Editor’s letter

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2022), "Editor’s letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 50 No. 1, pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-12-2021-223

Sound the trumpets! Shout joyous “Hosannas!” Wave congratulatory banners! With this issue, Strategy & Leadership has reached a milestone – Volume 50, Number 1. Praise and thanks is due our authors, reviewers, contributing editors and founders! For a half century the editorial mission has been to provide articles that insightfully define a strategic management or leadership problem, dilemma or opportunity from the perspective of senior management; propose a creative solution to the problem or a way to take advantage of the opportunity; describe the model, tool, technique, new research finding or concept that enables the solution and show evidence or examples that the proposed solution has worked or could work.

In this tradition, the articles in this issue examine how today’s leaders are succeeding by employing potent strategic management concepts – Agile management, corporate multi-business strategy, advanced technologies matched with open innovation, digital network business models, experience offering innovation and leveraging risk.

In his alarm-sounding article, “Why top managements must change their fundamental assumptions,” Agile management sage Stephen Denning advises that “Top management must institute and continuously support a value creation process that works backwards from the future.” To inspire leaders seeking to adopt a customer-primacy culture, Denning also offers his “Leadership transformation reading list: insider guides to customer-centricity, Agile management and visionary innovation.” The takeaway: “The transition from shareholder value primacy to customer-centricity is a multi-dimensional challenge.”

For decades leaders have struggled to “manage their corporate family of businesses in a way that will create value over and above what the businesses could create if they were independent entities with their own direct access to capital markets,” notes Professor Brian Leavy, emeritus professor of strategy at Dublin City University Business School. His Masterclass “Multi-business value-adding strategies – reconsidering the options,” reviews the assessment frameworks proposed by strategists Porter, Campbell, Capron, Prahalad, Martin and others.

In their article “Changing the business narrative: a guide to successful experience offerings,” authors of the award-winning book Designing Experiences, J. Robert Rossman and Mat Duerden, urge organizations “to adopt a new narrative to guide restructuring that focuses employee line of sight around experience engagements.”

In their case “How the leading Chinese real estate brokerage transformed into a digital platform business,” Yanli Zhang and Lixia Yao analyze the success of Bieke, China’s leading digital network for housing transactions and services. They note that “Beike represents a new wave of platforms that add further value on top of the information efficiency gains by also offering a management system that improves service quality and professional standards.”

IBM researchers Anthony Lipp, Anthony Marshall and Jacob Dencik report on the widespread adoption of open innovation powered by “Open and interoperable technologies like hybrid cloud, blockchain and AI [that] allow for many more ways to create value by unlocking hidden potential in existing relationships.”

Their article “Open innovation: a growth powerhouse when integrated with dynamic digital technologies,” also emphasizes that “Ecosystems are key to success with open innovation, creating value opportunities within and across the value chains.”

In this interview, “Jonathan Brill: The “ROGUE” method for leveraging risk and enhancing resilience,” Professor Brian Leavy explores the new book, Rogue Waves: Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change, by the former Global Futurist and Research Director at Hewlett-Packard. Brill’s message: “The changing likelihood of Rogue Waves can often be forecast. This means that you can take advantage of them — if you have the right process.”

Good reading!