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To develop and manage a brand effectively, marketers start by defining it with a brand essence statement. In an excerpt from her book Positioning for Advantage, Professor Kim Whitler discusses the blueprint for building a brand from the bottom up, including the foundation, the support, the impact on a consumer and, ultimately, the brand essence.

Areas in Mesoamerica see health equity gaps in newborn, infant and maternal health. The Inter-American Development Bank partnered wit ha number of partners to create the Salud Mesoamerica Initiative an innovative way to improve access to quality health care for 1.8 million women and children living among the poorest 20 percent of the population.

A new leader can turn around a failing organization — or drive it further into the ground. Strategy, leadership and success are intertwined phenomena, and accounting controls can make all the difference. This Case in Point examines a new pastor in a low-income community, confident he could turn around a small church — and the following controversy.

The Cambodia Rural Sanitation Development Impact Bond combines private and public capital with on-the-ground implementation expertise and market-based solutions to improve health and accelerate the Royal Government of Cambodia’s goal of universal sanitation. A finalist for the P3 Impact Award, it’s a public-private partnership changing the world.

Does “waiting in line” need translation, or do all cultures view a wait as undesirable? It turns out there’s cultural nuance to queueing, according to Darden Professor Elliott N. Weiss and colleagues Graham Gillam, Kyle Simmons and Donald Stevenson.

A Matter of Strategy: The laptop industry is competitive, and the product is highly available and highly interchangeable. Faced with unfavorable market dynamics, how did Apple carve out its niche among laptop makers? What implications are there for other organizations and industries? The answers lie in a capacity to rewrite the playbook.

TV ads? Pay-per-click? Organic search? Fine-grained data about consumer interactions with brands is helpful if marketers know how to identify the value of the channels used and see their contributions to customer acquisition and retention. Developing an attribution model is a gradual process; here are four key stages in the journey.

How can one gauge the quality of a negotiation? By examining four elements that contribute to its success: outcome, process, relationships, and (the surprise most important determination of success) sustainability. Here are crucial elements to be aware of in preparation, during the process and for the future.

The value of a culture of integrity: Using linguistic analysis of public communications, researchers studied which CEOs are likely to mislead investors and fail to follow through on promises. The CEO behavioral integrity index provides systematic evidence of the consequences of low integrity — here’s what it means for auditors and the bottom line.

When time is short, do we look for convenient experiences that fit in with our busy lives — or special experiences with the people in our lives? New research shows that limited time leads people to search out memorable, extraordinary experiences with others, whether they are new friends, work colleagues, romantic partners or other loved ones.