Strategy and entrepreneurship are often viewed as polar opposites. Strategy is seen as the pursuit of a clearly defined path—one systematically identified in advance—through a carefully chosen set of activities. Entrepreneurship is seen as the epitome of opportunism—requiring ventures to pivot in new directions continually, as information comes in and markets shift rapidly. Yet the two desperately need each other. Strategy without entrepreneurship is central planning. Entrepreneurship without strategy leads to chaos.
In a 2013 survey of nearly 700 executives across a variety of industries, our firm asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of the top leaders of their companies. How many excelled at strategy? How many excelled at execution? The results are shown in the chart below. These responses are sobering: Only 16% of top leaders were rated very effective at either strategy or execution. Only 8% were very effective at both, while 63% were rated neutral or worse on at least one dimension.
“Ask chief executives why their companies are performing so well, and they’ll typically credit a brilliant strategy coupled with hard-nosed, diligent execution. When you ask Lars Sørensen of Novo Nordisk what forces propelled him to the top of HBR’s 2015 ranking of the best-performing CEOs in the world, he cites something very different: luck.”
So begins our recent profile of the best performing CEO of 2015. Sørensen’s modesty is refreshing, but is it accurate?
Imagine que desea comprar una casa. Un agente de bienes raíces puede mostrarle varios lugares, una forma de hacer las cosas muy ligada al siglo XX. También podría ir al siglo XXI y acudir a Internet para investigar precios, propiedades disponibles y hacer algunos tours virtuales.
A la hora de comprar, sin embargo, es probable que no tenga más remedio que recurrir a los procedimientos creados durante la era de sus abuelos. Tendrá que reunir una serie de documentos financieros y presentarlos a un agente de préstamos de un banco, quien demorará semanas en decidir el monto y la tasa del crédito hipotecario y ofrecerle un estrecho menú de opciones costosas.
We’re living through an era of remarkable U.S. corporate consolidation. A recent USC study shows that across multiple and diverse markets, industries are 25% more likely to be “highly concentrated” than they were 20 years ago. From banking to computing to beer, mergers and acquisitions are accumulating at a breathtaking pace, raising antitrust concerns in the middle of a contentious presidential election cycle.
I once asked the new head of corporate strategy at one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies whether his organization is a single business with multiple parts or a portfolio of businesses with a common owner. He answered, “The former.” If I were to ask his fellow traveler at, say, GE or Time Warner, the most likely answer would be, “The latter.” But the right answer is both.
In an experiment in which German and American teams attempted to reach consensus on a complex task, the German groups generated 30% fewer statements focused on possible solutions than the American teams and more than twice as many statements focusing on various problems, such as inadequate information, say Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock of VU University Amsterdam and colleagues. The findings, drawn from research on 30 teams of university students, support past research suggesting that culturally, Germans tend to desire a substantial amount of background information before making decisions and prefer clarity over uncertainty, whereas Americans tend to quickly come up with solutions, often without having a complete and thorough analysis of the problem.
Start with 30 million responses on your QZone, Tencent, and other social media platforms — all to a simple question: “What do you want in air conditioning?” Then pay attention to the more than 670,000 people who take part in the online conversation that follows. You’re bound to come up with something cool — or, more precisely, “cool, not cold.” This concept, drawn from online responses, became the tagline for the Tianzun (“Heaven”), Haier’s advanced household heater/air conditioner/air purifier, released in 2014. Many Asian consumers don’t like the chilling effect of conventional temperature control. They’d much prefer to be “cool, not cold.” But there’s more to the concept than temperature.
Las grandes compañías, tal y como son concebidas hoy en día, con enormes plantillas y distintos equipos de profesionales, van a desaparecer poco a poco. Y su lugar lo van a ocupar las pequeñas y medianas empresas, que están naciendo arropadas por el inmenso abanico tecnológico e innovador que se está desarrollando en los últimos años. Es una de las principales conclusiones a las que llegaron varios especialistas en recursos humanos y dirección de personas en la 49 edición del Congreso de la Asociación Española de Directivos y Desarrollo de Personas (Aedipe), que se celebró este jueves y viernes en Valencia y que albergó a cerca de 500 profesionales del sector.
At Work-Bench Ventures, we invest in early stage enterprise technology startups. HR is an area where we have been spending significant time. Our first portfolio company exit was True Office, which transforms outdated training content into interactive courses, using game mechanics and motivation techniques so that users actually enjoyed learning. The NYSE acquired the company a year after we invested to enhance its role as thought leaders in the Governance Risk Compliance space.
