EVENING WHITE PAPERS                                                                          an Enlightening Bridge

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PREFER SUMMARIES?

Go to Google and type in "business summaries." Perhaps a dozen websites will appear offering summaries in various formats (pdf, etc.). They typically reduce a book to eight or ten pages.  Annual subscription rates (2010) range from $70 to upwards of $200. There is also a free site: www.squeezedbooks.com. However there is relatively little content on it compared to the commercial ones.

PREFER VIDEOS?

Five videos are recommended within the website.  In alphabetical order these are:

- Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, author of eight books and founder of the venture capital firm Garage Technologies Inc. in Silicon Valley:

    https://academicearth.org/lectures/entrepreneurs-then-and-now (length 9:50)

    https://academicearth.org/lectures/to-get-an-mba-or-not-kawasaki (length 2:38)

- Marshall Goldsmith, an outstanding executive coach who bills on a results basis (cf. Eminent Referrals), "Leadership@Google series:" www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WBeGAAYWg8 (length 65:47)

- Harvey Mackay, the "Mr. Make-It-Happen" CEO and author of the classic Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive:  "Overcoming Obstacles:" www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQATpYOgSc (length 1:39)

- Chris Zook, eminent strategy authority at Bain & Company, "Focusing on the Core:" www.bain.com/bainweb/media/video/chris zook interview video.asp (length 3:40)

THE BRIDGES CHALLENGE!

The Bridges White Papers are not static essays presenting the “received wisdom” from an ivory tower. They are dynamic working papers. They are subject to continual revision by line managers out there in the trenches. Comment, corrections and content from CEOs and managing partners are especially welcome. Let us co-achieve an outstanding, user-friendly strategy website in English,¹ one which is above all useful for the line manager, the CEO, with verifiable information. We respect intellectual property and try to be accurate with our citations. Therefore we think requesting reciprocity is fair, as explained at Copyright/Citation below. 

Gordian Knot - Cutting Edge Papers

These papers, in draft form and incomplete, are designated with a §§, representing a Gordian Knot.² Cogently completing them is an intellectual challenge. We hope some perusers of this website rise to that challenge!

Challenge Papers

Challenge Papers, in their own subsection present only a suggested title, concept, outline, idea or a diagram as points of departure, a catalyst, for an article for which Bridges seeks a lead author or co-author.

Research

The use and delivery of Strategy Tools & Techniques is a subject of on-going interest to Bridges. This research and a brief associated questionnaire (as part of a thesis) are explained on its subpage on the menu at the right. Therefore we would appreciate your taking a minute to complete it!

Copyright/Citation                                                                                                                                                                       

The statement made at "About Us" bears repeating: Bridges does not use copy protected pdf files. Within reason³ feel free to use content from this website. We only ask you properly to cite Bridges and, if applicable, the original copyright holder, and not to change the material. ("Reason" is clarified in footnote 3 below.)

Editorial policy

The basic model of having readers update and improve the white papers is taken from Wikipedia, the free multilingual on-line encyclopedia. Bridges editorial policy has three main differences from that of Wikipedia:

1) Contributors are not anonymous. You will be properly identified, for a short comment with a footnote, for a longer contribution with a couple of sentences, similar to the way the writers for Harvard Business Review are identified.  The contributions remain the property of their creators (trademarks and copyrights), but their submission to Bridges constitutes consent to Bridges exercising its editorial discretion and to their being freely distributed.   

2) Original research is not prohibited.⁴ In fact, we welcome not only supporting – or contradicting – anecdotes, evidence and case studies but also “theory building empirical research” – if it is easy – better yet, entertaining -- to read. Contributions should not only be informative and thought provoking but also enjoyable.  Business bestsellers and the best of Harvard Business Review are your role models, not arcane academic journals enumerating angels on the head of a pin.

3) We do not take a “shotgun” approach to information, covering continent sized territories. Rather we “rifle” in on aspects of strategy, a dense jungle of hundreds of square miles in of itself.

Benchmarking 

The leading management consultancies (Bain, BCG, McKinsey, etc.) on the one hand and Wikipedia on the other make for contrasting benchmarks of “maximum delivery” for, respectively, information on a specific subject, business, and information in general. The English language websites of the leading consultancies, 1000+ pages, offer a tremendous amount of business (management, marketing, finance, production and strategy) information. However these sites tend towards “information overload." Navigation is fraught with peril (lost time from inefficient searching).

In contrast the orders of magnitude larger Wikipedia offers articles about virtually everything, while at the same time being extremely “user-friendly." A possible downside is that the information may not been subjected to the same level of scrutiny, of due diligence, as most of what is on the websites of the management consultancies. However Wikipedia is impressive indeed, as the following quote (lightly edited) from its home page illustrates:

            “Since its creation in 2001,Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference web sites, attracting 78 million visitors monthly. There are more than 91,000 active contributors working on more than 17,000,000 articles in 270 languages. As of today (23.11.11) Wikipedia is published in ten major languages with 3,618,903 articles in English, making up 23,798, 451 pages.”

Submission Guidelines

Submission of changes to existing Bridges content

Just cut and paste the article to a word doc.  Highlight in yellow the sections you think should be deleted or changed. Add in red print your own comments. If your contribution is long, then just flag it with an introductory and closing comment in red. The body of the article will then be amended accordingly, or your comment posted at the end of it as a blog (respecting, of course, the bounds of propriety and relevance). We reserve the right to edit submissions -- up to and including omitting them! To avoid misunderstandings, test the waters with a short submission.

Submission of new content

Guidelines are given at the subpage "Challenge Papers."