How to Stop Corporate A.D.D.

By Michael Kanazawa, Guest Author Companies of all sizes and stages are suffering from corporate attention deficit disorder. It shows up as constantly shifting strategies, launching lots of new initiatives without finishing any, changing plans before results can even be measured, and people running around busy doing a lot of tactical things that just aren’t

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Trend Radar 2008: Turnarounds

2008 seems like a year in which several major companies are positioned for turnarounds. Whether or not they would be successful is another matter, but there is enough discontinuity in each of their markets, that turnarounds could happen. Here are some to watch:

Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 12)

SM: In terms of where you are today, and from a business / financial point of view, what is your strategy? BH: For us, the near term is focused on scaling. The opportunity is big. Every time I say that, I end up doing an acquisition. We clearly do them and we have them in

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Turning Around LeapFrog: CEO Jeff Katz (Part 4)

SM: While you were doing Orbitz, did you already join the board of LeapFrog? JK: No, I joined the board in April of 2005. SM: How did they find you? JK: Leapfrog had been in the process of restructuring its board of directors, moving from insider directors to independent directors. They were looking for somebody

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Pioneering Video Conferencing: Polycom CEO Bob Hagerty (Part 1)

SM: Let’s start the conversation with your story? Where did you grow up, where do you come from? BH: I grew up in New Rochelle New York, which is right outside of New York City. I went to grammar school there and then went off to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for my BA degree.

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The VC-Entrepreneur Compensation Disbalance

We started discussing the leadership development problem in my previous post referring to Prof. Khurana’s new book about Business Schools losing sight of their mission of grooming leaders capable of building and running sustainable enterprises by following the money trail. So, what’s happening in the Venture Capital / Private Equity world? The compensation disbalance here

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Rakesh Khurana’s Business School Mission Critique

I read an interesting piece in the WSJ this week called Business Schools Forgetting Missions. :: Business-school professors are masters at critiquing everyone else’s work. They pick apart Microsoft Corp.’s strategy; they rebuke Enron-era companies for ethics breakdowns. They are so busy gazing outward that it’s unthinkable for them to rip into their own institutions.

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Eric Benhamou: The Saga Of Palm (Part 8)

SM: What is Ed Colligan’s area of expertise? EB: He contributed a lot in the marketing front of the company. That was his main contribution. Ed was a first time CEO. The board felt he could preserve the innovation skills that had characterized the success of the early Palm days as well as Handspring, while

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