Assemble a team of talented professionals. Virtuosos in their fields. Then let them loose to fulfill their promise. Tricky to manage? Maybe. Top results? Virtually guaranteed. Here's a recipe for team success. Just make sure the chef is talented!

In a fast changing environment, leading and managing profitable growth is critical for the development of sustainable competitive advantage. Every day, top executives increasingly face pressure for short term results, slower growth in many developed markets, more international competition from China in particular, a polarization of traditional markets (with mainstream segments squeezed between low cost and high-end brands), not enough leadership in strategy and change execution and more demanding boards to deliver ambitious business results.

What it takes to succeed today and tomorrow is to understand all the forces that shape the new business world, to continuously challenge the ways we conduct business and to revisit traditional managerial processes.

Invented out of a sales function, marketing is a discipline that has been around for some 60 years. And while the motto "You are in the business to serve and keep your customer" has helped numerous companies over the years, and is mostly still as valid today as it was some decades ago, the drive for innovation only picked up recently.

Major shifts in consumer behavior have resulted in a number of changes in recent years in the automotive industry. Today, it tends to operate through franchized dealers and is governed by distribution and customer contact.

It has become clear to many managers that it is no longer enough to have a great product with great functional features and good quality. What is needed is to provide a great customer experience. The fact is that customers cannot but have an experience! They will have one whether you want them to or not. The question really is how random or how managed the experience your company is delivering and how the discrepancy between what customers perceive and what you believe your company is delivering impacts the customer experience.

In 2006, we conducted a survey about low-cost competition amongst our partners and business associates. The results were as surprising as they were startling: eighty percent of companies said they were facing a very strong low-cost competition challenge. Ninety percent felt it was going to increase over the next five years, and only ten percent felt they were dealing with the challenge effectively.

Unfortunately corporate venture capital has tended to follow the much larger venture capital market, albeit with a lag. Why the lag? Venture capital is not a corporation’s core business. By the time the decision to take the plunge has been made, the markets are often “very” healthy with increasing numbers of IPOs. Increasing interest in this area during this upswing often means higher initial investments in the start-ups. And the less easy, three or four years down the road, to actually liquidate them through IPO or acquisition markets.

Technology start-ups are tough going. Yet while often hugely demanding as to capital and time, the rewards and ROI can be equally impressive. In their forthcoming book on Nurturing Science-Based Ventures: An International Case Perspective (ISBN: 978-1-84628-873-9) Professors Leleux and Seifert summarize their research on the management challenges of early stage, technology-based companies.

Of the 55 economies ranked by IMD, the US still ranks No. 1 in 2007, closely followed by Singapore and Hong Kong. However, 40 economies are now increasing or maintaining their competitiveness compared to the US - in other words, “closing the gap”. Only 15 are losing ground. For the first time, the ranking indicates not only the competitive position of nations in 2007 but also their ability to catch up with the leader (the US). These trends are based on past competitive performance, drawn from the world’s most comprehensive database on world competitiveness built up over two decades by IMD.

Most companies fall into one of two camps. In the first, the senior managers take a traditional view. They have grown up seeing IT as a competitive necessity. They invest as much as their competitors do in IT, but no more. The CIO reports to the CFO, and focuses on operating and standardizing systems.