Online articles
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Displaying 1-30 of 111 results
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Lean strategy making
- Article
- 10 Apr 2025
- Michael Mankins
This article argues that companies should standardise their strategic decision-making processes, just as they do with critical operations, to reduce inconsistency, improve efficiency, and achieve better outcomes.
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How should Gen AI fit into your marketing strategy?
- Article
- 24 Mar 2025
- Dhruv Grewal, et al.
This article explores how businesses can effectively use generative AI in marketing, outlining key questions for companies to consider before implementation.
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The strategic genius of Taylor Swift
- Article
- 13 Feb 2025
- Kevin Evers
This article considers the lessons that business leaders can learn from Taylor Swift, highlighting her ability to identify new markets, build customer loyalty, stay proactive, and adapt to industry shifts.
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The power of strategic fit
- Article
- 13 Feb 2025
- Darrell Rigby, Zach First
This article explores the importance of aligning key strategic elements to create lasting value, rather than relying solely on financial targets. Using Self Esteem Brands as an example, the authors highlight seven factors that drive sustainable growth.
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Navigating the new geopolitical uncertainty
- Article
- 16 Jan 2025
- Cindy Levy, Shubham Singhal
This article considers how business leaders can manage geopolitical risks and navigate uncertainty through the use of scenario planning and sector-specific strategies.
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The answer engines
- Article
- 01 Jan 2025
- Mat Honan
The article discusses the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize decision-making in various industries. It highlights the optimism surrounding AI's capabilities and the investments being made in its development. The article also provides a brief history of AI, noting its ups and downs over the years. It emphasizes the importance of AI as a decision-support system rather than a decision-maker, particularly for critical and strategic decisions. The article raises concerns about the potential biases and injustices that AI decision-making may entail. It concludes by cautioning ...
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Getting strategic about sustainability
- Article
- 17 Dec 2024
- Jason Jay, Kate Isaacs, Hong Linh Nguyen
When it comes to sustainability businesses often try to address too many issues at once. This article sets out a framework that leaders can use to better focus their sustainability strategies, and achieve meaningful outcomes.
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Why multi-business strategies fail and how to make them succeed
- Article
- 01 Sep 2024
- Bharat N. Anand, David J. Collis
Multi-business enterprises often struggle with crafting effective strategies. This article puts forward an approach to corporate strategy which aims to help such enterprises to overcome challenges in this area, and presents some practical tips on how to design a multi-business strategy.
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Eliminate strategic overload
- Article
- 06 Feb 2024
- Felix Oberholzer-Gee
Felix Oberholzer-Gee, the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, sets out how businesses ought to select fewer strategic initiatives with greater impact.
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Strategic pivoting: how organisations can shift attention whatever their size
- Article
- 26 Jan 2024
- Mark N. Wexler, Judy Oberlander
This article considers how strategic pivoting, traditionally associated with early-stage organisations, can be applied by corporations of various sizes and types. It explores challenges relating to organisational complexity, path dependency, and stakeholder management.
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Navigating AI: a pragmatic guide for corporate boards
- Article
- 01 Oct 2023
- Chris Smith
The article focuses on how the exponential growth of artificial intelligence (AI) across various sectors is compelling boards to redefine their roles in providing oversight and guidance on AI strategy and risk management. It emphasizes the importance of a human-centred approach to AI, aligning strategic decisions with an organization's mission and values, addressing ethical dilemmas, intellectual property concerns, and privacy challenges.
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Innovative processes in finance and accounting
- Article
- 01 Oct 2023
- Vineet Jain
Adopting innovative technologies can lead to streamlined processes, real-time insights, and increased focus on strategic planning, says Vineet Jain CA. The article looks at innovation in the record-to-report (R2R), accounts payable and procure-to-pay processes and the potential for automated tools to assist with these tasks. Finally, important challenges associated with AI and other innovative technologies and skill sets which forward-thinking finance and accounting professionals should develop are covered.
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A new approach to strategic innovation
- Article
- 01 Sep 2023
- Haijian Si, Christoph Loch, Stelios Kavadias
This article presents a new tool to help leaders to align innovation investments with their organisation's specific strategic goals.
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A company reinvents itself in sign of hope for Japan
- Article
- 24 Aug 2023
- Winnie Hsu, Sano Hideyuki
The huge conglomerate Hitachi became a symbol of corporate Japan's slide toward mediocrity when it got into difficulties during the global financial crisis and posted the biggest loss ever by a Japanese manufacturer. Yet the company has since undergone a turnaround, revamping its strategy to focus on growth and making its board more international and independent.
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How to create a stakeholder strategy
- Article
- 01 May 2023
- Darrell Rigby, Zach First, Dunigan O'Keefe
Companies have recently come to recognize the limitations of the view that they must create value only for shareholders, with many CEOs pledging to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders: customers, employees, suppliers, communities, and shareholders. Discusses how firms can use data to help develop a clear description of their purpose, establish criteria for evaluating progress toward it, set priorities among stakeholders and start measuring value creation for each group.
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Resiliency and strategic risk management: Protecting strategic value includes a mix of metrics, cybersecurity, reputational risk management, and more
- Article
- 01 May 2023
- Mark L.Frigo, Dennis H.Chookaszian
The authors discuss how CFOs and boards can support strategic resiliency and risk management skills as core competencies for creating and protecting long-term value. In a conversation together, they look at tools for long-term value creation, cybersecurity and resiliency, strategic resiliency and risk assessment, reputation risk, skills for business leaders, strategic life-cycle analysis and lessons on resiliency from bank failures.
