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The State of Strategy Consulting, 2011

Harvard Business Review

Among my questions to them: How are you thinking about strategy these days? Some tentative conclusions: There is not much of a market for stand-alone strategy studies any more. Strategy has triumphed, the installed base is huge, no self-respecting company would be without one. This poses a dilemma for consulting firms.

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Tinkering with Strategy Can Derail Midsize Companies

Harvard Business Review

And they love to pursue them, deadline commitments or old strategies be damned. They forget that the strategy which took them from small to midsize has already proven itself a winner. So they begin tinkering with their core strategy, burning up resources while their companies wander off their tried-and-true growth path.

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Why Target’s Canadian Expansion Failed

Harvard Business Review

The market exit will stop Target’s continued losses in Canada and help the company focus on its strategic initiatives in the U.S. However, in the end, the market entry seemed rushed and oversized, with 124 stores opening within ten months. Crew’s approach when it entered Canada in 2011. Consider J. Like Target, J.

Retail 8
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Why GE’s Jeff Immelt Lost His Job: Disruption and Activist Investors

Harvard Business Review

In his Harvard Business Review article summing up his tenure, Immelt recalls that the two things that influenced him most were Marc Andreessen’s 2011 Wall Street Journal article “ Why Software Is Eating the World ” and Eric Ries’s book The Lean Startup. He doubled GE’s investment in R&D. So what happened?

Ries 8
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The 2010 Execution Round-Up: Six Companies That Couldn't 'Get It.

Strategy Driven

Closing the Execution Gap : How Great Leaders and Their Companies Get Results by Richard Lepsinger If an organization can’t execute its plans and initiatives, nothing else matters: not the most solid, well thought-out strategy, not the most innovative business model, not even technological breakthroughs that could transform an industry.

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In Defense of Routine Innovation

Harvard Business Review

An innovation strategy has to include both. Yet, its strategy for almost three decades has largely been that of a sustainer, not a disruptor. How has this strategy worked? Its specific tactics have evolved over time, but the basic strategy has remained the same. Has it missed out on really key growth markets like search?

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Drink Your Way into the Middle Class

Harvard Business Review

This delightful tour through the history and marketing of the “amber restorative” is a blueprint for how to use our aspirational desires to sell us lots and lots of stuff — all over the world. He could be anyone — and you could be like him." He has since hanged himself.

Class 8