Risk management isn’t just a matter of complex financial models and formal risk-management systems. It is an essential value-creating activity that should inform the strategic debate at every level of the organization. Here are ten basic principles that should govern “the art of risk management.”

You can’t simply replicate the success of apostle brands like Apple or Amazon. Your company will have its own constraints, market conditions, challenges, and opportunities. But you can imagine a better future. Our eight rules provide a game plan for converting your customers into die-hard followers and ardent advocates.

As customer expectations grow and markets evolve more quickly, companies can’t expect to innovate in the ways they used to. Innovation models themselves need to be systematically rethought and updated. Five organizing principles can help companies sharpen their innovation edge—and promote sustained, value-creating growth.

A new growth strategy is only as good as the people and organizational practices that support it. Here are five secrets that leaders can use to promote the cooperation and behavior that new growth initiatives require.

Successful serial acquirers deliver more growth and create more value from acquisitions than their peers. What explains their success? A willingness to invest disproportionately in three key areas: defining a compelling investment thesis, building an enduring M&A network and culture, and establishing distinctive principles to guide the M&A process.

After slogging through a long trough, the global M&A market entered 2014 with a strong tailwind, including the announcement of roughly as many megadeals in the first six months as in the two previous years combined. Multiple signs point to a continued resurgence.

E-commerce is by far the fastest-growing retail channel, especially in Asia, but its growth is constrained by barriers to cross-border transactions. Those barriers are falling fast, though. Are online retailers, carriers, and other service providers ready to compete in an effectively borderless world?

Companies in all industries can reduce their product portfolio’s complexity without negatively affecting consumer perception of the variety of their offerings. The solution entails combining insights about the market and supply chain to make the right trade-offs between the cost of complexity and the value of diversity.

Too many companies see IP strategy as a false choice between “sue” or “share.” BCG’s IP strategic-intent framework illuminates the strategy behind Tesla’s unilateral “IP truce”—and offers a common language that can help other companies craft more subtle IP strategies that significantly enhance their competitive advantage.

One of the most powerful tools available to CEOs and CFOs to promote growth is their company’s approach to capital allocation across its portfolio of businesses. And yet, the way many companies allocate capital is remarkably haphazard. Taking four steps will ensure that capital allocation delivers on the corporate growth ambition.