When Dick Clark took over as CEO of Merck in 2005, he was asked about his strategy for restoring the pharmaceutical company to greatness in the face of lawsuits over its painkiller Vioxx, expirations of patents on some of its most profitable drugs and a weak product pipeline. His strategy, he said, was to put strategy second and focus on changing the company's insular, academic culture. "The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch," Clark explained. "You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don't have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement it... the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy."

Communication, respect, integrity, excellence - corporate values we've all heard before - not the least of which from Enron! Talk, however, as we all know, is cheap - and what is more important is that values need to be lived when it comes to creating a culture that has a positive impact on innovation.

The challenge in many companies is to bridge the disconnect between values and what is actually happening on an everyday operational level.

Now that everyone is talking about the greenhouse effect, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is very much in vogue. But I maintain that it has always been important for companies to demonstrate their social responsibility. CSR conveys how you conduct your affairs. And people judge that.

Based on the chapter "Bottom-up Innovation", of his recently published book, "Innovation Leaders: How Senior Executives Stimulate, Steer and Promote Innovation", published by Wiley/Jossey-Bass, Professor Deschamps explains how innovation occurs under two complementary modes: bottom-up innovation and top-down innovation. Both have the same objective - creating value for customers or for the company - but each has different drivers and processes.

Margins are tight and the competition powerful. Just getting your feet under the negotiation table is a challenge nowadays. All the more reason, once you’re there, to make sure you capitalize on your opportunity. The key here is good negotiation skills. So what makes a good negotiator?

Everyone is busy nowadays. While this is intrinsically a good thing, situations are developing increasingly in which this busyness turns negative, and results in stress. This hinders development and positive leadership. So what can we do about it?

This article focuses on building an aligned ambition around where the firm is moving, challenging how the leadership team defines both the possibilities to which the organization can aspire and the direction it is heading.

How can family businesses minimize their inherent weakness and leverage their inherent strengths? Our research indicates that successful family businesses do this by - both deeply and broadly - understanding their complexity and preparing for proactively dealing with particular issues that arise at different stages.

When the dust settles, the question will have to be asked: Where were the boards of directors when the leading banks and financial firms were loading up on subprime backed CDOs and SIVs? What happened to the risk management procedures laid out in their corporate governance guidelines? How is it possible that some had to take more than ten billion dollars in write-downs, while others like Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse sensed the risk and were much less exposed?

Sponsorship in and over the coming years is set to expand further. As markets become more cluttered, companies are finding fewer effective ways of communicating with their clients. Sponsorship offers one way out of this.