1338 Posts Found

The most widely used (and taught) protocols for strategic analysis—SWOT and Porter’s (1980) Five Force Framework for industry analysis—have been found wanting as stimuli to strategy creation or even as a basis for further strategy development. We approach this problem from a neurocognitive perspective. We find profound incompatibilities between the mental image representations evoked by these strategic analysis frameworks and the neural processes going on … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Harold E. Klein, Mark D’Esposito | Sources: Adventure of Strategy, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences | Subject: Strategy

Michael Porter published an article in the January 2008 Harvard Business Review updating his famous five forces model. Here is an interview with him (12:57 minutes) on the relevance of the 5 Forces in today’s world.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Michael E. Porter | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: People, Strategy

Today, the pressure is on to deliver on the demands of customers and investors—and to do it right now. More than ever, every business executive needs to be thinking carefully about how markets develop and how to sustain them, what customers and markets value, how to best serve these markets, and how to reallocate resources to succeed. As a company’s business model shifts to meet … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: The Chasm Group | Subject: Strategy

If you ask young men what they want to accomplish by the time they are 40, the answers you get fall into two distinct categories. There are those—the great majority—who will respond in terms of what they want to have. This is especially true of graduate students of business administration. There are some men, however, who will answer in terms of the kind of men … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Seymour Tilles | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Goals, Mission, Planning

Strategy is not just a plan, not just an idea; it is a way of life for a company. Strategy doesn’t just position a firm in its external landscape; it defines what a firm will be. Watching over strategy day in and day out is not only a CEO’s greatest opportunity to outwit the competition; it is also his or her greatest opportunity to shape … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Cynthia A. Montgomery | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

A plan is only a scenario, and almost by definition, it is optimistic. Any complex undertaking is subject to myriad problems — from technology failures to shifts in exchange rates to bad weather — and it is beyond the reach of the human imagination to foresee all of them at the outset. Although the probability of any one of these events could be low, the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Daniel Kahneman | Source: Rotman Magazine | Subjects: Personality / Behavior, Planning, Risk Management

William Duggan declares in Strategic Intuition that he hopes to fill a gap in modern strategic thinking, where “the reigning models of business strategy…leave out how strategists actually come up with their ideas.” In one of the more ambitious books in recent years, he wrestles with the nature of strategic intuition — the “creative spark” — and how to develop it. – David Newkirk

Content: Book | Author: William Duggan | Subject: Strategy

A compelling vision. Bold leadership. Decisive action. Unfortunately, these prerequisites of success are almost always the ingredients of failure, too. In fact, most managers seeking to maximize their chances for glory are often unwittingly setting themselves up for ruin. The sad truth is that most companies have left their futures almost entirely to chance, and don’t even realize it. The reason? Managers feel they must … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Subject: Strategy

In business, unlike in nature, the fittest often survive by helping create the environment that favors them.

Content: Quotation | Author: David Newkirk | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Competition, Management, Observations, Strategy

Dave Robinson, a marketing professor at Haas, offers some notes on performing case analysis and also offers his “Six C’s model” of Business Situation Analysis.

Content: Article | Author: David Robinson | Subjects: Case Related, Strategy

Integrating a futures approach into traditional strategic planning models in order to develop a foresight capacity requires not only an understanding of what a futures approach is – as
opposed to only using a methodology like scenario planning – but also a fundamental reconceptualization of the strategic planning model itself. This paper first explores that re-conceptualization in order to develop an alternative planning model before discussing … [ Read more ]

Content: Related Content | Author: M. Conway | Source: Swinburne University of Technology | Subject: Strategy

Highly differentiated strategies, either low cost or product leadership, offer the promise of high returns, but only because they run higher strategic risk. Staking a defensible claim to a unique competitive position demands bold commitments over long periods of time to assets and capabilities that few others feel will be valuable in the future. In other words, greatness requires that companies make a significant, and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Michael E. Raynor | Source: Ivey Business Journal | Subjects: Risk Management, Strategy

Business cares so much about quality because quality — however defined — can be clearly linked to some measures of economic value and business success. Given the relationship between quality — once achieved — and value, corporations have good reasons for remaining committed to the quality vision. But many firms are having a hard time applying quality principles throughout their operations.

Many of the TQM projects … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Tamara J. Erickson | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Operations, Strategy

Most organizations are good at collecting internally focused data, but few systematically provide insight about a company’s external environment. For example, only 21 percent regularly track how their competitors are performing. Business is not an us-vs.-us exercise, yet management reports rarely touch on the world outside.

Content: Quotation | Author: Robert Kugel | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Competition, Competitive Intelligence, Management, Measurement

MacMillan and McGrath’s new book, Marketbusters: 40 Strategic Moves that Drive Exceptional Business Growth, is intended to help managers identify similar high-impact opportunities within their own companies and industries. MacMillan, a Wharton management professor, and McGrath, a management professor at Columbia University, collaborated on a prior book, The Entrepreneurial Mindset, published in 2000. Marketbusters grew out of it.

But where the Entrepreneurial Mindset focused on fostering … [ Read more ]

Content: Related Content | Authors: Ian MacMillan, Rita Gunther McGrath | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Here is a summary of the concluding volume in Chris Zook’s trilogy on the business core. The previous two books focused on supporting, exploiting and expanding your core business, whereas this book shows you what to do when your position in the marketplace is under threat. Zook points out the dangers of defending your core until your company dies, or of jumping to the next … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Chris Zook | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Strategy

For executives trying to make sense of a rapidly changing business environment, superiority in pattern recognition is perhaps the greatest competitive advantage that can be developed.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Clint Kilts, Roderick Gilkey | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Personal Development, Skills, Strategy

Facing saturation and cutthroat competition in long-established markets, many multinational companies are seeking new markets. Yet until recently, they have largely ignored the more than 5 billion low-income consumers, thinking these consumers have no money to spend or are impossible to reach. Now several companies are disproving these perceptions.

Content: Article | Authors: Peter Pfeiffer, Sven Massen, Ulrich Bombka | Source: Kearney | Subjects: Demographics, International, Strategy

It helps to base your strategy on things that won’t change. When I’m talking with people outside the company, there’s a question that comes up very commonly: “What’s going to change in the next five to ten years?” But I very rarely get asked “What’s not going to change in the next five to ten years?” At Amazon we’re always trying to figure that out, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeff Bezos | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

A lot of our energy and drive as a company, as a culture, comes from trying to build these customer-focused strategies. And actually I do think they work better in fast-changing environments, for two reasons. First, customer needs change more slowly—assuming you pick the right ones—than a lot of other things. Second, close following doesn’t work as well in a fast-changing environment. The strategic value … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeff Bezos | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Strategy | Company: Amazon.com Inc.