Emerging market champions: Comfortable myths and harsh realities
In October 31, 1989 Mitsubishi Estate bought a controlling stake in the Rockefeller Group, owner of iconic buildings including Rockefeller Center and Radio Center Music Hall. The acquisition, for many,...
View ArticlePass surfaces and swarm gaps: Strategic agility in the US Marine Corps
My last post discussed Warfighting, the US Marine Corp manual that characterizes combat as disorderly, uncertain, fluid and plagued by friction that makes “the simple difficult and the difficult...
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Agility through people: Five lessons from the early Jesuits
The first Jesuits, as portrayed by Professor John W. O’Malley, S.J. in his book of the same name, excelled at seizing unexpected opportunities to fulfill their mission of saving souls. In its first two...
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Operational agility at Toyota
Most managers (90% according to two recent surveys) agree that agility is important to succeed in turbulent markets. There is less agreement on precisely what agility is. My research on companies...
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Five requirements for portfolio agility
When I ask executives to list examples of agile companies, they often mention firms such as Tesco, Southwest Airline, or Wal-Mart, which excel at operational agility–the ability to seize opportunities...
View ArticlePrivate equity, operational improvement, and value creation
This Friday, the London Business School Private Equity and Venture Capital Club hosts its annual Private Equity Conference. I will moderate the closing panel discussion called “Value Creation:...
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Heros of agility: Colonel John R. Boyd
Many people have contributed to our understanding of agility, but few have contributed more than John Boyd. My last post described how U.S. fighter pilots dominated their adversaries during the Korean...
View ArticleLessons from Brazilian champions
How can managers survive and thrive in unpredictable markets? To shed light on this question, I and my co-author Martin Escobari, who is now a managing director of Advent International in Brazil,...
View ArticleBuilding organizational agility at Embraer
As a state-owned enterprise, Embraer had long suffered under stifling bureaucratic processes. One long-time employee recalled, “Embraer was subject to many procedures, norms and government audits,...
View ArticleExperiments to identify golden opportunities
My last post discussed how managers can collect information to spot emerging opportunities in turbulent markets and illustrated these points with the case of Brazil’s Banco Itau’s acquisition of...
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