Telecom

What's at stake for the future of the music industry.

I have spent most of my career chronicling the power of business at its best and highlighting strategies for making positive change in difficult situations....

It’s no secret that companies can use information technology as a key to competitive advantage. But the computer key can’t unlock the competitive door if information services (IS) functions—or rather malfunctions—as it does today in many companies. Top managers routinely rate their computer departments dead last among staff functions. Not only is IS slow and […]

Free offerings are rapidly spreading beyond online markets to the physical world. Here’s how incumbents can fight back.

For another look at the Spotify launch, see "Why I'm Not Going Near Spotify (and Why You Shouldn't Either)." iTunes as we know it is over. It is walking,...

Are you in control of your content experience?

In the past three years, we at Northern Telecom Inc. have thrown away many of our internal reporting systems and radically changed our systems for tracking manufacturing, procurement, and customer service. We’ve never been afraid of change, but we don’t believe in change for its own sake either. We’ve given up many of our old […]

This is a story of how a small, young company lost a very important order, recovered, and became much stronger and more competitive by learning about market positioning. The lessons learned proved so valuable that, when all was said and done, the company concluded that losing the big order was the best thing that had […]

Successful innovation requires tracking your partners and potential adopters as closely as you track your own development process.

The TV industry doesn't need to fear HBO Now or Netflix.

Fifty years ago, when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company still held a monopoly on U.S. phone service, the first minute of a toll call could easily cost a dollar—the equivalent of about $5 today. But a few pennies of that 1950s dollar supported research and development efforts at Bell Telephone Laboratories and at AT&T’s […]

If sales and service organizations are to improve, they must learn to measure and manage the quality of the employee-customer encounter. Quality improvement...

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A small island-city located at the tip of the Malay peninsula is the site of an astonishing economic and technological achievement. Singapore not only embodies what is already perhaps the most technologically advanced environment in the world but is also poised to become the world’s first fully networked society—one in which all homes, schools, businesses, […]

Midcareer employees and managers, who should be at their peak of productivity, are the most disaffected segment of the workforce. Companies need to find ways to rekindle the fires of this vast, neglected group of people—or risk losing them altogether.

How a market creator became a market follower.

And why it’s “reprehensible,” for both employees and customers.

As a public speaker, I'm always looking for ways to engage my audience. One old trick - which I never use, precisely because it is so old - is to challenge...

During the soar-and-swoon days of the late 1990s, many people believed that information technology, and the Internet in particular, were "changing everything"...

Even as loyalty programs are launched left and right, many are being scuttled. How can that be? These days, everyone knows that an old customer retained...