Open up to investors

McKinsey quarterly urges executives to embrace transparency if they want to help investors make investment decisions – presumably to invest in their firms. There’s a problem though …

This is a great principle, since investors are of course a critical constituency – along with customers and staff – whose loyalty is valuable. And as for any ‘product’ loyalty to a firm more likely if investors know and understand that product. Public companies have been obliged for some time to ...

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9
FEB
2009

5

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Strategy

business performance, Business Strategy Review, investment decisions, investor relations, Management Discussion and Analysis, Mckinsey Quarterly, MD&A, starbucks

Anyone using game theory?

Posted by: Kim Warren

Though I have heard of game theory being used in a few particular and special cases (e.g. the auctioning of 3G cellphone licenses) I have not seen anything of it being used in general strategic management or business planning. The strategy textbooks dismiss it as too uni-dimensional and limited to special cases to be useful, and I can find virtually no articles in e.g. Harvard Business Review or McKinsey Quarterly giving any encouraging cases where it has been helpful. (Though ...

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4
JAN
2009

3

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Strategy

12manage, business planning, game theory, harvard business review, Mckinsey Quarterly, Nalebuff, strategic management, strategy+business

More on strategy in the crisis

Posted by: Kim Warren

More from McKinsey Quarterly on the crisis A new era for management. Links in this intro article seem not to work, so here are direct links to articles I found useful, plus one on consumer sectors that may do better or worse than others.

LEADING THROUGH UNCERTAINTY

STRATEGY IN A ‘STRUCTURAL BREAK’

THE DOWNTURN’S NEW RULES FOR MARKETERS

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29
DEC
2008

0

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Strategy

Mckinsey Quarterly, recession, strategic management, structural break, uncertainty

Strategy in cyclical industries

Posted by: Kim Warren

The world’s biggest basic materials firms are suffering along with others as the world economy collapses, and the Economist points out that taking on loads of debt to grow and acquire others did not help. But these industries have always suffered cyclicality, even when not buffeted by extreme market conditions. Pity is that we have known how to steer away from these dangers for many years. Seems to me the same principles would have been useful to a great ...

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15
DEC
2008

1

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Strategy

basic materials, chemicals, cyclicality, downturn, economist, insurance, Mckinsey Quarterly, shipping, steel, strategic management