A version of this article appeared in the Autumn 2016 issue of strategy+business. Most companies have leaders with the strong operational skills needed to maintain the status quo. But they face a ...

A version of this article appeared in the Winter 2020 issue of strategy+business. In the 2019 PwC Global Crisis Survey PDF, 69 percent of respondents said they expected a global crisis in the next ...

McDonald has dedicated his career to exploring innovation-related challenges and their solutions. His early research on startups drew the attention of Harvard’s Clayton Christensen, who became a ...

But simply understanding the need for distributed responsibility is not sufficient if leaders don’t understand what it means to demonstrate responsibility themselves. One way of demonstrating ...

Although some people thrive in such ambiguity, most people tend to be resistant to change. I’ve seen this dynamic many times in the organizations I have worked for and worked with, which has led to a ...

On the surface, the Lego Group didn’t look as if it was in trouble. The fourth-largest toymaker in the world at the time (today it is fifth-largest), the Lego Group sold €1 billion (US$1.35 billion) ...

Establishing a foothold in a new market can be a potent weapon against rivals, according to this paper, which finds that the value of footholds far exceeds their small size and the costs of their ...

With an introduction by Ram Charan. The heart of a company’s business model should be game-changing innovation. This is not just the invention of new products and services, but the ability to ...

A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of strategy+business. By now, the idea of business as a force for good has taken hold, and the discussion around poverty has changed, too.

Digitally enabled ecosystems are a vital part of the modern business landscape. They open the door to new customers and markets, and broaden and enhance a firm’s value proposition through the seamless ...

Every February for the last 35 years, the National Football League has run a scouting camp, called a combine, to assess the skills of college players before its annual draft. With scientific precision ...

Many would chalk up these differences to culture, the seemingly nebulous and hard-to-control factor that contributes to business success. Our work over the last three decades has centered on culture.