Growth Strategies for Law Firms

Law firms that grow intensively can experience problems maintaining strategic focus, structural alignment and personnel balance.  This article proposes a process through which management can plan a law firm´s future, by defining a strategy and choosing a growth avenue. We describe four growth strategies and use benchmarks of a sample of 150 law firms stemming from all Latin America to describe the typical leverage and growth levels found in the region

What do we mean by cooperative advantage?

There is an alternative to militaristic approaches to competition in business. It is to create cooperative climates within the company and to choose external competitors carefully. Cooperation in achieving negotiated agreements becomes a competitive advantage. Werner Ketelhöhn cites the successful case histories of two Brazilian companies, Industrial Mecanica de Salvador and SEMCO as having achieved strong internal 'partners'. Outside partnerships are possible too, as illustrated by NWZ and Benetton in Europe. The secret is 'out-managing' the competition, not 'out-smarting' it. The author concludes by emphasizing the clear advantages of internal and external negotiated strategies on corporate value-added and distinctive competence respectively.

The missing link in the solutions business: Managing flows through business systems

To beat Japanese low-cost industrial suppliers, hardware vendors in the West have entered the solutions business to earn higher margins. But Werner Ketelhöhn urges caution. He recommends that corporations develop distinctive competences, adopting a double-edged product/market strategy for the long run. Corporations coming in to the business of marketing solutions to customer problems encounter new markets and higher risks. There is no panacea. Ketelhöhn advocates a new form of industrial organisation -- the 'hammock organisation', to cope with these problems. To come out on top in marketing solutions in the current decade, corporations must both offer solutions that really add value, and compete in hardware products by selling low-cost, high-quality commodity-type hardware.

An interview with Aldo Palmeri of Benetton: The early growth years

As CEO of Benetton from 1983 to 1990, Aldo Palmeri transformed a successful Italian apparel retailer into an international player with a legendary growth record. Building on Benetton's distinctive partnership network with self-employed agents, Palmeri set about reorganising the company, introducing legal changes, recruiting high-quality Italian managers, participating in external companies and founding new businesses. In particular, Palmeri began globalising Benetton's sales and finance, and set up product companies in financial services such as insurance, leasing, factoring and corporate finance. Aldo Palmeri talked to Werner Ketelhöhn of IMD about his strategy for the company in a series of interviews in 1990 prior to and just after his departure from the company, giving unusual insight into his ideas and methods. In a later interview in a forthcoming issue of EMJ, Palmeri talks to Werner Ketelhöhn about his plans to globally redistribute Benetton's manufacturing following his return to the company as CEO and chief strategist in 1992.

An interview with Aldo Palmeri of Benetton: The return as CEO

After seven years as CEO of Benetton, Aldo Palmeri left the Company, having transformed the organisation from a successful local Italian apparel retailer into an international distributor and retailer with powerful brands. Following an absence of two-and-a-half years, Palmeri accepted an invitation from the Benetton family to return as CEO in the late autumn of 1992. Earlier disagreements over strategy had been resolved, and Palmeri was ready to introduce his earlier ideas on globalising the group of companies with a turnover now topping US$2.5 billion. In an interview with Werner Ketelhöhn of IMD Lausanne, Palmeri explains the Benetton system of globalising -- through agents or by finding strong local partners. He also points to his new role in the company as 'consiglieri' in the matter of the family succession, and his personal wish to improve the quality of political management in Italy through the impact of Benetton's development on the Italian economic system.

Act and think to create the learning organization of the 1990s

Effective management does not depend just on smart thinking or understanding of secret competitive formulas. Outstanding corporations are created by consistently out-managing the competition with a chosen strategic posture. Werner Ketelhöhn explains that continous improvement and continous learning processes are the key - industrial leaders need to 'think-out' problems in their business systems in order to gain insight.

Turnaround management is not Rambo management

The authors insist that turnaround management should not be 'Rambo management', that is, drastic, simple solutions first -- long-term thinking later. On the contrary, a short- and long-term vision of the future for the company is essential from the start. When this vision is complete, an action plan which incorporates product/market innovation and/or productivity, carried out by a seasoned manager, not a turnaround specialist, stands the best chance of success.

Knowledge Spillovers and Growth in the Disagglomeration of the Us Advertising-Agency Industry

We investigate knowledge spillovers and externalities in the disagglomeration and growth of the advertising-agency industry. A simple model of high demand, low wages, and externalities associated with clusters of related industries can explain the dispersion of advertising agency employment across states. Other factors affected the industry growth rate within states. Consistent with Jacobs and Porter but contrary to Marshall, Arrow, and Romer, competition, but not specialization, enhanced growth. In accord with Porter (1990), growth increased with buyer cluster size. Diversity had no effect on growth. Despite improvements in telecommunications and transportation reducing effective distances, location still matters. Copyright (c) 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.