1338 Posts Found

HR professionals have arrived at the strategy-creating table. This is good, but it is time for HR as a profession to move past this objective. HR professionals have a unique set of perspectives and knowledge to bring to the strategy creation table, but even more important is what they could bring to the strategy-implementation table. HR professionals, often defensive about their comparative worth, need not … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Richard McKnight, Ph.D. | Source: Right Management Consultants | Subjects: Human Resources, Strategy

Over the past few decades, many companies have become obsessed with benchmarking-comparing their performance with rivals on industry-wide standard metrics. But benchmarking pulls companies in exactly the wrong direction, because it leaves them looking more similar to their rivals, rather than more different.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Emory | Subjects: Best Practices, Competition

Time is the secret weapon of business. Advantages in response time provide leverage for all the other competitive differences that make up a company’s overall competitive advantage.

Content: Article | Author: George Stalk Jr. | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Competitor-oriented objectives, such as market-share targets, are promoted by academics and are commonly used by firms. A 1996 review of the evidence, summarized in this paper, found that competitor-oriented objectives reduced profitability. We describe new evidence from 12 studies, one of which is introduced in this paper. The new evidence supports the conclusion that competitor-oriented objectives are harmful, especially when managers receive information about competitors’ … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: J. Scott Armstrong, Kesten C. Green | Source: International Journal of Business | Subject: Strategy

Joseph L. Bower and Clark G. Gilbert have collected together some of the leading experts on strategy to examine how strategy is actually made by company managers across the several levels of an organization. Is strategy a coherent plan conceived at the top by a visionary leader, or is it formed by a series of smaller decisions, not always reflecting what top management has in … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Clark Gilbert, Joseph L. Bower | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Strategic planning should not be a once- or twice-yearly event disconnected from running the business. Only by erasing the distinction between strategy and daily execution can companies reliably craft and execute a winning plan. Executives looking to make their strategic planning more strategic can quickly refer to these ten best practices.

Content: Article | Authors: Jonathan Gove, Olivier Defline, Phyllis Rothschild | Source: Mercer Management Journal | Subject: Strategy

The author of this book believes that the key operational objective of any growth-based initiative is to create a much better value proposition, as seen through the eyes of customers, than competitors provide. To achieve that objective, he recommends focusing on five elements of a “core value proposition”: the core idea, the benefits for customers, the target market, the desired perception (“How do we want … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Author: Jack G. Hardy | Subject: Strategy

An awareness of the brain’s flaws can help strategists steer around them. All strategists should understand the insights of behavioral economics just as much as they understand those of other fields of the “dismal science.” Such an understanding won’t put an end to bad strategy; greed, arrogance, and sloppy analysis will continue to provide plenty of textbook cases of it. Understanding some of the flaws … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Charles Roxburgh | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Economics, Strategy

This article traces the rationale, features, development and application of the BSC in the past few years, and then provides a critical review of its key problematic effects on firms and their stakeholders in today’s changing business environment. Five major problem areas are identified and discussed, with selected business examples. An alternative to the BSC is proposed and motivated, involving drastic change in both the … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Marius Leibold, Robert A. Eckhoff, Sven C. Voelpel, Thomas H. Davenport | Source: Intellectual Capital Stream CMS4 | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Corporate strategy can guide acquisitions, divestitures, and market and product development efforts outside the scope of individual business units. But the importance of corporate strategy is often overrated…That’s because operational excellence at the business-unit level is fundamental to our prescription for success.

Content: Quotation | Source: Harvard Business School (HBS) Working Knowledge | Subjects: Execution, Strategy

Errors in corporate strategy are often self-inflicted, and a singular focus on shareholder value is the “Bermuda Triangle” of strategy, according to Michael E. Porter, director of Harvard’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness. Porter, who recently spoke at Wharton as part of the school’s SEI Center Distinguished Lecture Series, challenged managers to stop trying to be the best company in their industry and instead deliver … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Michael E. Porter | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: People, Strategy

Every industry is going to have an operating system. The question is: Who gets to be Microsoft?

Content: Quotation | Source: Context Magazine | Subject: Strategy

If strategy is the art of allocating scarce resources, then segmentation-and the understanding it provides about your core customer groups-is part of the science informing that allocation.

Content: Quotation | Source: Bain & Company | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Strategy

In the world of strategy, what tempts corporations off the path of true value? The strategists at Strategic Decisions Group, with hundreds of collective years of corporate and consulting experience, have identified the most common and deadly sins of strategy. This executive summary discusses why people and organizations commit these sins, and what steps can be taken to sin less frequently and become “more virtuous.” … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Carl Spetzler, David Wolter, Greg Bean, Jim Lang | Source: Strategic Decisions Group | Subject: Strategy

The Balanced Scorecard is a Performance Management system that can be used in any size organization to align vision and mission with customer requirements and day-to-day work, manage and evaluate business strategy, monitor operation efficiency improvements, build organizational capacity, and communicate progress to all employees. The scorecard allows us to measure financial and customer results, operations, and organizational capacity. This paper discusses how to develop … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Howard Rohm, Larry Halbach | Source: Balanced Scorecard Institute | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Demand-driven innovations can, at best, develop and extend existing markets incrementally. These innovations usually come in the form of product extensions or process innovations. While valuable, they do not create disruptive new markets. Evidence shows that disruptive new markets are actually created in a haphazard manner when a new technology gets pushed onto a market. This kind of innovation process is called “supply push” by … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Costas Markides, Paul Geroski | Source: Strategy& | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Lazy orthodoxies can allow new entrants to thrive in niches that seem full of capable incumbents.

Content: Quotation | Source: Knowledge@Wharton | Subjects: Competition, Opportunity

Peter Rip of Leapfrog Ventures has an insightful post on business models. He gives some context about the term and the way he thinks about it, ending with a useful chart. The chart, which he admits is incomplete, is still a thought-starter and indeed, a useful guide for entreprenurs and others contemplating putting together a business plan.

Content: Article | Author: Peter Rip | Source: EarlyStageVC | Subjects: Management, Strategy

While the importance of stakeholders to corporate success is not a new concept, Dr. Darrol Stanley restates the significance of these stakeholders in a pragmatic way that will lead to their adoption as part of an integrated corporate strategy. He also shares ten financial drivers that a management team should focus on to enhance, if not maximize, corporate value for the long term.

Content: Article | Author: Darrol J. Stanley | Source: Graziadio Business Report | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Scenarios are imaginative pictures of potential futures, but the future they picture is just a means to an end. These conversations, at once free-flowing and rigorously constrained, are designed to help a group of people trick themselves to see past their own blind spots. Confronting the future with rigor tends to leave most people energized and enthusiastic about facing their future–even if the future looks … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Art Kleiner | Source: Whole Earth | Subjects: Management, Strategy