1338 Posts Found

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.

strategy+business reviews the best strategy books of 2007

Content: Related Content | Author: David Newkirk | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

Corporate alliances account for nearly 33% of many companies’ revenue and value. Yet these alliances’ failure rate hovers at 60%-70%. To bolster success rates, companies need to apply five counterintuitive practices.

Content: Article | Authors: Jeff Weiss, Jonathan Hughes | Sources: BNET, Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

Recognition of the strategic importance of Project Management (PM) in the corporate world is rapidly accelerating. One reason for this acceleration may be strong belief by business leaders that aligning project management with business strategy can significantly enhance the achievement of organizational goals, strategies, and performance. This paper addresses three aspects of an under-researched topic in the strategic management literature, aligning project management with business … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Sabin Srivannaboon | Source: Portland State University | Subjects: Project Management, Strategy

There is no doubt that planning through a hierarchical structure has significant advantages, such as breaking a complex problem into more easily solvable parts or enabling lower levels to respond more quickly to problems. However, hierarchical organization poses two major problems. First, while one or more areas may find local ways to improve planning and production, the net effect on the whole organization may be … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: IESE Insight | Subject: Planning

These two questions are the fundamental questions in strategy. How can you understand your industry and your competitive environment, and how can you understand how to position your company within that environment?

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subject: Strategy

Strategy is choice. Strategy means saying no to certain kinds of things. Strategy means saying no to certain kinds of deals. Even if they might make some money. Strategy means saying no to certain types of [customers] that you are not really interested in. Strategy means making some people unhappy. If you are willing to do anything that looks economic, that’s a danger signal. You … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subject: Strategy

In essence, a business model performs two important functions: It creates value and it captures a portion of that value. The first function requires defining a series of activities (from raw materials through to the final customer) that will yield a new product or service, with value being added throughout the various activities. The second function requires the establishing of a unique resource, asset or … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Sloan Management Review (MIT) | Subjects: Business Plans, Strategy

In this interview David Taube talks
about franchising and its pros and
cons as a business expansion model.

Content: Article | Authors: David Taube, James Nelson | Source: Emerald | Subjects: People, Strategy

Companies can keep an eye on their health by regularly assessing all their business ideas and new initiatives-projects or programs to change or improve something in the business. They should evaluate these projects both by mapping the point when each would be likely to create the greatest value and by looking at whether a project involves familiar, routine work that plays to their strengths and … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Keep one ear open in almost any business environment and the term “strategy” is sure to crop up on a regular basis. Unfortunately, those using the term frequently fail to define the way in which they are using it. Nor do those hearing it bother to check to see how it is being used. As a result, conversations about strategy can become confusing.

There are at … [ Read more ]

Content: Related Content | Author: Fred Nickols | Subject: Strategy

To be successful, a company should have a portfolio of products with different growth rates and different market shares. The portfolio composition is a function of the balance between cash flows.

Content: Article, Related Content | Author: Bruce D. Henderson | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

This content is restricted to site members. Please log in or register

Michael Porter (1996), in his influential article “What is Strategy”, called cost reduction, quality improvement and customer service operational effectiveness. He argued they are not strategy because, one cannot choose to market products of competitively low quality. One cannot afford to say one will not reduce costs, or will serve customers poorly.

Strategy is about creating value for customers. In this respect operational efficiencies and strategy … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subject: Strategy

Why do some shopping malls, retail stores, popular magazines, and even Internet portals seem to purposefully make it hard for consumers to find what they want? HBS professor Andrei Hagiu and Bruno Jullien challenge the conventional wisdom that intermediaries create value by reducing search and transaction costs. Their paper sheds light on the economic motivations that in some contexts may lead intermediaries to make it … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Andrei Hagiu, Bruno Jullien | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) | Subjects: Economics, Strategy | Industry: Retail

For improving performance and gaining competitive advantage, offshoring and the latest advances in technology seem to grab all the headlines. Yet building a sustainable advantage requires much more. Employees whose jobs can’t be automated-any company’s high-value decision makers-hold the key to boosting productivity, so making them more effective can create an edge that competitors won’t replicate easily.

Content: Article | Authors: Bradford C. Johnson, James Manyika, Lareina Yee | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Strategy

SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is a popular framework for developing a marketing strategy. Although SWOT is promoted as a useful technique in numerous marketing texts, it is not universally praised: One expert said that he preferred to think of SWOT as a “Significant Waste of Time.”

The problem with SWOT is more serious than just wasting time. Because it mixes idea generation with evaluation, it … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: J. Scott Armstrong | Source: ManyWorlds | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Strategy

Strategic thinking is essentially a substitute for having clear connections between the positions we take and their economic outcomes.

Strategic thinking helps us take positions in a world that is confusing and uncertain. You can’t get rid of ambiguity and uncertainty-they are the flip side of opportunity. If you want certainty and clarity, wait for others to take a position and see how they do. Then … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Opportunity, Strategy

Most of the strategy concepts in use today are static. They explain the stability and sustainability of competitive advantages. Strategy concepts like core competencies, experience curves, market share, entry barriers, scale, corporate culture, and even the idea of “superior resources” are essentially static, telling us why a particular position is defensible-why it holds the high ground.

If the terrain never changed, that would be the end … [ Read more ]

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

Financial theory would say that companies diversify to reduce risk, but in the business world diversification is done not to hedge risk but to sustain top-line growth. The riskiest companies-the start-ups and early-stage companies-are intensely focused. Companies begin thinking about diversification only when their growth has plateaued and opportunities for expansion in the original business have been depleted.

Content: Quotation | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Risk Management, Strategy