Globalization has quietly transformed the economic playing field. The traditional strategic paradigms (positioning, core competence and the like) are not dead, but they are less germane. The new global economy is more entrepreneurial and centers on disequilibrium, fleeting opportunities to capture competitive advantage, and the creation and destruction of wealth, Citing successes and failures at companies like Colgate, Ispat International, Intel and SAP, the author demonstrates how the best strategies in today‘s world are not complex and top-down, but are based on simple, flexible guidelines supported by organizational design.

Powerful forces are redefining the roles and activities of corporate boards — among them are the volume of M&As, the focus by institutional investors on the role of governance in underperforming and failing companies and the accelerating rate of turnover among CEOs that is placing enormous pressure on boards to take a more active role [...]

The Internet is at a crossroads. The dot-com debacle has raised the possibility that the idea of universal access upon which the Web is based may not be economically viable. Advertising-based business models have generally proved disappointing and small, per-click payments known as microcharges — long viewed as the Holy Grail of profitability for the [...]

Before September 11, the Bush administration was often criticized for going it alone in foreign relations, notably in its decisions to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and to reject the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Since September 11, while the United States has built a broad coalition against terrorism and is talking seriously [...]

The quality initiative Six Sigma, says the author, is not a panacea. It uses statistical, analytic tools to uncover flaws in the execution of an existing process without asking whether the process itself is flawed. Some companies, which the author calls process enterprises (Caterpillar, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Progressive Casualty Insurance, Bombardier and IBM), have found more success redesigning whole processes. The author explains how fitting Six Sigma into a process-management framework allows organizations to deploy it appropriately.

Forget capital; it‘s relatively easy to obtain. The scarce, sought-after strategic resource is expertise, which comes in the form of employees. With people in ascendancy over capital, say the authors, it is time to recall what a company actually is: a social institution designed to engage people in the achievement of a valuable and meaningful purpose.

The authors examine the theoretical and practical problems associated with trade promotions, and they explain how the right kind of deal can be created — a transparent system that generates mutual trust and provides benefits to both manufacturers and retailers. The key is proper implementation of what is thus far a little understood tool: the pay-for-performance trade promotion, in which retailers get rewarded according to how much they sell, not how much they buy.

A tidal wave of IT-enabled initiatives has elevated the importance of investing strategically. The opportunities seem limitless, but the resources required — capital, IT expertise, management focus and capacity for change — are not. How to choose? The authors recommend a new investment approach based on a framework they developed after studying the e-business initiatives and supporting IT investments of 30 enterprises. The framework encourages simultaneous investment in four kinds of IT initiative: transformation investments, renewal investments, process improvements and experiments.

Companies and projects that embrace uncertainty have surprisingly high success rates. The secret, say the authors, is a willingness to continually redefine project parameters in midcourse on the basis of its predominant type of uncertainty. Having studied 16 major projects in a variety of industries, the authors identify four major uncertainty categories — variation, foreseen uncertainty, unforeseen uncertainty and chaos — and reveal the best mix of tools and techniques to apply when managing each type.

All companies are operating on ever faster evolutionary tracks and at ever greater risk. A company‘s real core capability — perhaps its only sustainable one, say the authors, is its ability to continually redesign its value chain for fast response. To that end, the authors developed a value-chain-strategy framework during a yearlong strategic assessment at General Motors Powertrain, which is further illustrated in case discussions of IBM and the Recording Industry Association of America vs. Napster.

Using the metaphor of improvisational theater, the author lays out six elements of strategic improvisation that executives can apply to transform their organizations into experimental arenas. Companies that engage in such continual improvisation are better equipped to explore highly threatening disruptive technologies and embrace radical change.

Managers don”t have to be told that to innovate they need to embrace drastically different practices from the ones they use for routine work. So why don”t they do it? According to the author, when business leaders see what innovation actually requires, they often recoil. In this article, Sutton has developed eight techniques to move teams and companies from working by rote to innovating.