Strategic planning is about preparing a business for the future. As we all know, a strategy should put a business in a position to maximally exploit potential chances and to minimize the damage of potential threats.
We all witness the worst financial crisis most of us would have thought of in these days. We also witness […]

In this post we will have a brief look at a specific phenomenon of strategic management. Turn back time is in interesting concept in terms of movies or sci-fi literature, but in terms of chosen strategic directions an easy way out often does not exist. So let’s look at this issue – given the example […]

A couple of days ago I participated in a discussion concerning risk management systems. A specific emphasis was given on strategic risks and their management. Identification and delimitation were described as two major problems when starting to manage this risk type.
Well, that is basically not an unusual situation within an organization. Before managing a specific […]

The subprime crisis of us-American mortgages (and its primary and secondary impacts on the financial system) has increased the pressure for mergers and acquisitions in the European financial services market. In particular in Germany major transactions are likely to occur: Postbank and Citibank are on Sale. Some Federal State banks (former Sachsen LB and West […]

As you might have noticed from one of my blog posts I am an external PhD-student of the Warsaw School of Economics / Institute for Organization and Management in Industry. My research topic focuses on the strategic planning of European retail banks. As part of my studies I was given the opportunity to present some […]

A couple of weeks ago I discussed four major benefit criteria of innovation in this post. Now it is time to look on the other side of innovation. Yes, there are not only benefits; in the case that your organization starts to focus on innovation you should have in mind to face some disadvantages. You […]

Last week I discussed the four benefit criteria of innovation. This post will focus on the impact of “innovation speed”. But don’t forget: Innovation is not the general approach (in the sense of “one tool fits all”) to enter competition; when focusing on innovation your organization should consider issues like complexity, costs and strategy. But […]

In my post last week I discussed innovation’s impact on corporate success. In the meantime I had a very interesting conversation with a student (business economics) related to innovation issues. The core of this conversation highlighted the character of innovation, the difference to inventions and the benefit aspects.
So let us start with a definition for […]

A couple of weeks ago I posted “How innovative is your organization” in order to discuss some fundamental aspects of innovation. In this post we will look at the impact of innovation. My personal observation is that most organizations see innovation as a very positive measure. Of course, being innovative sounds fine and offers a […]

In this post I will describe the first steps and approaches of (small to medium size) German retail banks when organizing their strategic planning process. Some of these aspects are valid for all types of small to medium size companies; at least they offer the option to compare your strategic planning process with the banks’ […]