This article is a brief overview of a Working Paper that I previously published here and perhaps an eventual book. But I think the overview message in this short article is worth your attention.
Notes on Growing Wealth in the For-profit Firm 2017
A Primer on Strategy and Finance: What Any Strategy Professional Needs to Know
In this piece, I want to provide finance principles written in a way that any strategy professional can understand. If my message rings true, please share widely. I do know something about finance. I finished all my coursework during my Ph.D. program thirty-four years ago in finance before switching to strategic management.
What Is Competitive Advantage Re-visited?
How many times have you heard an executive say we have a competitive advantage over our rivals? The business press has written that firms like Amazon and Apple have a competitive advantage. What do these people mean by this?
Operations Excellence Revisited and Observations of the Balanced Scorecard
Speed, Quality, and Cost are three key watchwords of Operations Excellence (OE). Historically a for-profit firm could enjoy best-in-class levels of two of these three watchwords, but not all three at the same time. In today’s business world, the firm needs to have all three at best-in-class levels just to survive. OE is a huge contributor to organization performance and growth the market value of the firm.
How I Use Strategy Frameworks to Pick Stocks
Hopefully, I have your attention on this one. I know this article may seem presumptuous, as I am not known as an investment specialist. But if you have a few minutes and an interest to learn about a process that works for me, please read on. This article is a little longer than usual but I think worth the read.
Grow or Die
The topic of business growth is a fascinating one. I will try to build the argument in this article that if a firm is not growing, it is dying.
What Is The Meaning of Dynamic In Business?
Dynamic defined as an adjective is – “(of a process or system) characterized by constant change, activity, or progress”. As a noun it is defined as – “a force that stimulates change or progress within a system or process”.
The Curious Nature of Business Goals
Achievement oriented business people love goals. Ask a salesperson to go sell widgets. Now have an agreement with that person to go sell ten widgets in three months. This simple change in approach and language makes all the difference to that salesperson’s focus and motivation.
Why There Are So Many Frameworks for Competitive Strategy?
there is a good reason for so many approaches and frameworks. We will not discuss various frameworks in depth here. I have my own called the Business Performance Engine that I have written about in this series of articles. Our purpose here is why there are so many frameworks.
Why Do Competitive Strategies Fail?
We normally like to think about what causes competitive strategies to be successful. But a discussion of what causes them to fail can complement our understanding about what a good competitive strategy is and why a clear competitive strategy is so important for the for-profit firm.
The Basics of Competitive Strategy Revisited
As I have written in this series, the field of competitive strategy seeks to understand why some firms continuously out-perform their rivals in terms of sustainable competitive advantage and superior financial performance. Why does Amazon continue to amaze nearly everyone in terms of continual superior performance and increases in its stock price? And recall Amazon almost went bankrupt early in its history. The answer lies in large part on a clear conception of competitive strategy. The clear conception also unfolds as a story that evolves and changes as the competitive landscape changes. But this is key: the unfolding story needs to be aligned and consistent with the clear conception. Stories that flip-flop with no unifying theme usually leads to bad performance over time. Proper alignment of the unfolding story to the clear conception in turn allows a keen focus on operations excellence, which keeps the organization grounded in initiatives that are doable and that allow the firm to win.
What Is the Most Important Functional Area in a Business?
Marketing, sales and human resources are just three of the usual many functional areas. Of course all of the functional areas are important all of the time. And in some time periods one or two of the functional areas become more important to solve a problem, crisis or seize an opportunity. What do you feel is the most important functional area in your business or in any for-profit firm?