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Lead with a Coherent Strategy

Coaching Tip

Too many business leaders are preoccupied with the next answer to growth and find themselves stretched thin – trying to play in too many disparate markets and pursuing multiple strategies and directions that undermine rather than reinforce each other. As a result, they forgo the right to win in any market. .

Strategy 178
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How Likely Is Your Industry to Be Disrupted? This 2×2 Matrix Will Tell You

Harvard Business Review

The topic of industry disruption — “a process whereby a smaller company with fewer resources is able to successfully challenge established incumbent businesses” — is rife with misconceptions. Industry disruption, as Accenture research has found, is reasonably predictable. Jorg Greuel/Getty Images.

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Recommended Resources – An Interview with Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, authors of The Essential Advantage

Strategy Driven

In The Essential Advantage : How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy , Booz & Company’s Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi maintain that success in any market accrues to firms with a coherence premium – a tight match between their strategic direction and the capabilities that make them unique. Let’s go after it.”

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Retailers Beware: Markets Punish Stores with Too Much Inventory

Harvard Business Review

It is derived by adjusting for changes in gross margin, capital intensity (fixed assets as a proportion of total assets), and positively for sales surprise (the degree to which actual sales exceeds or falls short of forecast). Consider the following example that Vishal Gaur of Cornell, my frequent co-author, shared with me.

Retail 13
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The Three Decisions You Need to Own

Harvard Business Review

At many companies the total cash investment in acquisitions, R&D, and fixed assets has not earned back its cost of capital after adjusting for the time lag in realizing incremental benefits. It was the first time a vice chair would be based in an emerging market.

P&L 8
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When a Country is Facing Political and Human Rights Issues, Should Businesses Leave or Stay?

Harvard Business Review

Questions like this involving issues like politics, human rights, or equality often present themselves sooner or later for any business operating in global markets. Over the course of the last few decades, multinationals have entered and left “frontier markets” like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Vietnam, Myanmar, and others.

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Finally, Proof That Managing for the Long Term Pays Off

Harvard Business Review

New research, led by a team from McKinsey Global Institute in cooperation with FCLT Global , found that companies that operate with a true long-term mindset have consistently outperformed their industry peers since 2001 across almost every financial measure that matters. public market capitalization over this period.