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Rita McGrath Group

Rita McGrath

Author. Speaker. Consultant.

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Growth Options / Real Options

August 24, 2021

The Discipline that Turns Vision into Reality

In the heady days of coming up with what you think is a breakthrough idea, it’s easy to get carried away by assumptions. Forcing yourself to create a deliverables specification can create powerful discipline. Entrepreneurs… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Start Ups / Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Discovery Driven Planning, Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation, Seeing Around Corners, Tools, Uncategorized

May 18, 2021

Landing at the end of the road: Verizon’s decision to disengage from its media strategy

The very human tendency to continue to pursue a failing project, strategy or investment just increases the suffering when the inevitable happens.  What are some indicators its time to pull the plug? Verizon’s recent decision… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Case Studies and Applications, Growth Options / Real Options, Leadership, Strategy Dynamics

July 6, 2017

One reason Tesla Lost $10 Billion in Market Capitalization in a Breathtakingly short period of time

Understanding investor psychology can be baffling and frustrating for the managers of publicly traded corporations.  For instance, despite what many would regard as a stellar track record of proven performance, CEO Mark Fields was fired… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation, Profitable Organic Growth, Thought Sparks

January 11, 2017

Failure can be your friend – if it’s intelligent

Just out, a short video primer on how you can decrease the fear and increase the learning from failure by practicing the art of intelligent failure. Click here to view.

Filed Under: Growth Options / Real Options

October 13, 2016

Innovation and Jobs-to-be-Done discussed in my latest newsletter

My latest newsletter offers observations and ideas that were discussed at two CEO Summits sponsored by Innosight and featuring keynotes by Clayton Christensen and myself.   We discussed Clay’s terrific new book, Competing Against Luck, some… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation, Opportunities, Profitable Organic Growth, Thought Sparks, Uncategorized

August 30, 2016

Clearing the space for growth-on disengagement, transformation and reinvestment

With September just ahead of us, in my August newsletter I touch on why disengagement from exhausted advantages is important for renewal, share the story of Target’s transformation from a traditional department store to the “Tar-zhey”… Read more »

Filed Under: Growth Options / Real Options, Thought Sparks, Uncategorized

August 27, 2016

Why managing an opportunity portfolio leads to surprising investment decisions

There is no shortage of interesting strategic activity going on in the intertwining worlds of content creation, telecommunications and other forms of distribution.  The recent sales of AOL and Yahoo! to Verizon are representative of… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Growth Options / Real Options, Profitable Organic Growth, Thought Sparks

January 5, 2012

Lessons from the Growth Outliers – HBR Article available for download

This is an article about an exceptional group of companies – publicly traded, with market cap as of 2009 of over $1 Billion USD – who were able to grow their net incomes by at… Read more »

Filed Under: Business Strategy, Growth Options / Real Options, Profitable Organic Growth

August 26, 2011

New HBR article:  Living with Complexity and Link for Free Download

Gokce Sargut and I are working together on the fascinating subject of how organizations can sensibly and strategically cope with the demands of complex situations.  One of the papers from our ongoing research project is… Read more »

Filed Under: Growth Options / Real Options, News Archives, Strategy Execution

June 13, 2011

Interesting application of options idea to “Green” Energy programs

A colleague of mine drew to my attention an NPR story about the Federal government's plans to develop green technologies.  In many ways, the approach echoes options reasoning:   Many small bets Substantial upside if… Read more »

Filed Under: Growth Options / Real Options, Opportunities

July 24, 2010

Uncertainty and risk in discovery driven planning

I was recently fortunate enough to be teaching in a very interesting program for strategy consultants at IBM.  One of their senior leaders, an ex-BCG guy, pointed out to me that I really could use… Read more »

Filed Under: Discovery Driven Planning, Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation, Opportunities

March 29, 2010

Six Sigma is Deadly for Innovation - But then I’ve said that before!

Every so often, doubtless in a doomed bid to make the whole process of growth and innovation more predictable, some bright spark comes up with the idea of trying to apply six-sigma quality controls to… Read more »

Filed Under: Growth Options / Real Options, Innovation, Opportunities

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Princeton, NJ 08543

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