and nonprofit sectors. We aim to help business people run their organizations more productively, more competitively, and more creatively. Quarterly articles, written by McKinsey consultants, offer practical ideas based on the firm's experience with the world's largest companies and on proprietary research and close ties to academic institutions. The crisis: A new era in management In the face of the current economic crisis, many core assumptions about the merits of globalization, markets, risk, and debt long taken for granted in business, government, and academia have come into question. This issue of McKinsey Quarterly focuses on the managerial implications of the economic transition that has just begun. A critical theme running through the content is how to cope with the extraordinary uncertainty permeating today's business environment. We have also distilled practical advice for executives on a number of issues such as managing costs, obtaining financing, working with regulators, and adjusting sales and marketing that are more pressing and require fresher thinking than they did in past downturns. Also in this issue, we examine operational improvements and how companies can make lean processes stick, how the aging of baby boomers will affect the US economy and why boomers will likely need to work past the traditional retirement age, and we talk with Google's Eric Schmidt about the future of business.

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