In reading Fortune’s new 2011 list of the “50 most admired companies” in 
the world, I saw some good teaching opportunities. Of the nine attributes rated by the 4,100 execs who did the rankings, I would view six of them as being under the OM purview. (The rest are financial measures). And what makes the rankings more interesting is that Fortune points out the major changes since their pre-recession survey 4 years ago.
Here are the 6 categories, along with the old and new champs for each:
1. Ability to attract/ keep talented people: then, GE: now Goldman Sachs.
2. Global business effectiveness: then Nestle: now McDonald’s
3. Quality of management: then P&G: now McDonald’s
4. Quality of products/ services: then Anheuser-Busch: now Amazon.com
5. Sustainability: then UPS: now Statoil
6. Innovativeness: then Apple: now Apple
Two things we can discuss with our students: (1) McDonald’s is considered the world’s best-managed company on 3 attributes (the last being wise use of corporate assets). Can the class explain why? (2) Only Apple preserved its status (for innovativeness) over the 4 traumatic years. And Apple ranks no.1 in the Fortune overall most admired list.
A wonderful editorial recently in The Wall Street Journal (April 12,2011), by Vinton Cerf (an Internet pioneer now at Google), explains Apple’s success. He writes: “Americans get very excited about innovation…In Silicon Valley, and elsewhere in the US, the engine requires sources of trained professionals, sources of capital, and new and exciting companies that form a mutually enforcing ecosystem”.
Contributing factors, Cerf adds, include the freedom to pursue ideas, the freedom to fail, and freedom of access to information. “Business failure in the US is a mark of experience”. I am reminded of a recent interview of Stephen Jobs who remarked that being fired from Apple by John Scully (in 1984) was the best thing that ever happened in his career. (He came back as CEO in 1997). In other cultures, such a downfall would be a permanent scar.