Smart Big Moves: The Story Behind Strategic Breakthroughs

Acknowledgements

For the past 15 years, we have been studying what drives strategic breakthroughs. We first looked at the impact of industry breakpoints and found that, while external forces are important from time to time, the more frequent breakthroughs come from big strategic moves that managers make to trigger the further development of a business. The keys to breakthroughs are to be found mainly inside the company, even inside management heads, rather than outside. These early findings were discussed with the hundreds of managers who attended the IMD’s Breakthrough Programme for Senior Executives in the early 2000s and the Programme for Executive Development more recently. We are indebted to the participants on these and other IMD programmes ...