Contents

High-Performance Business: Making the Trend Your Friend
Predicting the future is the easy part. What really matters is the ability to harness waves of change and use them to achieve high performance.

High-Performance Business II: Why Marriott Shareholders Sleep Well at Night
Lodging is a mature industry, struggling with market saturation and relentless pressure on margins. Marriott's response? Combine a unique brand strategy and a focus on employee training and retention with a carefully nurtured corporate culture to create a winning mindset that pervades the entire organization.

Special Report: China: Open for Business
If Beijing continues to leverage its WTO commitments to introduce more reforms, China will only become an even more attractive place to do business.

Special Report: China II: Playing by the Rules
From transparency in financial services to protecting intellectual property rights, it's in Beijing's best interests to live up to its WTO commitments, argues Long Yongtu. This veteran Chinese diplomat should know: He spent more than 10 years of his life negotiating China's entry into the organization.

Special Report: China III: Getting IT Right the First Time: A Bold New Agenda for China's CIOs
Chinese enterprises are positioned to leapfrog several generations of IT hardware and applications, adding further momentum to the transformation of their businesses. If this happens, it could significantly alter the dynamics of relationships among IT suppliers, customers and joint-venture partners around the world—and catapult Chinese companies into the forefront of global competitors.

Mergers & Acquisitions: Lost in Translation: Avoiding Misadventure in Cross-border M&A
More and more companies are looking abroad for acquisition targets or merger partners to help them meet their growth aspirations. While transnational deals are not uniquely prone to disaster, they do offer a different mix of opportunities and risks, which need to be understood and managed if the deals are to be successful.

Customer Relationship Management: Marketing Mastery Matters
A major Accenture study reveals that a significant investment in marketing is crucial to achieving high performance. But the skill levels that constitute mastery continue to shift constantly, and today's best practice can become tomorrow's price of entry. No company can afford to be complacent.

Customer Relationship Management II: A Wake-up Call—Why Marketing Became a Top Priority for the Chemicals Industry
With little room left for further cuts in manufacturing costs, chemicals companies are looking to drive and sustain operational excellence from other parts of their business—which is why marketing suddenly came into focus.

Sales Strategy: When Small is Beautiful
Small and medium-size businesses represent trillions of dollars in opportunity. But for most would-be entrants, even well-proven models for sales force and organizational management break down. Here's a set of best practices from those who have succeeded.