strategic planning

There have been a number of books and whitepapers published about strategic agility, but most of them are purely theoretical or too narrowly focused on things like software development methods. Rarely do people adequately address what strategic agility really means and how it can be made possible.

This marks the end of another year. A very busy and fruitful year for us. Personally I was on the road for more than 200 days and I need to take a break - perhaps 3 days. What about my New Year's resolution? I need to cut down on drive and email. I need to cut down on attending unproductive meetings. I need to find three people to mentor that they can become the best. I need to revisit places from my childhood that were memorable. I need to back up my hard drive (I am 96 days behind). I need to produce a mini feature film and shot entirely with my HTC phone. I need to cut down on my public speaking. I need to have more discipline on getting enough sleep.

When people talk about exploring white space in innovation, often they refer externally to unserved markets or businesses that are outside their core. It is basically where unmet and unarticulated needs are uncovered to create innovation opportunities. White space is where products and services don’t currently exist based on the present understanding of values.

by: Dick Stroud

Strategic Planning has gone out of fashion, mores the pity. Tactics is everything has been the motto of most organisations – and politicians. Perhaps we should label this the era of:"Don't confuse me with the facts."

This paper from Nicholine Hayward is a real breath of fresh air that illustrates how strategy and tactics can come together.

by: Idris Mootee

Business lessons do not just come from business, they come from art, biology, physics and music. There are tremendous analogies from these fields to teach corporate innovation. And I have two to share with you here.

by: Idris Mootee

Strategic planning today is seldom strategic. Many companies label their operations meeting as strategic planning. 90% of the times they use a top-down formal process of articulating a vision and translate that to actions, assuming the word “freeze” while they execute.

by: Idris
Mootee

by: Idris Mootee

Here's
an interesting except from an recent McKinsey interview with Prof
Richard Rumelt of UCLA's Anderson. I've met with him once many years
back in a strategy roundtable. We share very similar views on strategy.
He is very well respected in our field and early in 1972 he became the
first person to uncover a statistical link between corporate strategy
and profitability. Here are some interesting insights:

by: John Caddell

Monday's Wall Street Journal In The Lead column discussed what the CEO changes at Ford and Viacom say about strategic planning. In short, if you haven't discarded your once-a-year strategic planning process, it's time. Says the Journal: