McK gives useful short videos in its ‘enduring ideas’ series. The latest I’ve viewed on the business system is a helpful reminder of the old value-chain concept, though it is disappointingly qualitative, even in the ‘How to conduct a good analysis’ section.  In fact, value-chain is a better term for what the video describes.

Have noted before the major role that Sovereign Wealth Funds may play as the global economy recovers, in particular those engaged in active management, not just passive investment, e.g. Mubadala Development Co from UAE. Reports from Monitor have much to say on this - Weathering the Storm and Testing Time. As I have urged before, [...]

Now available are republished editions of two short books, aimed at upper-level strategy and HR execs, and useful in short courses.

We will be giving short free workshops on the day before various conferences over coming months.

Some useful tips in this article from BCG, some simple, some complex [and some over-complicated by trying to force them into a 'evolution' analogy]. Especially good to see its focus on exploiting opportunity, and good not  to see some of the bad or dangerous ideas I have mentioned previously.
Do take care, though - few are universally applicable, so [...]

Fired up by some stinging criticism from a former student, Joel M. Podolny once at HBS and Yale, shows admirable contrition for the failure of MBA programs to equip executives and their consultant advisors to run firms well. In The Buck Stops (and Starts) at Business School he vents the anger on this he shares with those outside [...]

Just updated the revised opening for chapter 1 of Strategic Management Dynamics, which you can download from www.strategydynamics.com/smd-new-start. This includes an important correction to the explanation of free cash-flow on p.27 that was unfortunately introduced when the document was laid out - apologies.
Reminder - This document reviews through some well-known cases the current philosophy and [...]

I hope senior management do not get persuaded to divert their attention to studying ‘complexity’ in the hope of understanding recent economic turmoil.  ”‘Power curves’: What natural and economic disasters have in common” argues that “parallels between financial crises and natural disasters–such as earthquakes or forest fires–suggest that the economy, just like complex natural systems, is [...]

Just came across a great piece, but curiously embedded in a McKinsey Quarterly article that seems to be about something else entirely - an update of how to decide what businesses should be in a corporate portfolio. The little gem is on the evolution of strategic management - which describes how strategy has evolved from a basically [...]

An otherwise great column in HBR It’s Time for the 3-D MBA about improving MBA programs starts well by urging more breadth and depth, then calling for more ‘dynamics’ than static prespectives. [I'd hardly disagree with that!]. But it then asserts that “The vast majority of value created in business comes not from applying existing [...]