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The Strategic Leader’s Roadmap

Strategy Driven

Not that Nissan’s management had not been trying to make the right decisions to staunch the losses. It had earlier set an ambitious target of taking a quarter of Japan’s auto market, but to achieve that, the chief executive had said that the old way of making and selling cars would no longer suffice. Learn to Lead Strategically.

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Corporate Writing Doesn’t Have to Sound Like It’s Written by Committee

Harvard Business Review

Among managers, directors, and supervisors, that number drops to 21%. ” – Marketing staff, technology/telecom company. “The desire for management to include pet phrases or sayings gets in the way of clear communication. ” – Marketing manager, technology/telecom company.

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How Merck Is Trying to Keep Disrupters at Bay

Harvard Business Review

Also, most billion-dollar ideas don’t start that way; they can benefit from the established operations, go-to-market or service capabilities, and other corporate assets that help to scale rapidly. It has also abandoned other initiatives, and that’s equally important in managing innovation in a corporate context.

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How to Know If a Spin-Off Will Succeed

Harvard Business Review

The first category is exogenous factors over which the business has little control: the growth of the markets into which it sells; the competitive intensity and thus the average profitability of the industry in which it operates; or the fragmentation of its industry and thus the scope for a growth-by-acquisition approach.

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The Secrets to Building a Lucky Network

Harvard Business Review

A major customer may default, a promised source of funding may disappear, or the world's markets may sour — any of these can shift your trajectory in an instant. After all, if he were on a desert island without a capital market, the value of his skill goes nearly to zero. Then again, you may be lucky. So, Luck matters.

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You Can’t Engage Employees by Copying How Other Companies Do It

Harvard Business Review

Employee trust in management and commitment to the company have been in decline for decades. Only a minority of companies have managed to buck this decline and have built companies worthy of the human spirit. It takes a careful mix of mission, management, and culture. How do they do it? Sponsored by Citrix GoToMeeting.

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The Right Kind of Conflict Leads to Better Products

Harvard Business Review

” Members from each partner organization rate the alliance in areas related to strategic fit, operational fit, and cultural fit. Lilly trains its alliance managers to look at risk as the precursor to conflict, as parties typically engage in conflict as a method of reducing or controlling alliance risk.