How Corporations and Startups Are Redefining Corporate Venturing

The Mack Institute’s Corporate Venturing Report presents a data-driven analysis of how corporations are engaging with startups today. Based on a systematic review of the world’s 500 largest companies, it reveals a corporate venturing landscape defined by structured, mutually beneficial partnerships. These collaborations enable corporations and startups to access new technologies, build business ecosystems, and tackle complex challenges.

Zoom out/zoom in

How can companies direct attention toward initiatives that have the most impact—and ensure that they’re properly funded? Using two parallel time horizons—one that’s six to 12 months out and another that’s 10 to 20 years—can help boost immediate strategic impact and prepare for the long term.

How Multinationals Can Build Local Innovation Capabilities

Fractal innovation enables large companies to be more responsive to customer needs, leverage their global scale, and set the pace for their competition. Multinationals often face strong competition in geographies where nimble, local companies are able to succeed by meeting the changing demands of local customers with speed, responsiveness, and innovation.

  • Large companies face two main innovation challenges: They have a limited understanding of the

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How AI is transforming strategy development

Artificial intelligence is set to revolutionize strategy activities. But as AI adoption spreads, strategists will need proprietary data, creativity, and new skills to develop unique options.

Your Growth Strategy Depends on Your Starting Point

There are three truths about revenue growth. It’s imperative. It’s perilous. And it’s possible regardless of your industry or starting point. Our latest research on growth confirms these truths. Ultimately, getting growth right entails making smart choices and investing time and money in them. We unearthed insights from successful growers that can help others choose their optimal growth path. Crucially, our analysis revealed that the … [ Read more ]

The more things change: Value creation, value capture, and the Internet of Things

Some changes enabled by the Internet of Things will be incremental, while others will be transformative. Yet the need to capture value remains as acute as ever. The established principles of strategic differentiation, process flow, and network economics will go a long way toward revealing a path to long-term success.

6 Strategic Concepts That Set High-Performing Companies Apart

Strategic concepts come in and out of fashion as the needs and dynamics of the marketplace change. Research and analysis of today’s landscape identifies six key strategic concepts that set outperforming companies apart: Borrow someone’s road, partner with a third party, reveal your strategy, be good, let the competition go, and adopt small scale attacks.

Annual Planning Sucks — A CPO, CRO, CFO, and COO Share Advice on How to Make it Better

Four top execs reveal their annual planning secrets from Notion, Stripe, Vanta, Linear, Linktree and more. From addressing AI to adjusting org charts, this COO, CFO, CPO & CRO share insights so startups at any stage can build effective, realistic plans.

To Accelerate Growth, Analyze Your Company Like an Investor

Private equity (PE) firms have a proven approach to identify areas for revenue growth, value creation, and cost reduction: due diligence. But companies rarely use this same approach in the execution of their own growth strategy. This is a missed opportunity. The same due diligence skills and tools can be found in most large companies, but they are usually siloed in the corporate development team … [ Read more ]

Ten questions for a winning climate-transition business strategy

The move to a low-carbon economy will create opportunities for innovation and growth. To make the most of them, leaders must understand the challenges they could face along the way.

3 Ways to Clearly Communicate Your Company’s Strategy

For all the communication around strategy, we know that leaders at many companies don’t provide the necessary context for employees to understand what the words and sentences in a strategy statement actually mean. What can leaders do to help employees understand enough context to understand a strategy? In this article, the authors offer three ideas.

Five paths to TSR outperformance

It’s hard for companies to significantly beat long-term market TSR, harder still for the largest corporations, and hardest of all in the face of low growth. But industry endowment needn’t be destiny.

Your Strategy Needs a Story

Business strategy is usually born of a highly rational process, grounded in facts and analysis. Storytelling, often associated with fiction and entertainment, may seem like the antithesis of strategy. But the two are not incompatible. A clever strategy on paper is only the starting point for engaging those who will implement it. Strategies must also be communicated and understood — and they must motivate action. … [ Read more ]

The portfolio management imperative and its M&A implications

Several trends are creating a new imperative for strong portfolio management of businesses. Companies need six capabilities to build and manage a winning portfolio, using M&A strategically.

How Companies Can Speed Up the Business of Business Building

New ventures often fail—but digital capabilities change the odds. By following a business-building playbook based on your company’s strategic assets, you can accelerate growth dramatically.

Cracking the growth code: The ten rules of growth explained

Experts behind the rules of value-creating growth discuss how leaders can apply these insights to their growth strategies.

Growth rules: Which matter most?

Ten rules should guide how companies select pathways to profitable growth, but each rule’s impact on performance varies considerably.

Time—The Next Source of Competitive Advantage

The ways leading companies manage time—in production, in new product development and introduction, in sales and distribution—represent the most powerful new sources of competitive advantage.

Editor’s Note: This is a classic HBR article that was assigned reading when I was a student. It has held up pretty well 35 years on.

Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint

Driving sustainable, inclusive growth requires the right mindset, strategy, and capabilities. Here are some steps that could help foster successful growth.