The colour red has long been associated with pleasure, and its effects have long been the subject of research. Studies have suggested that it serves as a ‘heuristic cue’ or shortcut when people make judgments and decisions. (In 2008, for example, researchers found that sports referees assign more points to competitors wearing red than those […]
Subject: Competitive strategy
Leveraging Diversity through Integrative Thinking
Without tools and processes, the quality of thinking from even the most diverse team is likely to match that of the loudest person in the room. Unless people are taught how to integrate there will be no additional value to having opposing views and no integration across views. Why is leveraging diversity so hard? When […]
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Innovation and the Power of Positive Thinking
Business environments evolve quickly and constantly, and changes in technologies, demand or regulation often lead to the development of new products and services. But what determines the quality of these products and services — and the degree of innovation of companies? A study of data from 84 firms supplying the German car industry shows that […]
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Leadership Alignment and Strategy Implementation
Through their research, the authors set out to examine the effects that leaders at different levels in an organization have on each other. To do so, they investigated the relation between leadership alignment and strategy implementation in a large health care organization of more than 3,000 physicians, who work in 19 large medical centres or […]
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Scenarios Planning + Early Warning Scanning = Strategic Advantage
Scenario planning (SP) and early warning scanning (EWS) are considered important to ‘managerial cognition’. They help leaders understand how the future might unfold and they alert top management to new developments and ‘issues’ – typically conceived as opportunities and threats. They help leaders understand how to reconfigure resources to match or create market change – […]
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What to Learn from Pirates
For as long as capitalism has existed, there have been pirate organizations that have refused to play by the rules and standards set by the state and the ‘legitimate’ business world. Traditionally, these pirates have been viewed as rogues and cheaters who deserve the same fate — or at least its economic equivalent — as […]
Principles of Competitive Global Talent Management
A multi-year, collaborative research study set out to examine the steps global companies can take to ensure that they recruit, develop and deploy the right people. Researchers from institutions including INSEAD, Cornell, and Cambridge University came together and analysed companies that were selected based on superior business performance and reputation. They found that in addition […]
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Understanding High-Stakes High-Performers
From the point of view of a decision maker, performance in critical moments matters much more than in other moments. Psychological skills impact that performance, and the pressures faced when making a decision should also be taken into account when analyzing behaviours. To consider whether the ability to ‘rise to the occasion’ varies between individuals, […]
Leveraging DNA to Survive in Hostile Business Environments
Rather than develop strategies for coping with future challenges, managers often blame market turbulence or unexpected events when a crisis occurs. This “corporate déjà vu” takes place in many organizations. How can companies avoid the blame game and instead manage better in hostile environments? Could the solution lie in genetic codes found in nature? Hostile […]
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