The chief strategy officer.

They're nominally and ultimately responsible for strategy, but today's CEOs have less and less time to devote to it. As a result, CEOs are appointing "chief strategy officers"--executives specifically tasked with creating, communicating, executing, and sustaining a company's strategic initiatives. In this article, three authors from Accenture share the results of their research on this emerging organizational role.

Selling to the moneyed masses.

Over the past decade, the distribution of household incomes has shifted so much that a much larger proportion of consumers now earn significantly higher-than-average incomes--while still falling short of being truly rich. As a result, what used to be a no-man's-land for new product introductions has in many categories become an extremely profitable "new middle ground." How can marketers capitalize on this new territory? The key, say the authors, is to rethink the positioning and design of offerings and the ways they can be brought to market.