Most Popular Editorials: How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy

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How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy The essence of strategy formulation is coping with competition. Yet it is easy to view competition too narrowly and too pessimistically. While one sometimes hears executives complaining to the contrary, intense competition in an industry is neither coincidence nor bad luck. Moreover, in the fight for market share, competition is not manifested only in the other players. Rather, competition in an industry is rooted in its underlying economics, and competitive forces exist that go well beyond the established combatants in a particular industry. Customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products are all competitors that may be more or less prominent or active depending on the industry. Continued here

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Help Your Team Do More Without Burning Out Earlier in our careers, speed and energy are important components. But there comes a point where you actually can't speed up any more. You need to rely less on what you can personally achieve (your "ego-drive") and more on what you can achieve with others (your "co-drive"). Instead of being energetic, you need to become energizing. Instead of setting the pace, you need to teach others to self-propel. Instead of delegating, you need to allow people to congregate. As you shift from proving yourself to helping others perform, your key question is not "How can I push harder?" but "Where can I let go?" Continued here

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Stop Screening Job Candidates' Social Media Social media sites such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram have given many organizations a new hiring tool. According to a 2018 CareerBuilder survey, 70% of employers check out applicants' profiles as part of their screening process, and 54% have rejected applicants because of what they found. Social media sites offer a free, easily accessed portrait of what a candidate is really like, yielding a clearer idea of whether that person will succeed on the job - or so the theory goes. However, new research suggests that hiring officials who take this approach should use caution: Much of what they dig up is information they are ethically discouraged or legally prohibited from taking into account when evaluating candidates - and little of it is predictive of performance. Continued here

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Product placement is a $23 billion business and growing. Here's why brands keep betting on it Product placement is ubiquitous, but there are some tactics that work far better than others.In "The Variant," an episode from the Disney+ hit streaming show Loki, it's tough to miss the barrage of product placements, with fast-paced action and dialogue taking place in front of Charmin toilet paper, Dove soap, and Arm & Hammer deodorant. At one point, Loki barrels down an aisle with vacuum cleaners and fights off an opponent with a corded vacuum while iRobot vacuums are prominently featured on the shelf. As someone who studies such advertising techniques as product placements, I'm starting to notice them crop up more and more. With viewers migrating to streaming services and web videos, this trend makes sense. (Who actually watches the full ads that appear at the beginning of a YouTube video?) But not all product placements work as intended, and my research has shown that advertisers need to engage in a delicate dance with viewers to effectively influence them. Continued here

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First GM, now Ford - why India is becoming a graveyard for world's auto giants India is a market for low-priced cars with low running costs, and global majors don't have the models to match Maruti and Hyundai's entry-level vehicles.If you leave out Hyundai, which has become a bigger car manufacturer than Ford and General Motors (by numbers, not value), the top four global makers of automobiles command barely 6 per cent of the Indian passenger vehicle market. Among them, General Motors (GM) left India four years ago. Ford's announced exit now will make little difference since it has less than 2 per cent of the market. And the global No. 1 (Volkswagen), together with its Skoda subsidiary, has barely 1 per cent. Of the big four, Toyota has been the most successful, but has barely 3 per cent of the market. And recall that even Toyota, while complaining of high taxes, announced a halt last year to further investment in India before quickly retracting. Regardless, it has stopped the production of two three-box models, the Etios and Corolla Altis. Honda on its part has stopped the production of the Civic and Accord. So why is India becoming a graveyard for the world's auto majors? One answer is that the Indian car market is no longer what it once promised to be, its global ranking expected to move from fourth to third - again, measured by vehicle numbers, not value. Instead, it has slipped to fifth (overtaken by Germany) because the market levelled off and then shrank for two years before recovering this financial year. This is part of the larger story about the loss of momentum in India's consumer markets. Continued here

