers are beginning to earn enough discretionary income to afford quality brands and quality consumer experiences. At the same time, many of these markets are just now seeing widespread penetration of the Internet and social networks -- in societies where upwards of 60% of the population is under the age o...

Continuity and Change in Japan's Automotive Industry

Japan's past successes and current challenges are most apparent in the country's automotive industry and, in particular, its leading manufacturer and corporate icon, Toyota. In 1990, the book The Machine that Changed the World (Womack, Jones & Roos) introduced the term "lean production" and cemented the reputation of Toyota as the world's best car assembler. Interest had been growing in Japan's major corporations through the 1980s, and this book advanced lean production as a new and super...

Human Evolution has Given Us What We Need for Good Corporate Leadership

Medicine leaped ahead in effectiveness when it gained a foundation in biology and chemistry. So did engineering when it finally gained a foundation in physics. But leadership, which makes so many things happen in all societies, has never had an equivalent foundation in any science. Several fields of science, including neuroscience and evolutionary biology, are finally in a position to provide that foundation. The author's book, Driven to Lead: Good, Bad, and Misguided Leadership, is an attemp...

In Focus: The Neuroscience of Leadership

Leaders of Good Character

Much of what is written, discussed and taught about leadership in business today revolves around how to lead other people and about how to lead within an organization. There is very little, however, about how to lead yourself or more specifically, how to become a leader of good character. Nevertheless, being of good character is the leadership quality that distinguishes great leadership. This brand of leadership came to the forefront of Ivey's discussions with the more than 300 business, publ...

Leading Minds Instead of Managing Behaviour

Certain recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience hold nothing less than the potential to improve the performance of their direct reports. The discoveries may point to a completely different approach than the traditional incent/punish model, but they will form a tighter bond between manager and employee, as well as between stakeholder and company. The author, who has written a book on the subject, describes the lessons managers can learn. Neuroscience may seem far removed from the immed...

Mitre Corporation: Using Social Technologies to Get Connected

The use and application of social technologies to move a business forward have become widespread. One of the most common uses of social technologies today can be found in the realm of collaboration. In this context, one of the biggest benefits of social technologies is to connect employees with each other, overcoming traditional barriers of communication. This article will describe how one organization has benefited from such a use of social technologies. MITRE is your quintessential R&D ...

Neuroscience and Leadership: The Promise of Insights

The quest for understanding leadership seems perpetual. Against the context of the daily news that is full of leadership failures and lost opportunities, it seems to be an area of mystery rather than understanding. Advances in neuroscience may help understand the internal mechanisms that enable some people to be effective leaders, and some not. Leaders need to build relationships that inspire and motivate others to do their best, innovate and adapt. In Primal Leadership, Resonant Leadership, ...

The Ideal Leader

The ideal leader has vision, charisma, integrity, emotional intelligence, an inspiring delivery and sterling character. But if there are leaders who don't fit this image, then you cannot use the ideal to define leadership in general. You need to stop viewing the leader as a type of person in charge of a group. Instead, you need to see how leadership can come from anyone who shows it as in an occasional, discrete act of influence. Leadership must be better aligned with a world that is too comp...

The Top Ten Reasons Why Businesses Aren't More Sustainable

Firms that invest in sustainability are no worse off financially than those that do not. Plus, their employees, customers, and investors are happier and more committed. Even the simplest of activities, such as philanthropy, can yield financial rewards. However, not every firm is jumping on the sustainability bandwagon. The authors asked 15 organizations that are on the leading edge of sustainability to tell them why. The top 10 reasons include: 1. There are too many metrics that claim to meas...

Winds of Change: Corporate Social Responsibility in China

Over the past few years, news reports have highlighted various incidents that demonstrate poor corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices in China. Worker suicides, faulty consumer products, toxic emissions in the countryside, overworked and underpaid employees have all been major topics in the popular press. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo has also raised awareness of social issues and the fallout facing China and its organizations. Given this negat...