After the financial crisis of 2008 wreaked havoc on the global economy, a lot of finger-pointing was directed at the former giants of finance, many of whom held MBAs from top business schools. Have a few bad-apple business school alumni spoiled the economic barrel? Or is the problem more systemic: Have schools themselves contributed to the global financial crisis by selecting the wrong kinds of students and teaching them the wrong things? To answer .....more

A recession often forces you to cut R&D as you refocus on your core. But innovation need not go by the wayside. By placing certain assets and projects outside your walls, you can actually preserve opportunities for future growth while you shore up the fortress. Henry Chesbrough, of Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and Andrew Garman, of New Venture Partners, identify five strategic moves that open up the door to innovation by, ironically, .....more

In too many companies, growth is stagnating--even shrinking. Clearly, typical growth strategies--international expansion, acquisitions, product proliferation--are losing steam. What's the remedy? More dependable ways to propel and sustain growth. The most successful companies tackle this challenge in three ways: they strengthen their core business by building a foundation of operational excellence; they recognize when it's time to redefine .....more

The economic world is full of patterns, and one of the most controversial is the distribution of wealth. You might expect the balance between rich and poor to vary widely from country to country. But back in 1897, Vilfredo Pareto discovered a pattern of wealth distribution that appears to be universal. Whenever you double the amount of wealth within a country, the number of people in each successively higher wealth bracket falls by a constant factor. .....more

A nonbusiness discipline can provide a useful framework for thinking about old problems in new ways. Evolutionary psychology and biology are especially popular sources of inspiration. But should they be? Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has spent much of his career explaining science to the public. More than 20 years ago, his book The Selfish Gene shattered the popular belief that evolution necessarily favors altruism and self-sacrifice. In .....more

The digital revolution is here, rapidly changing business practices and posing a dilemma for executives: how should they formulate strategies in this new business environment? London Business School professor John Stopford says there are two big challenges: understanding the fast-moving digital business environment and then actually developing strategies that work in it. Two new books, he says, provide a useful introduction to these challenges. Adrian .....more

Five years ago, intellectual capital was a topic of choice among enlightened businesspeople. Now, with the publication of Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, another form of putative wealth has moved to center stage--what author Robert Putnam calls "social capital." Social capital--"the connections among individuals and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them"--is important for .....more

The e-commerce explosion is turning the Internet, once a freewheeling medium of individual expression, into a sphere of intense corporate activity. Companies are shaping cyberspace to make electronic transactions more secure and consumer information easier to use--a development that has widespread ramifications. In Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, author Lawrence Lessig argues that if commercial interests have a free hand in determining the Internet's .....more

What's the verdict on the U.S. economy's greater reliance on free markets in recent decades? The data alone won't give us easy answers. As economist Frank Levy points out, the numbers on economic well-being are so diverse that analysts can usually find support for their points of view. Two new books are cases in point. Myths of Rich & Poor, by W. Michael Cox and Richard Alm, is written with supply-side optimism and a combative faith .....more

No one would run a business without accounting for its capital outlays. Yet most companies overlook one major capital component--the value of the earth's ecosystem services. It is a staggering omission; recent calculations place the value of the earth's total ecosystem services--water storage, atmosphere regulation, climate control, and so on--at $33 trillion a year. Not accounting for those costs has led to waste on a grand scale. But now .....more