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Rita McGrath

Author. Speaker. Consultant.

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Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship

September 23, 2022

When Business Cases Teach the Wrong Lessons

Jeffrey Pfeffer, in his great book “The 7 Rules of Power” declares that “success excuses (almost) everything.”  Success also determines which stories about the origins of that success get told and which headlines are buried. … Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Case Studies and Applications, Discovery Driven Planning, Growth, Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation Flops, Strategy Execution

August 30, 2022

How’s your teaming going?

The traditional model of how teams progress goes by stages – forming, storming, norming and performing. While it’s easy to remember, teams today don’t necessarily follow that model. They’re dispersed, virtual, temporary and potentially remote…. Read more »

Filed Under: Articles, Business School, Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Careers, Discovery Driven Planning, Leadership, Opportunities, Seeing Around Corners

July 19, 2022

From Funnels to Flywheels

Traditional sales organizations used the concept of a sales “funnel” to describe the process through which potential customers move, ending up with sales at the end. Winners today have abandoned that way of thinking in… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Case Studies and Applications, Seeing Around Corners

June 9, 2022

Thought Sparks Wrap Up – May 2022

Dear colleagues: It sure was nice to be back in person on our gorgeous new Columbia Business School campus.  My course on growth and change, called Leading Strategic Growth and Change received an evaluation of… Read more »

Filed Under: Articles, Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Innovation, Insights and ideas, Leadership, Thought Sparks

June 8, 2022

Who knew there is so much in common between the rare successes in mega-projects and innovation?

Photo: The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry   Bent Flyvbjerg studies spectacular mega-project flameouts.  I study (often) spectacular innovation mis-steps.  Who knew the process that produces both has so… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Growth, Innovation, Thought Sparks

May 31, 2022

Counting down Our Top Ten List of Discovery Driven Planning misses – Part 1 (10 through 6)

Through Valize, Ron Boire and I have been working with clients to use the tools we have developed to bring Discovery Driven Planning / Discovery Driven Growth to life. Although we’ve got years of experience… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Discovery Driven Planning, Growth, Growth Options / Real Options, Leadership, Thought Sparks

May 17, 2022

Startups in distress – we’ve seen this movie before

Wired magazine offered an article on the state of things in startup-land and discovered, astonishingly, that “The Bad times are Coming for Startups.” But not every startup, of course, mainly the ones that blithely ignore entrepreneurship… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Growth, Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation, Technology

May 10, 2022

Thought Sparks Wrap Up – April 2022

Dear colleagues: Just when you thought the world has learned the many lessons of discovery-driven planning, some huge, ambitious project gets shot down yet again – whether for business reasons or otherwise – and we… Read more »

Filed Under: Articles, Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Innovation, Insights and ideas, Leadership, Thought Sparks

April 6, 2022

Thought Sparks Wrap Up – March 2022

Dear colleagues: The first quarter of 2022 was as momentous as any I have ever experienced. It was emotional to join my colleagues from the LvBS Business School, the Business School of the Catholic University… Read more »

Filed Under: Articles, Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Innovation, Insights and ideas, Leadership, Thought Sparks

March 3, 2022

Thought Sparks Wrap Up – February 2022

Dear colleagues: Just when we begin to see glimmers of the emergence of whatever comes next, we are seemingly plunged into massive uncertainty once again, with geopolitical tensions and armed conflict that seemed unthinkable.  The Washington… Read more »

Filed Under: Articles, Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Innovation, Insights and ideas, Leadership, Thought Sparks

October 5, 2021

Positioning: Beyond the Statement

Developing a positioning statement is often done as a fill-in-the-blank “Mad Libs” exercise. The power of insightful positioning, however, goes right to the heart of how you are creating value, and for whom. In marketing… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Checkpoints, Customer insight, Innovation, Strategy Execution

September 29, 2021

Thought Sparks Wrap Up – September 2021

Dear colleagues, Hey, everybody! We’re already through September?—?back to school, back to work, back to thinking about Q4! This monthly wrap-up of my weekly Thought Sparks news pieces will give you a short summary and… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Customer insight, Innovation

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