Strategic Spotlight

This category is Strategic Spotlight, highlighting key business strategies, industry innovations, and leadership insights. It features expert perspectives on decision-making, competitive advantage, and transformative approaches shaping the future of business and management.

Why Focus Matters to Your Leadership: Understanding Huawei’s Business Strategy

By David De Cremer Contemporary business develops at a rapid pace, with many uncertainties, internationally connected stakeholders, and little latitude to make mistakes. In such...

Structure Follows Strategy – But May not Look Like You Imagined

By John Sutherland In the world of structural design, one size does not fit all. It pays massive dividends to get the structure fit for...

What We (Think We) Know May Not Be So

How to Get (More of) What You Want in Negotiations By Margaret A. Neale and Thomas Z. Lys The results of empirical research on the performance...

Change as Strategy

By Walter McFarland This article suggests that some traditional approaches to organisational change are obsolete – and recommends a new approach focused on creating new...

Impact of Digital on How We Implement Change

By Audra Proctor No one doubts the effectiveness of face-to-face workshops for organisational change implementation. But the practicality of things, such as, availability, time, expense...

Sharing Business Ownership to Execute Your Strategy

By Felix Barber and Michael Goold Co-owners sharing business rewards do not need to take on the same mix of responsibilities; instead, to create more...

What Companies Must Do Now That Better Is Also Cheaper

By Paul F. Nunes and Larry Downes Industry-disrupting products used to enter the market as inferior but more affordable versions of existing offerings, giving incumbents...

A Transformation Manifesto

By Richard Lynch and Jack Calhoun Transformation is not about external forces, they are inevitable. It’s not about reorganisations, they don’t work. There are more...

Strategising to Win On the Global Playing Field: Making Real Strategic Choices in...

By Bart Tkaczyk Attract the best people. Own shares either in good ships, or in none at all. Make your ship attractive, then good people...

Senior Team Development for the Unwilling

By John Sutherland Traditional team work over-emphasises the whole team approach far more than is needed for most practical purposes. In this article, John Sutherland...

Growth Principles from a Decade of Billion-Dollar ‘Startups’

By Josemaria Siota and Luiz Zorzella How did LinkedIn achieved a 35% revenue growth in 20151, after suffering media earthquakes in the previous months? Some...

Talent Management 2.0: Transformation Powered By People

By Amber Román and Richard Lynch In “Moving Beyond the Anecdotal: What Will It Take To Create Your Digital 2.0 Business Model,” we discussed our...

The 4 P’s: Saving 25% of Meeting Time

By John Sutherland Ineffective meetings are the bugbear of many organisations. In this article, John Sutherland, Director of Strategic resource introduces and discusses the 4...

Your Seventh Sense: Beyond Mindfulness

By William Duggan In this article, Willian Duggan explores the practice of Free Your Mind, a way to turn stress into strategy and to turn...

The Practice Of Strategy

By Carlos Rey Peña and Joan E. Ricart What is strategy? In this article, the authors view strategy as a discipline that harmonizes business model...

Fads and Fashions in Management

By Adrian Furnham In this article, the author shows that many fads and fashions in management are short lived and based upon flimsy evidence, yet...

Behavioral Strategy: Thoughts and Feelings in the Decision-making Process, the Unconscious and the Company’s...

By Claudia Nagel It is evident that the psychology of the decision-making person – to a certain extent the human factor – plays an important...

Moving Beyond the Anecdotal: What Will It Take to Create Your Digital 2.0 Business...

By Todd Fisher and Richard Lynch A Strategy to Execution planning process focused on Technology Strategy, will raise the TQ (Technology Quotient) of ...

Aargau – The Swiss High-Tech Canton in Hot Pursuit of Silicon Valley

"Hightech Aargau" is a program of the Aargau government to encourage innovation and growth. With that, the canton of Aargau aims to become the...

Reinvention: Critical to Business Success, but not Always Obvious

By Lloyd E. Shefsky Strategic reinvention is a powerful engine for value creation, but business leaders sometimes miss opportunities to harness it. Lloyd Shefsky uses...

Strategic Transformation at Tennis Canada

By Roger Martin Aside from the small percentage of hugely successful game-changing start-ups like Apple, Microsoft and Google it can be hard for a small...
Executive Education

Marketing Lessons Luxury Wine Brands Teach us About Authenticity and Prestige

By Klaus Heine and Francine Espinoza Petersen Luxury brands have spent decades, and sometimes centuries, cultivating the perfect mix of authenticity and prestige to remain...

Creating Collaborative Advantage

By John Sutherland Successful collaboration between businesses can have myriad advantages. In this article, John Sutherland talks us through four key aspects for successful collaboration...

