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For businesses seeking to improve profits, the low-hanging fruit is obvious. Cut costs, improve sales performance, optimize the supply chain. But after that, is everything else out of reach? In challenging economic times, you can’t afford to draw such conclusions.

Content: Article | Authors: Paul Schroder, Sean Ryan, Steve Mehltretter | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Any genuine shift in strategy implies a change in emphasis; it might involve different customers or markets, new technologies or business processes, unfamiliar leadership styles or management techniques. This requires that leaders learn new skills and master new approaches—a big challenge in itself. Even more problematic, a new strategy undermines the organization’s political profile in very tangible ways. It alters priorities, resource allocations, and reporting … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Mark Nadler | Source: Oliver Wyman | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

The concept of shared value—which focuses on the connections between societal and economic progress—has the power to unleash the next wave of global growth.

There are three key ways that companies can create shared value opportunities:
– By reconceiving products and markets
– By redefining productivity in the value chain
– By enabling local cluster development

Every firm should look at decisions and opportunities through the lens … [ Read more ]

Content: Multimedia Content | Authors: Mark R. Kramer, Michael E. Porter | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

How a capabilities-driven information technology strategy can help differentiate your company.

Content: Article | Authors: Eduardo Alvarez, Srini Raghavan | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Strategy

A common pitfall is tying incentive compensation, such as annual bonuses, to performance against a predetermined plan or budget. This inevitably leads people to restrain their aspirations for the business in order to make it easier to “beat plan.” In turn, this is interpreted as sandbagging by corporate headquarters or investors. The end result is a time-consuming, soul-destroying, and ultimately unproductive gaming of the planning … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Greg Rotz, Ken Favaro | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Management, Planning

Vertical integration does not necessarily mean that a company’s upstream plants supply inputs to its downstream operations. In fact, it is more likely that they do not.

Content: Article | Authors: Ali Hortaçsu, Chad Syverson | Source: Capital Ideas | Subjects: Operations, Strategy

In the unpredictable business environment, any advantage that allows the possibility to predict and prepare for outcomes will add value. Monitor Group partner Nick Turner explains to CEO how scenario planning can offer companies an advantage.

Content: Article | Author: Nick Turner | Source: Chief Executive Officer (CEO) | Subject: Strategy

Successful low-cost competitors don’t just sap margins incrementally. What makes them so dangerous is their ability to redefine the entire competitive landscape. The low-cost competitor transforms its value chain to reduce prices drastically. With low costs as a pivot, it shifts the ground beneath larger, less flexible opponents and turns their mass and momentum against them. Responses often come too late to be effective, and … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Bob O’Meara, Christian Hagen, Jim Morehouse, Todd Huseby | Source: Kearney | Subject: Strategy

Trying to predict the future with any precision is a fool’s game, but ignoring it is suicidal. The right approach lies somewhere between prediction and neglect. Recent research has revealed a positive correlation between a leader’s tolerance for ambiguity and the successful management of paradoxes: Troy University management professor Debra Hunter says that a high tolerance for ambiguity entails a tendency to perceive ambiguous situations … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: David L. Dotlich, Peter C. Cairo, Stephen H. Rhinesmith | Source: The Conference Board Review | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Strategy

Is strategic planning still relevant in a world of tumultuous economic events and stunning social and technological shifts? According to an Accenture report, the answer is yes, although new approaches (particularly relating to risk management) are likely needed. The report also introduces five elements of an effective strategic planning process.

Content: Article | Author: Robert Gjetsund | Source: Accenture | Subject: Strategy

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The yin and yang of strategic fad and fashion — the movement of business leadership from one trend to another over the past 50 years — has often led companies to make incoherent and ineffective moves. The answer is not to keep adopting new theories in hopes of finding the right answer, but to develop your own capabilities-driven strategy: your own theory of coherence for … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Art Kleiner, Cesare R. Mainardi | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

Despite their differences, all four schools of strategy represent attempts to resolve the same basic underlying problem: the tension between two conflicting business realities.

The first reality is that advantage is transient. Even the most formidable market position can be vulnerable to technological disruptions, upstart competition, shifting capital flows, new regulatory regimes, political changes, and other facets of a chaotic and unpredictable business environment.

One might assume … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Art Kleiner, Cesare R. Mainardi | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

The experience curve and growth-share matrix rapidly became popular because they worked powerfully well — at first. But in practice, these tools had a serious flaw: As retroactive analyses of a company’s past success, they made it irresistible to continue that same behavior into the future, even when circumstances changed.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Art Kleiner, Cesare R. Mainardi | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

Former Merck CEO Raymond Gilmartin and three other leaders share their approaches to testing strategy.

Content: Article | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

Add the dictum, “Know the terrain” to “Know your customer” and you’ve got the two most important principles that a manager needs to follow to compete successfully. At first, and perhaps even later on, the playing field may not be level, but managers who consider the observations of this Ivey Business Journal regular contributor will surely be able to compete with any player, under any … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: John McCallum | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Competitive Intelligence, Management, Strategy

Many businesses build slowly with a few solid customers, grow rapidly as demand swells, and then slow their ascension. This progression is called the S-curve. High-performance businesses, however, regularly launch new S-curves and thus enjoy renewed competitive advantages. What characteristics separate these companies from those with lesser skills?

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

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