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Here are five choice articles from the business schools, the business press and major consulting firms to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about strategy at Coinstar, American manufacturing, open innovation, how top-level teams really work, and learning about organizational integration from evolutionary psychology.

From the NY Times: Thinking Outside the Redbox
"To many people, the coffee dispensed by vending machines is a sour brew, forever associated with jury duty waiting rooms and bowling alleys. But Coinstar, which has become a force in self-service retailing through the swift rise of Redbox, its movie rental subsidiary, hopes to change that. When a visitor to its headquarters here dips a credit card into a coffee machine in the company cafeteria, the machine grinds a batch of beans and dribbles out a $1 cup of fresh coffee that tastes pretty close to a cup from any upscale coffee bar. The machine is the latest bet by Coinstar, which is best known for its Redbox kiosks that have become nearly inescapable in some parts of the country."

Wally's Comment: Coinstar has done quite well, thank you, renting DVDs through vending machines. That business is going away, though, and the question is "What next?" They've acquired some of their competition, but mostly they're attempting to use the same core vending machine technology in different ways. For background read "The candy machine just sold me an iPod."

From Wharton: Why BCG's Hal Sirkin Is Bullish on the Future of American Manufacturing
"For years, conventional wisdom has maintained that manufacturing in the U.S. is in terminal decline. But the tide is now turning, according to Hal Sirkin, a senior partner and managing director at the Boston Consulting Group. Rising wages and currency rates, among other factors, have dramatically narrowed the gap between manufacturing costs in China and the U.S., with the result that several U.S. companies are now "in-sourcing" manufacturing jobs back to America. Sirkin, who recently spoke at the White House about this research, discusses the implications for U.S. jobs and competitiveness in an interview with Knowledge@Wharton"

Wally's Comment: This is a 23 minute video with a full transcript directly below. For background and comparison, I suggest two articles from Strategy + Business. In "The Case for Intelligent Industrial Policy," Clyde Prestowitz, founder of the Economic Strategy Institute makes his case for what the government should do. "Manufacturing's Wake-Up Call " is about manufacturing and the importance of recognizing what Peter Drucker called "the futurity of present decisions."

After I published the recommendations, I encountered a great post on manufacturing by Willy C. Shih, titled "Just How Important Is Manufacturing?"

From Deloitte: At the Court of King Henry
"A visit and conversation with Henry Chesbrough on all things open innovation and the challenges of sustaining the Open Business"

Wally's Comment: Henry Chesbrough always has interesting things to say. When you're done reading this interview, click over to Chesbrough's Open Innovation Community site and poke around a bit.

From Strategy+Business: The Right Role for Top Teams
"Think of the top teams you’ve known that have had the greatest impact. Did their value come from the meetings they conducted and the decisions they made together? Or did it derive from something else? In most companies, the phrase top team is a misnomer. Senior executives throughout the company may clamor for a seat on the leadership committee because that is where the key strategic decisions are supposedly made. But in actuality, the group rarely conducts its work in unison, as a deliberative body or a source of command. Instead, its power comes from its members’ informal and social networks, their determination to make the most of those connections, and their ability to work well in subgroups formed to address specific issues. The most effective top teams are those that recognize this reality and explicitly set themselves up to function as the senior hub of the enterprise."

Wally's Comment: This is a fine piece about how executive teams actually work. You'll also find some good reading about improving how teams work in your shop in Jim Morgan's post, "True Teamwork Proven Worth the Training Time" and you'll learn some things about "Why Teams Fail -- and What to Do About It " at HR Executive Online.

From Industry Week: What evolutionary psychology may tell us about organizational integration .
"Mergers often look strategically sound, yet become a real-world disaster for the shareholders of acquiring companies. Studies indicate that anywhere from 30% to possibly 80% of mergers fail to deliver expected value."

Wally's Comment: I think some of the most powerful insights for our organizational life are coming from fields such as anthropology and sociology. For background read another Jim Morgan post, "Biologist Gives Evolutionary Advice for Better Teamwork." And, while most mergers fail, some companies do lots of acquisitions and do them well. Find out five things those companies have in common by reading my post, "How Doing Acquisitions is like being a Fighter Pilot ."

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check back on Wednesday when I select five excellent posts from the week's independent business blogs. Last week I highlighted posts on teams that are really teams, comparing your performance to Sheryl Sandberg, embracing the mystery, learning from the GE Super Bowl ads, and leadership as a doing discipline.

Studying individual leaders is a great way to learn about leadership. That's why my weekly post points you to posts by or about individual leaders. Last week I pointed you to posts by and about Sheryl Sandberg, Tim Bucher, John Petrucci, Val Rahmani, and Akio Toyoda.

On my Zero Draft blog I profiled Blanchard LeaderChat.

"Steve Jobs' Behavior is no Excuse" and "Tom had great potential once " were popular posts on my blog last week.

If you want to get a book done, improve your blog posts, or make your web copy more productive, please check out my blog about business writing. My coaching calendar for authors and blog writers currently has time open. Please contact me if you're interested.

If you're a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor's Support Kit.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.