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This article proposes a framework to address a central conundrum in strategic management: How can firms transcend the trade-off between the momentum that results from the strong strategic commitments needed to gain industry leadership with the need for strategic agility in the face of strategic discontinuities? The article develops an analysis of the meta-capabilities underlying strategic agility, which is clustered around strategic sensitivity (both the sharpness of perception and the intensity of awareness and attention), resource fluidity (the internal capability to reconfigure business systems and redeploy resources rapidly), and leadership unity (the ability of the top team to make bold decisions fast, without getting bogged down in "win-lose" politics at the top). Based on an in-depth study of Nokia's evolution over the past twenty years, this article shows how these three meta-capabilities interact over time and proposes a framework to enable a firm to maintain and regain strategic agility as it matures.

This article presents the "strategy diamond," which extends received strategic management theory by integrating the positional view and the resource-based view, the formulation and implementation of strategy, and the firm's internal selection environment into one relatively simple conceptual framework of dynamic forces driving firm evolution. The article suggests that this framework can be helpful in stimulating further research to drive towards a dynamic theory of strategy. The strategy diamond facilitates understanding the dynamic interplays between strategy logic and strategy execution, and its jargon-free "natural language form" may facilitate strategic conversations and help inculcate a strategic mentality into organizations. This framework has been useful for senior executives in two major corporations. Four case studies highlight how the framework may help instill strategic discipline in high-technology ventures operating in extremely dynamic environments.

This is the second of a two-case series. Cirque du Soleil very successfully entered a structurally unattractive circus industry. It was able to reinvent the industry and created a new market space by challenging the conventional assumptions about how to compete. It value innovated by shifting the buyer group from children (end-users of the traditional circus) to adults (purchasers of the traditional circus), drawing upon the distinctive strengths of other alternative industries, such as the theatre, Broadway shows and the opera, to offer a totally new set of utilities to more mature and higher spending customers. **ecch European Case Awards Category Winner 2008**

It's high time to shift our focus from the "avails" in media content to those in consumers' lives - that is, where, when, and how people might be receptive to relevant commercial messages.

Supervisors often turn a blind eye when employees use company resources and time to work on personal projects. They realize that stamping out such behavior may do more harm than good.

By engaging employees in the systematic, facilitated collection and circulation of organizational knowledge, you can make sure innovations reach those who need them. Intel Solution Services offers a case in point.

The president and CEO of Estee Lauder Companies learned the importance of time management back when he worked under U.S. treasury secretary Donald Regan. The lesson sounds simple, but it has shaped his approach to strategy and his philosophy on motivating people.

Most of the green buildings constructed over the past decade in the United States have been white-collar workplaces such as office buildings and schools. The greening of blue-collar workplaces, from warehouses to factories, has lagged far behind - but that's beginning to change.

After a merger, managers should strengthen sales and marketing before cutting costs. That's because revenue growth generates long-term shareholder value.

Though many multinationals see little business potential in serving the poorest people in developing countries, two innovative mobile phone companies are making profits and improving local economic conditions by doing exactly that.

The CEO of SpinVox, a start-up that provides voice-to-text service, says her relationships with her mentors have been the key to her entrepreneurial success.

A new study shows that downsizing often prompts demoralized survivors to quit, which hinders efficiency and costs companies money. To add insult to irony, career-development programs are associated with even higher turnover after the ax falls. The researchers say that certain types of HR practices may help.

Research by IBM's Visual Communication Lab shows that the sophisticated graphing of data generates impassioned conversations and collaboration. Executives seeking to engage employees in solving company problems should take note.

At the end of 2005, Atlanta-based Oxford Industries was closing on its third major acquisition in as many years. Two-and-a-half years earlier, Oxford had acquired the Tommy Bahama brand in Seattle, and one year later, it had purchased London-based Ben Sherman. As Oxford's CIO, John Baumgartner has managed over the last three years to provide systems support to establish visibility into the day-to-day financial activities of the legacy company and the newly acquired operating companies, while at the same time minimizing any negative impacts on the profitability of the newly acquired companies through business process and system changes. As additional acquisitions are planned, however, balancing these two objectives is becoming more and more difficult. The degree to which the acquired organizations should function independently or be brought under one corporate information system is becoming an increasingly pressing issue.

The authors argue that consumer valuations of goods and services are a lot more arbitrary than we may think, and are affected by several 'arbitrary' components and biases. They describe the phenomenon of 'Tom's Law', whereby Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer discovered a great law of human behavior: that in order to make a person covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. They introduce the concept of 'coherent arbitrariness' and show how arbitrariness is enhanced by ambiguity in a good or bad experience.

The top tier of society's income and wealth distribution has become a widespread emulative target, and there are implications for consumer satisfaction and collective well-being. The author describes the roots of the problem and how three shifts--in wealth and income distributions, of women into corporate hierarchies, and of the growing importance of electronic media--have led to an escalation of North Americans' consumer aspirations. She then shows how quality of life has been affected in at least three important ways and ponders a sustainable way forward.

The authors describe their research, which found that when a quantity of a given resource - such as food, money, or cigarettes - is physically divided into smaller quantities, it reduces both the total quantity consumed and the speed of consumption. For marketers, these results suggest that simple forms of packaging have the ability to create dramatic variations in consumption. For consumers, the message is simple - for consumption that you want to control (but that is tempting), the simple act of partitioning the resource will help curb consumption.

Unilever CEO Patrick Cescau describes how finding the 'sweet spot' between the needs of consumers, society and our planet is a complex task, but shows that it can be a significant source of competitive advantage for those who do it well. Cescau provides specific examples of how Unilever's presence in the emerging economies of Asia and Africa is contributing to the global development agenda, describing in detail the new business models his firm has created for products that meet social needs.

To maximize happiness, consumers must accurately predict the emotional consequences of their options and make product and service choices based on those predictions. The authors describe concepts including 'hedonic editing' and the role of multiple choice, and discuss eight common consumption biases that can decrease consumer happiness. In the end they show that 'hedonomics' challenges two commonly-held assumptions in economics: that maximizing a desired external stimuli equals maximizing consumer happiness; and that what consumers choose reflects what makes them happy.

If a brand is the relationship between a business and its customers, the retail space is its most visceral conversation. Considering a shopper's context is the key to understanding their motivations and making green products and services more relevant to them. By better understanding what shoppers desire from green offerings and what matters in the context of their shopping experience - i.e. time and convenience - products and services can connect with people in a more relevant way. The authors, from leading design firm IDEO, describe four strategies for engaging shoppers with products that encourage a sustainable lifestyle for all.