News

“From the dotcom boom and bust to the extraordinary rise of China,” the last 10 years have marked one of the most eventful – yet unpredictable – decades of global business. So what do the next 10 years have in store? The recently released “Risk 2018,” an Economist Intelligence Unit report considers this question and begs another: how prepared are organizations to meet the challenges and manage the risks of the next decade?

Rich in oil, Libya holds the ingredients to spark economic progress, but rising oil prices have failed to boost the nation’s standard of living on par with other oil-producing lands. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s recently announced his intent to abolish state bureaucracy, empowering the private sector to take on economic decision-making – a drastic change in a country where the state has long told everyone what to do.” But most observers agree, including Monitor’s Rajeev Singh-Morales: this change might just be what the country has been waiting for.

From Steve Jobs and Bill Gates to the declining dollar and the ’08 presidential elections, Entrepreneur magazine names the nation’s top 25  “influencers” – the people, trends and events – that businesses can’t afford to ignore in 2008. Monitor’s Andy Belt has his finger on the pulse of one “influencer” that promises to change the pace of mobile communication.

An evolution of powerful proportion is taking place in television news – a transformation of the traditional roles and personalities of broadcast journalists. Andrew Heyward, former president of CBS News and consultant with Marketspace LLC, a business unit of the Monitor Group, shares his view of the changing landscape of journalism in a recent video interview produced by Beet.TV and aptly posted on YouTube.com, a generational mile marker in today’s world of user-generated news.

Monitor receives a Pro Bono Award from the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation as part of the first-ever Summit on Corporate Volunteerism.

It’s not often that the conventional wisdom in business gets turned on its head not once but twice in a month’s time. But Rupert Murdoch’s recent decision, following News Corps’ acquisition of Dow-Jones, to keep the Wall Street Journal’s website a subscription service certainly qualifies.

The playing field for online ad market share may be leveling out. Challenging what increasingly seems to be a battle of Google vs. Everyone Else on the Web, Microsoft’s pursuit of a billion dollar acquisition of Yahoo! takes the fight “down to two.” But the Google vs. Microsoft contest is still Google’s to win, forecasts Jeffrey Rayport, the founder and chairman of Marketspace LLC, a business unit of Monitor Group, in a recent BusinessWeek “Viewpoint” column.

Consulting is honoring their inaugural batch of 20-something standouts.

Peter Schwartz’s The Art of the Long View was the top vote-getter in the APF’s inaugural most important futures work balloting.