Content on Risk and Globalization
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l revolution, many companies still agonize over whether to invest significant resources in digital capabilities. Meanwhile, customers — who are used to weaving their digital and physical worlds tightly together — wonder why companies haven’t done the same.
The author and his colleagues at Bain have worked with and studied hundreds of companies around the globe that are trying to cope with the swiftly changing marketplace. Most industries, he writes, are still in the early stages of what he calls “digical” transformation — and the greatest barrier they face is inexperience with its execution. Drawing on Bain’s study of leaders from 20 global industries, he presents five rules that can help: (1) Build your strategy around digital-physical fusion. It can be your new competitive edge. (2) Add links and strengthen linkages in the customer experience. (3) Transform the way you approach innovation. (4) Organizational separation is just an interim step. (5) Build a digical-savvy leadership team that includes the CEO. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Nike, Disney, and Burberry are among the companies whose efforts in this realm have paid off mightily.
The Crisis in Retirement Planning
Corporate America began to really take notice of the looming retirement crisis in the wake of the dot-com crash, when companies in major industries went bankrupt in large part because of their inability to meet their pension obligations. The result was an acceleration of America’s shift away from employer-sponsored pension plans toward defined-contribution plans — epitomized by the ubiquitous 401(k) — which transfer the investment risk from the company to the employee.
With that transfer has come a dangerous shift in investment focus, argues Nobel Laureate Robert C. Merton. Traditional pension plans were conceived and managed to provide members with a guaranteed income. And because that objective filtered right through the scheme, members thought of their benefits in those terms. Ask a member what her pension is worth and she’ll reply with an income figure: “two-thirds of my final salary,” for example. Most DC schemes, however, are designed and managed as investment accounts with the goal of accumulating the largest possible pot of savings. Communication with savers is framed entirely in terms of assets and returns. Ask a saver what his 401(k) is worth and you’ll hear a cash amount and perhaps a lament to the value lost in the financial crisis.
The trouble is that investment value and asset volatility are simply the wrong measures if your goal is to secure a particular future income. In this article, Merton explains a liability-driven investment strategy whose aim is to improve the probability of achieving a desired retirement income rather than to maximize the capital value of the savings.
The Danger from Within
The 2013 cyberattack on Target is just one recent example of a growing phenomenon: attacks involving connected companies or direct employees. According to various estimates, at least 80 million of these attacks occur in the United States each year — but the number may be much higher, because they often go unreported.
Upton and Creese head an international research project whose goal is to aid organizations in detecting and neutralizing threats from insiders. Their team includes computer security specialists, management educators, psychologists, and criminologists, among others, and their findings challenge conventional views and practices. “The doors that leave organizations vulnerable to insider attacks,” they write, “are mundane and ubiquitous.”
In this article they discuss the causes of growth in the number of insider cyberattacks, the reasons behind them, and five ways to tackle the problem: Adopt a robust insider policy at every level of the organization; raise awareness of phishing and other ploys; screen new hires thoroughly; employ rigorous subcontracting processes; and let employees know that you will observe their cyberactivity to the extent permitted by law.
Unlock the Mysteries of Your Customer Relationships
Despite the $11 billion spent on CRM software annually, many consumer companies don’t understand customer relationships at all. They aren’t aware of the variety of relationship types and don’t understand what kind their customers want.
Through research in a wide variety of consumer industries, the authors have identified 29 types of relationships. For example, some customers want to be best friends with a brand; others are looking for a passionate fling; still others find themselves as ex-friends and would welcome a closer bond.
To understand the current portfolio of relationships, companies must pick up on signals from multiple sources. Companies can then build a strategic mix of connections by bolstering desired relationships and shifting customers to more-valuable types. There are many issues to consider: For example, some relationship types are more profitable than others.
No actions will bear fruit unless a relationship orientation pervades not just the marketing function but every aspect of the company that touches customers or affects interactions with them. Customers don’t just represent the next upsell or cross-sell opportunity; they are individuals looking for a certain kind of interaction. Companies need to respond accordingly.
Profits Without Prosperity
Though corporate profits are high, and the stock market is booming, most Americans are not sharing in the economic recovery. While the top 0.1% of income recipients reap almost all the income gains, good jobs keep disappearing, and new ones tend to be insecure and underpaid.
