Strategy formulation

“Wicked” problems can’t be solved, but they can be tamed. Increasingly, these are the problems strategists face—and for which they are ill equipped.

Wachovia has a long-term goal to build customer equity and short-term decisions to make on how to allocate marketing resources. Until recently, it had no way to connect the two.

When trouble strikes, you may want to jump into action. But you'll make a better decision if you pause to understand the problem's causes first.

High-definition televisions (HDTVs) should, by now, be a huge success. Philips, Sony, and Thompson invested billions of dollars to develop TV sets with...

To maximize information exchange among employees, don't reward individual performance.

Recent headlines — Citigroup’s layoffs, Iceland’s sudden downturn, worldwide food shortages, etc. — suggest serious global turmoil is ahead. All companies, and multinationals in particular, should be prepared to withstand it. Unfortunately, many are not. Traditional forecasting and budgeting systems produce linear projections insufficient for risky, uncertain times. What’s needed is scenario planning, where companies […]

The armed services have been in the business of leadership development much longer than the corporate world has. Today's military leaders need tools and...

Smart firms can learn to distinguish what type of work leads to big profits — and what doesn’t.

On my first visit to Samsung’s Suwon complex, the headquarters of the company’s electronics and appliance division was even more Third World than I expected. The factory floors were bare concrete. People hand-wheeled parts to and from the production line. The research lab reminded me of a dilapidated high-school science classroom. But the work going […]

In recent years a growing number of companies have expended considerable amounts of time and money to develop strategic planning skills in their profit centers and at higher organizational levels. We applaud this effort, but as we stand back and observe large and small companies alike apply this new talent and expertise, we are struck […]

The regularity of the growth cycles of living organisms has always fascinated thoughtful he observers regularity and of has the invited growth a cycles variety of living attempts to apply the same principles—of a predictable sequence of rapid growth followed by maturation, decline, and death—to companies and selected industries. One such concept, known as the […]

Drawing on a rich set of company examples, Thomas H. Davenport, a professor at the University of Texas's Graduate School of Business, provides a fresh,...

Companies are using big data for pricing, maintenance, and more.

Just five years ago, salespeople at Whirlpool were in the habit of referring to their supply chain organization as the "sales disablers." Now the company...

Many American companies have begun to plan for their professional, managerial, and technical personnel. The most critical element is management's appreciation...

If you were a military general on the march, you'd want your troops to have plenty of maps--detailed information about the mission they were on, the roads...

This short quiz can gauge how committed your company really is.

Last week, I wrote about the dangers of overly relying on quantitative market research when developing innovation opportunities. A tendency to seek "safety...

In this sequel to their well-received earlier collaboration for HBR, “Strategic Planning in Diversified Companies” (January–February 1975), Peter Lorange and Richard F. Vancil take the reader through the steps necessary to implement and carry forward a formal strategic planning effort. They identify six issues that top management has to deal with along the way: communication […]

Business has gone through a dramatic transformation in recent years. So has warfare. Every executive knows firsthand the daunting challenges of the twenty-first-century business environment: rapid and disruptive change, fleeting opportunities, incomplete information, an overall sense of uncertainty and disorder. While military commanders have long faced such challenges on the battlefield, meeting them has be […]