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Monthly
Newsletter
January 2012
Editors’ choice
The next industrial revolution
Economic advances now sweeping through China, India, and other emerging markets dwarf the pace and scale of the Western world’s industrial transformation in the 18th and 19th centuries. As three billion more middle-class consumers join the global economy over the next two decades, the resource landscape will change profoundly: demand for many commodities will soar, and new technologies will be needed to counterbalance critical shortages of food, water, and other resources.
“Mobilizing for a resource revolution” shows how higher resource productivity and expanded supply can meet this surging demand. “Voices on the resource revolution” comprises three video interviews on the risks and opportunities ahead, with Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, the North American CEO of a leading water services company, and Boeing’s environmental chief. “Five technologies to watch” explores potentially revolutionary approaches that could dramatically affect the unfolding of the resource productivity revolution.
A great change is coming. Read this new package of articles to explore some of the most important implications for your company.
This month’s highlights
ECONOMIC STUDIES
How the role of equities may shrink
A powerful new class of investors in emerging markets prefers other kinds of assets.
STRATEGY
What really drives value in corporate responsibility?
Few companies understand the harm bad strategies can cause or how investing in social initiatives will change the behavior of stakeholders.
HEALTH CARE
A wake-up call for Big Pharma
Lower profit margins suggest that the industry needs new business models.
ECONOMIC STUDIES
Economic Conditions Snapshot, December 2011
Executives in most parts of the world view the global economy and their own companies’ prospects more positively than they did in September—but less positively than they did in June.
MARKETING & SALES
An interview with the executive chairman of Federated Media Publishing
John Battelle shares his view that content should be seen as a system of conversations. [available on McKinsey’s Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum site]
Special package: Managing IT’s bigger role in business strategy
From growth strategies rooted in “big data” to the cloud-computing platforms now transforming operations in many companies, IT stands at the center of today’s competitive environment. Our new package of articles shows how technology managers can drive growth and innovation—while delivering value for the business.
A rising role for IT: McKinsey Global survey results
How a grocery giant puts technology at the center of innovation
Sharpening data center due diligence
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Top 10 from 2011
Take a look back at the most popular articles of the past year.
McKinsey Classics
The most basic question about companies
A traditional corporation combined businesses for building customer relationships, for developing products, and for producing and distributing them. These different kinds of activities coexisted within one organization because interactions to coordinate them were usually too hard and costly for each to be undertaken by a specialized company. The Web makes sharing data cheap, fast, and easy. Many executives must ask the most basic question about companies: what business are we really in?
Chart Focus
Mapping globalization
No more than 25 percent of economic activity is truly global, yet visions of a borderless planet entrance many senior executives. To grasp the realities of distance and differences, suggests IESE Business School professor Pankaj Ghemawat, they should develop “rooted maps,” which correct the misimpression that the vantage point of viewers doesn’t influence the way they see the world.
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