One of the major causes: Instead of investing their profits in growth opportunities, corporations are using them for stock repurchases. Take the 449 firms in the S&P 500 that were publicly listed from 2003 through 2012. During that period, they used 54% of their earnings — a total of $2.4 trillion — to buy back their own stock. Dividends absorbed an extra 37% of their earnings. That left little to fund productive capabilities or better incomes for workers.
Why are such massive resources dedicated to stock buybacks? Because stock-based instruments make up the majority of executives’ pay, and buybacks drive up short-term stock prices. Buybacks contribute to runaway executive compensation and economic inequality in a major way. Because they extract value rather than create it, their overuse undermines the economy’s health. To restore true prosperity to the country, government and business leaders must take steps to rein them in.
Putting Sales at the Center of Strategy
For many years Document Security Management (a pseudonym) had a thriving business in retrieving and shredding or securely storing organizations' documents. Executives and their assistants loved its one-stop-shopping value proposition, and the sales force cultivated deep relationships with them. By the early 2000s, however, it was clear that cheaper digital storage technology, especially the cloud, would disrupt the company. So DSM introduced its own cloud-based storage and directed the sales force to bundle it with traditional services.
The results were disastrous. Many of the salespeople lacked the technical knowledge to work effectively with clients' IT departments. Pricing was a problem, because the physical and digital services had very different cost structures. And in spite of being trained to bundle offerings — a key to the new strategy — reps often sold only the lower-priced, digital service. Contract renewals for traditional services fell sharply, as did profits. DSM modified its sales compensation plan, but then digital sales dipped; meanwhile, new competitors began signing clients. Ultimately DSM spun off its digital unit.
Why China Can't Innovate
The Chinese invented gunpowder, the compass, the waterwheel, paper money, long-distance banking, the civil service, and merit promotion. Until the early 19th century, China's economy was more open and market driven than the economies of Europe. Today, though, many believe that the West is home to creative business thinkers and innovators, and that China is largely a land of rule-bound rote learners — a place where R&D is diligently pursued but breakthroughs are rare.
When we ask why, the answers vary. Some people blame the engineers. "Most Chinese start-ups are not founded by designers or artists, but by engineers who don't have the creativity to think of new ideas or designs," argues Jason Lim, an editor at the website TechNode.
The Rise (And Likely Fall) of the Talent Economy
en Roberto Goizueta died of cancer in 1997, at the age of 65, he was a billionaire. Not bad for a Cuban émigré who had come to the United States as a teenager. He was by no means the first immigrant to America to become a billionaire, but the others had made their fortunes by founding and building companies or taking them public. Goizueta made his as the CEO of Coca-Cola.
His timing was impeccable. In 1980 he became the chief executive of a company that owned no natural resources and had precious little physical capital. The talent economy had just come of age, and rewards for its key productive assets made an epochal shift — in his favor. His company was among the most valuable in the world for its iconic brand and the talent that built and maintained it. Goizueta epitomized that talent, and investors paid for it as never before.
Capture More Value
When Switzerland-based Vestergaard introduced its LifeStraw technology, it proved it could innovate. LifeStraws remove 99.99999% of bacteria and 99.9% of protozoan cysts from contaminated water. The product is a favorite of aid organizations: Over the past decade, LifeStraws have been distributed after almost every disaster.
But not every place with bad drinking water is a relief zone; 780 million people in the world lack access to clean water in their daily lives. So Vestergaard saw a much larger potential market than its NGO customer base — and proved that it could innovate in another way. The challenge was LifeStraw's cost, which is beyond the means of most households in developing countries. The company found a clever means for families to fund their purchases: with carbon offset credits. Thanks to the worldwide carbon emissions trade, any documented C02 savings can now be monetized — and using LifeStraws means not having to burn petrol or wood to boil dirty water. Vestergaard's Carbon For Water initiative has enabled hundreds of thousands of Kenyan families to pay for its product, growing its business substantially.
Profits at the Bottom of the Pyramid
During the past decade, many multinationals have come up short trying to make a profit by solving the pressing needs of low-income communities. Preoccupied with their social missions, companies have optimistically taken on challenging projects, only to be surprised when weak consumer demand and obstacles such as bad roads keep revenues low and costs high. Overstretched and disillusioned, many switch gears and reconstitute their ventures as break-even social investments that are destined to remain small.
Profits are critically important for ventures targeting the bottom of the economic pyramid — the more than 4 billion people who individually earn less than $1,500 per year. Compared with a social responsibility project, a profitable business stands a better chance of being able to increase its scale and impact. It can command resources and be sure of continued support from both the corporate headquarters and the country office.