General Motors was once regarded as one of the best managed and most successful firms in the world, but between 1980 and 2009 its share of the US market fell from 62.6 to 19.8 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. In this paper we argue that the conventional explanation for this decline...

The development of the smart grid -- the integration of traditional elements of energy transmission and delivery with information technology -- heralds a new era in the power industry. Many new business opportunities will be created as the smart grid gets developed. What strategies should Cisco...

In 1997 Nestle committed to a strategic vision of becoming the leading nutrition, health and wellness (NHW) company in the world. Over the next 13 years, the NHW strategy guided strategic decisions and choices at Nestle including merger and acquisition choices, strategies for improving products,...

Since its 1999 merger Reckitt Benckiser (RB), a global consumer goods company, led by its CEO Bart Becht, RB developed a reputation for rapid product innovation and industry leading profit margins. RB's stated strategy was to focus on its Powerbrands and high growth categories and to nurture the...

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on “managing the numbers” – delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer term investments – makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive advantage....

Much recent work in strategy and popular discussion suggests that an excessive focus on "managing the numbers" --delivering quarterly earnings at the expense of longer term investments--makes it difficult for firms to make the investments necessary to build competitive advantage. "Short termism"...

We examine the impact of publicly funded biomedical research on the in-house research of the for-profit pharmaceutical industry. Qualitative analysis of the history of the discovery and development of a sample of 21 significant drugs, and a program of interviews with senior managers and...

We compare the geographic location of patent citations to those of the cited patents, as evidence of the extent to which knowledge spillovers are geographically localized. We find that citations to U.S. patents are more likely to come from the U.S., and more likely to come from the same state...

This paper draws on a detailed history of Intel's strategy with respect to the complementary markets for microprocessors to explore the usefulness of the current theoretical literature for explaining behavior. We find that as the literature predicts, Intel invests heavily in these markets, both...