Editor’s note

Citation

(2006), "Editor’s note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 27 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2006.28827eaa.001

Editor’s note

Rob Docters and his colleagues at Abbey Road Associates are no friends of bargain hunters. The firm helps companies determine the best prices for their products and services. Pricing has become one of the more complex aspects of running a business. Consider the controversy over drug pricing: if it costs only a few cents or a few dollars to manufacture a given drug, why does it sometimes sell for hundreds of dollars (or euros) in the market? In fact, there are many products whose manufacture seems to bear no relation to their market price. Docters and his co-authors discussed some of these issues in a series they did two years ago in the Journal of Business Strategy. In their paper in this issue, they continue to make the case for strategic pricing in their discussion of bundling.

Jeanne Liedtka, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, has often collaborated with the prolific Henry Mintzberg, who provided input into her article for JBS on strategy and ducks, an unlikely pairing. Liedtka’s paper is ultimately about applying strategy in a practical sense by making it seem real.

JBS has often published papers on innovation. Everyone agrees that it is vital to success in business but it is also hard to measure. Over the past decade, research in different industries has shown that effective innovation, to the extent it can be measured, correlates with better total returns to shareholders and high performance. Jane Linder, a researcher with Accenture, points out in her paper that most measures of innovation are incomplete, focusing only on R&D or new product development. She suggests an alternative, enterprise-level measure that reflects the broadest definition of innovation and focuses on impact or value.

Of all European countries, Switzerland is perhaps most often associated with high-end products and services, from elegant watches to sophisticated finance. But the future may lie not in selling luxury goods to other wealthy countries but in selling low end goods in emerging markets like China and India. Replete with case studies, the paper from Heiko Gebauer reports on interviews with managers in over 30 large companies, many in Switzerland, and how reluctant they are even to consider entering low-end markets. Having the will to do so is only the first small step, and Gebauer lays out a course for success that companies beginning this new venture can follow.

Annie McKee and Richard Boyatzis teamed up to write an unusual study of leadership, Resonant Leadership, published in late 2005. Now, McKee has teamed up with Dick Massimilian on an article for JBS based on their findings in the book. The paper’s authors believe that leaders can renew themselves, and their companies in many instances, through practicing mindfulness, hope and compassion, qualities not often discussed in connection with the boardroom.

Mike Bradbury and Neal Kissel, two Marakon consultants in the London office, take on the marketing budget controversy in their paper. Marketing budgets are going in only one direction – up – and managers are continually asking whether the costs are appropriate. The authors of this paper suggest that the focus shift from how much to where and how the dollars are spent.

John Singer weighs in with a paper that pulls no punches in declaring the end of traditional advertising as an effective tool for corporations. He offers a new approach to advertising and marketing via marketing ecosystems.