All articles by Ken Favaro

Some recent announcements have cast a shadow on the concept, but it’s still a great tool for optimizing a company’s strategy, performance, and potential.

How to find the best way for your business to have a positive social impact.

Organizations that don’t have a profit imperative still need to answer three critical questions.

The right time frame for a strategy depends on what its implementation will require.

Leaders should draw on the past to spark ideas that are both novel and practical.

Three questions will help you find the best combination of buy, borrow, and build for your business.

Clear choices can provide stability for your organization while also enhancing your strategic options and ability to adapt.

Evaluate new management approaches, such as holacracy and agile, based on how they can improve clarity and collaboration at your company.

Animal Spirits

Successful innovation in big organizations demands three essential behaviors.

Financial engineering won’t fix a stagnant valuation.

The next generation of management needs to build its strategic acumen through real-world practice.

Your strategy should turn customers into “cross-buyers” of your products and services.

Shaping strategy should be an ongoing team effort of the CEO and directors, not just an annual exercise.

Your strategic planning process and annual off-sites may be holding your directors back.

A punishing trek is a painful reminder to get your strategic fundamentals right.

The thriving streaming business faces some fundamental questions about its future.

The most capable strategists see the real value, and big pitfalls, in new business concepts.

What to do when you outgrow your target market — or vice versa.

Don’t underestimate the power of choosing a unique definition of the customers your company will serve.

How companies with multiple businesses operating in far-flung markets can avoid common strategy-implementation pitfalls.

Why established companies should join forces with upstart competitors.

Large enterprises that operate both as a single entity and a business portfolio get the best of both worlds.

The Search for Innovation

Winning strategies start with a big idea.

More companies are seeking greater control of their value chain — but they should do so with caution.

Poor planning for changes in leadership costs companies dearly. Getting it right is worth more than you might think. See also “CEO Succession: Why It Pays to Have a Plan.”

Winning companies are made by leaders committed to solving important problems with innovative ideas — against all odds.

It’s time to break your company’s cycle of expand-contract-repeat.

How to make data your source of sustained growth.

The linking of billions of devices through the Web has scaled the heights of strategy fashion.

You won’t find them through typical strategic planning, executive retreats, or brainstorming sessions.

To the Nimble Go the Spoils

When your strategy is shackled to the annual planning process, you lose a uniquely powerful management tool.

Answering two critical questions will fortify your company’s strategy—and your ability to implement it.

How to navigate the twin demands of current performance and future investment.

From 100 years back to a quarter century ahead, the evolution of the chief executive officer.

Although culture is much more than an “enabler” of strategy, it’s no substitute for it.

Customers and capabilities—not the competition—should take center stage when developing strategies.

Many adjacency moves fail because they’re driven by the wrong motives. But a lot can be learned from those that succeed.

Why a popular approach to growth may put your company’s health at risk.

From the headlines to the C-suite, big data embodied the height of strategy-as-fashion in 2013.

What is 2013’s most in-vogue strategy? Make your nominations.

Avoid the usual temptations and your big bet on Verizon Wireless might be a big win.

A respected head office and strong corporate affinity will drive the company’s fortunes.

As he prepares to step down, will Ballmer’s organizational shake-up make any difference?

The cofounder of unconscious thought theory explains how taking a break and distracting the mind can lead to higher-quality decision making.

Why some corporate relationships end in divorce while others live on in blissful union.

Successful strategists understand that their role is to manage a process fraught with contradictions.

As A.G. Lafley returns to the helm, the consumer products giant can’t just rely on its product development expertise to get its mojo back.

The road to sustained success begins with the answer to this simple question: “Who are we?”

The newest CEOs have neither the diversity nor the global backgrounds that you might expect.

CEO turnover is trending high, but in a more planned and stable manner.

Even when facing a crisis, some CEOs know how to anticipate the worst, plan a response, and navigate to advantage. You can do the same.

The big box retailer badly needs a good dose of strategic innovation. Is it up to the task?

Understanding the real value of corporate strategy and the head office.

How strategic intuition unlocks innovative solutions to your biggest problems.

A Harvard Business School professor observes that leaders become better strategists by engaging in conversations about the purpose of a company.

A review of Build, Borrow, or Buy, by Laurence Capron and Will Mitchell.

When leaders substitute visions, missions, purposes, plans, or goals for the real work of strategy, they send their firms adrift.

Many business leaders think they’d rather have great execution than superior strategies, but you can’t have the first without the second.

What is a business strategy? It is the result of choices made to maximize long-term value.

Big companies are once again appointing new chief executives in greater numbers, Booz & Company’s annual study finds. Here’s a close look at the incoming class, and some advice from veterans on how they can best navigate their crucial first year.

CEOs who took part in Booz & Company’s 2011 study of CEO turnover share their thoughts about the difficulties they faced, the successes they achieved, and what, in retrospect, they might have done differently in their first year on the job.

Business strategy is best distinguished from corporate strategy by the different perspectives that business leaders and strategic planners must bring to bear.

Six months after video rental company CEO Reed Hastings was forced into a strategic retreat from Qwikster, strategists can still learn a lot from his decision.

To outperform their rivals, private equity firms will need to enhance their ability to spur organic growth in the companies they own. (And public companies will need to follow.)

Booz & Company’s annual study of turnover among chief executives — now increasingly diverse, as the world’s largest companies migrate to emerging economies — suggests that the nature of the job varies with the role of the corporate core.

This measure of business performance is the best indicator of corporate success.

How CEOs can turn conflict, dissent, and disagreement into a powerful tool for driving performance.

The role of the chief executive is evolving. CEOs from around the world discuss the game-changing practices that lead to success.