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Nothing lasts forever. Change is gonna come. Those were the days.

If there's a general theme to almost everything that finds its way into this magazine, it's the increasing responsibility of the strategic planner to assume the role of corporate gadfly. As long as there are executives who cling tenaciously to the conventional wisdom and yes‐people who reject the mantle of iconoclasm, there will be a place for the strategic thinker who relishes the opportunity to rock the boat, to point out flaws in the‐way‐things‐are‐done‐around‐here, to offer alternative courses of action.

There's nothing that gets a magazine editor's heart racing as quickly as a trend. Even on a bimonthly, where breaking news is rarely an issue, finding a trend to hone in on is not just a perk of the job—it is the job.

For some planners, it seems, the play's the thing.

“Scanners are passé,” says Josh McQueen, a student of futuristic marketing technology who directs the research operations at Leo Burnett, the Chicago‐based ad agency. With all manner of newly delivered interactive tools cramming the corporate workbench, it's not surprising that for a maven like McQueen, last year's hot new toy has already cooled off.

The mass market is dead. The database lives. Sales, marketing, product development—and the strategies that fuel them—will never be the same.

The ‘90s aren't a bad dream. And they're not the 70s redux, with a go‐go decade waiting around the corner. Survival will take pacing—and planning. The alternative's too ghastly to consider.

Why has outsourcing become a corporate litmus test? Is it the right move for your company? Who's doing it—and why? Is it both efficient and cost‐effective? How should you structure an outsourcing agreement? Here are some answers—and a lot more questions to ask before you embark on an outsourcing adventure.

Everywhere you turn these days, there's corporate unrest. No one wants to dress up anymore. Everyone wants to work out of his car. Plateaued middle managers spend their working hours scanning the pages of Entrepreneur for franchise opportunities. Running that inn in Vermont seems real attractive.

As a recent piece in The Economist noted, “there is remarkably little agreement” these days about just what constitutes business strategy. Is it matching resources with opportunities, or is it setting goals that push well beyond the corporate envelope? Is it limiting or liberating? Competitive or combative? On the edge or on the shelf?