1338 Posts Found

When controlling costs dominates the corporate agenda, it sucks the oxygen out of any growth plan.

Content: Quotation | Authors: Jesko Perrey, Kabir Ahuja, Liz Hilton Segel | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Strategy

For every company wrestling with evolutions in its strategy, success depends as much on matching the operating model to those evolutions as it does on the soundness of the strategy itself. Whether a company has reinvented itself, sought growth through expansion, or turned to partnerships or M&A, gaps between what it says it does for customers and what it delivers are usually the result of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Eric Garton | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subject: Strategy

A lot of companies don’t decide how they want to grow until they’re well into their growth phase. For a long time, your actions pull your company along, and then all of a sudden it switches — your existing business starts pushing your behavior. External forces like feature requests, the need for more customer support, the need to create a team to do X when … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Claire Hughes Johnson | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Experts have opined for decades on the reasons behind the spectacular failure rates of strategy execution. In 2016, it was estimated that 67% of well-formulated strategies failed due to poor execution. There are many explanations for this abysmal failure rate, but a 10-year longitudinal study on executive leadership conducted by my firm showed one clear reason. A full 61% of executives told us they were … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Ron Carucci | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

Even firms that typically prefer to centralise decisions needn’t miss out on the benefits of opening up their strategy making.

Content: Article | Authors: Daniel Mack, Gabriel Szulanski | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subject: Strategy

As a professor teaching strategy, most recently at Harvard Business School and Northeastern University, I have tried to offer the minimum essential explanation of an integrated view of strategy, to combine the best of the many frameworks that exist, show how they relate to one another, and distill the field to the essentials that entrepreneurs need to know to get started.

I’ve published my notes … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Kevin J. Boudreau | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Strategy

These are the components of the correct alternative to the MVP [minimum viable product]: Simple, Lovable and Complete (SLC). A SLC product does not require ongoing development in order to add value. It’s possible that v1 should evolve for years into a v4, but you also have the option of not investing further in the product, yet it still adds value. An MVP that never … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jason Cohen | Subjects: Customer Related, Management, Marketing / Sales, Strategy

The simplest way to implement an idea effectively may not be the simplest way to implement that idea. “Minimum” comes first in “MVP,” but “viable” is at its core.

Content: Quotation | Author: Gina Gotthilf | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Customer Related, Management, Marketing / Sales, Project Management, Strategy

It’s worth thinking about whether you are a category creator or disruptor. If you are creating a category, focus on market risk — do users really feel the pain and want this? Is there budget out there? If you are trying to take over a category, then what are the dynamics, the changes in technology or environment, the 10x better that will allow you to … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Sarah Guo | Source: LinkedIn | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Strategy

If paying excessive CEO salaries is the most maligned use of corporate funds, stock buybacks may well take second place. Conventional wisdom is that CEOs buy back stock to manipulate the short-term stock price. They fund the buyback by cutting investment, and so firm value suffers in the long-term. As Senator Elizabeth Warren argued, “stock buybacks create a sugar high for the corporations. It boosts … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alex Edmans | Source: Harvard Business Review | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Finance, Management, Strategy

When firms invest too heavily in buying back shares, there is likely to be trouble ahead.

Content: Article | Authors: Michael Olenick, Robert Ayres | Source: INSEAD Knowledge | Subjects: Corporate Governance, Finance, Management, Strategy

Growth winners think about growth in new ways and pursue it across multiple dimensions.

Content: Article | Authors: Jesko Perrey, Kabir Ahuja, Liz Hilton Segel | Source: McKinsey Quarterly | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Having a consistent strategy may not seem like a differentiator. But having consulted with about 500 companies worldwide over the last 30 years, I have, time and again, heard employees complain that their company subscribes to the “flavor of the month” approach, constantly switching direction. Frequent changes in strategy breed both cynicism and a lack of confidence among employees. A clearly articulated, consistent strategy […] … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: John Izzo | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

Digital disrupts business strategy. Finding the right competitive response is complex. Executives must act fast across multiple layers of the business.

There is no one path to becoming a digital leader. Intelligent experimentation— a marathon in sprints—means business leaders need a fundamentally different approach to how strategies are developed and executed.

Content: Article | Authors: Bruno Berthon, Mark McDonald, Mark Pearson | Source: Accenture | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Strategy

If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon (or less), then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Jeff Bezos | Source: ChangeThis | Subject: Strategy

New products and services can enter your market from other directions, each distinct in terms of how, where, and when it affects your business. These are market dislocations — radical breakaways from the existing market that occur when a company introduces a business model or a product that sits apart from those of competitors.

Clearly, not all upstart threats are alike — and misdiagnosing your new … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Alexander Kandybin | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Strategy

Most companies have leaders with the strong operational skills needed to maintain the status quo. But they face a critical deficit: They lack people in positions of power with the know-how, experience, and confidence required to tackle what management scientists call “wicked problems.” Such problems can’t be solved by a single command, they have causes that seem incomprehensible and solutions that seem uncertain, and they … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: David Lancefield, Jessica Leitch, Mark Dawson | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior, Strategy

To thrive on disruption, successful incumbents channel their capabilities into broader “market activities.” Their goal: Become indispensable within a diverse network of partners. Even as industries and technologies change, these market activities are sufficiently core to business in general that they will almost certainly remain relevant.

That’s what makes a market activity different from—and more advantageous than—a traditional industry role. An industry role takes a static … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Joshua B. Bellin, Paul F. Nunes | Source: Outlook Journal (Accenture) | Subjects: Management, Strategy

Those who let things happen usually lose to those who make things happen.

Content: Quotation | Author: Dave Weinbaum | Subjects: Achievement, Action, Strategy, Success / Failure

Accenture research shows that leading organizations are now adopting circular economy models—decoupling growth from scarce resources and, thus, gaining a competitive edge (what we call a circular advantage).

We are rapidly approaching a point where the linear growth model is no longer viable for companies. This is due to the rising global affluence, the inability of many nonrenewable resources to keep up with demand, the strained … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Justin Keeble, Peter Lacy, Robert McNamara | Source: Accenture | Subjects: Social Responsibility (ESG), Strategy