Book-launch related events
Would you like to be invited to any of my upcoming book tour events? Let me know!
April 25: Columbia Business School alumni event in Boston (invitation only, but if you are in the area we can probably include you)
May 20: Offiical Book launch event! Invitation-only (I can probably wangle an invite, but let me know soon if you are interested - it will be a high profile event at the Parker Meridien featuring senior leaders from companies featured in the new book
May 28: Book signing at alumni-owned bookstore in Maplewood, New Jersey
June 1: Alumni event in London
June 3: HBR sponsored reception in London
June 4: Google author event in London (lunchtime)
June 4: Benchmark for Business reception in London
June 11-12: Visit to Helsinki
June 18: Birmingham, Alabama
June 19: Jacksonville, Florida
June 20: Denver, CO
June 21: Phoenix, AZ
June 22: Carlsberg, CA
June 26: Houston, TX
June 27: Dallas/Fort Worth
It's going to be quite a month!
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- Posted Rita McGrath on April 13, 2013
A requiem for Competitive Advantage - Forbes Interview by Dorie Clark
Last month, I was invited to give a talk at the National Association of Broadcasters on the core theme of my new book. While there, I met the smart and savvy Dorie Clark, who did an interview with me for Forbes. In the interview, I outline why we need a new playbook for strategy, one that recognizes the need for different practices when competitive advantages are short. The new playbook calls for the following building blocks of a new form of strategy:
●Continuous Reconfiguration
●Healthy Disengagement
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 16, 2013
The perils of being a publicly traded firm
Over at my blog on the HBR site, you'll find some commentary on how difficult it is to cope with the constant changes necessary to be adaptive in a fast-moving economy under the glare of public ownership. Have a look!
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 10, 2013
Broadcasters on the brink? Why skyrocketing media pay should be a red flag.
On my blog at HBR, I observed that the business model for broadcasting is showing some cracks and that a new one is likely to emerge. Interestingly, a recent New York Times article points out that the compensation for media CEO's is at sky-high levels, some $10 million more, give or take than the compensation of other executives. So let me make a provocative observation: We've seen this before in industries about to go through wrenching change. In the near term, the companies will have pulled out of less productive markets, narrowed their range of offers, gone upmarket, learned to exert power over suppliers and done a ton of other things that makes their immediate results (and cash flows) look good.
Let me tell you what they aren't doing: using those cash flows to invest in the experimentation, options and new ventures that could provide them a glide path to a new business model. In other words, things look their brightest right before the business model heads over a cliff.
What those big pay packages might mean, instead of celebrating success, is that funds that should be going into building a future for the organization are going into today's consumption instead. And that's a very bad early warning.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 09, 2013
The Hourglass Economy and the Fate of J. C. Penney’s
This month, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the consequences of what some have termed the "hourglass" economy, in which there is growth at the low end of the income spectrum (a boon for dollar stores) and also at the high end (why else would anybody pay so much for a cup of coffee?). In a blog post over at the HBR site, I argue that one of the big problems facing Penney's, and many other organizations, is that the mass middle class is evaporating.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on May 04, 2013
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