1338 Posts Found

In today’s world, it is important to understand when an alliance is an appropriate investment vehicle and when it is not; it is equally important to understand how to form an alliance properly.The “why and when” of alliance formation depends on recognition of the differences among a corporation’s businesses and the appropriate investment strategies for them.

Core businesses come in two varieties: first, what we … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: James A. Finnegan, John L. Forbis | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Effective strategists are not people who abstract themselves from the daily detail, but who immerse themselves in it while being able to abstract the relevant messages from it.

Content: Quotation | Source: ManyWorlds | Subject: Strategy

Because analysis is not synthesis, strategic planning has never been strategy making… No amount of elaboration will ever enable formal procedures to forecast discontinuities, to inform detached managers, to create novel strategies. Thus planning, rather than providing new strategies, could not proceed without their prior existence.

Content: Quotation | Source: ManyWorlds | Subject: Strategy

As deconstruction spreads, integrated value chains break apart into stand-alone businesses, or layers. Some of these layers have the potential to become the “sweet spots” of the deconstructed value chain�the places where the most value is concentrated and where the highest profits and returns can be found.

Editor’s Note: although this article was written in early 1999 and cites Enron as an example, it is … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: David Edelman | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

Planning and control are Siamese twins. You can’t have control if you don’t have a plan, because the very definition of control is that you compare progress against your plan and take corrective action if you are off course. Another thing to remember, which seems counterintuitive, is that the more important a deadline is, the more important a plan becomes.

Content: Quotation | Source: Business Finance Magazine | Subjects: Management, Planning

A business should be regarded as a system in equilibrium. An effective corporate strategy is a predetermined sequence for the allocation of resources in such a fashion that the equilibrium will be shifted to a more favorable relationship.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

When growth rate exceeds the cost of capital, the competitive relationships become inherently unstable. Aggressive competition then produces revolution instead of evolution in competitive relationships.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

It is possible to demonstrate that at various stages of product development the critical strategy element shifts from technical lead, to financial resources, then organization policy coordination and finally to market share.

It is also possible to demonstrate that competitive equilibrium is highly unstable under certain conditions, conditionally unstable under others, and finally the equilibrium will become almost certainly essentially stable.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

Failure to gain market share even with superior costs is failure to compete. This failure is also a failure to achieve even lower costs.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Competition

The majority of the products in most companies are cash traps. They will absorb more money forever than they will generate. This is true even though they may show a profit according to the books of account. Continued investment sends good money after bad. Escape from the trap requires extreme measures. Either stop investing and manage solely to maximize cash withdrawal, or invest so heavily … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Competition, Economics

Whenever a front or zone of competitive parity becomes stable or static, then “bourgeois” competition will develop. Such “bourgeois” competition exists when the defense always acts as a hawk and the offense always acts as a dove. This is a mutual recognition of mutually predictable behavior.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

The fewer the number of competitive variables that are critical, then the fewer will be the number of competitors. If only one factor is critical, then no more than two or three competitors are likely to coexist. Only one will survive if the available market shrinks. This is the “rule of three and four.”

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

Failure to seek patterns in business results in either analysis paralysis or firefighting. The forest becomes lost in the trees. Patterns filter extraneous information, reduce complexity, focus on the essential. Only key patterns of competitive behavior are evaluated.

…Most of the major ideas in business strategy are conceptual rules of thumb about economic competition. The experience curve, the growth-share matrix, average costing, and the environments matrix … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subject: Strategy

The fact is that some markets yield more opportunities for advantage than others, and some none at all. Some companies invest heavily in pursuit of the mirage of a secure future competitive edge. Nowhere is this more likely to end in disappointment than where there is blind faith in the value of market share or in the rewards of technological superiority.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

Many executives believe that competitive advantage is best achieved by providing the most value for the lowest cost. This is the traditional paradigm for corporate success. Providing the most value for the lowest cost in the least amount of time is the new paradigm for corporate success.

Content: Quotation | Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Subjects: Competition, Strategy

McGrath and MacMillan, graduate business school academics, offer assistance to executives for improving growth and profitability, especially those seeking skills such as improving their decision-making ability, working with the reality that failure is linked to intelligent risk, and making sense of ambiguous information. To achieve growth and profitability, the authors suggest using market busters, actions they define as those a company can take to change … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Ian C. Macmillan, Rita Gunther McGrath | Subject: Strategy

Kim and Mauborgne’s blue ocean metaphor elegantly summarizes their vision of the kind of expanding, competitor-free markets that innovative companies can navigate. Unlike “red oceans,” which are well explored and crowded with competitors, “blue oceans” represent “untapped market space” and the “opportunity for highly profitable growth.” The only reason more big companies don’t set sail for them, they suggest, is that “the dominant focus of … [ Read more ]

Content: Book | Authors: Renée Mauborgne, W. Chan Kim | Subject: Strategy

In “push” systems…the core assumptions are that companies and other institutions can anticipate demand and that mobilizing scarce resources in previously specified ways is the most efficient and reliable way to meet it. But the efficiency of push systems comes at a stiff price, for they require companies to specify, monitor, and enforce detailed activities and tasks. This rigidity necessarily restricts the number and diversity … [ Read more ]

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

“Alfred Marcus’s new book Big Winners and Big Losers compares and contrasts the practices of successful and failing firms. Most importantly, his study offers thoughtful definitions, examples, and boundaries to each of the four best practices, which will help practicing managers apply the prescriptions to their own situations.” -Will Mitchell, The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University

Content: Book | Author: Alfred A. Marcus | Subject: Strategy

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