Unleash innovation in foreign subsidiaries

In multinational corporations, growth-triggering innovation often emerges in foreign subsidiaries from employees closest to customers and least attached to the procedures and politeness of the home office. But too often, heavy-handed responses from headquarters squelch local enthusiasm and drive out good ideas--and good people. The authors' research into more than 50 multinationals suggests that encouraging innovation in foreign subsidiaries requires a change in attitude. Companies should start to think of foreign subsidiaries as peninsulas rather than as islands--as extensions of the company's strategic domain rather than as isolated outposts. If they do, innovative ideas will flow more freely from the periphery to the corporate center. Basing their arguments on a rich array of examples, the authors say that encouraging such "innovation at the edges" also requires a new set of practices, with two aims: to improve the formal and informal channels of communication between headquarters and subsidiaries and to give foreign subsidiaries more authority to see their ideas through. The challenge for executives of multinationals is to find ways to liberalize, not tighten, internal systems and to delegate more authority to local subsidiaries. It isn't enough to ask subsidiary managers to be innovative; corporate managers need to give them incentives and support systems to facilitate their efforts. The authors suggest four approaches: give seed money to subsidiaries; use formal requests for proposals as a way of increasing the demand for seed money; encourage subsidiaries to be incubators for fledgling businesses; and build international networks. As part of the last approach, multinationals also need to create roles for idea brokers who can link entrepreneurs in foreign subsidiaries with other parts of the company.     

A question of community: at not-for-profit hospitals health is a local affair

For-profit hospitals' entrepreneurial status, big business climate, and adherence to market discipline mandate that their services be considered akin to any other market commodity, to be bought and sold at the highest margin to the largest audience. Investor owned healthcare's primary allegiance must be a reasonable return to its stockholders and as a result it must avoid unprofitable services and unprofitable patients, by displacing their costly burdens onto the rest of the healthcare system.     

检验、纠正、预防、选择：质量工作者的角色转变

回顾自己40年的质量工作生涯，我认为可以将质量工作大致划分为四个阶段：     

Training,migration, and regional income disparities

"It is assumed that there are two regions, that production requires both skilled and unskilled labour, and that one region is innately more productive than the other. Workers, who differ in their migration or training costs, make individually rational decisions. In equilibrium the ratio of skilled workers to unskilled workers is always higher in the more productive region. Average incomes differ between regions because regional differences in wage rates are reinforced by regional differences in the structure of employment. The model is also used to analyse the effects of policies intended to equalize the distribution of income."     

凯恩斯主义之后的宏观经济学

文章首先回顾了凯恩斯主义理论所借助的计量经济学框架,该理论藉此从互不相连的定性讨论进化为一个能够系统地运用数据作估计的方程组,并在需要量化货币和财政政策时提供可操作的指导建议。接着,文章对导致这一框架在20世纪70年代失败的主要原因进行了讨论。文章指出,现代宏观经济模型在政策指导上毫无价值,而沿着现在的思路所进行的任何修正也都无法改变这种情况。这一判断提出了一个有用的经济周期理论所必须具备的某些原则。