Strategy

Cultures can only evolve.

Surprised by a gender stereotype? React calmly, directly, and move on.

A close study of the real thing — seafarers’ insurrections during the Age of Discovery — might help you decide.

Managers should make environmental investments for the same reason they make other investments: because they expect them to deliver positive returns or to reduce risks.

Many managers of service businesses are aware that the strategic management (by which I mean the total process of selecting and implementing a corporate strategy) of service businesses is different from that of manufacturing businesses. This article discusses how pure service businesses are different from product-oriented businesses and why they require different strategic thinking. A […]

Risk heat maps can miss critical weaknesses.

Companies in developing countries are often so focused on chasing growth that they fail to invest in improving their innovation, operations, and brand...

A framework for opening up your company's strategy process to outside participants without giving away your game plan.

In the middle of an economic and jobs crisis, why should any politician or executive focus on a "soft" issue like work-life policy? Most are thinking...

AT&T’s recently announced acquisition of T-Mobile will invite hellfire from telecom regulators who fantasize over a different market structure, in which 17 mom-and-pop carriers serve the masses with tender love and care. As an economist, and as a customer of AT&T (with my mom, wife, and oldest daughter on my account), I am not so […]

And why your company can’t ignore it.

“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.

When business conditions change, the most successful companies are often the slowest to adapt. To avoid being left behind, executives must understand the true sources of corporate inertia.

How to use design thinking to make great things actually happen

The business world is abuzz today about Greg Smith's parting shot at his long-time employer, Goldman Sachs. Is it accurate? Hard to say, but it has the...

When given a choice between getting $1,000 with certainty, or having a 50% chance of getting $2,500, most people will choose the certain $1,000 — even though the expected value (the average value over repeated trials) of the uncertain option is $1,250. Most people would reject a gamble where they would gain $100 if a […]

IT systems increasingly hold the potential to launch cascading disasters, triggered by the most trivial of incidents. A new type of risk-management culture...

I'm hardly the most objective source, but in this post I will give my thoughts on the new book Supercrunchers, by Ian Ayres. It's about the rise of analytical...

Most consumers don't care where, how, or by whom products are made, says David Vogel at Berkeley's Haas School of Business.

How can American industry rebuild the skills and supplier bases required to produce advanced technologies? I am losing confidence that the solution lies in American companies overhauling, unaided, their management practices. A whole generation of managers has been imbued, over a period of more than 20 years, with the supposed virtues of global outsourcing, and […]