Business Strategy Innovations

Agile strategy can significantly increase the probability of achieving your firm’s goals. Traditional strategic planning processes work best in manufacturing and construction firms for instance, where repetitive, long-term, stabile operations are required. However, today many organizations are confronted with constant change, and have considerable resources invested in knowledge or R&D work.  Read More

Terry Schmidt publishes breakthrough book

Terry Schmidt pursued his MBA at Harvard along with Michael E. Porter. Michael focused on business strategy and Terry concentrated on both business strategy and how to most successful implement business strategy to achieve results. Terry has spent three decades helping hundreds of of teams worldwide.

His book on Strategic Project Management is breakthrough! Having a competitive strategy and projects tightly aligned to the strategy is key. Projects are the big “how” business strategies get implemented. Projects are what makes or breaks the company. Read More »

In the past the key to winning long-term business success was to capture and maintain market share. The name of the game was to build up large walls that made it hard for other to compete. Competitive advantage was achieved through expensive assets, economy of scales, purchasing power, existing channels, patents, propriety knowledge, etc. Today, constant innovation, integrity, and successful marketing are what is most important.  Read More »

Amazon – Example of a Strategy Plan

Amazon is the 5th most admired company in the world. How did it become so successful so quickly? Strategy! Investing in the right plans at the right time and staying the course. The purpose of this article is to review Amazon’s strategy development model and the external assessment tools it used in helping it to formulate and select top strategies. This article is part 1. (Please note that external assessment tools are but a small but vital part of Amazon’s strategic planning process.) Read More »

How are top companies adapting their strategic planning processes to address today’s competitive reality? This was the questions that lead to this report by Boston Consulting Group (BCS). The study involved in-depth interviews with executives from leading companies, secondary research, and tapping into the experience of many of BCS’s partners. Read More »

Simulations can significantly reduce your costs, risk, time, and increase the probability of your products, business strategies, and business models. Highlights from Boston Consulting Group’s article “Simulation Advantage” as part of the “Future Strategies” series.  Read More »

The Economist Intelligence Unit conducted research to determine approaches business across industries and the world are taking to improve productivity. Read More »

Only 30 percent of strategic initiatives are successfully executed. Most CEOs view the process as too slow.  Major research was conducted on executives accelerate and sustain the execution of strategies.   There is a strong link between speed and business results. Faster companies enjoy an average of 40% of higher sales growth, and 52% higher operating profit growth than slower companies. Read More

Few organizations have organized systems in place to effectively manage the execution of strategy. Many organizations look to the budget to track performance, and don’t conduct strategy reviews. Read More »

According to W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy, companies have been caught up in head-to-head competition in search of sustained, profitable growth. They have fought for competitive advantage, battled over market share, and struggled for differentiation. Yet in today’s overcrowded industries, competing head-on results in nothing but a bloody “red ocean” of rivals fighting over a shrinking profit pool. Read More »

Michael Porter provided a model that identifies the most powerful driving forces within industries. To learn more…Read More »

There is a starfish type of organization emerging. For many years, information was shared through a limited number of channels. Intentional or not, information was figuratively pushed out by a small number of people. Free collaboration technology enables people today around the world to find content they seek, to learn what they desire, to connect people with similar interests around the world, and to share thoughts and knowledge. Read More »

Business Strategy Innovations

By David Willden