In their quest for innovation-led growth, executives are apt to approach technology investments with a conservative risk-averse mindset. This paper explains how taking an active approach to technology risk management, using three common portfolio management techniques, can reduce uncertainty and increase a company's opportunity for growth.

Watch this webcast in which Monitor thought leaders Eamonn Kelly, Josh Lee and Karin E. Stawarky discuss how executives can make the right investment and cost savings choices.

This research paper explains how the heightened expectations of the Millennial Generation will influence workplace practices from hiring, recruiting and retention, to compensation, promotion, training and organizational culture. The paper also identifies a short list of actions that will help any company prepare for a future in which Millennials will play a major role.

The global financial crisis offers executives in the Middle East "a tremendous opportunity to drive change more effectively than in the good times, so that businesses are well-positioned for the future," writes Kristina Rogers, a leader of Monitor's Middle East and North Africa practice, in Emirates Business 24-7 based in the United Arab Emirates. Rogers explains how businesses can navigate these uncertain times "by incorporating uncertainty into business strategies and exploring a range of potential future scenarios to uncover new opportunities."

To explore creatively the nature of work in the 21st century, we must challenge many of our deeply held assumptions, beliefs and perspectives. In this article from People & Strategy, Eamonn Kelly, a Monitor partner and the firm's global head of thought leadership and networking, argues that there are six fundamental shifts in mindset leaders have to make about work in order to be competitive at the corporate and national levels.

Nearly half of the world lives on less than $2 a day. The persistence of massive global poverty cries out for new approaches to improving the lives of people living at the base of the income pyramid. Monitor Group released this first-of-its-kind report based on comparative research in 20 countries that explores financially sustainable and scalable enterprises that succeed in low-income markets and highlights their promise to accelerate genuine social change.

Why do organizations get blindsided by market transformations that could have been anticipated?  This article from Strategy & Leadership guides you through a systematic process for incorporating plausible but challenging future scenarios into your organization’s learning processes, to help mitigate risk and decrease the likelihood of being unprepared for discontinuities.

Directives to cut costs across-the-board do not work. Instead, companies should employ an approach that maps costs to strategic business activities. Adaptive cost management helps identify the right costs to cut, aligns the organization and its spending structures so that costs do not creep back in, and protects and strengthens the organization for the long run.

Facing a sharp economic downturn and fundamental shifts in the way buyers learn and make decisions, companies must adapt their mix of marketing expenditures and develop new models for customer engagement. These new models, informed by insight into how customers think and behave, welcome shoppers’ involvement in shaping when, where and how they receive information and how they interact with products and brands.

Corporate leaders coping with the current recession have to deal with forces that their predecessors in past recessions did not confront, explains Eamonn Kelly a partner and global head of thought leadership and networking at Monitor Group. In this six-minute video excerpt from a recent executive briefing, Kelly cites four disruptive forces leaders must confront as they grapple with the recession and prepare for the long term: the rise of a global economy not centered in the West; the blurring of boundaries among the commercial, government and non-government sectors; the significance of sustainability as a business issue requiring action; and the transformative impact of new connective technologies.