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How Moderna, Home Depot, and others are succeeding with AI. When pharmaceutical company Moderna announced the first clinical trial of a COVID-19 vaccine, it was a proud moment but not a surprising one for Dave Johnson, the company's chief data and artificial intelligence officer. When Johnson joined the company in 2014, he helped put in place automated processes and AI algorithms to increase the number of small-scale messenger RNA (mRNA) needed to run clinical experiments. This groundwork contributed to Moderna releasing one of the first COVID-19 vaccines (using mRNA) even as the world had only started to understand the virus' threat. "The whole COVID vaccine development, we're immensely proud of the work that we've done there, and we're immensely proud of the superhuman effort that our people went through to bring it to market so quickly," Johnson said during a bonus episode of the MIT Sloan Management Review podcast "Me, Myself, and AI." Continued here

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Why Talented People Don't Use Their Strengths. Experts have long encouraged people to "play to their strengths." But based on my observations, this is easier said than done, because we often undervalue what we inherently do well. As a leader, the challenge is not only to spot talent but also to convince your people that you value their talents and that they should, too. Begin by identifying the strengths of each member of your team. You might ask them, "What compliments do you tend to dismiss?" since people often downplay what they do most easily. Once you've identified their key strengths, ask them, "Are you doing work that draws on your strengths? Are we taking on projects that make the most of your strengths?" If the answer is no, reassign people to new roles where their strengths will be put to better use. Continued here

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Try this technique to learn just about anything (even the complex stuff) To continuously expand your skill set and achieve mastery over new and complex concepts, it's crucial to have a framework for conquering puzzling problems.Richard Feynman was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who made significant contributions in areas such as quantum mechanics and particle physics. He also pioneered quantum computing, introducing the concept of nanotechnology. He was a renowned lecturer who taught at Cornell and Caltech. Despite all of his accomplishments, Feynman thought of himself as "an ordinary person who studied hard." He believed that anyone was capable of learning with enough effort, even complex subjects like quantum mechanics and electromagnetic fields: Continued here

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Almost All of The World's Coal Is Now 'Unextractable', Scientists Warn The vast majority of the world's fossil fuels are effectively "unextractable" and must remain in the ground if we want even half a chance at meeting our climate goals, according to a new study.For nations like Indonesia and Australia, the world's leading exporters in coal, that will require abandoning 95 percent of their natural deposits come 2050, researchers at University College London have calculated. In that same time frame, Middle Eastern nations will have to leave all their coal reserves in the ground and the United States will have to leave 97 percent of its stores untouched. These are the regions that truly have their work cut out for them, but this is, of course, a team effort. Across the world, nearly 90 percent of all coal reserves will need to stay in the ground over the next three decades, including 76 percent in China and India. Any more removal than that and this combustible black rock could easily push global warming over the 1.5 degree Celsius goal, scientists warn. Continued here

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From deer and dogs to rats and mink, COVID-19 has spread to the animal world As SARS-CoV-2 spreads through some animal populations, animals may create a feedback loop as they re-infect humansFor six months out of the year, Dr. Jenessa Gjeltema has a very diverse and unusual roster of patients. The assistant professor of zoological medicine at University of California, Davis provides clinical work for hundreds and hundreds of animals at the Sacramento Zoo, from lions and giraffes to poison dart frogs and two-toed sloths. It doesn't take long to intuit that she cares very deeply for each animal, which is why she was concerned when a meerkat became very sick during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. "The meerkat presented with bloody nasal discharge coming out of its face and was in respiratory distress," Gjeltema recalled. "It was just at the start of the pandemic, when we were getting significant amounts of community spread in our local area, and I was very concerned because we didn't know as much as we do now about how the virus behaves in humans, much less all of the animals that were in our collection." Continued here

