Invisible hand or chaos
Perhaps the invisible hand of Adam Smith is not as important in free market economies as the freedom for unsuccessful experiments to fail.
Companies have it both ways
Whose interests are served by waves of mergers and demergers?
Steer clear of muddy waters
Pfizer, Warner-Lambert and American Home Products are flirting with each other - but does it really make sense to talk about a “market for pharmaceuticals”?
Tracking the net effect of innovation
A network industry which fundamentally changed the way we live, followed by a speculative bubble: but how much would you have made if you’d got in right at the start with Great Western Railways?
Mastering Strategy: Regulated Industries
Regulated businesses face almost all of the strategy issues which confront conventional firms, and some additional ones that are specific to their own environment. As deregulation spreads across Europe, the gap between those firms which handle these specific issues effectively and those which respond to regulation and regulatory changes with hostility, complacency or defeatism will widen rapidly.
Beating the west at its own game
Commercial success with innovation depends less on the innovations themselves than on the other qualities of a firm. Sony’s use of Bell Labs technology is the classic example.
Looking at cost, not value
Regardless of what something seems to be worth, I should never pay more for something than it would cost me to replace it. On this basis, mobile phone companies look expensive.
Mastering Strategy: Resource Based Strategy
The resource based view of strategy has a coherence and integrative role that places it well ahead of other mechanisms of strategic decision making. After thirty years or so, the subject of strategy is genuinely acquiring what can be described as a paradigm - to use the most overworked and abused term in the study of management.
Ford puts faith in high prices
Ford’s promise to keep prices high is a curious one, and the way it has been phrased shows that they have failed to understand the principles of credible commitment.
Shedding light on the limits to innovation
The story of the everlasting light bulb is one of the hoariest myths in business economics. But the myth is indeed a myth.