1338 Posts Found

In this interactive presentation, McKinsey director Lowell Bryan talks about the origins of the portfolio-of-initiatives framework. Developed to address the need for strategy in a more fluid, less predictable environment, this approach treats strategies as actions that require continual monitoring and evaluation.

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

Though often missing, a formal operations strategy can guide the crucial decisions that build competitive advantage.

Content: Article | Author: Tim Laseter | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Operations, Strategy

Identifying and assessing growth options are complex, critical processes. Even more critical, and intricate, is the measurement of risk associated with each option. These authors provide a robust framework that will enable managers and their firms to choose those growth options that have the best chance of succeeding.

Content: Article | Authors: Bill Liabotis, Donald Baer | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Why do alliances fail so often? The prime culprit is the way they are traditionally organized and managed. Most alliances are defined by service level agreements (SLAs) that identify what each side commits to delivering rather than what each hopes to gain from the partnership. The SLAs emphasize operational performance metrics rather than strategic objectives, and all too often those metrics become outdated as the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Authors: Bjarne Rugelsjoen, David P. Norton, Robert S. Kaplan | Subjects: Management, Strategy

In the third of a three part podcast series Donald Sull, Associate Professor of Management Practice in Strategic and International Management at London Business School, talks about how to put the notion of a strategy loop into practice in an organisation.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Donald Sull | Source: London Business School | Subject: Strategy

A successful reverse innovation effort can result in cannibalization of a company’s existing lines of business. that is certainly true, but it is not a justification for remaining inert. If a business can be destroyed, then it eventually will be destroyed. It is only a matter of whether you do it to yourself or a rival does it to you.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Chris Trimble, Jeff Immelt, Vijay Govindarajan | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Competition, Management, Strategy

In this interactive presentation—one in a series of multimedia frameworks—Steve Coley, a director emeritus in McKinsey’s Chicago office, describes the three horizons framework. Based on research into how companies sustain growth, this approach illustrates how to manage for current performance while maximizing future opportunities for growth.

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

Can ‘Complexity Theory’ explain why strategies and change programs seldom deliver the results that were intended? Does it mean that we should leave everything to chance and abandon any attempts to shape our organizations for the future? In this article Dr Jean Boulton and Dr Peter Allen, from Cranfield’s Complex Systems Management Centre, explain how this ‘new science’ can be used by managers to rethink … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Jean Boulton, Peter Allen | Source: think Cranfield | Subjects: Change Management, Strategy

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Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt have consulted for companies that are highly efficient, full of hard workers and smart managers—yet barely able to eke out a profit. They’ve also worked in undisciplined, mismanaged companies that generate huge margins year after year. The key to sustainable profits, they realized, was intellectual property. Yet most managers are unable to see the power of IP because they were … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Mark Blaxill, Ralph Eckardt | Subject: Strategy

You have a great enterprise that has a very strong set of values that’s married to a very insightful strategy. That is then translated into a set of disciplined decisions, mechanisms, cultural practices and a variety of other things that really bring the strategy to life so that you can make good on it. And when you look at that chain, the great danger comes … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jim Collins | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Management, Strategy, Success / Failure

How should a corporation decide whether to buy, sell, or keep a business unit? In the late 1980s, McKinsey developed its market-activated corporate strategy (MACS) framework, which answered that question in a surprising way. The obvious considerations—the attractiveness of the industry in which the unit competes and its competitiveness within that industry—are both relevant, but the acid test is which company can extract the greatest … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: John Stuckey, Ken McLeod | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

…when product performance outstrips the ability of customers to use that performance in an industry, the competitive game changes. Under those circumstances you have to decouple components businesses from assembly businesses. But I’d rather decouple than divest because the money shifts to the place where nonstandard integration next needs to occur.

Content: Quotation | Author: Clayton M. Christensen | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

Drivers such as globalization, deregulation, or technological change, just to mention a few, are profoundly changing the competitive game. Scholars and practitioners agree that the fastest-growing firms in this new environment appear to have taken advantage of these structural changes to compete “differently” and innovate in their business models. However, there is not yet agreement on what are the distinctive features of superior business models. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Joan Enric Ricart, Ramon Casadesus-Masanell | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subject: Strategy

Irrational thinking doesn’t just affect individual economic decisions; it affects corporate strategic planning as well. These results highlight the practices of companies that have made successful strategic decisions—and also reveal what the same companies have gotten wrong.

Content: Article | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Strategy

Although even the highest levels of uncertainty don’t prevent businesses from analyzing predicaments rationally, says author Hugh Courtney, the financial crisis has shown us the limits of our tools—and minds.

Content: Thought Leader | Author: Hugh Courtney | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subject: Strategy

Past success can become tomorrow’s liability. But instead of throwing out the old and taking a bold leap into the new, leaders in uncertain times should focus on creating conditions for internally generated growth. Columbia’s Rita Gunther McGrath presents a portfolio of opportunities that managers can employ, including a questionnaire to help you pinpoint the greatest sources of uncertainty in the business, and thereby focus … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Rita Gunther McGrath | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Management, Strategy

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Buffeted by years of offshoring, formidable Asian competitors and a global economic downturn, some companies are finding ways to make manufacturing in the U.S. a competitive advantage.

Content: Article | Author: Dale Buss | Source: Chief Executive | Subjects: Management, Operations, Outsourcing / BPO, Strategy

One of the biggest differences between a core business and an entrepreneurial one is what colleagues and I have termed the difference in the Assumption:Knowledge ratio. Businesses with a low ratio – such as your core – can be managed conventionally. In such situations, the measure of a good plan is how close results came to expectations, and failure rates should be low. In a … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Rita Gunther McGrath | Source: IESE Insight | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Management, Strategy