Editor's note

Citation

(2008), "Editor's note", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 29 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2008.28829faa.001

Editor's note

Article Type: Editor's note From: Journal of Business Strategy, Volume 29, Issue 6

Authors from six countries on three continents have contributed papers to this issue of Journal of Business Strategy. Brane Kalpic, who works with an international consulting firm in Slovenia, addresses the unsolved mystery of how to insure M&A success. He points out that mere size is no guarantee of a desirable outcome.

Two authors from Israel contribute a case study of a unique hotel that reinvented itself as a sport hotel, with winning results. The hotel used a diverse marketing mix and varied distribution channels to reach its intended market of sport professionals and sport enthusiasts. Despite the risk inherent in creating such a narrow niche, the hotel executed its strategy with the finesse of an Olympic athlete.

From South Africa, a business professor and department chair who likes to deal with distress (in companies) discusses turnaround situations and introduces a new model for turnaround strategy to complement Porter’s widely-used generic model.

Reed Holden’s paper on price discounting, while addressing a serious subject, has some humorous observations. It is not easy to turn away from the false allure of discounting, but he persuades us that the siren call of price cutting will ultimately lead to lost customers and poor performance.

The papers on consumer warfare and corporate alignment round out the feature articles. But an equally important part of JBS is our regular columnists, who seem to come through every time with fresh insights, crisp writing, and new ideas. Their columns are more like feature papers or essays than casual commentary. In this issue, coincidentally, two of our columnists, Stuart Jackson and Ajit Kambil, discuss the future of business in terms of internet opportunities, in the process creating a framework for cyber-planning.

Just when I learned about Web 2.0, Ajit Kambil, our Strategy Crossroads columnist and head of research at Deloitte, has made me realize that I am still subject to future shock, as he discusses Web 3.0 (the Semantic Web), Web 4.0 (the Mobile, Machine and Object Web) and Web 5.0 (the Sensory-Emotive Web) that can actually sense emotions of the user. He introduces words and language that are foreign to most of us now but may soon sound familiar: Webkinz, Haptics, Second Life avatars, for example.

We hope you enjoy this last issue of 2008 and wish you a prosperous and happy 2009.