As a brand, Fidelity is as good as it gets in the mutual fund industry. So the company's bid to retool its stock-picking process after years of disappointing results has generated a lot of excitement. Barron's notes that Fido is in the middle of an ambitious five-year program to revamp its investment process. That overall effort includes upgrading its in-house research, altering hiring and retention tactics, consolidating staff and re-working its deals with Wall Street brokers. As a result, in less than two years, Fidelity has doubled the size of its domestic stock-research corps, based in Boston, to 180 analysts and has changed how they're hired and cultivated. Now, they're developing specialists as well as generalists. They're also reaching out to more experienced professionals. There are signs that the efforts are paying off. But the big returns, the ultimate yardstick, are still in the future.

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- here's the article from Barron's