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Jazz Versus Symphony

Recognizing how old notions of rigid, structured command and control are losing relevance as the pace of business competition continues to quicken, BCG chief executive officer John Clarkeson expresses a vision for organization and leadership that echoes Todd Hixon's "Network Organization" in the Perspective "Jazz versus Symphony." It says that the marketplace now demands models based on speed, creativity, and flexibility (jazz). These organizations are flatter and looser and entrust far more autonomy to their members than the previous models (symphony).

BCG Insights & Highlights

  • BCG acquires the Australian consulting firm Pappas, Carter, Evans & Koop
  • Harold Sirkin and George Stalk's "Fix the Process, Not the Problem" is published in the Harvard Business Review
  • George Stalk and Tom Hout's Competing Against Time, a thorough examination of time-based competition, is published
  • Offices opened: Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland
  • Consultants = 676

World News

  • Iraq invades Kuwait
  • Mikhail Gorbachev wins the Nobel Peace Prize
  • Germany celebrates its formal reunification
  • Nintendo introduces the second-generation video game Super Fami-Com
  • John Major succeeds Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of England
  • South Africa frees Nelson Mandela from prison, where he has been held for many years as a result of his antiapartheid activities
  • The Yugoslavian Communist Party ends its 45-year monopoly on power
  • English and French engineers meet under the sea as the two ends of the English Channel tunnel are linked together
  • Ornidyl, a drug to treat African sleeping sickness, is approved by the World Health Organization
  • Twelve works of art valued at $100 million are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston in the world's largest art heist
  • The World Wide Web is born when Tim Berners-Lee develops HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
  • Georgian sculptor Zurab Tsereteli creates "Good Defeats Evil," a statue of St. George slaying the dragon. Erected outside the United Nations in New York City, it is made of fragments of U.S. and Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles