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The article offers an answer to the question, “When companies are caught between recessionary financial constraints and epic market discontinuity, what approaches actually deliver innovation efficiently and effectively?”

The article offers guidelines for enterprises seeking to implement a form of open innovation with external product development firms that offers the prospect of being more nimble than internally-managed R&D and less expensive, risky and complex than outright merger and acquisition activity.

Pick the right challenges to “outsource collaboratively” to external innovation partners. One rule of thumb: partner externally when the defined challenge is something your team cannot effectively tackle–for example, new spaces, channels, materials, processes or supply chain. Outsourcing to experienced innovators can reduce internal competition, accelerate organizational learning and counteract internal turf battles. 10;

Experienced innovators seek authorization to manage their initiative as a portfolio of projects: instead of isolated stabs at innovation, they create a diversified array of programs, with different risk/reward ratios and different foci.

The author has extensive experience working as a a corporate sponsor of open innovation projects and as a contract R&D innovation manager and his teams have had to deal with programs that meander and drift because corporate politics shift, decisions are opaque and strategic communication breaks down. The guidelines offered are designed to prevent such breakdowns.

VUCA times are pressuring senior executives more than ever to find pathways to growth, reinvention, and innovation. Strategy continues to be a primary tool in the toolkit, and yet execution is regularly rated as poor, and strategy is often misunderstood and misaligned. The article identifies patterns and symptoms of poor strategy processes and structures, and highlights successful approaches to activating strategy by breaking down barriers, communicating strategy more effectively, and creating the conditions for strategic thinking to permeate the organization.

This article usefully highlights trends in approaches to the strategy process and strategic practices, drawn from a range of recent robust surveys of thousands of senior strategists, CEOs, and senior executive teams across industries, sectors, continents. It also integrates examples and insights gleaned from applied strategy consulting engagements across industries, and curates contemporary examples from an array of sectors.

Most strategy execution is ineffective, slow, and misunderstood. Many strategy processes and structures do not overcome bureaucracy and misalignment, and many organizations lose sight of the links between mission, purpose, and strategy. Higher performing organizations invest in communicating strategy and purpose extensively, deploy dedicated strategy teams at multiple altitudes, and make strategy and strategic thinking a routine practice that informs decision-making (not a static, annual exercise).

Through succinct examples drawn from an array of industries and the distillation of a range of survey results of strategists and senior executives/CEOs, this paper identifies patterns and symptoms of poor strategy and poor strategic thinking, highlights examples of good strategic thinking and processes, and proposes practical guidelines for improvement to catalyze strategy and strategic thinking throughout an organization. The insights are relevant to an array of organizations, large, medium and small, across industries and sectors.

Selective Insurance, a mid‐sized regional property and casualty insurance firm, first mounted a classic strategy‐development effort and then implemented a reengineering effort focused on the core processes that drove their business.

Though your action team may be composed of your company's executive tigers, don't try to run it with a whip and a chair. As 3M found, it takes a non‐traditional management approach to make teamwork work.

The authors call attention to the rising customer dissatisfaction with the strategic‐business‐advice industry. Looking at each segment they find that some aspect of its business model has broken down. .

A business model describes how a firm delivers customer value. While this definition usually applies to a firm and its strategic business units, it can be applied to an industry or segment. Thus, we could ask, “What is the extant business model for management education in the US?”

Academic researchers, seeking professional advancement, put methodological rigor and peer approval ahead of creating value for business leaders and organizations. B‐schools reward research that peer reviewers assert is scientifically rigorous and that other specialists often cite –without measuring its usefulness to managers or organizations. Academic research is usually communicated exclusively to its own constituency – instead of to the world of business. Consultants, though they clearly have a stake in the welfare and success of their clients, seldom face up to their inherent conflict of interest.

Some specific recommendations for each segment of the strategic‐business‐advice industry: Business schools. Collaborate with corporations to identify critical issues and priorities as a guide for faculty research. Consultants. Become more client‐centered and less sales‐oriented, focusing on what the client really needs and how that differs from what the consultant has to sell. Corporations. Collaborate actively with business schools in the design of curricula and the establishment of research priorities. Journal publishers. Accelerate the review process; slash the cycle time and get their information out quickly.

The article examines the strategic‐business‐advice industry as a set of business models that need rethinking and it suggests astute solutions..

Process improvements like benchmarking and reengineering are side‐shows, not the main event, says internationally known pundit, Gary Hamel. Innovation is the real engine that powers corporate growth—and management should stay focused on fostering creativity.

Family businesses are a powerhouse of the US economy. Some of the largest businesses in and outside the US are family controlled. Family businesses significantly out perform non‐family businesses. So how to learn from their strengths? Paradoxically, many of their outstanding strengths are also their profound weaknesses. This article examines the virtues and vices of family businesses, explains how to leverage their strengths and diminish the vices, and offers recommendations for a strategic approach for management.

The author argues that the causes of this current epidemic of bad leadership include the leaders' personality disorders, akrasia (weakness of will), flawed values, and avoidance of reality. The complicity of followers also contributes.

The author offers a twin‐scenario model. In one case stressed leaders become pragmatists. In the other they act out this alternative: The would‐be visionary, seduced by power and a growing sense of certitude, first becomes isolated and then gets lost. When plans fail to deliver wins, the leader grows tyrannical, wields power wrongly, and devolves into a fallen star and self‐serving “decider,” often surrounded by fawning acolytes.

The subsequent emergence of bad leadership can be averted if leaders will pay attention to the welfare of stakeholders, listen to alternative points of view and perspectives, rely on their team for support, foster a culture of integrity, and cultivate personal awareness. Followers must give honest feedback and develop coalitions to foster a balance of power within the organization. If all else fails, externally‐imposed regulation may be necessary.

The author offers practical advice to both leaders and followers to enable them to avoid the perils of the bad leadership.

By identifying the causes and likely cures for bad leadership and bad followership the author makes it easier for stakeholders to address the problem and take action and for boards to select the right candidates for leadership roles, a critical board responsibility.

Most strategies stumble in the implementation phase. This article outlines a market‐validated process, and practical guidelines, for deploying well‐calibrated metrics to optimize implementation. The primary audience is mid‐level and senior executives charged with the responsibility for implementing strategy.

This approach focuses on how to design and deploy a balanced set of performance metrics to guide the implementation of strategy. It reviews conventional approaches and pitfalls, citing examples from a diverse array of businesses, then presents “best practices” for measuring what’s important. A key thesis is that good metrics reinforce implementation, while poor metrics actually interfere with implementation.

Misaligned metrics often impede implementation, eliciting counterproductive behavior from key managers. A better approach involves creating and deploying a smaller set of multidimensional metrics, closely aligned with the firm’s strategies. Successful firms move beyond simple budgetary indicators: they formulate a small set of metrics that directs management focus outside the firm (into the marketplace); translate qualitative aspirations into quantitative targets, using a common language; align the firm’s metrics with other managerial systems (like rewards) to motivate and galvanize the management team.

The approach and logic described are universal, but the actual metrics may need to be adapted to fit the strategies, stakeholders, and competitive position of each firm, and refined over time to dovetail with the firm’s budgetary process.

Strategy programs need to be expanded to focus on the implementation process – where performance measurement is instrumental. More attention should be given to simplifying and distilling performance indicators, and broadening and its stakeholders will help facilitate implementation, and ultimately, enhance stakeholder value. managerial perspective so that implementation challenges can be flushed out and resolved.

The rational, practical approach described offers managers specific guidelines for bringing strategies to life – for bridging the gap between aspirations and real performance. It illustrates common pitfalls, and outlines how to measure and optimize performance, improve implementation, and galvanize the management team.