The cover theme of the July-Aug 18 issue is ‘economic moats’. Experts— Hap Klopp, The North Face; Ambi Parameswaran, Brand-Building.com; Morgen Witzel, University of Exeter Business School; and Rajesh Maurya, Fortinet—share their views on various aspects of this subject.
Mark Greeven, Zhejiang University, and Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, author of The Focused Organization, give us insight into the Chinese way of building and sustaining organizations, a lesson to be learnt by Western leaders. On the same lines, John Colley, Warwick Business School, tells us how family-run businesses offer many valuable lessons to corporations. Sandra Jones, a business management consultant, shows us a positive side of procrastination, which could help reap benefits if done strategically, while Sharon Tal, author of Where to Play draws out a structured plan for organizations to find the right market opportunity.
Ralph Welborn, co-author of Topple offers us a different perspective on the business ecosystem, and Indranil Mitra, author of Winning Hearts and Minds breaks down Transactional Analysis and its significance in enriching organizational culture. Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya and Sumi Jha, NITIE, and Kartik Girish Vyas, InfoCepts talk about talent retention for IT firms during a lean period whereas Harkirat Singh, Woodland, tells leaders to continually adapt their style to motivate employees.
In our regular section, we have Pam Didner, author of Effective Sales Enablement, who distorts our view of sales and marketing and gives us a fresh perspective on the effective relation one can create between the two functions.
The Smart Manager, India's first world-class management magazine, was founded in 2002 by eminent business historian Dr Gita Piramal with Harvard Business School Dean, Prof. Nitin Nohria with the mission of updating managers and business practitioners in India with the latest thought-provoking strategic ideas from experienced, world-class managers, academics and consultants from across the globe. Over the years, the magazine has carried articles authored by illustrious management gurus such as the late CK Prahalad and Sumantra Ghoshal, Jack Trout, Ram Charan, Gary Hamel, Gay Haskins, Jagdish Seth and Lynda Gratton. We believe that "managers are the best teachers of managers" and most of our articles are written in the first person by top-tier CEOs such as Kumaramangalam Birla, Sunil Mittal, Aditya Birla, KV Kamath, Santrupt Mitra, Rajeev Dubey and S Ramadorai. We also have relationships with a number of B-schools around the world, apart from most top-level schools in India. The Smart Manager hosts the Tata Consultancy Services Smart Manager Case Contest, the most prestigious competition of its kind in the Indian print media. The contest, with a cash prize of INR50,000 per issue, sees wide participation from national and international business managers and students. The 'Smart" in The Smart Manager is an acronym for Strategy, Marketing, Analysis, Resources and Technology. Truly useful knowledge when you need it 24 x 365, year after year.
