Creating value from employees

The world's largest companies are earning outsized returns—without significantly increasing the size of the workforce—by making their professional employees ever more productive.

 
In today's global marketplace, a handful of companies that have developed massive scale and scope are generating enormous earnings: $10 billion or more a year. Such extraordinary profits, the evidence suggests, reflect the ability of these mega-institutions to make their talented professionals—tens of thousands of them—more productive.

 
Intangible assets such as knowledge are the key to these companies' profitability, and it is professionals who create and use them. Mega-institutions not only employ disproportionately high numbers of professionals but have also found ways to help them work together ever more effectively. That combination has allowed these companies to increase their share of the top 2,000 corporations' net income significantly, while their share of the total workforce hasn't gone up in proportion.

To learn about the strategies and organizational models that allow the mega-institutions to thrive, read "Strategy in an era of global giants." (Premium)