Agencies and departments at all levels of government are facing increased pressure to cut costs and become more efficient. In this article, Monitor partners Bruce Chew, Josh Lee, and Jessica Watson explain how to avoid the traps of traditional budget-cutting, and outline the three keys to “doing more with less.”

In this Harvard Business Review lead feature article, Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff of Monitor make the compelling argument that organizations should manage for "Total Innovation." A carefully balanced innovation portfolio is important for long-term, sustained growth; it helps companies outperform their competitors and potentially achieve a premium recognized by the capital markets.

In this recording of Monitor’s recent webcast, "Embracing Complexity: Building Innovation Capabilities for Your Organization" Monitor thought leaders discuss how to frame growth challenges holistically. They detail practical methods to develop more systematic and structured approaches to innovation. Watch this webcast to glean new insights on how to build both the robust structures and the internal systems to provide reliable, repeatable growth and innovation.

Most strategies fail in the implementation phase, and the problem can be traced to three factors: a failure of translation, a failure of adaptation, and a failure to sustain change over the long term. Amelia Dunlop, Vincent Firth, and Robert Lurie discuss key elements of a dynamic approach to strategy implementation—one that overcomes the limitations of traditional approaches—and how it has helped leading enterprises deliver more effectively on their strategic ambition in this paper from the Monitor Perspectives series.

Between 500 million and 800 million of the world’s poor now have access to finance—but only one in four have been taught how to use their access wisely and to their advantage. In this study commissioned by the Citi Foundation, Monitor’s Anamitra Deb and Mike Kubzansky survey the landscape of old and new financial education models, analyze whether they have a business case and make recommendations on a shared agenda for the field to benefit all financial inclusion stakeholders—including consumers, financial institutions, policy makers and donors, and educators.

“Effective stories that win both listeners’ hearts and minds are critical communications tools that can enable leaders to achieve difficult strategic goals,” write Doug Randall and Aaron Harms in an article in Strategy & Leadership magazine. The onus is on leaders—not their audience—to deliver a successful narrative that transfers meaning and motivation. The authors warn executives that their strategy initiatives are at risk every time the message they deliver is not convincing or clear.

The global economy faces serious risks of a second “great recession” if world leaders fail to cooperate on solutions to prevent “near-term economic divisions to devolve into deeper-seated geopolitical divisions,” write Peter Schwartz, Jonathan Star, and Nikhil Prasad Ojha in The Times of India newspaper. In this piece that demonstrates scenario thinking, the authors project the global economy is likely to go through a near-term period of low growth. The long-term prognosis then depends on the actions—or failures—of leaders to respond.

In a discussion with the “Cambodia’s Global Dialogue,” a public affairs program on the Southeast Asia TV (SEATV) channel in Cambodia, Chris Malone, a senior partner at Monitor, explains the how the firm helps governments and industries around the world assess and improve their regional and global economic competitiveness.

This white paper by experts from Monitor and Global Business Network (GBN) analyzes the impact that deep structural shifts in commodities markets will have on the competitive landscape, including the critical supply chain and business location decisions C-level executives will face as higher prices for food, fuel and minerals become permanent.

A new report funded by the Rockefeller Foundation estimates that the field of Impact Sourcing, employing socioeconomically disadvantaged people in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centers, is currently $4.5 billion and has the potential to reach $20 billion and employ 780,000 by 2015. The report, conducted by Monitor Group, suggests a strong business case for Impact Sourcing, which can provide high-quality, reliable services at prices that are at least competitive with traditional BPO centers and, in some cases, almost 40 percent lower than what traditional providers can offer.