1341 Posts Found

Strategy is all about creating value for your shareholders. A strategy map is your guide to getting there. A Q&A with Robert Kaplan And David Norton.

Content: Article | Author: Christopher Koch | Source: CIO Magazine | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Strategy

Best practice doesn’t always equal best strategy. Best-practice benchmarking, rightly viewed as one of the most important tools for improving operational efficiency, can be a double-edged sword. Managers must guard against transforming what is a purely process-related technique into the overriding goal of strategic decision making. When industry competitors begin to herd around a single strategy, declining margins are bound to follow.

Content: Article | Sources: CFO Publishing, McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Best Practices, Strategy

In commodity-goods markets, price is usually the only differentiator. But if you can brand those goods and bundle them with services, even bricks and sand can command premium prices. Here is how to turn commodities into branded goods.

Editor’s Note: see a related European Business Forum (EBF) article, “Marketing through collaboration: how seller and buyer can benefit” by Kamran Kashani at:
Content: Article | Authors: Jack McGrath, Sam I. Hill, Sandeep Dayal | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Strategy

Chapter excerpted from Due Diligence for Global Deal Making: the definitive guide to cross-border mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, financings, and strategic alliances.

The authors present a comprehensive toolkit for cutting through complexity in cross-border deals to identify core value and its potential.

Editor’s Note: this is a bit long and a bit heavy on examples but of particular value is the strategic planning framework … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Geoff Cullinan, Tom Holland | Source: Bloomberg Press | Subject: Strategy

From appliances to medical equipment, from aircraft to golf clubs, the Internet is giving consumers unprecedented access to a growing number of used products. Whether your market is consumer or business-to-business, the emergence of efficient electronic resale markets will fundamentally change the perspective and behavior of your customers.

Content: Article | Authors: Julia Kirby, Paul F. Nunes | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Marketing / Sales, Strategy

Catching the right moment to take action when successful business models begin to wane requires skilled detection work and the courage to face reality. In this article on value migration — the process by which changing markets and new competitors threaten a company’s equilibrium — a system of early-warning diagnostics is recommended.

Content: Article | Authors: Adrian J. Slywotzky, Benson P. Shapiro, Richard S. Tedlow | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Leading manufacturers of capital goods are blurring the increasingly artificial distinction between “industrial” and “service” industries. These manufacturers are turning themselves into service providers, as service provision is rapidly becoming the cornerstone of their customer management strategy.

Today, no product company can afford to ignore the potential benefits – and risks – of making the transition from manufacturing to manufacturing-plus-service-provision. However, to make this transition … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel Deneffe, Herman Vantrappen, Koen Bouckaert | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

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

A three-part blueprint for building processes for innovation into your organization.

Editor’s Note: for the same basic information in a different format, read “It takes systems, not serendipity: A blueprint for building a disruptive-innovation engine” at:
Content: Article | Authors: Alistair Corbett, Darrell K. Rigby | Sources: Bain & Company, Journal of Business Strategy | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy

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

Garcia has a thought provoking piece that warns against short-term thinking. The short version of the paper is that as technology, competition, and strategy have shrunk the business world, firms may have an even greater incentive to think short term. Winner takes all idea and if you do not win the first round, you may not be around to play other rounds. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Eduard Gracia | Source: Deloitte | Subjects: Finance, Strategy

Over the last several years, many businesses have adopted the concept of shared services as a means of controlling costs while improving the quality of internal services. The basic idea is to put the provision of these services on a more business-like “customer-supplier” basis, in which the using organization contracts with the shared-services organization for a given level of service at a competitive (market) price. … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: David J. Barker, Nigel Godley, Robert M. Curtice | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Every company has a well-defined competitive field of vision, which is usually too narrow. Long periods of equilibrium only exacerbate the problem. A whole raft of “minor little players” operates just at the periphery. They are difficult to see because traditional competitors focus on each other and not on new entrants and “nontraditional” entities lurking at the industry’s fringes.

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Competition, Competitive Intelligence

The largest market in the world does not show up on most corporations’ radar screen. Odds are, it doesn’t make an appearance on yours either.

With 6.3 billion people in the world, less than 40% are tapped as markets for the vast bulk of goods and services offered by today’s corporations. These unseen four billion consumers represent the base of the global economic pyramid.

Content: Article | Author: Medard Gabel | Source: GreenBiz.com | Subjects: Social Responsibility (ESG), Strategy

“How can companies find sources of new, profitable growth? Our analysis indicates that most new growth will come from pushing the boundaries of a strong core business into ‘adjacent’ territory. This is different from the past, when companies typically sought growth from either expanding their core businesses or improving their weaker businesses or from diversifying and pursuing hot markets.

When we examined the growth records … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Chris Zook | Source: Chief Executive | Subject: Strategy

“We have found that alliances have an uneven record in improving shareholder value. Our analysis of nearly 2,000 alliances formed over a four-year period shows that alliances impact share price; the 15 most active value-creators in our study increased shareholder value by $72 billion, but the 15 most active value-destroyers decreased the market capitalization by $43 billion.

Given the critical contribution of alliances, how can … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

This article takes a “big picture” look at how alliances work, discusess three principle hurdles cross-organizational relationships must overcome, and offers seven principles critical to alliance success.

Content: Article | Authors: Jennifer M. Kemeny, Joel Yanowitz | Source: Prism (Arthur D. Little) | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Strategy

The secret to good alliances is simplicity both in terms of collaboration and strategic autonomy. A simple matrix is proposed in this article.

Content: Article | Authors: Bernard Garrette, Pierre Dussauge, Will Mitchell | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Given the increasingly critical role technology plays in the competitive positioning of an organization-from adaptive supply chains to innovative customer relationships-the gap between companies that use their technology effectively and those that don’t is destined to widen. How can a company build an IT organization that fosters innovation and creates long-term value for the business?
An A.T. Kearney study conducted by Harris Interactive asked executives … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Source: Kearney | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Strategy

It would probably be hard to find anyone these days to argue against the idea that all activities of a business should be responsive to customer needs. It is our contention in this article, though, that being customer-oriented is not enough in the present complex economic environment. Successful players need to be market-driven, a concept that broadens customer orientation to other key market actors (distributors, … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Jean-Jacques Lambin | Source: European Business Forum (EBF) | Subjects: Customer Related, Strategy