Comments on: Nimble execution: learn cheaply and adapt quickly

By: Albunni Yazan, de Theux Gloria, Meeus Chloé, Zorrilla Celia

Albunni Yazan, de Theux Gloria, Meeus Chloé, Zorrilla Celia — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 12:24:41 +0000

This article challenges the idea that good initial planning is the key to a successful project. Indeed, it highlights the fact that careful planning is outweighed by the impact of change. Even if planning does help with schedule, budget, and scope, its positive impact is almost entirely canceled out when the project faces significant changes. Moreover, not all changes are the same, we can distinguish between goal changes (which affect what the project is trying to achieve) and plan changes (which affect how the project is organized). Goal changes pose the greatest risk of project failure, as they are far more disruptive. Finally, the article also highlights that adaptability matters more than the initial plan.

The main implication of the study is that managers should focus on stabilizing project goals early, as goal changes are the strongest factor harming project efficiency and they trigger additional plan changes whose negative impact outweighs the benefits of good planning. Clear early goal definition, strong user involvement, and freezing requirements as soon as possible help prevent this instability. At the same time, managers must control external pressures such as staffing shortages, personnel turnover, parallel projects, and technological risks (e.g. building a product around a hardware component still in development), which often drive both goal and plan changes and disrupt performance. Ensuring stable staffing, limiting parallel workloads, and anticipating technological uncertainty reduces the likelihood of
such disruptions. As a final implication, the study notes that successful projects keep goals concrete and stable while allowing plans to stay flexible. Stable goals reduce confusion and rework, because everyone knows exactly what the project is aiming to achieve. Meanwhile, plans must remain adaptable so the team can adjust to challenges and changes in the project environment.

The paper has some limitations. Firstly, there are projects with strong legal constraints or norms of security where the objectives and requirements hardly change. Indeed, sometimes there are legal constraints that are difficult to overcome in order to make the change. Moreover it can be complicated to implement change, or even risky and therefore should be avoided. Then, the size of the company has an impact on its capability to choose whether or not it can implement change. SMEs or start-ups may be constrained by their investors and therefore are quite limited in terms of change. They can’t decide for themselves to make changes. Unlike large companies, which have the power to decide to implement changes. Finally, it is true that in general the fact of being able to adapt matters more than the initial plan. However, there are sectors, for example the automobile industry, where this adaptability has a limit because beyond a certain threshold changes cost more than they bring. A strategy, mentioned by the article, that can be put in place by these sectors is the « freeze gates » which means that after a certain date no more modifications can be made.

Recent research expands Dvir and Lechler’s (2008) framework by showing that the effects of plan changes are not uniform but depend strongly on contextual factors such as industry and project complexity (Carvalho et al., 2015). Meanwhile, the second article (Ika and Pinto, 2022) broadens the notion of project success by emphasizing stakeholder satisfaction, benefits realization, issues of timing and sustainability. Their findings suggest that plan changes are not necessarily failures but can be opportunities to generate value through flexible management.

References:

(Article) Carvalho, M. M. de, Patah, L. A., & de Souza Bido, D. (2015). Project management and its effects on project success: Cross‑country and cross‑industry comparisons. International Journal of Project Management, 33(7), 1509–1522.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263786315000733

(Article) Dvir, D., & Lechler, T. (2004). Plans are nothing, changing plans is everything: the impact of changes on project success. Research Policy, 33(1), 1-15.

(Article) Ika, L. A., & Pinto, J. K. (2022). The “re‑meaning” of project success: Updating and recalibrating for a modern project management. International Journal of Project Management, 40(7), 835–848.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263786322000990

By: Alberto Duprè, Aude Meunier, Henri de Villenfagne, Julie Dopchie, Rodrigue David

Alberto Duprè, Aude Meunier, Henri de Villenfagne, Julie Dopchie, Rodrigue David — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 14:37:31 +0000

