46 Posts found for Author: Martin Reeves

In any strategy process, there is a tension between structure, necessary to ensure rigor and alignment, and exploration, critical for innovation.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Madeleine Michael, Martin Reeves, Roeland van Straten, Tim Nolan | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

A clever strategy on paper is only the starting point for engaging those who will implement it. Strategies must also be communicated and understood — and they must motivate action. Most strategy documents and presentations fail miserably when it comes to this last point. […] Strategy stories can provide a powerful bridge between arguments and actions, intentions and results, and strategists and implementers. […] A … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Madeleine Michael, Martin Reeves, Roeland van Straten, Tim Nolan | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Storytelling, Strategy

Companies need to treat the execution of routine tasks and customer interactions as opportunities for learning. Standardizing tasks or offerings becomes counterproductive since it suppresses variance, which is the grist for new ideas. Instead, firms need to leverage their digital presence and use learning algorithms to capture and process lessons from each interaction.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Adam Job, Martin Reeves, Mihnea Moldoveanu | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Organizational Behavior

When the future state of the world is likely to be similar to the current one, or is at least somewhat knowable, it is efficient to tailor strategy to achieve optimal fit with the current or anticipated environment. But the efficiency gain of striving for fit comes at the cost of flexibility. In times of uncertainty and change, optionality becomes critically important. Companies need to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Adam Job, Martin Reeves, Mihnea Moldoveanu | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

Most technology revolutions have required accompanying applied innovations to unlock their full potential. Electricity in itself did not immediately translate into big productivity gains for industry. This only happened as new technologies like electric motors and social innovations like new factory layouts took hold.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Christian Stadler, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

A new technology can be novel, it can be useful, it can even generate massive value for consumers and providers, but without creating sustainable competitive advantage in specific applications, it can easily distract and divert attention and resources from more promising opportunities.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Christian Stadler, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: IT / Technology / E-Business

Munger’s success was built on a system for decision-making—not a classical investment philosophy, but rather a mental discipline underpinning one. We outline four ideas strategists can learn from Munger to think more clearly in turbulent times.

Content: Article | Author: Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

In The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, Investment, and Management Implications, Aswath Damodaran presents the corporate life cycle as a universal key for demystifying business finance, strategy and company valuation. He outlines how corporations age, describes the characteristics of each stage of their life cycle, and discusses implications for managers and investors.

In his conversation with Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Damodaran outlines how … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Aswath Damodaran, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: General

In an increasingly turbulent world, the need for and the challenges of corporate change remain remarkably persistent. Empirical insights reveal how change leaders can beat the odds. We highlight five truths about corporate transformation—and refute one lie that executives like to tell themselves.

Content: Article | Authors: Adam Job, Christian Gruß, Gabe Bouslov, Kristy Ellmer, Martin Reeves, Paul Catchlove | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Change Management

Business strategy is usually born of a highly rational process, grounded in facts and analysis. Storytelling, often associated with fiction and entertainment, may seem like the antithesis of strategy. But the two are not incompatible. A clever strategy on paper is only the starting point for engaging those who will implement it. Strategies must also be communicated and understood — and they must motivate action. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Madeleine Michael, Martin Reeves, Roeland van Straten, Tim Nolan | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Storytelling, Strategy

Organizations tend to neglect or downplay the ingenuity component in change initiatives. Leaders often prefer instead a simpler, mechanistic view of the world, which assumes they can easily specify and control actions using project management techniques. Moreover, organizations are often averse to change. Ideas like “breaking the rules” or “reinventing the organization” are less accepted in typical projects—and a departure from the norm will often … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Adam Job, Arthur Boulenger, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Project Management

A business ecosystem is a dynamic group of largely independent economic players that create products or services that together constitute a coherent solution.

This definition implies that each ecosystem can be characterized by a specific value proposition (the desired solution) and by a clearly defined, albeit changing, group of actors with different roles (such as producer, supplier, orchestrator, complementor). The definition excludes some of the more … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Martin Reeves, Maximilian Schüssler, Ulrich Pidun | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Business Model, General, Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Achieving change is difficult. Organizations spend more than $10 billion annually on change transformations, but more than 50% of efforts fail to meet objectives. To better understand why, despite our best intentions, change efforts tend to fail, we looked to the literature—and found that “loss aversion” presents a helpful point of reference.

To better understand this phenomenon, we surveyed more than 200 people across the US … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Adriann Negreros, Julia Dhar, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Change Management, Organizational Behavior

75% percent of ambitious change programs fail to capture long-term value. Despite these grim odds, globally, organizations spend $10 B annually on change management efforts. That is understandable in some ways — in our evolve-or-perish environment, organizations cannot afford to stay still. But more fundamentally, it suggests that organizations need to rethink the “tried and tested” approaches to change management. Our research suggests that change … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Annelies O’Dea, Julia Dhar, Martin Reeves, Sana Rafiq | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Change Management

Strategy is a competitive game, which always evolves in response to competition. But the magnitude of the changes in the technological, social, and natural environment are such that corporate strategy will need to be qualitatively reinvented again for new circumstances. This article discusses six factors are driving these changes: 1) dynamism, 2) uncertainty, 3) contingency, 4) connectedness, 5) contextuality, and 6) cognition.

Content: Article | Authors: Annelies O’Dea, Martin Reeves | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

Drawing on the insights gleaned from three years of ecosystem research, BCG offers a step-by-step framework for developing an incumbent company’s ecosystem strategy.

Content: Article | Authors: Balázs Zoletnik, Martin Reeves, Ulrich Pidun | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

Companies often focus on executing one business model, and its associated targets and metrics become the main ways of judging success. But the dominance of such metrics can come at the expense of seeing possibilities and dabbling with new models. When there is a standard, clear way to measure and reward success, efforts in any other direction can look like failures or a waste of … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jack Fuller, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Innovation, Management

Three types of surprise inspire imagination: anomalies (aspects in our information flow that are out of the ordinary); analogies (similarities we notice between concepts or experiences, which lead us to imagine new possibilities); and accidents (unexpected actions and consequences that draw our attention to something interesting).

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jack Fuller, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Innovation

Map and understand the larger system in which you operate. Businesses operate within larger economic, social, and environmental systems, which have feedback loops in both directions — businesses’ actions affect the larger systems, and vice versa. Though predicting the exact behavior of such systems is rarely feasible, leaders can improve their understanding by explicitly mapping out the most impactful forces (accelerators or inhibitors of the system’s workings) … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Business strategy has traditionally considered only a narrow set of issues (such as customer needs, operating model effectiveness, and competitive advantage), a limited range of timescales (most notably the annual planning process), and a limited number of stakeholders (customers, employees, and competitors). Such simplification may have made sense when contextual change was slow, and when the only expectation of businesses was that they would aim … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Kevin Whitaker, Martin Reeves | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy