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3 Ways To Harness The Power Of Differences

Lead Change Blog

Professor Donald Sull calls it active inertia, an organization’s tendency to follow established patterns of behavior. Diversity of thought, opinion, and perspective yields richer and more productive outcomes. People do the same thing. All great experiences that engage us have an element of uncertainty at their core. Aaron Dignan.

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How and Why Market Anomalies and Incongruities Can Reveal 10 Clues to Business Opportunity

First Friday Book Synopsis

In it, Donald Sull shares his insights concerning how and why market anomalies and incongruities may point the way to the next breakthrough strategy, thence to a wealth of business opportunities. Here is an excerpt from another outstanding article that appears in strategy+business magazine, published by Booz & Company.

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How to Solve Complex Problems Fast

Skip Prichard

This question spurred frank and difficult conversations about why growth was stagnating, why employee attrition was happening, what it would take to effect real change (to culture, to policies and processes, to the product set, and to the customer experience), and who would have to step up to lead the charge.

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Business Competition Has Not Gotten Fiercer

Harvard Business Review

Puzzling anecdotes abound: Microsoft has missed out on a series of new products in the past decade, yet as Don Sull points out , it continues to be highly profitable. Overall productivity growth has actually been below historical levels for the last decade. But there’s no evidence of these big gains in the macro evidence.

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Explain Your New Strategy By Emphasizing What It Isn’t

Harvard Business Review

Yet, according to Donald Sull’s research in the March issue of HBR, almost half of top executives cannot connect the dots between their company’s strategic priorities; and two out of three middle managers say they simply do not understand their strategic direction. This is a subtle, but important nuance.

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What Is Strategy, Again?

Harvard Business Review

And so, he famously argued, in addition to the fierceness of price competition among industry rivals, the degree of competitiveness in an industry (that is, the degree to which players are free to set their own prices) depends on the bargaining power of buyers and of suppliers, as well as how threatening substitute products and new entrants are.