The difference between management control and the five points of strategic control are in 2
sub differences. First, the difference between management control and the first point of
strategic control so the control of the strategic implementation is just about the focus. Indeed,
they have the same purpose who is to implement the strategy as a plan and the same process,
to set the standard of desired performance, track the actual performance and use the deviations
to take corrective action. But strategic control focuses on some key success factors and
management control takes care of all the aspects. After it the 4 others points of strategic
control are totally different from the 2 previous points. The 4 other points are validating
strategic assumptions, strategic issues management, interactive control and periodic strategy
review. So they have another purpose, they change the strategy content to invalid the planning
and to put light on the opportunities. The process is also different because they collect and
interpret data’s in the previous objective to identify opportunities. And they focus on planning
assumptions and opportunities.
Managers should always be aware of the changing environment so they should try to
implement both systems of strategic control and management control. One that is monitoring
the implementation of strategy and one that is monitoring the environmental changes. The
second managerial implication is that in companies it’s very important to always involve staff
and people all around the company, not just the top managers. That’s because you keep in
touch with what is really happening. You can do that by informing the staff about strategies
and changes. Involve them, especially line managers that are linked to both top managers and
employees, in the decision-making process, to monitor changes and react to them. To do so
top managers could have once a week, a meeting with line managers to monitor constantly the
situation. Line managers also should collect the opinion of the staff. If there are changes in the
environment, they can add more weekly meetings. The last implication is that managers
should be prepared to understand when they need to stop their commitment to pre-planned
strategy. Because as we said there are changes in the environment and your strategy might be
invalid at a certain moment. You must adapt and it’s very important to understand when to
stop and when to push with a specific innovation or strategy.
For the limitations, we focused on the limitations of one particular managerial implication,
involving the staff in the decision process but it’s not always a good idea. First, for security,
indeed if the decision to be made contains sensitive information it’s best not to involve too
many people so that the information doesn’t get leaked. For example, if it concerns the
acquisition of a company, it’s important that it stays secret.
The second limitation is that it can create problems with authority. If you involve the
employees in the decision-making process, it might weaken the hierarchy in place, a manager
should be careful and make sure his authority will not be threatened before involving the
staff.
The last limitation is that employees might miss the big picture, be too focused on their own
department so it might be best not to involve all the staff and keep the decisions concerning
the global strategy of the company on the management level.
About the further references, we decided to take a ted talk of Bernhard Schroeder, a previous
Director of Programs at San Diego State University, who worked with brands like Apple and
Mercedes-Benz. Today, he mentors startups with differing levels of support.
He takes an example of a startup he helped when they designed their business plan. During
their first year they raised 200, 000 dollars but they moved off their business plan due to
afterwards feedback from customers and the investors weren’t happy about it. The key point
is that you must start with a clear and stable business plan. You need an idea, a model, a basic
prototype which can easily be modified and direct feedback from more than 50 potential
customers, before you launch your business. It will allow you to learn, get feedback and you
will create your business with less surprises. His advice is to follow all these steps, to build a
concreate idea and to find 200 real customers in 8 weeks.
To conclude, Mr. Schroeder said: “Test, fail and learn to become a good entrepreneur!”
The second reference we choose is an article called “The influence of strategic control and
operational control on new venture performance”. We thought it could be interesting to
analyse what is the impact of the type of control in a very different political landscape. This
article analyses the Chinese market. The most interesting points are “strategic control has a
significantly negative relationship with new venture performance; operational control has a
significantly positive relationship with new venture performance; industry relatedness
between the corporate investor and the new venture and the new venture’s political ties
moderate the relationships between the two types of control and new venture performance.
The results are robust to alternative measurements of new venture performance.”

By: ANTONI Julien, BOTIKALI Wendy, CHENUT Juliette, CORS Samuel; MALULU Trinity

ANTONI Julien, BOTIKALI Wendy, CHENUT Juliette, CORS Samuel; MALULU Trinity — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 13:09:57 +0000

