Strategic analysis

How the three Fs-facts, faith, and fortitude-can create a persuasive business case as well as a roadmap for new initiatives.

Today's dynamic markets and technologies have called into question the sustainability of competitive advantage. Under pressure to improve productivity,...

Many executives rely on a process for devising strategy suited to stable, predictable environments even when they know conditions are highly volatile...

The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at...

How to exploit global hot spots? Understand which major economies are most important, what's happening in them, how they're influencing each other, and...

Increasingly, companies are measuring customer loyalty, employee satisfaction, and other nonfinancial areas of performance that they believe affect profitability....

It's not just about innovation; it's maximizing what you already have.

Structure follows strategy; and systems support structure. In the high-growth environment of post-World War II, a management doctrine rose up around these...

I didn’t anticipate that I would leave the country of Iceland with a renewed awareness of the different governance challenges faced by private and public sector organizations, but that’s just what happened. I was in Iceland recently to participate in a Balanced Scorecard (BSC) event, where I heard presentations from the main electricity and water […]

Want your business case to be supported? Get attention by telling a good story.

CEOs often complain that the financial markets simply don't understand their companies' strategy. The author's recent findings show that they may well...

For years, people have bemoaned executives' zealous focus on short-term results, which often leads CEOs to make moves that undermine their firms' long-term...

No plan survives contact with reality.

America, a nation once celebrated for its irrepressible optimism, now appears to be obsessed by "declinism"--the idea that something is fundamentally...

Theory often gets a bum rap among managers because it's associated with the word "theoretical," which connotes "impractical." But it shouldn't. Because...

Why is it that effective business start-ups frequently grow into corporate giants, but effective new nonprofits rarely reach national scale? Because,...

To remain a leader in innovation, the United States needs the support of foundational institutions that help seed, grow, and renew enterprises. Historically,...

Deliberate, emergent, and analogical approaches to finding the best strategy all have their advan-tages, depending on where an industry is in its life...

The main goal of any international strategy should be to manage the large differences that arise at the borders of markets. Yet executives often fail...

Sometimes growth involves hard choices and compromise.

Proposed in 2012, Nord Stream 2 was a pipeline project that aimed to bring natural gas directly from Russia to Europe beneath the Baltic Sea. Gazprom,...

MacAfee Building Supply, a distributor of building supplies and heating and plumbing products, had grown to become the largest company of its kind in...

Illustrates how nonfinancial performance measures can be used to manage a business and evaluate the success of a strategy.

Supplements the (A) case.

Tim Höttges was at the outset of his seventh year as CEO of Deutsche Telekom (DT) in 2020. The company served more than 184 million mobile customers and...

In 2013, the Swiss sports data company Sportradar debated whether to expand from its core business of data provision to bookmakers into sports media products....

A year of HBR's essential thinking on tech--all in one place. Generative AI, Web3, neurotech, reusable rockets to power the space economy--new technologies...

A loan officer must decide whether to lend $8 million to a rapidly growing high technology company. The company has had a series of relationships with...

The original version of the "Leading Change" Ebook is no longer available. A refreshed and redesigned version is available for sale which includes a new...

Describes the issues surrounding the funding of a centralized research service that supports two related divisions. The company has a very decentralized...

Set in July 2021, this case talks about the launch and discontinuation of the very large aircraft, A380, by leading aircraft manufacturer Airbus. The...

Looks at the development of the competitive actions between Airbus and Boeing from 1992 to 2006. Begins with the question of whether Airbus and Boeing...

When Borealis, a European producer of plastics, used a traditional, time-consuming budgeting process, the budget was quickly out of date in a competitive...

Fola Adeola, the CEO of Nigeria's Guaranty Trust Bank and one of its founders in 1991, is considering what should be done to maintain the bank's original...

This case study explores the challenges of aligning middle management interests with company goals as a company navigates rapid growth in a dynamic industry....

Nord Stream 2, a pipeline project that aimed to bring natural gas directly from Russia to Europe beneath the Baltic Sea, was a critical project for Gazprom,...

The chief executive officer (CEO) of the London Public Library (LPL) had developed and had begun to implement a strategic plan to improve the LPL. The...

This 10th anniversary issue of the Balanced Scorecard Report contains the following articles: "Linking Strategy to Operations: Part 2--Theme Teams and...

How can risk management be fixed? Banking executive Jack Klinck (and former chairman of BSC Hall of Fame company Mellon Europe), offers two solutions,...

Video Shorts for product #CB0081

Proposed in 2012, Nord Stream 2 was a pipeline project that aimed to bring natural gas directly from Russia to Europe beneath the Baltic Sea. Gazprom,...

Video Shorts for product #CB0081

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, organizations all over the world are beginning to manage risk in earnest-by moving it from a siloed to...

Steve Kirn, vice president of innovation and organizational development at Sears, describes how the willingness to acknowledge that management methods...

This issue of the Balanced Scorecard Report contains the following articles: "A Bottom-Up Approach to National Governance," "Boosting Performance-and...

MacAfee Building Supply, a distributor of building supplies and heating and plumbing products, had grown to become the largest company of its kind in...

This issue contains the following articles: a discussion of how to get all employees aligned to the strategy, so that they make it part of their daily...