Is Your M&A Organization Built to Win?

Top-notch deal teams collaborate with business units to identify targets, execute transactions, and expertly navigate a minefield of risks.

  • BCG collaborated with global dealmakers to study the common hazards and success factors involved in setting up M&A organizations.
  • We found that making the right choices in several key areas is essential for building effective teams.
  • Companies must tailor their design choices across these topics, applying a detailed

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Martin Reeves, Christian Stadler

Most technology revolutions have required accompanying applied innovations to unlock their full potential. Electricity in itself did not immediately translate into big productivity gains for industry. This only happened as new technologies like electric motors and social innovations like new factory layouts took hold.

Martin Reeves, Christian Stadler

A new technology can be novel, it can be useful, it can even generate massive value for consumers and providers, but without creating sustainable competitive advantage in specific applications, it can easily distract and divert attention and resources from more promising opportunities.

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 ]

Charles Gildehaus, David Allred, Allison Bailey, Amanda Luther, Sesh Iyer

Agile initiatives have proven highly effective in teaching teams how to build but not nearly as effective in teaching teams what to build.

Charles Gildehaus, David Allred, Allison Bailey, Amanda Luther, Sesh Iyer

As functional hierarchies grow larger, they tend to become more rigid, pushing decision-making authority up the hierarchy and away from where customer interactions take place. In this system, no single team or leader owns the full end-to-end product and customer experience, making it exceedingly difficult to implement customer-centric innovations quickly and effectively. As a result, frontline employees, who have the insights and inspiration to drive … [ Read more ]

Four Keys to Boosting Inclusion and Beating Burnout

Organizations can focus their attention on just these four areas to diagnose where they may be falling short in their efforts to meet employees’ needs.

  • Our survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries found that nearly half are dealing with burnout, which heightens attrition and lowers morale, engagement, and productivity.
  • Burnout is highly correlated with low feelings of inclusion.
  • The four sentiments that have the greatest impact on

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Elton Parker, Jeanne Kwong Bickford, Nick D’Intino, Alan Iny

Disruption creates both winners and losers. And you can only be one of the winners if you can see both sides of the coin—and are able not just to avoid the challenges, but also to envision and decisively embrace the potential opportunities within strategic risks. For most organizations, getting there requires a reboot of how they think about and evaluate risk. For example, instead of … [ Read more ]

Elton Parker, Jeanne Kwong Bickford, Nick D’Intino, Alan Iny

True strategic risk management is the discipline of anticipating, preparing for, capitalizing on or mitigating, and learning from the disruptions that could either enhance or impair the organization’s ability to achieve one or more strategic objectives. In our experience, at most companies, this crucial capability is rarely functionally embedded in the organization, core to the culture, or integrated into the strategy development and planning process. … [ Read more ]

How to Think Clearly in Turbulent Times: Lessons from Charlie Munger

Munger’s success was built on a system for decision-making—not a classical investment philosophy, but rather a mental discipline underpinning one. We outline four ideas strategists can learn from Munger to think more clearly in turbulent times.

Why Companies Get Agile Right—and Wrong

BCG conducted in-depth research with 127 companies worldwide regarding their experience with agile. Almost all (94%) had embarked on agile initiatives, and two thirds (66%) claimed successful agile transformations. But when we asked which agile practices they applied and what outcomes they achieved, we found that only about half (53%) could be considered truly agile, realizing their transformation targets and creating lasting change in their … [ Read more ]

The Corporate Life Cycle with Aswath Damodaran

In The Corporate Life Cycle: Business, Investment, and Management Implications, Aswath Damodaran presents the corporate life cycle as a universal key for demystifying business finance, strategy and company valuation. He outlines how corporations age, describes the characteristics of each stage of their life cycle, and discusses implications for managers and investors.

In his conversation with Martin Reeves, chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, Damodaran outlines how … [ Read more ]

Five Truths (and One Lie) About Corporate Transformation

In an increasingly turbulent world, the need for and the challenges of corporate change remain remarkably persistent. Empirical insights reveal how change leaders can beat the odds. We highlight five truths about corporate transformation—and refute one lie that executives like to tell themselves.

The Benefits of Data Sharing Now Outweigh the Risks

Sharing data with competitors might sound scary to executives, but only collaboration can solve some of industry’s biggest problems. Fortunately, new technology is making it easier and safer for companies to build trust and pool data in order to tackle problems that they can’t solve alone.

Turning Superheroes into a Super Leadership Team

In a complex, fast-changing world, leadership teams are facing challenges that are bigger than ever while trying to reach goals that are sometimes seemingly at odds. A super leadership team must: 

  • Guide the organization’s transformation while ensuring near-term performance.
  • Shift from being a group of individual “superheroes” championing their own domains to putting the enterprise first—sometimes at the expense of team members’ individual agendas.
  • Recognize the necessary behaviors

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Hidden connections that transcend borders and defy stereotypes

Global consumer strategist Aparna Bharadwaj shares a fascinating glimpse at under-the-radar affinities that transcend cultures and borders — from the way people snack in China and Saudi Arabia to how people shop for clothes in the US and Russia. “There are patterns where you least expect them,” she says and paying attention to them just might bring the world a little bit closer.

Content: Multimedia Content | Author: Aparna Bharadwaj | Sources: Boston Consulting Group (BCG), TED Conferences LLC | Subjects: Customer Related, International, Marketing / Sales

How to Create a Transformation That Lasts

Transformations are here to stay—and they will always be difficult. Success comes down to a few key things. Manage your processes rigorously, and institute strong governance. Use a stage-gate methodology to maximize the value of your initiatives, and use software and data to keep those initiatives on track. Put a TO at the center. Perhaps most important, set the bar high—and then look for the … [ Read more ]

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 ]

How CMOs Can Lead Transformations in an Era of Change

Companies are responding to a number of headwinds by transforming their marketing organizations to achieve measurable improvement in performance and efficiency and to ensure future sustainable growth. Chief marketing officers (CMO) are pursuing long-term changes instead of short-term fixes by focusing on structure, talent, and operating models—in that order—as they reshape their organizations.