David J. Teece

Dynamic capabilities can usefully be thought of as belonging to three clusters of activities and adjustments: (1) identification and assessment of an opportunity (sensing); (2) mobilization of resources to address an opportunity and to capture value from doing so (seizing); and (3) continued renewal (transforming). These activities are required if the firm is to sustain itself as markets and technologies change.

Is Your Company Fit for Growth?

A more strategic approach to costs can help you prepare for the next round of expansion.

Adrian C. Ott

Understanding how the invisible hand of time is driving customer behavior will provide massive opportunities to innovate for new value and capture customer loyalty in the Inattention Economy. But the innovations around time and attention aren’t just limited to new products and services. Building a strategy that will carry you forward requires continually thinking about customer filters and attention ecosystems.

We all are going to be … [ Read more ]

David Conklin and Larry Tapp

Many organizational structures in the 21st century will rest on cooperation as well as competition. A set of corporations will work together to expand the value that is added by their group. In particular, this set of corporations will strive continually to create unique goods and services so that potential substitutes are further removed from the final customer’s purchasing decision. While the … [ Read more ]

Becoming More Strategic: Three Tips for Any Executive

You don’t need a formal strategy role to help shape your organization’s strategic direction. Start by moving beyond frameworks and communicating in a more engaging way.

‘Kill the Company’: Identify Your Weaknesses Before Your Competitors Do

For many, implementing an innovation strategy, which requires changes within an organization, means adding layers of new processes. Lisa Bodell, author of Kill the Company: End the Status Quo, Start an Innovation Revolution, argues that there are straightforward ways to make change without bogging down the organization. Bodell insists that whether an organization is doing exceptionally well or struggling, now is the time to address … [ Read more ]

The Lesson of Lost Value

A new study finds that underestimating strategic risk is the number one cause of shareholder value destruction. But it doesn’t have to be.

Staying Power: Six Enduring Principles for Managing Strategy and Innovation in an Uncertain World

As we continue in an era of simultaneous innovation and commoditization, enabled by digital technologies, managers around the world are asking themselves “how can we both adapt to rapid changes in technology and markets, and still make enough money to survive–and thrive?”

To provide answers to these important and urgent questions, MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Michael Cusumano draws on nearly 30 years of research … [ Read more ]

The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy

Conventional wisdom on strategy is no longer a reliable guide. The authors maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with coherence: a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique.

Achieving this clarity takes a sharpness of focus that only exceptional companies have mastered. This book helps you identify your firm’s blend of strategic direction and distinctive capabilities that … [ Read more ]

Three Games of Strategic Thinking

Decision makers struggling with uncertainty can choose from a trio of probabilistic models to match the type of risks they face.

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader, whether the CEO at a Fortune 100 company, an entrepreneur, a church pastor, the head of a school, or a government official. Richard Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” He debunks these elements … [ Read more ]

Does Your Strategy Match Your Competitive Environment

How predictable are competitive conditions in your industry? How much power does your company have to shape its underlying competitive environment? These questions are critical to strategists, since clearly the kinds of strategies that work in predictable industries are likely to be worlds apart from those geared to shaping highly volatile environments.

Are You a Strategist?

Corporate strategy has become the bailiwick of consultants and business analysts, so much so that it is no longer a top-of-mind responsibility for many senior executives. Professor Cynthia A. Montgomery says it’s time for CEOs to again become strategists.

The Social Side of Strategy

Crowdsourcing your strategy may sound crazy. But a few pioneering companies are starting to do just that, boosting organizational alignment in the process. Should you join them?

12 Planning Pitfalls to Avoid

Do you spend enough time planning strategy? Are the meetings you hold actually productive? Do you regularly track and review the results of your short- and long-term strategies, and change them when necessary? Alberto Fernández offers tips for avoiding 12 common pitfalls in strategic planning and follow-up.

How to Put Your Money Where Your Strategy Is

Most companies allocate the same resources to the same business units year after year. That makes it difficult to realize strategic goals and undermines performance. Here’s how to overcome inertia.

Value Patterns: The Concept

A CEO’s strategic and investment choices are calculated bets, made in a competitive and uncertain environment. When developing a strategy to create value, it pays to know your company’s starting position. BCG has identified ten such positions, or value patterns, that define the moves most likely to create value.

Barry Jaruzelski, John Loehr, and Richard Holman

Culture matters, enormously. Studies have shown again and again that there may be no more critical source of business success or failure than a company’s culture — it trumps strategy and leadership. That isn’t to say that strategy doesn’t matter, but rather that the particular strategy a company employs will succeed only if it is supported by the appropriate cultural attributes.

Just-in-Time Strategy for a Turbulent World

Uncertainty and rising levels of risk make it impossible for companies to determine the future. But a portfolio-of-initiatives approach to strategy can help ensure that companies take full advantage of their best opportunities without taking unnecessary risks.