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Global inequality may be falling, but the gap between haves and have-nots is growing In one of the most unequal countries in the world, South Africa, the poorest 40% have annual incomes of less than US$1,000 (£727) per person. The comparable incomes for the richest 10% are more than US$39,000 per person - nearly 40 times higher than those of the bottom 40%. Those numbers, which are based on data from 2017, are actually something of an improvement on 2008, when the multiple was 50 times. But the gap in income between these groups grew by more than US$10,000 per person over this time. And more than two decades after the end of apartheid, the richest 10% are still predominantly from the white minority group, while the poorest 40% is the "exclusive" preserve of the black majority. These extreme inequalities show that economic growth has neither been inclusive nor transformative - despite the country having implemented significant policies benefiting people with lower incomes in an effort to improve the disparity. We've found similar situations in many countries - even those such as Brazil, China, India and Mexico where inequality is lower and tackling it has emerged as a fundamental development challenge. Continued here

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'Havana syndrome' and the mystery of the microwaves Doctors, scientists, intelligence agents and government officials have all been trying to find out what causes "Havana syndrome" - a mysterious illness that has struck American diplomats and spies. Some call it an act of war, others wonder if it is some new and secret form of surveillance - and some people believe it could even be all in the mind. So who or what is responsible? It often started with a sound, one that people struggled to describe. "Buzzing", "grinding metal", "piercing squeals", was the best they could manage.   One woman described a low hum and intense pressure in her skull; another felt a pulse of pain. Those who did not hear a sound, felt heat or pressure. But for those who heard the sound, covering their ears made no difference. Some of the people who experienced the syndrome were left with dizziness and fatigue for months.  Havana syndrome first emerged in Cuba in 2016. The first cases were CIA officers, which meant they were kept secret. But, eventually, word got out and anxiety spread. Twenty-six personnel and family members would report a wide variety of symptoms. There were whispers that some colleagues thought sufferers were crazy and it was "all in the mind".  Five years on, reports now number in the hundreds and, the BBC has been told, span every continent, leaving a real impact on the US's ability to operate overseas.  Continued here

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Could the ways you cope with stress be undermining you? Here are healthier ways to respond Good Anxiety is the title of the new book from NYU neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki PhD - but it's one that will surprise those of us who think of anxiety as strictly bad news. However, through her work, Suzuki has come to find, as she writes, that "anxiety can shift from something we try to avoid and get rid of to something that is both informative and beneficial." The key is taking the information that your anxiety is telling you and using it to live in ways that support your well-being. Below, she explains how to evaluate the ways you cope with stress and change them for the better. In the face of stressors and the anxiety they often trigger, we all develop coping strategies to manage and get ourselves back on track. These go-to behaviors or thought processes often function automatically, beneath our conscious awareness, and many were developed when we were younger and less mindful. We developed these coping mechanisms to self-soothe or avoid uncomfortable feelings. But when these coping mechanisms stop working to manage stress, they tend to make matters worse, exacerbating our anxiety and undermining our belief that we are in control of our lives. Continued here

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Do You Feel Guilty All The Time? Guilt, as subtle as it may be, is a pervasive emotion that many of us experience daily. Some argue that perfectionism is at the heart of it, but even those of us that are far from perfectionist aren't immune to guilt. Others argue that guilt is a complete waste of time, but we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Guilt can be a sign of a functional moral compass. For example, if, in a fit of rage, you call your colleague a useless snollygoster and put salt in his extra large, nonfat, double decaf mochaccino, feeling guilty is probably quite an appropriate emotion, and hopefully, it will prevent you from similar shenanigans in the future. In the case above, the "crime" is obvious and undeniable, though generally, guilt is much more insidious. When we're at work, we feel guilty for not being with our children (or even our pets). When we're at home, we feel guilty for not having done the laundry for a week or for not being at work. On the weekends, we feel guilty about not calling our friends or hanging out with our friends instead of our mothers. Continued here

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The Problem With Certainty It seems our collective capacity to consider - simultaneously - the many sides to a decision is weak, if not nonexistent. We crave certainty in some (any!) aspect of our lives, and the pressures of the moment reinforce our natural tendency toward confirmation bias. Seeing an issue through another person's eyes has become too uncomfortable to bear, especially in light of the marathon ills, both literal and figurative, we are enduring from the COVID-19 pandemic. The continual demands of adjusting to changes in our home and work environments have left us with little emotional energy and cognitive space. The problem, however, is that being certain about the rightness or wrongness of others' decisions leaves little room for us to grow or expand our understanding, not just of other people but of their situations and their circumstances. Our inability to control a knee-jerk reaction that shuts down ambivalence borne from disagreement or uncertainty limits our ability to make progress, personally and professionally. In other words, we get stuck. We get stuck as individual citizens, and we get stuck as managers and leaders. How do we get unstuck? By doing what's uncomfortable, unfortunately. Continued here

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The 'Pirate Bay of Science' Adds 2 Million New Journal Articles Sci-Hub, a website dedicated to free access of scientific articles, has updated for the first time in a year.On September 5, 2011, the Sci-Hub was born. It's a place where people can find scientific studies that are typically hidden behind expensive paywalls for free. The site is constantly under legal threat and only periodically uploads. On its tenth birthday, it did what it does best. Uploaded paywalled articles to a database where anyone can read them. "In honor of such a round date, two million have been added to the server today, namely 2,337,229 new articles," neuroscientist turned scientific paper pirate Alexandra Elbakyan said in a blog post announcing the upload. Continued here

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Why Some People Get Burned Out and Others Don't Everyone faces stress at work, but some people are able to handle the onslaught of long hours, high pressure, and work crises in a way that wards off burnout. You can get better at handling stress by making several mental shifts: - Don't be the source of your stress. Resist your perfectionist tendencies and your drive for constant high achievement. Recognize when you're being too hard on yourself, and let go. - Recognize your limitations. Don't try to be a hero. If you don't have the ability or bandwidth to do something, be honest with yourself and ask for help. - Reevaluate your perspective. Do you view a particular situation as a threat to something you value? Or do you view it as a problem to be solved? Change how you see the situation to bring your stress levels down. Continued here

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Why Do We Undervalue Competent Management? Neither great leadership nor brilliant strategy matters without operational excellence.Business schools teach MBA students that you can't compete on the basis of management processes because they're easily copied. Operational effectiveness is table stakes in the competitive universe, according to the strategists. But data from a decade-long research project involving 12,000 firms challenges that thinking. The study examined how well companies performed 18 core management practices. It found vast differences in how they execute basic tasks like setting targets, running operations, and grooming talent, and that those differences matter: Firms with strong managerial processes do significantly better on high-level metrics such as profitability, growth, and productivity. What's more, the differences in process quality persist over time, suggesting that competent management is not easy to imitate. In this article the authors review the findings of the research and explore what prevents executives from investing in management capabilities, arguing that such investments are a powerful way to become more competitive. Continued here

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How to say the unsayable: 10 ways to approach a sensitive, daunting conversation It's easy to put off tender discussions, but successfully addressing the most emotional subjects always starts with listening.There's a conversation you're avoiding. It feels important, the stakes are high, there are strong feelings involved and you are putting it off: "The time isn't right"; "I can't find the words"; "I don't want to get emotional". But delaying doesn't solve anything and anticipation is often far more uncomfortable than the conversation itself. Getting started might involve some awkward moments, but, after that, the situation is open for discussion and exploration. Tried and tested approaches can help to smooth the way. Here are 10 useful tips from my experience as a psychotherapist and doctor, developed while working in some of the highest-stakes discussions - the tender conversations taking place as people face the end of life. These principles apply whether you are chatting in person, over the phone or during a video call. You can even use them in text message conversations. Continued here

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Ready for the roaring 20s? It's time to re-learn how to have fun, says happiness professor A conscious decision to bring more joy into our lives can boost both mind and bodyAfter a year-and-a-half of loss, sickness and stress caused by the pandemic, burnout is high and morale is low. But in some positive news, according to Laurie Santos, Yale's "happiness professor", the way to feel better need not depend on restrictive diets, gruelling fitness regimes or testing mental challenges, but in something far more attractive: fun. The American psychology professor and Happiness Lab podcaster, who rose to international fame when her course "psychology and the good life" became the Ivy League university's most popular course of all time, says that consciously injecting more fun into our lives - which she refers to as a "funtervention" - can not only improve mental health and help prevent burnout but also improve physical health. Continued here

