February 28, 2002

The drive to be more innovative is stimulating a renewed appreciation of the value of the intrapreneur, otherwise known as the “inhouse entrepreneur”.

Are you closing business deals on a Sunday when your friends are on the golf course? Perhaps you are sneaking out of parties to check on your email or phoning clients in Asia when you’d prefer to be reading a bedtime story to your kids? Communication technology makes it difficult to switch off from work – but you need balance in your life.

Companies generated more revenue but the profit lines are nothing to write home about. Mergers and acquisitions continued but the number of overseas owned companies hardly moved as a percentage of the Top 200. Look ahead to next year, what do this year’s trading results mean?

The theme behind this year’s Deloitte/Management magazine Top 200 Awards is “taking risks”.

The global economy is driving organisational improvement. We have to be as good as the best in the world, not just the business down the street.

Wave six of the Porter Novelli/NFO SM Research project, Currents of thought, a compelling view of New Zealanders, provides some disturbing insights into ourselves.

We all shared the grief and outrage of the United States after September’s terrorist attacks. As the ripple effects continue, companies here are looking for ways to deal with the fall out.

With web design company Webmedia folding, Advantage Group closing its web division, and other New Zealand web agencies laying off staff, the inevitable question is: “How do I protect my company from being adversely affected if and when our web provider ceases trading?”

I would write the word “insure” over every door of every cottage and upon the blotting book of every public man. I am convinced that, for sacrifices that are conceivably small, people can be secured against catastrophes which otherwise would smash them forever.” – Sir Winston Churchill

Knowledge management seemed to promise enterprise a new competitive advantage. But there’s not much evidence the promise has been fulfilled. Why not?

How to choose the best exec for the job.

“Good faith” was always going to be a difficult concept to capture in the real world of industrial encounter. It’s report card time.

Deloitte/Management magazine Executive of the Year Winner Keith McLaughlin Managing Director, Baycorp Holdings Baycorp Holdings was last year’s Top 200 Corporate Strategy winner. The year before it was Company of

The Judges

Criteria

Message from Deloitte

New Zealand’s economy is performing reasonably well. More optimistic observers argue that we are well placed to capitalise on both the positive and the negative impacts of globalisation. So what, is holding New Zealand back? And are we becoming a branch office backwater? Why can’t we become “world class”?

American futurist and consultant Roger Herman, who is due out here this month, says the shortage of qualified and willing workers is a universal problem.

The economic slowdown in the US has had some surprising benefits for the training and education sector. Talking to Nicole Melander, vice president of think.com at Oracle Corporation based in Washington, threw up some challenges facing the corporate community in the US that are beginning to be felt here too.

Every good manager knows the right key performance indicators (KPIs) measure “the pulse” of any organisation.

Richard Templer – Team Manager, Industrial Research

Genesis Research & Development

Now at the top of the National Party Bill English must deliver on the promise some see in him. Can he?

Denis Thom, David Wolfenden Strategic Finance has appointed Wellington-based lawyer and professional director Thom (left) as its new chairman. Wolfenden also joins the board as director, bringing considerable banking experience

Methanex NZ – For stakeholder dialogue

Organisations are turning to environmentally safe and socially responsible management practices.

Sky City

NZIM national chairman Doug Matheson has been elected president of the Asian Association of Management Organisations (AAMO) for the next three years. New Zealand hasn’t chaired the organisation since 1974.

Less Expectations

Last century I wrote elsewhere that my first experience of Unix had been like drinking raw egg. That proved oddly prophetic, because few years later I was commissioned to take,

Forget the dotcom “meltdown” – it’s got little to do with the true nature of e-business which is permanent and progressing.

“Corporate Governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. The governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources.” – Sir Adrian Cadbury, chairman of the United Kingdom Committee on Corporate Governance.

Keith McLaughlin – Managing Director, Baycorp Holdings

What is the free trade debate really about? The reality of doing business – or writing the rules that constrain it?

Good to Great:why some companies make the leap… and others don’t By: Jim Collins Publisher: Random House Business Books Price: $75.00 It has its critics but Built to Last: successful

As prices at the petrol pump fall and rise by a few cents a litre, seemingly in almost random fashion, it’s easy to overlook the underlying reality, that global oil resources are rapidly running out.

The collaborative enterprise, offspring of the internet, is flourishing say the experts. But how different is it?

Next year’s content changes in Management magazine will include this column, which makes this valedictory. When I started writing this page 10 years ago (January ’92), the world, IT, and

Trainers need to be innovative to capture today’s highly competitive education and training market. The Knowledge Wave seminars held couple of months back, underscored what most of us knew but

Labour’s claims of commercial chastity look increasingly thin as the bulge in business legislation and regulation swells.

Leadership in the Antipodes: Findings, implications and leader profile. Edited by: Ken Parry Publisher: Institute of Policy Studies Price: $39 Academic but interesting, this 240-page collection of the research writings