http://www.kimwarren.com with Kim Warren Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:52:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Kraft foods finally won control of Cadbury with a big £11.9 billion ($19.4b) offer. Warren Buffet, owner of 9% of Kraft, says it's a bad deal - and he's rarely wrong. Will Kraft do the usual and try to extract 'synergies' by slashing costs, or deliver real value by leveraging the ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/02/strategy-error-by-kraft/ Encouraging interview with Blair Sheppard, dean of Duke Business School, about increasingly mature expectations of future execuitves [their MBAs!] Seems they are looking for broader perspectives, linking business issues to societal and environmental issues, and not thinking the answer is to junk existing institutions but to make them work better. Blair says this ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/what-mbas-want/ More solid stuff from Kaplan and Norton, which moves on somewhat from their balanced scorecard + strategy maps ideas. The Execution Premium points out "Strategy that does not link to operations is not strategic. It’s just pointless planning." and goes on to outline how to plan operations to deliver the strategy ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/the-execution-premium/ A blog post by Roger Martin* makes a good case that CEOs find it hard to simultaneously make a good choice of where to play and how to win. He concludes they need to go beyond these basics and 'creatively integrate' these two views. True enough if performance were all about formulating strategy, ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/why-most-ceos-are-bad-at-strategy/ A Chatham House report calls for policy makers to cut radically the time for clean technologies to be implemented. Even when technically and financially attractive, adoption takes decades. This can be changed - a big strategic opportunity for firms in relevant sectors, as well as massively important to society - see my ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/speed-up-clean-tech-adoption/ In Green Is a Strategy, strategy+business makes a strong case that sustainability is becoming, not a nuisance issue to which business will have to react, so much as an opportunity for advantage that needs to be proactively grasped. A bit thin on details, but offers some good big principles. Given the severe environmental ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/green-strategy-potential/ It seems the real hero-CEOs are not the well-known names, and perhaps not with well-known companies either. In Do We Celebrate the Wrong CEOs? Morten Hansen and Herminia Ibarra identify CEOs who have delivered sustained, long-term growth in investor returns over long periods, and it's likely you never heard of most. ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/which-ceos-to-admire/ With M&A activity recovering, a timely reminder from McKinsey to check out this question. Simple principles, but easily forgotten. http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/are-you-the-best-owner-of-your-assets/ A clear and practical paper from BCG explains nicely what a business model is, what 'innovating' it means, and when and how to do it. The only caveat is the superior total shareholder returns it claims comes from BMI innovators vs. traditional innovators - it likely excludes BMI innovators who ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/business-model-innovation-bmi/ A rare example of clear and useful academic research from Emilie Feldman at Harvard [but treat it with care - see below]. Emilie "investigates “legacy" divestitures, the sale or spinoff of a company's historical core business. Firms appear to divest their legacy businesses within the context of larger efforts to reshape their identities. ... http://www.kimwarren.com/2010/01/beware-divesting-core-business/