1341 Posts Found

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.

Content: Article | Author: Gerry Hansell | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

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.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Barry Jaruzelski, John Loehr, Richard Holman | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Culture, Strategy

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.

Content: Article | Author: Lowell Bryan | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

Many multinational business models are no longer relevant. Skillful companies can integrate three strategies — customization, competencies, and arbitrage — into a better form of organization.

Content: Article | Authors: C.K. Prahalad, Hrishi Bhattacharyya | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: International, Strategy

Greater returns at greater risk is meaningless, this author writes. But greater returns and the same or reduced risk? Now that’s a worthwhile goal. That’s what corporate strategy must take into account.

Content: Article | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subject: Strategy

Any seasoned strategist knows that strategy is not just sloganeering. It is the series of choices you make on where to play and how to win to maximize long-term value. Execution is producing results in the context of those choices. Therefore, you cannot have good execution without having good strategy.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Evan R. Hirsh, Kasturi Rangan, Ken Favaro | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Execution, Strategy

When companies sense the need to find a new growth business, many turn inward, searching to extend core competencies and relying on centralized planning. High performers, on the other hand, look outward, focusing on the edge of markets and the perimeter of their company for insights and opportunities.

Content: Article | Authors: Paul F. Nunes, Tim Breene | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subject: Strategy

A diversification strategy can create value, but only if a company is the best possible owner of businesses outside its core industry.

Content: Article | Authors: Jannick Thomsen, Joseph Cyriac, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

Business strategy is best distinguished from corporate strategy by the different perspectives that business leaders and strategic planners must bring to bear.

Content: Article | Author: Ken Favaro | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

The three things you need to make money are the right strategy, the right people and the right behavior. Strategy matters most when there is turmoil but it is only about 10 per cent of the answer because implementing strategy is so challenging. People and behavior are 90 per cent of the equation.

Culture and leadership are hard to copy. There’s no such thing as … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Tom Tierney | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Culture, Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

What is a business strategy? It is the result of choices made to maximize long-term value.

Content: Article | Authors: Evan R. Hirsh, Kasturi Rangan, Ken Favaro | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

The forces that fractured the computer industry are bearing down on all industries. In the face of changing interaction costs and the new economics of electronic networks, companies must ask themselves the most basic of all questions: what business are we in?

Content: Article | Authors: John Hagel III, Marc Singer | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Strategy

In practice, competitive brands are mostly very similar. Michael Porter’s “sustainable competitive advantage” suffers from two disadvantages: Competitive advantages seldom exist; and if they do, they are rarely sustainable.

Almost any difference between brands that makes a difference in sales gets copied very quickly. “The trends in our technology lead to competing products being more and more the same,” the famed advertising guru James Webb Young … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Andrew Ehrenberg | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Brand, Competition, Marketing / Sales

Studies consistently show that most strategies fail in the implementation phase. The root of the problem can be traced to three factors: a failure of translation, a failure of adaptation, and a failure to sustain change over the long term. A dynamic approach to strategy implementation overcomes the limitations of the traditional administrative approach that serves as a breeding ground for these failures. In this … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Amelia Dunlop, Robert Lurie, Vincent Firth | Source: Monitor Group | Subject: Strategy

My competitors do more for me than my friends. My friends are too polite to point out my weaknesses, but my competitors go to great expense to advertise them. My competitors are diligent, efficient and attentive, and would take my business away from me if they could. They keep me alert. They force me to search for new ways to improve my products and services. … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Subject: Competition

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. A business is giving products away. When a surprised customer asks how the company can make money distributing free products, the answer is familiar: “We make it up in volume.”

With more and more companies adopting Free as a preferred pricing strategy, some executives aren’t laughing at this old joke so much as they’re taking it to heart. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Denys Aguirrebeitia, Maggie Laird, Mike Simonetto | Source: Deloitte Review | Subject: Strategy

To escape the commodity trap — and to compete effectively in a knowledge-based economy — business leaders of all kinds need to reinvent themselves as innovators in services.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Henry Chesbrough, Rob Norton | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Strategy

To improve manufacturing operations, don’t forget to fix the organizational issues that can hinder performance. These guidelines can help your company choose the optimal manufacturing setup, based on such factors as your industry, markets, customers, products, internal capabilities, competitive position, and overall strategy. Also included: tactics for managing the inevitable tradeoffs.

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel Spindelndreier, Frank Lesmeister, Michael Zinser | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Operations, Strategy

Spinning off businesses can have real advantages in creating value—if executives understand how.

Content: Article | Authors: Bill Huyett, Tim Koller | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Finance, Management, Strategy

Ever since Bruce Henderson introduced the growth-share matrix, corporate portfolio management has been a big part of the CEO agenda. But a recent BCG survey, conducted with Freiberg University in Germany, reveals a major gap between the effort companies put into portfolio management and its impact on corporate decision-making.

Editor’s Note: includes and excellent overview of CPM including history and common criticisms.

Content: Article | Authors: Harald Rubner, Matthias Krühler, Michael Nippa, Robert Untiedt, Ulrich Pidun | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Finance, Strategy