In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
SWOT analysis is a strategic planning and strategic management technique used to help a person or organization identify Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to business competition or project planning. It is sometimes called situational assessment or situational analysis. Additional acronyms using the same components include TOWS and WOTS-UP.
Michael Eugene Porter is an American academic known for his theories on economics, business strategy, and social causes. He is the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School, and was one of the founders of the consulting firm The Monitor Group and FSG, a social impact consultancy. He is credited for creating Porter's five forces analysis, which is instrumental in business strategy development at present. He is generally regarded as the father of the modern strategy field. He is also regarded as one of the world's most influential thinkers on management and competitiveness as well as one of the most influential business strategists. His work has been recognized by governments, non governmental organizations and universities.
John Paul Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, an author, and the founder of Kotter International, a management consulting firm based in Seattle and Boston. He is a thought leader in business, leadership, and change.
Blue Ocean Strategy is a book published in 2004 written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, professors at INSEAD, and the name of the marketing theory detailed on the book.
Business economics is a field in applied economics which uses economic theory and quantitative methods to analyze business enterprises and the factors contributing to the diversity of organizational structures and the relationships of firms with labour, capital and product markets. A professional focus of the journal Business Economics has been expressed as providing "practical information for people who apply economics in their jobs."
Robert M. Galford is an American author. He is the coauthor of four business books: The Trusted Advisor, The Trusted Leader, Your Leadership Legacy, and, most recently, Simple Sabotage.
Kenneth Richmond Andrews, was an American academic who, along with H. Igor Ansoff and Alfred D. Chandler, was credited with the foundational role in introducing and popularizing the concept of business strategy.
Chris Zook is a business writer and partner at Bain & Company, leading its Global Strategy Practice. He currently resides in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and in Boston, Massachusetts. He is listed by The Times (London) as one of the world's top 50 business thinkers.
The Mutual Gains Approach (MGA) to negotiation is a process model, based on experimental findings and hundreds of real-world cases, that lays out four steps for negotiating better outcomes while protecting relationships and reputation. A central tenet of the model, and the robust theory that underlies it, is that a vast majority of negotiations in the real world involve parties who have more than one goal or concern in mind and more than one issue that can be addressed in the agreement they reach. The model allows parties to improve their chances of creating an agreement superior to existing alternatives.
Competitive heterogeneity is a concept from strategic management that examines why industries do not converge on one best way of doing things. In the view of strategic management scholars, the microeconomics of production and competition combine to predict that industries will be composed of identical firms offering identical products at identical prices. Deeper analyses of this topic were taken up in industrial organization economics by crossover economics/strategic-management scholars such as Harold Demsetz and Michael Porter. Demsetz argued that better-managed firms would make better products than their competitors. Such firms would translate better products or lower prices into higher levels of demand, which would lead to revenue growth. These firms would then be larger than the more poorly managed competitors.
Arthur C. Brooks is an American author, public speaker, and academic. Brooks served as the 11th President of the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of twelve books, including Love Your Enemies (2019), The Conservative Heart (2015), and The Road to Freedom (2012), and From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life. Since 2020, he has written for the Atlantic’s How to Build a Life column on happiness and hosted its podcast, How to Build a Happy Life.
Pankaj Ghemawat is an Indian-American economist, professor, global strategist, speaker and author known for his work in the study of globalization. He created the DHL Global Connectedness Index and the CAGE Distance Framework.
David B. Yoffie is the Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS).
Tarun Khanna is an Indian-born American academic, author, and an economic strategist. He is currently the Jorge Paulo Lemann professor at Harvard Business School; where he is a member of the strategy group, and the director of Harvard University’s South Asia initiative since 2010.
Bob Frisch is an author, speaker, and managing partner of the firm Strategic Offsites Group. He writes and speaks about decision making in the workplace, and particularly about the dynamics of offsite business meetings. In 2016, his book, Who’s in the Room: How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them, is held in more than 400 libraries.
Jay B. Barney is an American professor in strategic management at the University of Utah.
William E. Fruhan Jr. is an American academic. He is the George E. Bates Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School. He is the author of three books and over 140 business cases.
James L. Heskett is an American academic. He is the UPS Foundation Professor of Business Logistics, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School.
Leonard A. (Len) Schlesinger is an American author, educator, and business leader. He is currently the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and President Emeritus of Babson College where he served as the college's 12th President from 2008 through 2013.
