Today's organizations must become far more effective in crafting strategy that reflects the relentless external technological, economic, political, and business pressures they face. In this guide, leading technology strategy educator Alfred A. Marcus offers powerful tools for anticipating change and managing the threats and opportunities it poses.
Using incisive case studies, Marcus shows how to describe potential events leading from the present to the future, envision alternative positive and negative futures, and assess the moves you can make to achieve the future you want. He offers practical guidance for analyzing current strategy, challenges, customer and supplier bases, current and potential competitors, and possible short- and long-term substitutes for your offerings.
Marcus helps you identify the events that can quickly destroy a flourishing business model or change a fast-growing company into one that's just "treading water." You'll learn how to incorporate major technological shifts, global security, economics, and sustainability in your analyses, reducing the risk of unexpected external shocks to the maximum extent possible.
Next, Marcus demonstrates how to systematically assess potential responses related to product positioning, M&A, divesting, partnering, globalizing, and innovation. Finally, since businesses often ignore even the most compelling predictions, he addresses the challenge of getting your organization to take your analysis seriously - so you can act in time to shape the future you desire.
Author Biography
Alfred A. Marcus is the Edson Spence Chair of Strategy and Technological Leadership at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management and the Center for Technological Leadership. He is the author or co-author of many books, including Innovations in Sustainability published by Cambridge University Press; Management Strategy, published by McGraw Hill; Strategic Foresight, published by Palgrave MacMillan; and Big Winners and Big Losers, published by Pearson. His articles have appeared in the Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, California Management Review, Business and Politics, Business and Society, and Organization Science, among other places.
His Ph.D. is from Harvard, and he has undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Chicago. Besides teaching in the Carlson School and Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, Professor Marcus teaches in the Industrial Engineering Department in the MBA program in the Technion in Israel. He also has taught management courses in France, Norway, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, and Costa Rica.
Professor Marcus has consulted or worked with many corporations, including 3M, Corning, Excel Energy, Medtronic, General Mills, and IBM. He was involved in a multinational research project sponsored by the NSF involving companies in the United States, Finland, Israel, and India. He did a sabbatical year at the MIT Sloan School in Boston. Prior to the joining Minnesota's faculty, he taught at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School Of Business and was a research scientist at the Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers in Seattle, Washington.
