Strategy execution

For the past ten years, my colleague, Chris Trimble, and I have studied one critical question: What are the best practices for executing an innovation initiative? Execution is the poor stepchild of the innovation challenge. People love to engage in the hunt for the big ideas, but, let’s face it, without execution capability, an idea […]

This post is part of HBR’s special issue on failure. I came to be an expert on collaboration because Carol Bartz both hired me and fired me — within 18 months. Here’s what happened. A friend of mine, Godfrey Sullivan, asked me to consider running the operations for the Americas unit at Autodesk. Only sheer […]

Imagine a company with a new board of directors, charged with entering complex markets while managing rapid growth, both organic and through M&A. This...

Satisfied with doing good, too few foundations work strategically to do better.

Many people turn to networking when they’re looking for a job, but the best time to build your network is before you need something; and the best time to keep that network strong is always. But what is the best way to do that? Simply collecting business cards and attending events may expand your number […]

Three steps to put your plan into action.

Otherwise you'll drown in a to-do list.

The conventional wisdom about how best to pursue growth--launch a slew of initiatives in high-potential areas; appoint some promising young managers to...

2008 and several years preceding it will not go down in history as the best years for good decisions. While we did make a groundbreaking (and, so far...

The key is developing the right capabilities.

Of all the meetings top executives attend in a year, none is more important than the strategy off-site, where the most essential conversations for the...

Today it's not unusual for corporations that have dominated their markets for decades to be blindsided by upstarts with radical new business models. A...

Strategic dreams often turn into nightmares if companies start engaging in expensive and distracting restructurings. It’s far more effective to choose a design that works reasonably well, then develop a strategic system to tune the structure to the strategy.

They’re goals.

How to close the gap between knowing and doing

When business conditions change, the most successful companies are often the slowest to adapt. To avoid being left behind, executives must understand the true sources of corporate inertia.

After my first year of college, my mom announced she was out of money. Not what I wanted to hear, but tough luck, I went home and worked. A year later I returned to college, knowing something I hadn’t known when I left: I may need to make my own way, but I can still […]

In my travels, I’m frequently asked to share my thoughts about Google’s stated practice of encouraging individuals to spend 20 percent of their time pursuing innovative projects of their own inspiration. It’s not hard to understand where the question comes from. Many people are told routinely that innovation is everybody’s job. And yet, the pressures […]

In this article, Bain consultants Orit Gadiesh and James Gilbert explore the concept of the strategic principle--a memorable and actionable phrase that...

How some large companies infuse their planning process with new entrepreneurial vigor, maintaining market leadership over the long haul.