Key Insights
Seven is the number of surprises a new CEO must face when he is starting a new business. Today, we
all know that the job of a CEO is not an easy one. And at the beginning, they want to make a lot of
changes within the company. But it’s not that easy because as a new CEO, they must take some
things into account. They also must be able to use their power with a lot of intelligence and wisdom.
Implications
First of all, even though many CEOs were responsible for a major business role before, their current
position is very different. They have to manage being MrInside, by controlling the internal demand,
but also MrOutside, by leading the external pressure as the new face of the company. So, they have
to learn how to separate themselves from operations and let go of a lot of responsibility. The second
implication is that you will have to seek valid information. Because you’ve become CEO, the
information coming to you will be filtered by, for instance, minimizing how serious a problem could
be. A solution could be face-to-face conversations with people at different levels and various parts of
the company. This informal setting will help to reduce barriers to communication. Finally, rather than
attempt to please all shareholders, CEOs must recognize that it is only long-term profitability that
matters, not today’s growth expectations. A key CEO role is to sell the strategy and shape how
shareholders look at the company. CEOs should not expect that their strategies will be immediately
understood; a constant stream of explanations will likely be necessary to affect analysts’ perceptions.
Success in this process may be slow. But a CEO with the courage to develop a strategy, even if it is
currently unpopular, will eventually attract the right shareholders, those who buy and hold the stock
because they believe in the big picture.
Limitations
The first limitation, what about smaller companies? Companies with a much smaller turnover and
number of employees. Smaller companies certainly face these issues to different degrees.
For example, for the surprise one: you can’t run the company. It is said that the CEO cannot handle
all requests from internal or external stakeholders. In a smaller company this would be more
manageable.
Then, each company is unique and can reveal its own way of operating. Sometimes trying to change
the structure of the company too much to follow this advice can be very dangerous. Especially when
the company is already functioning very well by not necessarily following this advice before the
arrival of the new CEO.
As the article itself says, even following the advice carefully does not fully prepare a CEO to take on
the role perfectly. There will always be surprises, exceptions, and new challenges upon taking office.
Further references
The first article is about the analysis of narcissistic behavior of CEOs. This could have positive and/or
negative strategic impacts on the organization. The second reference is a video which shows us how
to behave when you become a new CEO. We can see the CEO’s of Paypal and Microsoft talking about
the leadership.
Cragun, O. R., Olsen, K. J., & Wright, P. M. (2019). Making CEO Narcissism Research Great: A Review and Meta-Analysis of
CEO Narcissism. Journal of Management, 46(6), 908–936. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206319892678`
PayPal. (2017b, November 8). PayPal CEO and Microsoft CEO Share Insights on Leadership [Video].
YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7C0xojv2fE

By: Amandine Massant

Amandine Massant — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 16:59:41 +0000

The main objective of the article is to propose different types of innovation processes depending on the type of project and other organisational parameters such as the size of the company, the sector of activity, the age and the creation or not of an R&D department. The study was made of more than 132 innovation projects in 72 different companies, mainly from Brazil, one from France and two from Holland. The study was based on the multiple case study approach which consists of the analysis and comparison between different projects based on their main activities. The eight processes have been studied by taking into consideration the following criteria : Significant differences in scope between the projects studied; Differences between the processes in terms of their level of formality ; Different ways of dealing with uncertainties in innovation processes ; There are different processes in terms of structure and content. The eight processes are classified following 4 axes : Traditional process, Customer Oriented, Stoppage and Parallel activities. During the presentation we compared briefly each processes between each other.
The first implication was related to overcoming uncertainties. We recommended to be more customer oriented by offering more personalized products. You can do that by creating open platforms where clients give their preferences about products (like Lays and C’est qui le Patron). You also have to be more Company Oriented by implementing controls systems on the production process (like the products proposed by Odoo), or on the behaviour -by collective “reward system”-. But three limitations come across: it’s not possible to create a specifical product for each demand; product customization doesn’t work for all sectors; and it’s not always possible to forecast with certainty the allocated budget for product development in complex and unstable environments.
The second implication, is that you have to be aware about stoppage processes. To do so, you have to 1) Wait for the market to be mature enough to adopt your innovation (like 5G infrastructires); 2) Wait for the advance of technology, 3) Wait for both. But what if the market never come? The firm must nurture the market (like Tesla that disclosed its patents). The second limitation is that we cannot create technologies that doesn’t exist.
The third implication is linked to the parallel activities. We advised to always consider the product as a sample because innovation is a never ending process. You have to consider your product as a beta version of it that you have to update constantly. You can do that by adopting the agile process for your projects. But there are some times where the beta version is not good enough for the demand (like Google Glass). In that case it brings bad image that can be fatal for the firm. The second limitation is that products have an innovation lute. There’s a moment when additional improvement doesn’t add more value to the customer’s eyes (like Matrass with 10 different layers). It can also spoil the initial purpose of the product (if you have a Couteau Suisse with 20 different tools for example)
For the further references we chose two articles from Zizlavsky, O. « The Use of Financial and Nonfinancial Measures within Innovation Management Control: Experience and Research » (2016). Journal of Innovation management. That explains how and why it is important to measure the performance of our innovations. And from Richard F. Vancil. « What Kind of Management Control Do You Need? » (March 1973). Harvard Business Review. That advices major tools that can be used to have a better management control.
During this session, the teacher advised us to be careful about which type of profiles the sample of companies was taken into account in the studies. Indeed, knowing the size and the activity of the company could help to understand better when the eight processes are applied.