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What It's Like to Inherit Billions in Your Twenties Tyler Huang is living what many would think of as a dream existence, but he feels like he's just sleepwalking through life.At an age when most teenagers are swapping trading cards, Tyler Huang was involved in his father’s bid to buy a British football club. If they wanted to, his family could make a Monopoly board of London, purchasing properties on the roll of a dice. Tyler himself has the means to dine on wagyu for every meal. He is, if it wasn't already obvious, unbelievably rich. This kind of existence might sound like a dream, but Huang feels as though he's merely sleepwalking through life. "It wasn't as nice it sounds," he tells me. "Wealth can fix many external problems, but it does nothing to tackle the internal ones." Continued here

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How Humble Leadership Really Works When you're a leader - no matter how long you've been in your role or how hard the journey was to get there - you are merely overhead unless you're bringing out the best in your employees. Unfortunately, many leaders lose sight of this. Power, as my colleague Ena Inesi has studied, can cause leaders to become overly obsessed with outcomes and control, and, therefore, treat their employees as means to an end. As I've discovered in my own research, this ramps up people's fear - fear of not hitting targets, fear of losing bonuses, fear of failing - and as a consequence people stop feeling positive emotions and their drive to experiment and learn is stifled. Continued here

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The Sources of Resilience Findings from the largest global study of resilience and engagement from the ADP Research Institute.We're all suffering through difficult times that we did not anticipate and challenges that we were not prepared for. In the face of all that's going on in the world, how do we survive? How do we push through the muck of current events and continue showing up for the people who need us most? The answer to many of these questions lies in our capacity for resilience: the ability to bend in the face of a challenge and then bounce back. It is a reactive human condition that enables you to keep moving through life. Many of us live under the assumption that a healthy life is one in which we're successfully balancing work, parenting, chores, hobbies, and relationships. But balance is a poor metaphor for health. Life is about motion. Life is movement. Everything healthy in nature is in motion. Thus, resilience describes our ability to continue moving, despite whatever life throws in our path. The question for us, of course, is what causes us to be able to bounce back and keep moving, what ingredients in our lives give us this strength, and how do we access them? Continued here

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Why Talented People Don't Use Their Strengths Experts have long encouraged people to "play to their strengths." But based on my observations, this is easier said than done, because we often undervalue what we inherently do well. As a leader, the challenge is not only to spot talent but also to convince your people that you value their talents and that they should, too. Begin by identifying the strengths of each member of your team. You might ask them, "What compliments do you tend to dismiss?" since people often downplay what they do most easily. Once you've identified their key strengths, ask them, "Are you doing work that draws on your strengths? Are we taking on projects that make the most of your strengths?" If the answer is no, reassign people to new roles where their strengths will be put to better use. Continued here

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Plan a Better Meeting with Design Thinking Nine out of ten people admit to daydreaming in meetings. Seventy-three percent do other work. That's because most meetings are poorly designed. How do you improve the situation? "Sometimes, when I sit in meetings, especially ones in which people don't seem engaged, I calculate the cost in staff time. I've estimated that one standard weekly meeting in my bureau - 50 people sitting in a cookie-cutter conference room, looking both bored and anxious - costs around $177,000 annually, and surely this scenario occurs throughout the [organization] hundreds of times a day. It drains us, and it breeds cynicism. So many meetings are lost opportunities." Continued here

