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At Harvard Business Review , Nilofer Merchant has strong words for Yahoo's new leadership . It is time, Merchant says, to be "fearless." The first step is to figure out how the company got to where it is today, and she uses this graph to illustrate the point: Merchant: After working with dozens of complex companies and observing hundreds more, what I've learned is that the companies that create the next big thing are the ones who go beyond talking about doing things differently; they work through the denial, resistance and inaction, and truly shift and adapt. After all of the struggle, they finally both decide that they must, and they actually do. This appears to be where Yahoo has just arrived. A shift. Some movement in saying that what's worked in the past isn't working anymore, and it's time for a change. Bravo. Finally. This shift could be called "feckless to fearless." Feckless is when a company doesn't know its mission, is weak in its decision-making, and thus ineffective in its output. Fearless is seen in bold moves, created by people who trust one another, and backed up by accountability. This shift is the difference between freaking out at the possibility of an imperfect bold bet and making the worst of all choices: zero bold bets. In actually bringing in new talent and letting them lead you to new edges, instead of just saying it's time for a new approach. It's deciding to stop talking about the competitive threat, and instead asking what it will take to leapfrog those competitors. It is worrying less about getting it right, and more about getting started — now. Merchant's advice is directed simultaneously at Yahoo and at other companies that have lost their momentum. Read Yahoo's Shakeup Demands Fearlessness here .

Steve Stoute , CEO of the marketing agency Translation , believes that traditional marketing does not fit with the new economy and in particular with Millenial consumers. A former record executive, Stoute came to recognize that the old way of looking at demographics no longer seemed relevant, so he coined a phrase to mark what he was seeing: "tanning." He came to believe that many American companies were missing out on connecting with American consumers across demographic lines by shunning hip-hop culture even as it continued to grow and grow. Stoute recently spoke about his new book, The Tanning of America: How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy , in this HBR IdeaCast :

Successful companies depend on successful collaboration: employees working together whether they like each other or not. If the collaboration is not working, don't blame the employees. Blame the leader. So says John Abele , cofounder of Boston Scientific . Abele writes about managing successful collaborative efforts in the Harvard Business Review article, Bringing Minds Together . Abele discusses managing collaboration in this HBR IdeaCast interview:

MIT Sloan School of Business professor Thomas Malone says the information age has brought about a new phenomenon in the workplace. Writing in the Harvard Business Review ----with co-authors Robert J. Laubacher , and Tammy Johns --Malone calls the new dynamic "hyperspecialization." With the ability to communicate across the world in real time, workers can collaborate like never before. And that means that businesses no longer have to find generalists--people who can handle a wide variety of tasks. Rather, specialists can team up on projects, with each worker's specific skills complementing those of others on the team. Of course, there are echoes of the early days of industrialization in this new collaborative workplace--and Malone refers to Adam Smith's prediction that the division of labor would come to define business structures. Here is Malone discussing the impact of the division of labor in today's workplace on the way companies do business in Harvard Business Publishing's IdeaCast : Read The Big Idea: The Age of Hyperspecialization here .

Hirotaka Takeuchi says an effective leader in global business today should be "an idealistic pragmatist." In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Takeuchi, professor of management practice at Harvard Business School , and Ikujiro Nonaka , professor emeritus at Hitotsubashi ICS , make the case for "wise" leadership. Wise leaders, they say, are not driven simply by the bottom line. THey have a more holistic sense of a compnay's reponsibility to "the common good," a responsibility that is not at odds with the practical aim of bringing in more revenue. They explain their call for wise leadership in this Harvard Business Review interview: Read The Big Idea: The Wise Leader here (subscription required).

Technology can't give the best executives all the backup they really need. True personal support? There's no app for that. In the May Harvard Business Review , Melba Duncan makes The Case for Executive Assistants . Duncan, President of the Duncan Group , argues that while the process of finding the right executive assistant may be more difficult than other hirings, the cost of making the wrong hire can be much more damaging. Duncan made the case in this IdeaCast:

Product launches like the iPad, and then iPad 2, are the exception. Few bring the groundbreaking success that the businesses and people doing the launch desire. Most, in fact, fail. Joan Schneider and Julie Hall of the PR and marketing firm Schneider Associates manage product launches for a living. And they say there are In the latest Harvard Business Review , they share these five reasons Why Most Product Launches Fail : Flaw 1: The company can’t support fast growth. Flaw 2: The product falls short of claims and gets bashed. Flaw 3: The new item exists in “product limbo.” Flaw 4: The product defines a new category and requires substantial consumer education—but doesn’t get it. Flaw 5: The product is revolutionary, but there’s no market for it. In this HBR Idea Cast, Schneider and Hall discuss the challenges facing marketers and new product developers when it comes time to launch an idea or a product:

We are now one year removed from the start of the catastrophic BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Looking back at how the company responded in the first weeks and months of the spill, Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter says the company CEO, Tony Hayward, failed to lead effectively because he did not "zoom out" and look at the big picture. Kanter argues that successful business leaders need to be able to zoom out and zoom in. They need to be able to take in the big picture, and they need to see the details. Kanter writes in the Harvard Business Review : The lens through which leaders view the world can help or hinder their ability to make good strategic decisions, especially during crises. Zoom in, and get a close look at select details—perhaps too close to make sense of them. Zoom out, and see the big picture—but perhaps miss some subtleties and nuances. Zoom buttons on digital devices let us examine images from many viewpoints. They also provide an apt metaphor for modes of strategic thinking. Some people prefer to see things up close, others from afar. Both perspectives—worm’s-eye and bird’s-eye—have virtues and pathologies. But they should be vantage points, not fixed positions. Leaders need multiple perspectives to get a complete picture. Effective leaders zoom in and zoom out. Here Kanter discusses the strategy: