Our story in today’s paper that Mars has launched Fling, a chocolate bar targeted at women (”Naughty, but not that naughty”) is part of that contant trend among consumer goods companies to change what they produce and how they market it. Consumers are changing and the company’s selling them products are trying to keep pace with how things are evolving.

One reason, of course, is the global downturn. And to get a sense of how significant an impact it is having, you should take a look at Procter & Gamble, maker of Pampers nappies and Gillette razors. The company has decided to start making cheaper products.

Jenny Wiggins, our consumer industries correspondent, explains: Continue reading "Niche marketing takes it to another level"

A great story in today’s paper on how Malaysia’s decision to modify its bumiputra or positive discrimination policy. Bumiputra, which offered preferential treatment to ethnic Malays, has been in place since 1971 as a pillar of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s New Economic Policy.

How this change will affect business, which had been legally required to reserve an equity stake of 30 per cent for Malay investors, will be interesting to see.

A lot of it seems to be down to the leadership of the recently appointed prime minister, Najib Razak (pictured), who has surprised observers with his reformist zeal.

For another, broader take on life in Malaysia, Ian Buruma recently wrote about the state of Malaysian politics and society in the New Yorker magazine (registration required to read the whole piece). It gives a good sense of the roots of the policy and wider society.

UPDATE: My colleague Gideon Rachman on ethnic quotas and sodomy in Malaysia

Many promises are made at the altar during a merger or an acquisition. Most of them get broken. It is worth reminding yourself of this now, before the next wave of whirlwind corporate romances arrives.

So far this year there has been only mixed evidence of renewed appetite for M&A. Sure, the proposed £40bn ($66bn, €47bn) merger between the mining companies Xstrata and Anglo American caught the eye, just as Oracle’s $7.4bn deal to buy Sun Microsystems and GlaxoSmithKline’s $3.6bn move for Stiefel Laboratories did.

The past three months have been relatively quiet, however, as businesses wait to see how robust any potential economic recovery really is, and whether finance will be available. Getting valuations right at a time like this is in any case extremely difficult.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

London Business School’s Global Leadership Summit (theme: Leadership in Challenging Times) is taking place today. Stefan Stern is tweeting from the conference but I made it part of the morning session, including an impressive keynote address by Jeff Immelt, chief executive of GE, and a panel discussion chaired by my colleague Martin Wolf, that included Ian Davis of McKinsey, Paul Walsh of Diageo and Kishore Mahbubani.

Here are a few highlights from Immelt’s presentation on “The way forward for business in a reset economy”:

Continue reading "Leading in a crisis, the 2009 edition"

• Oprah Winfrey is taking her entire staff and their families on a luxury holiday - for the second year running. Stuart Jeffries offers some reasonably plausible reasons why it might not be a great idea
• Abercrombie & Fitch is being sued by an employee who says she was discrimated against because she has a prosthetic arm that did not fit Abercrombie & Fitch’s “look” and led to her being relegated to the back room.
• Apple is so protective of its operations, that it senior managers have apparently released false information in internal meetings in order to identify the source of stories that had made it into the public domain
• Xerox’s CEO-elect, Ursula Burns is the first African-American woman to head a big US company. The company’s progressive policies on diversity are part of the reason but why have so few other ethnic minorities made it the top of corporate America?

David Rohde, a New York Times reporter, recently escaped from the Taliban after being held as a hostage for seven months. Unusually, particularly in the world of the 24-hour newscycle, the NY Times managed to keep the story of his abduction quiet with the co-operation of a raft of other news organisations.

Bill Keller, the paper’s executive editor, explained to CNN how they worked with their sometime rivals and also dealt with the bloggers who are often thought to be more difficult to control.

UPDATE: David Rohde returned to the New York Times yesterday, with his Afghan translator.

Why aren’t businesses and organisations more innovative? Are they filled with dull, unimaginative people? Are they lacking crucial “core competencies”? Or are their people just not working hard enough?

The answer to those last three questions is no, no and no. Something else must explain the inability of companies to display greater innovative flair. What is it?

The problem for senior managers is that, as you walk round the business or study the organisational chart, nothing much may seem to be wrong. People are at their desks or in meeting rooms, hard at work. Something that looks like two-way communication appears to be taking place. And then there are all those e-mails, instant messages and texts. You can be confident that good ideas must be flowing freely within the organisation.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Wow.

I suppose there is a logic to this. What do you think an online Jack Welch MBA will be like?

Suggestions please.