There is nothing like gathering with a group of peers from other organizations and sectors to facilitate making sense of the context in which crucial strategic decisions need to be made. I was pleased to… Read more »
Thought Sparks
It’s Halloween! Speaking about X teams and leadership ghosts with MIT’s Deborah Ancona
Our conventional wisdom about teams is that factors internal to the team mostly determine how well they will operate. My LinkedIn Live guest, Professor Deborah Ancona from MIT, begs to differ. No matter how great… Read more »
Personalized strategy – without the expensive fees! My experience of being impersonated by an AI bot. Rita McGrath
Among the unintended consequences of AI applications built with few guardrails is that conventional views of what is intellectual property are upended – I found out the hard way! Image source Well, that was a… Read more »
Want to help the environment? Here’s an affordable, easy, and devastatingly effective approach
When it comes to challenges like climate change, it can feel overwhelming. After all, how much of an impact can any individual have on such a massive problem? Imagine my delight at finding out… Read more »
Opportunities and Challenges of Driving Impact In Innovation – A Princeton Panel Discussion
A dazzling array of speakers opened a day of hearing from entrepreneurs, researchers, businesspeople, and others convened for Princeton’s Keller Center’s Innovation Forum. I was delighted to be part of a panel, each person discussing… Read more »
Remembering Brian Dovey and his book “The Idea is the Easy Part”
I was deeply saddened to learn of the sudden passing of Brian Dovey, a partner at Domain Associates and a family friend on August 27. Imagine my surprise at receiving a signed copy of his… Read more »
Using behavioral insights to better segment customers
This week, we’re launching a new guidebook series at Valize, designed to share core ideas about strategy today in a convenient online format for using with your team or on your own. The first one… Read more »
Creating value or extracting it? An existential question.
A board and governance level issue that doesn’t get nearly enough attention is whether firms are being run as value creators or value extractors. As economist William Lazonick points out, absent real pushback, it is… Read more »
The Rise, and Fall, of the Direct-to-Consumer Model
There was a brief period in the early 2010’s when a new business model – dubbed “direct to consumer” emerged and threatened to upend established incumbents. A decade or so in, the assumptions underlying the… Read more »
We Never Seem To Learn – Bubbles Bursting, WeWork Edition
Every bubble produces its own poster children. One of the more astonishing is WeWork – a company that promised to defy the gravity of conventional real estate transactions by leasing long-term and renting short-term. At… Read more »
The Methods Most Managers Aren’t Taught – Our Leading Strategic Growth and Change Curriculum – Part 2
To recap and continue: Competitive advantages have life cycles – born in innovation, scaled up with launching, making a profit by operating and eventually transforming to the next advantage. Unfortunately for leaders in today’s fast-paced contexts, we… Read more »
The Methods Most Managers Aren’t Taught – Our Leading Strategic Growth and Change Curriculum – Part 1
Competitive advantages have life cycles – born in innovation, scaled up with launching, making a profit by operating and eventually transforming to the next advantage. Unfortunately for leaders in today’s fast-paced contexts, we tend to only… Read more »