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Most firms struggle to adapt to discontinuous changes in their environment--witness Lego's very slow adaptation to the world of digital devices and online games. One key reason for this is that they get locked into established networks of relationships and struggle to break out of these relationships and establish new ones. Examines the approaches firms can use to build relationships with new prospective partners that are more suited to the opportunities and threats they face in new competitive environments. Identifies the key barriers that prevent firms from accessing these "networks for discontinuous innovation" and presents specific strategies that firms can adopt to overcome them. The challenge involves three steps: finding the right partners to engage with, forming relationships with them, and then building high-performing networks. By following the guidelines proposed, firms will be more likely to create high-performing networks for discontinuous innovation.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. For a firm to succeed over the long term, it needs to master both adaptability and alignment--an attribute sometimes referred to as ambidexterity. The concept is alluring, but the evidence suggests that most companies have struggled to apply it. The standard approach has been to create separate structures for different types of activities. But separation can also lead to isolation, and many R&D and business development groups have failed because of their lack of linkages to the core businesses. In an attempt to shed new light on the discussion, the authors develop and explore their concept of contextual ambidexterity, which calls for individual employees to make choices between alignment-oriented and adaptation-oriented activities in the context of their day-to-day work. The authors introduce this as a complementary concept to traditional structural ambidexterity. By means of their survey- and interview-based research--which took place over a three-year period and involved 4,195 respondents across 41 business units in 10 multinational firms--the authors identify the four behaviors displayed by ambidextrous individuals, each of which involves taking independent, adaptive action in the service of overall company goals. They then present a framework for describing and analyzing which organizational contexts encourage or discourage such behaviors. They link organizational context to ambidexterity and, in turn, ambidexterity to high performance. Finally, the authors describe how companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, Oracle, and Renault have been able to create such high-performance contexts, and they offer managers guidance on how to create them in their own companies.

Internal competition evokes mixed feelings among senior executives. It is typically seen as wasteful, bad for morale, and indicative of a lack of strategic direction; but at the same time it can also be very beneficial--a way to create flexibility in the face of technological uncertainty as well as challenge the status quo. This article draws on a five-year study in ten companies to provide advice to executives on how to realize the benefits of internal competition. It describes two distinct forms of internal competition (competition among technologies and competition among lines of business) and the appropriate strategies for managing each one. It also identifies the criteria for deciding whether to allow competing units to coexist or whether their activities should be consolidated.

There is a strong current trend toward globalization of the sales function, driven by increasing customer power, initiatives in customer relationship management, and the design of customer-centric organizations. This article questions the wisdom of rapid adoption of global account management by vendor companies. Drawing on field and survey research among global account managers, the authors highlight a number of ways in which vendors can fail to reap the benefits of global customer relationships and, instead, suffer falling prices. A number of managerial guidelines are suggested for a strategic approach toward global customer management and an effective implementation of global account management programs.

The authors' research into more than 50 multinationals suggests that encouraging innovation in foreign subsidiaries requires a change in attitude. Companies should start to think of foreign subsidiaries as peninsulas rather than as islands--as extensions of the company's strategic domain rather than as isolated outposts. If they do, innovative ideas will flow more freely from the periphery to the corporate center. Basing their arguments on a rich array of examples, the authors say that encouraging such "innovation at the edges" also requires a new set of practices, with two aims: to improve the formal and informal channels of communication between headquarters and subsidiaries and to give foreign subsidiaries more authority to see their ideas through. The challenge for executives of multinationals is to find ways to liberalize, not tighten, internal systems and to delegate more authority to local subsidiaries. It isn't enough to ask subsidiary managers to be innovative; corporate managers need to give them incentives and support systems to facilitate their efforts. The authors suggest four approaches: give seed money to subsidiaries; use formal requests for proposals as a way of increasing the demand for seed money; encourage subsidiaries to be incubators for fledgling businesses; and build international networks. As part of the last approach, multinationals also need to create roles for idea brokers who can link entrepreneurs in foreign subsidiaries with other parts of the company.

To ensure that acquisitions generate value, what should the priorities of the new management team be? If it starts with rationalization (closing duplicate facilities, reducing the head count), it will make rapid progress on the cost side, but risk a demotivated work force. If it emphasizes acculturation (building relationships, fostering a common culture), it will have happy employees, but little cost savings. Doing both at the same time is no answer, either. Intensive analysis of three case studies suggests a model for the acquiring firm in deciding whether to pursue the "high road" by first emphasizing human integration before concentrating on operational synergies, or the "low road" of attending to cost savings initially and subsequently focusing on relationships. Evidence supports the case for a "high road" approach when the acquired firm's key assets are R&D and knowledge-intensive. A three-phase model--initial actions, follow-up, and second wave--is offered to help top management avoid the perils on either side of an optimal integration path. Specific examples are drawn from the experiences documented in the three case studies.