1297 Posts found for Source: strategy+business

Twelve years of data shows that mergers and acquisitions that apply or enhance capabilities produce superior returns.

Content: Article | Authors: J. Neely, Joerg Krings, John Jullens | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

As most of us who’ve worked in even well-run and successful companies can attest, a hearty, “Great idea, boss!” is the grease that keeps most careers moving. Rebels may start and build companies, but they rarely get promoted to run them.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sally Helgesen | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Career

Most businesses rehearse their response to a calamity of some sort. Almost everyone, for example, conducts fire drills. Many test their business continuity contingency plans. The problem is that most organizations do not rehearse for the real threats that are most likely to have a significant impact on the business. How many companies run a drill for a product launch failure? Or an M&A bomb? … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Crisis Management, Success / Failure

We don’t celebrate failure—“Good for us, we failed!”—but we liberate it. We try to take it from “trial and terror” to “trial and error.”

Content: Quotation | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Success / Failure

Seven strategies for managing the unique challenges of large technology acquisitions.

Content: Article | Authors: Gregg Nahass, J. Neely, Rob Fisher | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Mergers & Acquisitions

People flourish when they take responsibility. Have you ever met a young person who couldn’t wait to be a subordinate?

Content: Quotation | Author: Frances Hesselbein | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Management, Organizational Behavior

Are … these modern forms of vertical integration good strategies? Yes, if two special conditions are met. The first is a “market failure” that is hurting your business; the most common are supply risk, demand risk, and profit gouging. The second is that you have the power or capabilities to fix and even exploit that market failure. Without market failure, vertical integration is just plain … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ken Favaro | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

A global survey of business leaders shows how the smartest companies develop and wield their technology strategy.

Content: Article | Authors: Chris Curran, Chrisie Wendin, Tom Puthiyamadam | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: IT / Technology / E-Business, Strategy

The most farsighted enterprises have mastered five unconventional practices for building and using distinctive capabilities.

Editor’s Note: Perhaps it’s just me, but these capabilities don’t seem particularly unconventional. They are also like many secrets-to-success studies in that they look good on paper, but offer little in the way of practical recommendations for realizing them. And, you have the ever-present correlation-causation problem. At the least, it … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Cesare R. Mainardi, Paul Leinwand | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Best Practices, Management, Strategy

Companies can tap their natural advantage when they focus on changing a few important behaviors, enlist informal leaders, and harness the power of employees’ emotions.

Content: Article | Authors: Carolin Oelschlegel, James Thomas, Jon R. Katzenbach | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Change Management, Management, Organizational Behavior

The NYU social psychologist says that the ethical risks for a business depend on its ingrained cultural attitudes.

Content: Thought Leader | Authors: Ann Graham, Jonathan Haidt | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Ethics, Organizational Behavior

Flexible, adaptive supply chain management is an overlooked but vital component of a company’s overall innovation strategy.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Innovation, Operations

I recently came across some eloquent advice from Tufts University philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. He offers four useful insights that help inform collaboration, negotiation, and conflict resolution in organizational settings.

Content: Article | Author: Eric McNulty | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Bottom Line: When firms want to shed a subsidiary, they must decide whether to spin off or sell the business. New research shows that selling, rather than spinning, may be the more profitable option.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Strategy

It’s easy to be critical of business books, which have become a big business. The motives and abilities of the writers who toil in these segments — self-help, how-to, CEO biographies, corporate narratives, big-picture panoramas, focused functional pieces, to name a few— are as widely varied as the categories themselves.

As is the case with every genre, a few of these books are fantastic, some … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: David K. Hurst | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Personal Development

Organizations looking for outside talent pay an extraordinary amount of attention to resumes. Once people are inside, it’s almost as if some of kind of reset button is pressed: The details of their backgrounds seem to get dumped onto a far-off slag heap, and they become known only for what they do at the new organization. I call this phenomenon resumenesia — a malady causing … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Eric McNulty | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Early adopters get most of the attention from analysts and marketers, but focusing on consumers who are resistant to innovations is another way to bring new products to market.

Content: Article | Author: Matt Palmquist | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Customer Related, Innovation, Market Research, Marketing / Sales

Eli Goldratt’s 1984 classic, The Goal, introduced his “theory of constraints,” the idea that, in the face of interdependencies and variability, maximizing the activity of each part in a system reduces the output of the system. Drawing on the analogy of a scout troop on a hike, Goldratt showed that only one factor determined how fast they would get to their destination: the speed of … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Author: Elizabeth Doty | Source: strategy+business | Subject: Change Management

If you haven’t read the book Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time, by Stanford business school professor Jeffrey Pfeffer, you are missing out. Pfeffer lambasts the leadership development industry — including business schools, human resource departments, authors, and leadership programs and coaches — for being clueless about the harsh political realities of the workplace, and for promoting behaviors that are … [ Read more ]

Content: Article | Authors: Jeffrey Pfeffer, Susan Cramm | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Leadership, Organizational Behavior

The experience of … entrepreneurs reflects an unfortunate reality: companies are set up to perform. They are not set up to produce. If they were more capable at producing, they would not have to worry about combating disruption from outside. They would already be skilled at redesigning, disrupting, and innovating from within.

Content: Quotation | Authors: John Sviokla, Mitch Cohen | Source: strategy+business | Subjects: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Organizational Behavior