By: Aade Sarah, Agstner Nadia, Guillaume Camille, Marchal Alice, t'Kint de Roodenbeke Constantin, Van Daele Margaux

Sun, 05 Dec 2021 21:47:23 +0000

The first point shows how opportunity can be the essence and heart of entrepreneurship and thus of corporate entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial behaviour is therefore the search for growth through innovation. Everything must revolve around the search for this opportunity and its use to make it a success. The second point links entrepreneurship to education. Indeed, entrepreneurship is a set of skills, which are excellent to be taught. Entrepreneurship is also a management style that is different from what we know that favours rewards and changes the way control is done. When properly taught and practiced, it can change everything. The third point emphasizes that for entrepreneurship to work well in the company, the right conditions must be created. It is therefore necessary to create an entrepreneurial culture in the company and to make regular assessments to check that the entrepreneurs in the company are treated equally. This way the person will be trained and ready to see and seize the opportunity and the entrepreneurial spirit will be born.
The first concrete action that organizations can do is that they can enable their employees to identify more easily opportunities thanks to training sessions that they organize for their employees so that they can develop new skills, a new mindset to identify the most relevant opportunities. In those sessions, the organization can organize exercises so that employees have concrete example of how they should think when they try to identify opportunities. Even if the environment is suitable for development, the individual’s and organizations’ motivations are decisive to the emergence of the entrepreneurial behaviour. Nobody will pursue an opportunity if he/she does not want to. We also have to keep in mind that some people become entrepreneur not because they like discovering opportunities but because they have to.
The second implication is that enterprise should minimize the errors if the new project doesn’t work which allow people to dare entrepreneurship. The first concrete action is to create a system that will allow classifying the mistakes on a scale from one to three, one being a simple mistake that doesn’t have a big impact on the organization and three being a mistake that have a significant impact on the organization. Writing the mistakes and their impacts on the organization will let the entrepreneur aware of the type of mistakes that he shouldn’t make again. The second concrete action is that it is necessary to insist on the fact that not one person is to blame. Some errors are due to the newness and in this case the blame should not be put on only one person. We found two limits to this implication. The first one is that we should be aware to not minimize too much the errors and underestimate the impact they can have. Indeed, making new projects takes time and is costly so making errors should not become a habit. Another limit is that if people know that it is okay to make mistakes, they can be satisfied a little too fast and not doing the work in the best way.
The last implication is that in order to understand the ability of employees to exploit opportunities, it is necessary to look at employee behaviours and not just to the success rate. For this, the company could organize feedback every given period of time to see firstly where the entrepreneurs are in the development of the project but also try to understand how the entrepreneurs have reached this level. It is especially this second action that is important because it will allow the entrepreneurs to realize and understand which points are working well and which ones they can improved on. One possible limit to this implication is that giving feedback regularly takes time and it is therefore necessary to be sure that this time is used to provide constructive feedback. Indeed, it is necessary that the feedback allows the other person to improve and is thus useful to obtain better results.

