None of the conference rooms were available, so the meeting was held in a maintenance closet: an 8-by-8-foot room with mops, brooms, and brushes, and the smell of detergent in the air. Ten men and ...

In the beginning, it was cultural and managerial chaos. When Chinese computer company Lenovo dispatched a team to New York in 2004 to discuss acquiring the personal computer division of IBM, only one ...

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Almost everyone feels the temptation to answer “10 cents” because the sum $1.10 so neatly ...

Leadership is not just for leaders anymore. Top companies are beginning to understand that sustaining peak performance requires a firm-wide commitment to developing leaders that is tightly aligned to ...

War is not a pathology,” says Philip Bobbitt. “War is a natural condition of the state.” In his groundbreaking book The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (Alfred A. Knopf, 2002) ...

A large auto manufacturer asked a consulting firm to evaluate its competitive position in relation to ride-sharing startups building autonomous vehicles. Instead of viewing this as a classic strategy ...

With an introduction by Ram Charan. The heart of a company’s business model should be game-changing innovation. This is not just the invention of new products and services, but the ability to ...

A version of this article appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of strategy+business. Kristian Ebbesen Fjelde and his team knew that the executive committee meeting scheduled in mid-2019 to discuss the ...

A version of this article appeared in the Autumn 2020 issue of strategy+business. Senior executives, accustomed to annual performance reviews and 360-degree assessments, can be quick to acknowledge ...

Sometimes epiphanies come by email—or, in this case, three emails. It was Saturday at 5:17 a.m., and Joanna was already at her laptop. As the new CEO of the fictional Seabright Publishing Company, ...

In 2021, PwC launched its first study into the role of the chief data officer (CDO)—a position we defined based on seniority, role in the organization, and scope of work, rather than just job title.

A version of this article appeared in the Summer 2017 issue of strategy+business. Have you ever had a difficult executive decision to make? This is the kind of decision where the best options aren’t ...