Editor’s letter

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2010), "Editor’s letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 38 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/sl.2010.26138baa.001

Editor’s letter

Article Type: Editor’s letter From: Strategy & Leadership, Volume 38, Issue 2

This issue of Strategy & Leadership contains some news about best practices that a strategist can quickly put to use, for example:

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  “How did strategic planning help during the economic crisis?” by James W. Wilson and Soren Eilertsen surveys 190 managers to find out how firms hit by recession lightning benefited from their prior investment in planning.

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  In some businesses, shared leadership has become an accepted strategy used throughout the organization – sometimes at the top, and more often at the business-unit level. “Shared leadership: from rivals to co-CEOs” by Maria Arnone and Stephen A. Stumpf interviews leaders who have learned the best practices and experienced the pitfalls of sharing the top job.

The issue also offers some genuine learning opportunities that require extra effort. Here are some stimulating new ideas you can use, if you spend some time with these complex but rewarding articles:

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  One of the game-changing concepts of our time, pioneered by the extraordinary strategist C.K. Prahalad, is co-creating unique value with customers. But there have been relatively few case studies that explain how the most innovative companies are exploiting this idea. In this issue, Prahalad’s noted co-author, Venkat Ramaswamy, shows how two innovative firms – the French telecom firm Orange and the California-based global networking firm Cisco – have used two different approaches to gain competitive advantage from the co-creative enterprise business model. “Competing through co-creation: innovation at two companies” explains that the focus at Orange is on establishing experience environments with customers and industry mavens, and at Cisco it is on the management of risk and reward.

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  Many corporate planners see design as a marketing approach not a strategic one. However, over the past decade a few leading companies have adopted design thinking, which involves the wider application of a design perspective beyond just product aesthetics, as a key driver of innovation. “Design thinking: achieving insights via the ‘knowledge funnel’” by Roger Martin asserts that the concept can sustain competitive innovation advantage.

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  In recent years, a few leading organizations have by-passed the traditional preoccupation with product and process innovation to embrace the notion of value innovation. Value innovation involves a breakthrough in the value-to-cost ratio. Four of the most prominent variations on the value innovation theme to have emerged to date include the “disruptive innovation theory,” the “blue ocean strategy,” the “co-creation of value with customers” perspective and the “experience economy.” Now a further variation, “emotion-focused design,” is gaining adherents. In his article: “Masterclass: How innovation in “product language” can overturn markets – the power of emotion-focused design,” S&L Contributing Editor Brian Leavy explains the latest addition to the emerging value spectrum, Roberto Verganti’s concepts of “design-driven innovation.”

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  Joseph Calandro, Jr – a finance professor, corporate risk manager and former analyst with a leading consulting firm – presents a new way of calculating how much a company should pay for an acquisition. “Disney’s Marvel acquisition: a strategic financial analysis” explains how to use the modern Graham and Dodd valuation method for merger assessment. A favorite methodology of legendary investor Warren Buffet, it accounts for a variety of value drivers and risks that could affect the purchase price. Disney’s recent acquisition of Marvel Comics for $4 billion is used as an illustrative case study. Calandro’s bottom line: Disney paid too much.

Some heavy lifting? Frankly, yes. But worth it.

Robert M. RandallEditor