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Developing an entrepreneurial small business strategic plan
- Article
- 01 Mar 2023
- Hakan Butuner
Feature explaining how to use shortened Systematic Strategic Planning (SSP), a tool particularly suitable for developing strategic plans for SMEs. The article uses a case study of an entrepreneurial new business to demonstrate how the first four steps of a shortened SSP strategic plan can be applied.
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How CFOs can better manage: Strategy execution
- Article
- 01 Feb 2023
- Seth Elliott
Best practices in business strategy execution can help CFOs balance their traditional role of oversight and control with their emerging role as a catalyst for growth. Seth Elliott discusses using the objectives and key results (OKR) framework to track progress and organize goals. includes figures: 'The four faces of the CFO' and 'The quarterly OKR cycle'.
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Expand your pricing strategy
- Article
- 01 Jan 2023
- Rafi Mohammed
Pricing consultant Rafi Mohammed recommends that companies should re-examine not just their prices but their pricing strategy - looking for different ways to charge customers. Looking at models used by other industries can offer inspiration for pricing innovations, such as offering to rent a product that's typically bought, or selling a service by the hour instead of by the day. By adding new pricing options, you increase the odds that customers will find one tailored to their needs.
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Strategy making in uncertain times
- Article
- 01 Sep 2022
- Mark Gottfredson, Michael Mankins
Most companies have stuck with conventional techniques for strategy-making. In this article the authors describe what it takes to produce great results during economic uncertainty, and propose a practical model for strategy development that they have seen work at several leading companies.
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Strategies for individual leadership
- Article
- 01 Jul 2022
- Mark L.Frigo, Kathleen Stokes
Advice on translating great business strategy to create great leadership strategy for both individuals and high-performance teams. The article contains a short interview with Kathleen Stokes, who gives her perspective on leadership driven strategy as a finance leader.
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Succession stories: lessons learned from former family office CEOs
- Article
- 01 Jul 2022
- Jane Flanagan
The article discusses succession planning in family enterprises, considering how CEOs may retire without causing significant disruption to business operations. The author highlights the importance of trusted advisors as sources of guidance, and outlines certain key aspects of the strategic succession planning process, including training future leaders and writing clear job descriptions for successors.
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McKinsey lays out what makes 'next level' Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) teams
- Article
- 18 May 2022
- Sheryl Estrada
CFOs from McKinsey and other businesses answer the question: 'What do you need from your FP&A team?'. Answers included harnessing data to make quick decisions, automation, and providing insights to strategic thinking.
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Three tricks to make hard decisions easier
- Article
- 01 Mar 2022
- Marc Randolph
Entrepreneurs often face what feel like impossible or unknowable choices. Marc Randolph shares three decision-making tricks he relied upon as cofounder and CEO of Netflix - and that he still uses today for business strategy decisions. These include the 'one-way or two-way door decisions' identified by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
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Liminal movement by digital platform-based sharing economy ventures: The case of Uber Technologies
- Article
- 01 Mar 2022
- Raghu Garud, Arun Kumaraswamy, Anna Roberts, Le Xu
The authors explore the challenges that digital platform-based sharing economy ventures face in establishing legitimacy for their business models by examining the dynamics that ensued when Uber Technologies deployed its ridesharing business model in four U.S. cities. They find that platform-based sharing economy ventures such as Uber do best by rapidly forging ahead with their market strategies in each local context before regulators can intervene decisively and compromise their viability.
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The mysterious world of airline pricing: innovative practices and strategies for profit
- Article
- 04 Feb 2022
- Mohammad Reza Habibi, Chiranjeev S. Kohli
Business success and pricing are very closely intertwined. Using the airline industry as an example, this study aims to explain how businesses can improve their profitability through creative pricing strategies. The study takes an in-depth look at how airline companies developed innovative strategies to create differentiation between competitors.
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Budgeting to fund strategic plans
- Article
- 01 Dec 2021
- Daniel Butcher
The CFOs of CSX and ATI reveal best practices for finance to lead organizations' strategic planning and budgeting processes.
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Crafting a mission statement
- Article
- 02 Aug 2021
- Jolene A. Lampton
A mission statement works with the company or business' code of ethics and helps inspire its employees to work toward a common goal of that company or business. It should be the way the company and employees work. The statement should be reviewed to respond to current changes that have occurred recently.
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Designing a marketing strategy using AI
- Article
- 01 Jul 2021
- Thomas H Davenport, Abhijit Guha, Dhruv Grewal
In order to realize AI’s giant potential, CMOs need to have a good grasp of the various kinds of applications available and how they may evolve. This article guides marketing executives through the current state of AI and presents a framework that will help them classify their existing projects and plan the effective rollout of future ones. It categorizes AI along two dimensions: intelligence level and whether it stands alone or is part of a broader platform. Simple stand-alone task-automation apps are a good place to start. But advanced, integrated apps that incorporate machine learning have ...
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How come so many strategies fail?
- Article
- 01 Jul 2021
- David J.Collis
Leaders often focus on the parts rather than the whole strategy, says David J.Collis. Instead they should take a holistic approach to business strategy, recognising the interdependencies of components in their company's complete strategy landscape. He compares strategy mistakes typically made by CEOs at innovative new businesses and at mature established companies.
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