Companies once viewed themselves as isolated entities engaged in win-lose battles with opponents for the same set of customers. The technology-driven evolution of business has re-ordered the universe. Today, companies operate as participants in business ecosystems in which they engage with a broad and diverse set of partners in a range of different types of […]
An ongoing collaborative research project, led by Bayes Business School professor Charles Baden-Fuller and involving scholars from around the world, has developed a fundamental typology of business models based on customer interactions. These interactions can be either dyadic—involving interactions with one customer group—or triadic, involving interactions with two customer groups who are each interacting with […]
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Many companies struggle to keep up with today’s supercharged, constantly evolving competitive markets, where customers needs, products and technologies change at ever-increasing speed. An in-depth study of the global telecom equipment leader Huawei Technologies by researchers from Cambridge University’s Judge Business School and China’s Zhejiang University’s School of Management offers a detailed lesson in what […]
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Significant developments such as new strategies, new competitive pressures, or new leadership often require changes to a company’s organizational culture. This undertaking, however, is complicated by the amorphous nature of organizational culture as an invisible but pervasive force guiding how people think and behave, rather than a tangible and clearly defined facet of the company […]
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Corporate strategy rarely offers a clear and unified directive for the company’s functions and business units. Instead, companies often have competing sets of corporate strategies. In a study based on the product development activities of a large food company, researchers from Oregon State University and the University of Auckland demonstrate that strategic alignment challenges can […]
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While businesspeople have a sense of what strategic thinking entails, defining this familiar concept in specific terms is a challenge. We know that strategic thinking and operational thinking are different, but what are the capabilities and mindsets that are required of strategic thinking? A wide variety of conceptualizations and definitions of strategic thinking emerge from […]
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Furniture retailer IKEA successfully expanded from its home base in rural Sweden to 52 countries across the globe. In contrast, Wal-Mart, the capital-rich retail leader in the largest economy in the world, has stumbled repeatedly in its efforts to expand its reach. Its latest failures include Germany and Brazil. And it is not alone among […]
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Terms such as ‘volatility’ and ‘disruption’ are often used to describe a world in which competitive advantage is increasingly difficult to maintain. The extent of such volatility and disruption is quantified in a Boston Consulting Group study that examined the performance record, relative to their competitors, of 20,000 companies over a period of 40 years. […]
Corporate venturing, a collaboration between an established firm and an innovative start-up, has been gaining ground as a strategic path to innovation. There is a wide range of mechanisms for corporate venturing, of which the following is a sample: Scouting missions. Looking for innovations aligned with the company’s goals, representatives of the corporation meet with […]
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The concept of agility — an approach to innovation and development based on shorter project timeframes, focused targets and ‘sprints’ — was first conceived in software development companies. Metaphors such as SEAL teams are used to describe these fast-moving, nimble project teams. This attractive concept is spreading to more traditional companies and industries, although with […]
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