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How to Stop Delegating and Start Teaching As a manager, a central part of your job is to develop people. But when you delegate a task to someone - with no prior training - simply because you are unavailable to do it, their chances of succeeding are slim. Managers need to stop thinking of passing off responsibilities as delegating, and start taking on the mindset of a trainer. If you do, you will naturally look for ways to give a little more responsibility to the people who work for you. Start by gauging who on your team genuinely wants to move up in the organization, and identify their main areas of interest. Create a development plan for them and write down the skills they will need in order to reach their goals. Then, focus on giving them assignments that require those skills. Help them work their way up to a challenging task by starting with a series of practice sessions. The first time you introduce a task to someone, let them shadow you while you explain some of the key points. Then, give them a piece to do on their own with your supervision. Only let them carry the full load when you sense that they are ready. By doing this, you are helping your supervisees reach their career goals, and creating a team of trusted associates who can step in when you are overwhelmed or out of the office. Continued here

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What We Can Learn From Bodybuilders In the Primal or "functional fitness" communities, I've noticed that bodybuilding gets a bad rap. The story goes that bodybuilders are only in it for the aesthetics. Or that their strength isn't "real," that they do too many isolation exercises that rarely occur in natural settings or sports for that matter. And I get some of that. The average bodybuilder who only focuses on the appearance of his or her muscles is leaving a lot of function on the table. Bodybuilders are often not the paragons of athleticism as commonly conceived - running and jumping, general physical preparedness. Yet critics miss the fact that bodybuilding itself is a sport. It's a complex undertaking that requires extreme discipline and the development of certain skills. It's anything but easy. Like any community, there's plenty to criticize about bodybuilding, but there's also a lot to learn from it. What can we learn from bodybuilders? Continued here

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6 Strategies for Exhausted Working Parents Working parents are depleted. Every single one of the dozens of working moms and dads the author has coached over these past several weeks has voiced some version of the "I'm driving on empty" feeling. And now vacation is over, school is gearing back up, and the return to in-person work is here or looming. Which leaves working parents asking: How can I face all of the changes in these coming months when I'm feeling this depleted? The author offer six techniques to try to reset and build your forward momentum. Continued here

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She's the Investor Guru for Online Creators Li Jin, 31, began backing creators years ago. She has raised her own fund to invest in influencer-related start-ups.Cody Ko, a YouTube star with 5.7 million subscribers, found himself in a pickle in May. Two different start-ups wanted to give him stock, and he was concerned that they were potentially competitive deals. So Mr. Ko called someone he trusted for advice: Li Jin. Ms. Jin, a venture capitalist, suggested that Mr. Ko, 30, be honest and upfront with the founders of both start-ups about the potential conflict of interest. He agreed and ended up pursuing just one of the deals. "I'd never hesitate to reach out to her if I needed something," he said of Ms. Jin. If there is such a thing as an It Girl in venture capital these days, Ms. Jin, 31, would fill the bill. She sits at the intersection of start-up investing and the fast-growing ecosystem of online creators, both of which are red hot. And while she formed her own venture firm, Atelier Ventures, just last year and has raised a relatively small $13 million for a fund, Ms. Jin was among the first investors in Silicon Valley to take influencers seriously and has written about and backed creators for years. A Harvard graduate who was inspired by the ideas of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Ms. Jin is also aggressively pro-worker. Continued here

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Return-to-Work Programs Come of Age Companies can benefit from hiring mid-career professionals who've taken a break.During the past few years Amazon has been experimenting with programs to recruit mid-career professionals who've spent a few years away from the workforce. Like most other companies, the online retailer started out small, hiring a few dozen people at a time in pilot cohorts. But in June 2021 Amazon made a stunning announcement: It would expand its return-to-work initiative by hiring 1,000 returning professionals - an order of magnitude larger than any other company's program. Each participant would be given coaching and mentoring as part of the paid 16-week program, with potential to land a permanent position at its conclusion. "We've formed a dedicated team that recruits specifically for professionals who are restarting their careers," says Alex Mooney, Amazon's senior diversity talent acquisition program manager. And instead of looking skeptically at resume gaps or skills that may need refreshing, Amazon's recruiters are directed to focus on each candidate's potential. Continued here