Topic: Company Activities and Information

When Dinosaurs Embrace

When all else fails, you can always merge. That seems to be the message behind Federated's $11 billion acquisition of May Department Stores. These are two struggling businesses in a moribund industry: for more than a decade now, ...READ»

Can Philips Learn to Walk the Talk?

Gerard Kleisterlee's turnaround program for Royal Philips Electronics is a high-stakes bet on a simple, catalytic idea: strategic conversations.READ»

Effective Innovation: Large or Small?

Which companies are the most effective in investing in innovation/R&D? Large companies have many more resources to dedicate, but small companies specialize in what they know best. So is there a way to determine which gets the biggest ...READ»

Herman Miller's Leap of Faith

Like lots of troubled companies before it, Herman Miller slashed and burned--people, facilities, businesses. But at the same time, it took a deep breath and made a big bet on the future.READ»

Will You Be Acquired, and Then What Happens?

A common misconception from companies contemplating an exit is that M&A has dried up as the venture and IPO markets have. This is not to say that M&A hasn’t been affected by the current market conditions, but dried up? No. Case ...READ»

Microsoft's Acquisition of aQuantive Jabs at Google-DoubleClick

Who knew? Back in April when I interviewed aQuantive CEO Brian McAndrews for the ad:tech San Francisco opening keynote, "The Digital Decade: What the Past 5 Years Can Teach Us About the Next 5," the industry was abuzz about the ...READ»

FreeRisk: Crowdsourcing Credit Ratings?

Can an open source approach reinvent the business of analyzing risk?READ»

Weak Companies, Strong Mergers?

Untangling the WebREAD»

7 Lessons From WaMu's Playbook

Mergers and acquisitions are, once again, shaking up all kinds of industries. The big question: How do you do them right? Here's the playbook according to Washington Mutual, one of the best in the business.READ»

Moody's and Kiva at CGI: Rating Credit Risks for a Hand in the Future of Micro-lending Banks

While it's a thrill for me to help engage companies in strategic philanthropy, corporate social responsibility (CSR), skilled volunteering, and other forms of giving and service, I've always believed that corporate initiatives are ...READ»

Can Innovation Be Bought?

In his Harvard Doctoral Dissertation, Saikat Chaudhuri (2004) examines the degree to which acquisitions are an effective path toward adding new technology and new products to a company. Acquisitions can be used as an alternative to ...READ»

The End of the Financial World as We Know It

By MICHAEL LEWIS and DAVID EINHORN AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our ...READ»

Innovation Awards

How do you quantify corporate imagination? Meet the top companies on the first-ever Fast Company/Monitor Group Innovation Scorecard -- firms where new ideas are a competitive advantage.READ»

Update

Take Two From big molecules spring big deals: Drugmaker Wyeth, which develops large-molecule pharmaceuticals cultivated from living cells ("Grand Experiment," February), is set to be acquired by Pfizer in a $68 billion ...READ»

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Microsoft Skills

William H. Gates III is chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corp. He spoke with Fast Company about patience, fast-following, and the innovation gap.READ»

The Wal-Mart of High Tech?

In this candid QA, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins discusses the company's supply chain strategy, approach to setting goals, and contrarian nature.READ»

What Money Can't Buy

Each year, Microsoft spends more than $6 billion on R&D. And for all that money, it gets...digital toilets and SPOT Watches. Is there a problem here?READ»

Lessons on Innovation From Microsoft

There are plenty of internal reasons why Microsoft's record of innovation is so lackluster. Not to mince words, Bill Gates's researchers have placed a bunch of expensive bets on technologies that haven't panned out. But the company's failure also points to three much bigger lessons about innovation.READ»

The Thrill of Defeat

Want to know how to motivate people to take on tough odds? Ask the folks in Pfizer's labs, where managing failure is a fine art and superhuman persistence an everyday habit.READ»

Building Your Company's Intellectual Capital Pool

As described in a previous posting today, researchers categorize Intellectual Capital (IC) as human (brilliant individuals), social (collaborating groups), and organizational (patents and databases). If your company is interested in ...READ»

Moody's Mega Math Challenge: Wall Street's Strategic Philanthropy

"Want to know if the stimulus act will work or whether ethanol is the right choice for U.S. energy independence? Need advice on how to beat Wall Street?" So asked the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) at the annual ...READ»

Booz & Company's Global Innovation 1000

Each year, Booz & Company analyzes R&D spending and determines the top 1000 spenders who are named their “Global Innovation 1000.” This year’s analysis takes a different look at the R&D spending and reveals ...READ»

Strategic Partnerships That Soar

Part V: The Growth of a Brand. Karen Post continues to offer branding lessons from a social-networking start-up.READ»

Merrill Lynch Works - at Home

The Wall Street giant has created a one-of-a-kind program to teach its telecommuters how to get the job done.READ»

Don't Have a Cow - Kill One!

How Mitel killed sacred cows.READ»