It’s fun to reflect on how my course “Leading Strategic Growth and Change” has evolved over the years. I first took over as the Faculty Director for the course in 1998. Everyone was abuzz about… Read more »
strategy
The Merger Mirage: The Triumph of Hope over Experience
Synergy. Market expansion. Gaining share. Cost savings. Diversification. Talent acquisition. Owning a unique asset. Moving into a high-growth sector. These and many more reasons have often propelled companies into one another’s arms, regardless of the… Read more »
Have business books jumped the shark? The “peak book” hypothesis
Publishing a book used to be a rite of passage for would-be pundits, experts, speakers and more. Books once provided credibility, presence in the market and an audience for new ideas. But in an age… Read more »
Interns! We have interns! Welcome to the tribe
As Garry Ridge, the former CEO of WD-40 says, in his wonderful book Any Dumb-Ass Can Do It, citing Sebastian Junger, “The earliest and most basic definition of community – of tribe – would be… Read more »
Anticipating today’s smart devices – in 1999!
In the late 1990s, my colleague and I were invited to write a book which eventually became “The Entrepreneurial Mindset.” I had reason to go back and revisit some of what we wrote about then,… Read more »
Fighting Back against the algorithms – Community and the redemption of Taylorism?
As algorithms have come to dominate the lives of gig workers, treating many like poorly performing robots, community structures are emerging that allow workers to spontaneously organize – and create a potentially powerful counterforce. Piecework… Read more »
An inflection point comes for Pharmaceutical Companies
The Inflation Reduction Act for the first time allowed Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate with drugmakers for pharmaceutical prices. It also contained a much less discussed provision regarding patent protections. The law sets different exemption… Read more »
On the agenda for 2024 – a better way to keep track of your innovation portfolio?
I was delighted to be part of a virtual event sponsored by the good people over at Innov8rs, in which a field of 10 experts shared their perspectives on the prospects for innovation in 2024,… 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 »
Big Food, the Diet Industrial Complex and now, miracle drugs?
Three-quarters of all Americans are overweight or obese. Despite the diet industry’s ballooning revenue at some $80 billion, whatever they are doing clearly is not working – which is a great business model but a… Read more »
Pick mine, pick theirs, but pick a tool and stick with it!
The utilization of management tools, ideas and frameworks has a strange cyclicality to it. The boss reads another book and suddenly we’re all required to calculate Net Promoter Scores! It’s worth taking a critical eye to the… Read more »