Editor’s letter

Citation

Randall, R.M. (2017), "Editor’s letter", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 45 No. 3, pp. 1-2. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-04-2017-0038

The topics engaged by the authors of the articles in this issue are controversial and various. Can Agile teams be effectively used to discover market-creating innovations? Can companies that co-create customization with customers in a truly collaborative process enjoy significantly more sustainable competitive advantages? Can the lingering effects of previous corporate crisis and trauma sabotage attempts to engage a company with new market challenges? Will China transcend current global uncertainty and establish a central role in the new ecosystem economy? How will companies manage their reputations as people become aware that many goods can be produced cheaply only because of slave labor in the supply chain? By way of introducing readers to the new and useful ideas in this issue I’ll let the authors speak for themselves.

Strategic Agility: using Agile teams to explore opportunities for market-creating innovation

Stephen Denning: “Agile teams must redefine how customer needs are being met and in the process, discover value for customers from offering something or doing something that the company or the industry currently doesn’t provide.”

Co-creating customization: collaborating with customers to deliver individualized value

Jordi Loef, B. Joseph Pine II and Henry Robben: “By first adopting a ‘mass customization’ mindset and then developing the required operational strategy, companies can design their offerings and interactions so that individual customers can have more choice and companies can offer innovations that increase customer value.”

Interview

Thomas Stewart: What leaders need to know about the new design revolution in services

Brian Leavy: “Customer experience is an essential element of competitive advantage, and service design is the key that unlocks it.”

Is “transgenerational response” a hidden cause of failed corporate turnarounds and chronic underperformance?

John Oliver: “By looking at chronic corporate underperformance as a potential case of ‘transgenerational response’ business leaders will be able to trace the problem back to its original cause, the event that triggered the subsequent underperformance of the firm.”

How Chinese executives view economic challenges and global opportunities

Steven Davidson, Wei Ding and Anthony Marshall: “The Chinese executives surveyed see the current economic environment in China as encompassing five main challenges – immature services sector, declining domestic consumption growth, lending decisions creating over investment in some sectors, declining export growth and environmental issues impact economic development.”

Interview

How David Cooke implemented Corporate Social Responsibility at Konica Minolta Australia

Gayle C. Avery and Narelle Hooper: “Legislation is coming in most countries around the world that will compel organizations … to report to their governments on what they’re doing to eliminate slavery and human rights abuses from their supply chain – no matter how far downstream. It’s no longer acceptable to say we’re not doing anything wrong, and blame the people who make the components.”

Good reading,