The Nine Grounds

The Art of War, compiled over two thousand years ago has been a valuable source of insight for leaders and strategists. The ‘nine grounds’ examines the ‘tactical’ issues of a group in relation to its terrain or territory, useful in its application to competitive and market analysis and to the social, political, and more abstract senses.

How to Treat Customers Right: Winning the Channels Challenge

The proper care and feeding of customers is a hot topic these days. Whether the discussion goes under the name customer satisfaction, zero defections, loyalty or intimacy, the customer issue has pushed its way to the top of the agenda for a growing number of C.E.O.’s.Yet despite all that attention, surprisingly little is said about a core problem many a chief executive faces: how do … [ Read more ]

A Future for E-Alliances

Are e-alliances a fad of the past? Speed and scale remain important in the post-New-Economy world, and alliances are often a faster and less capital-intensive way of gaining access to products, customers, and business capabilities than building them from scratch. But the stakes are now much higher, and the market is less forgiving. How can you raise the odds an alliance will succeed? To answer … [ Read more ]

Dynamic Competitive Simulation: Wargaming as a Strategic Tool

Drawing on military wargames to simulate battlefield conditions, commercial wargaming simulates a set of business conditions and challenges executives to design successful strategies that are able to evolve with the changing nature of the environment. In a corporate war game, senior managers play their own company, a select group of their competitors and the marketplace. A control team plays all other entities that affect the … [ Read more ]

Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to Last Underperform the Market

Striving for excellence or building to last is one thing. Sustaining superior performance over the long haul is another matter entirely, as longtime McKinsey & Company executives Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan persuasively point out in Creative Destruction. Based on a concept first advanced some 70 years ago by economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter, Foster and Kaplan propose that corporations can outperform capital markets and maintain … [ Read more ]

Corporate Venturing: Management Fad or Lasting Trend

Corporate venturing has increased dramatically in recent years as companies seek to grab ever more profitable growth. This has raised two important questions. First, is it a management fad or lasting trend? And second, is it for everyone – or are some companies better positioned to create shareholder value through corporate venturing? Bain’s findings show corporate venturing to be far from a panacea. It’s just … [ Read more ]

Napoleon

The first strategy of war is an armed force that is fully mobilized and consumed with the desire to win. Without that, all other strategies are vain.

Strategic alliances uncovered

Article looks at the questions of how and why alliances are formed and the ingredients for their success or failure.

The Innovative Organization

The idea that new businesses prosper best when separated from their corporate parents has now become conventional wisdom. Although new ventures do need space to develop, strict separation can prevent them from obtaining invaluable resources and rob their parents of the vitality they can generate. The solution? A balance of partitioning and integration.

Gordon Eubanks (original source?)

Strategy gets you on the playing field, but execution pays the bills.

Will Rogers

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

First-Mover Advantage: Myth or Reality?

Some time ago the new economy appropriated a term that summed up its irrational exuberance – “first-mover advantage.” E-business first movers, it was thought, could gain valuable advantages over the competition by pioneering technologies, being first-to-market, and building brand loyalty. Hindsight may be 20/20, but it’s still not clear what hindsight will say about the first movers in e-business. Gathered here are … [ Read more ]

Bottom-Up Strategic Planning

Start with the people who are closest to the customer, then alphabetize, organize, summarize, save time and tempers, finalize, publish, sign and celebrate.

Why You Need Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is more than playing golf at an exotic resort. Taken seriously, strategic planning and execution can make the difference between being a mediocre “me-too” company and a trailblazing category-killer. Talk about these items:
1. The corporate vision
2. Personal vision
3. Shared vision
4. Mapping current reality
5. Strategic priorities
6. Choice and execution
7. Celebrate your successes

Thomas Jefferson

Nothing gives a person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

Think local – act local

Is it time to slow down the pace of global marketing?