The success of Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century is nothing short of astonishing. First published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, it’s since sold ...

In the beginning, it was cultural and managerial chaos. When Chinese computer company Lenovo dispatched a team to New York in 2004 to discuss acquiring the personal computer division of IBM, only one ...

Every February for the last 35 years, the National Football League has run a scouting camp, called a combine, to assess the skills of college players before its annual draft. With scientific precision ...

On the night of Nov. 8, 2016, there was a surprise announcement on Indian television. In a live telecast to the nation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that the country’s two ...

Leaders operate with near-constant deficits of time, energy, resources, and focus, which keeps them locked in a perpetual state of catch-up. This reality erodes quality contemplation. Although there ...

Bottom Line: Workshops in another setting can provide employees with a valuable means of thinking critically about their company’s vision. Whatever you want to call them — strategy retreats, away days ...

This interview is part of the Inside the Mind of the CxO series, which explores a wide range of critical decisions faced by chief executives around the world. “People asked me how long it took the ...

Digitally enabled ecosystems are a vital part of the modern business landscape. They open the door to new customers and markets, and broaden and enhance a firm’s value proposition through the seamless ...

It was Confucius who said that “life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” I’m going to explain why achieving simplicity matters, and how organizing strategy around the number six ...

None of the conference rooms were available, so the meeting was held in a maintenance closet: an 8-by-8-foot room with mops, brooms, and brushes, and the smell of detergent in the air. Ten men and ...

This article was written with Kasturi Rangan and Evan Hirsh. The question “What is strategy?” has spurred numerous doctoral dissertations, countless hours of research, and hearty disagreement among ...

A version of this article appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of strategy+business. Excerpted with permission from From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives, by ...