Innovation Strategy

By Christoph Loch and Stelios Kavadias Many top level executives are still hopelessly behind when it comes to designing an effective innovation strategy in the...

Preparing for Uncertainty: How to use Creaction at Work

By Len Schlesinger and Charles Kiefer In an excerpt from their book, Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future, the authors Len Schlesinger...

Incorporate Innovation into your Business Model

Interview with Jeff Rosenthal Innovation is a surefire way to achieve growth and success for your company. Below Jeff Rosenthal, CEO of the UC Berkeley...

The End of Competitive Advantage

Interview with Rita McGrath The European Business Review talks to Forbes’ #6 most influential business thinker, Rita McGrath, about innovation, the end of competitive advantage,...

What Could Be a Hidden Key for a Successful Merger and Acquisition Project?

By Mark Goyens and David De Cremer The way we engage, communicate and deal with people involved in each phase of a merger and...

Strategic Principles for Competing in the Digital Age

By Martin Hirt and Paul Willmott Digitization is rewriting the rules of competition, with incumbent companies most at risk of being left behind. Below, Martin...

The Road to Sustainable Business Mobility

Interview with Carsten Kwirandt In this day and age, sustainability must be on the agenda of every organisation – particularly when it comes to their...

Building an Innovation Mindset

By Jeff Gaspersz The prime source of the innovation power in any firm lies in the mind of its employees. When they are mentally prepared...
trees growing

Succession Redefined: Family Business Succession in the 21st Century

By Richard Shrapnel In this article – the final in the Succession Series by Baker Tilly International – the author considers how business succession has...

The Internet of things: An Inside Perspective

By R. Richard Asselstine A data revolution is underway: the Internet of Things is giving a “voice” to billions, even trillions, of objects – connecting...

Are High Growth Firms Really About Profit, or Just Greed?

By Malin Brännback and Alan Carsrud Successful and profitable growth firms come from a variety of industries, but many viable business ideas are overlooked by...

The Gospel of Information Management

By Sherilyn Casiano Information management is not the most fashionable of subjects. Yet as Sherilyn Casiano puts forseth in her article, it is the...

The 3 W’s Growth Dilemmas: What, When & Where?

By Mª Julia Prats How do you go from one store in 2006 to 44 (and 28 concessions) in six countries today? Clever experimentation to...

Smart Specialisation and Economic Opportunity in the South West

By Richard Ball The city of Exeter is proactively developing its credentials as a true exponent of “smart specialisation”, one of the pillars of the...

Using Business Cases to Champion New Ideas and Advocate Business Growth

By Wolfgang Messner Despite clear business-growth objectives, managers often have to make decisions on projects with uncertain outcomes, which can result in failed initiatives, missed...

Unlocking the Internet of Things

By John Bates Big data is amassing like snow in a blizzard, forming an avalanche that threatens to bury anyone who ignores it. Below, John...

Achieving Demand Planning Excellence

By Karin L. Bursa Demand planning excellence is the foundation for any successful business. Below, Karin Bursa argues that the demand plan is essential for...

Meeting Expectations

By John Sutherland Most senior teams only have one or two ways of working together and never learn to vary their approach, based on the...

How to Boost the Insight Generation Power of Your Workforce in Innovation

By Alessandro Di Fiore In a knowledge society, a company’s competitive advantage derives from the capability to generate and apply insights to innovation. Below, Alessandro...

The Language of Deception

By Michael T. Braun, Lyn M. Van Swol & Deepak Malhotra Separating lies from truths is key to successful negotiation, and research designed to uncover...

The Strategy-to-Execution Process: A Critical Component of Transient Competitive Advantage

By Jack Calhoun It’s not simply having a good idea that separates marketplace winners from losers – it’s possessing the ability to execute. In fact,...

The End of Competitive Advantage

By Rita McGrath Businesses are competing in increasingly volatile and uncertain global situations. Below, Rita McGrath suggests that stability, not change, is the state that...

The Hidden Costs In Business Processes

By Richard Ward Most businesses are affected by hidden costs in procurement, distribution, order processing, sales and finance.  Organisations can benefit from a careful review...

Security-as-a-Service: At Your Service

By David Sandin David Sandin, product manager of Clavister shows how new approaches to delivering next-generation security can benefit your business. The firewall has been the...

Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation From Mind To Method

By William Duggan In Creative Strategy: A Guide for Innovation, William Duggan shows how the human mind creates solutions to new problems and then translates...

6 Keys to Inventory Optimisation

By Karin Bursa Many companies around the world have adopted inventory optimisation and those without a formal process are falling behind their competition. Effective companies...

Flexibility to Improve Forecast Accuracy

By Karin Bursa To succeed in a business economy shaped by uncertain demand and rapid market changes, companies must be able to sense and adapt...