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January - 2002 - issue > Cover Feature
The Focus Shifts
Tuesday, January 1, 2002
A year after the economic slowdown really began to take hold, one by one, the new age buzzwords have been dropped from the common business vocabulary. In their absence, a whole host of well-trodden concepts can suddenly be heard uttered at every water cooler — profits, operating margin, measured growth, overhead expenses, inventory and so on. It’s a wakeup call for dozens of executives. Frankly nobody really cares if your router is faster; they just want to know if your business is going to be around in six months.

So what’s the big deal? The point has been made a thousand times over the last year. It’s back to reality for an overheated tech sector and for anyone else in the rest of the business world who thought they could make up new rules.

And yet, what are the fundamentals of financial engineering? Do companies really know how to get back on the right path to success? Only a handful of companies figured it out before the markets took a nosedive. What was it that they did right? What did the others do wrong? What can they do now to steady their ships in choppy economic conditions?

In this issues cover feature we present three stories about companies coming at fundamentally the same concepts from three different angles, giving you crucial lessons that have always been the essence of doing good business.

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