Management - Leadership

Many philanthropists have big ambitions, but even the richest individuals and largest foundations don't have enough money to end poverty, reverse climate change, or cure cancer.

Most organizations have strategic plans, these days, and create them through sometimes detailed and time-consuming processes.

These thoughts plagued Jason, an experienced manager, as he lay awake one night fretting about a new position he’d taken. For more than five years he had run a small team of developers in Boston. They produced two highly successful lines of engineering textbooks for the education publishing arm of a major media conglomerate.

Strategy has been the primary building block of competitiveness over the past three decades, but in the future, the quest for sustainable advantage may well begin with the business model.

Many Western multinationals expect to find most of their future growth in emerging economies. But they have frequently struggled to exploit the opportunity, relentlessly cutting costs and accepting profit margins close to zero.

The concept of shared value—which focuses on the connections between societal and economic progress—has the power to unleash the next wave of global growth.