Further references:
Cervelló-Royo, R., Moya-Clemente, I., Perelló-Marin, M. R., & Ribes-Giner, G. (2021). A configurational approach to a country’s entrepreneurship level: Innovation, financial and development factors. Journal of Business Research. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014829632100816X
Osiyevskyy, O., Bahman Radnejad, A. & MahdaviMazdeh, H. (2020). An Entrepreneurial Management System for established companies. Strategy & Leadership. https://www.proquest.com/abicomplete/docview/2378032958/A8D9BCB8FCB641D1PQ/5?a ccountid=12156

By: BIERLAIRE Louise, BOMAL Marine, KIEVITS Ysaline, LEMAIRE Romain, TOUSSAINT Antoine & VANDERSMISSEN Gaëtane

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 15:48:41 +0000

The first key insight of this article is that there are five organizational inhibitors that
prevent established companies from planning, developing and marketing radical innovation.
The first inhibitor is limited organizational research as firms devote too many resources to
R&D and existing networks. Next, there is the insufficient organizational capacity to plan and
evaluate radical innovation. The rigidity of routines is also an element that makes radical
innovation difficult. The fourth inhibitor is an incorrect staffing, compensation and reward
system to retain creative employees. Finally, there is the reluctance to experiment in unknown
territory. The second key insight highlights the four different capabilities that may encourage
the introduction and implementation of radical innovation. These are respectively the openness
capability, the integration capability, the autonomy capability and the experimentation
capability.

The first implication of this paper concerns technological innovation. For the moment,
large companies tend to over-invest in in-house R&D. Managers should try to put aside their
fear of the unknown and start investing in external sources and emerging networks. We would
therefore be in a process of improving the capacity for openness. To do so, they could get in
touch with start-ups. Usually, start-ups have innovative ideas but they do not have the financial
means to develop them. The second implication relates to social innovation, which is the other
dimension of innovation. In order to better manage innovation, managers need to instill the
culture of innovation in employees. One way to do this is to integrate continuous change within
the company. In addition, for many people, cultural change is linked to large-scale behavioral
patterns. However, it is not the organization that changes, but rather its individuals. Any
cultural change visible on a team, departmental or organizational level is made up of many
small and individual actions.

Regarding the limitations of this article, we will mention three of them. Firstly, the paper
presents the concept of experimentation capability in a very theoretical way. A tool that is not
discussed but which seems perfectly adapted to this concept would be the MVP. By quickly
introducing MVPs into the innovation process, the company will be able to better assess its
customers’ resistance to change and adapt its product to meet market needs. Radical innovation,
which is often seen by large firms as uncertain, could thus gain more credibility and
significantly reduce this uncertainty. Another limitation is about the fact that organizational
autonomy capability is positively correlated to radical innovation performance. However, too
much autonomy can lead to a situation where employees go in all directions without consulting
each other. It is important to have a clear and precise framework so that the company does not
become dispersed. Lastly, this paper emphasizes the importance of openness capability but it
does not propose any concrete solution of external connection such as the acquisition of startups. Managers should not only look for external sources of creative ideas, but also think about
how to assimilate and integrate them into the company.

Further references

Hietschold, N., Reinhardt, R., & Gurtner, S. (2020). Who put the “NO” in Innovation?
Innovation resistance leaders’ behaviors and self-identities. Technological Forecasting
and Social Change, 158(C).

Grewatsch, S., & Kleindienst, I. (2018). How organizational cognitive frames affect
organizational capabilities: The context of corporate sustainability. Long Range
Planning, 51(4), 607-624.

By: Bataille Marie, Brienza Leonardo, Heun Alexander, Philippart Robin, Paternotte Bodart Sergio & Thiry Emilie

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 14:44:17 +0000

Key points: Firstly, the paper analyses the levels of cooperation between departments at different stages of a new product development (NPD). The study shows that the cooperation increases in the time during the process. It is also proved that there is more cooperation between marketing and R&D in the early stages while the cooperation of these two departments with operations is more at the late stages. The next point addressed is whether and how particular patterns of functional cooperation are related to a project’s performance outcomes. The research shows that project’s performance often depends on how cross-functional cooperation is organized. Finally, the paper says that those relationships might be moderated by the project’s innovativeness. The need for cooperation is likely to be bigger for the most innovative projects because of the combination of high uncertainty concerning functional issues and lack of relevant experience.

Implications: Firstly, the data suggest that higher levels of cooperation between functions generate stronger new product performance than does lower levels of cooperation. For these reasons, companies should trade-off between the different possible cooperation following the results obtained in this study.
Secondly, authors observed that high levels of cooperation between marketing and operations during early stages of the NPD were associated with lower levels of project performance in high innovative projects and higher levels of project performance in low innovation projects. This finding implies that in low innovation projects it is very important for marketing and operations personnel to get together in order to determine the most efficient way to produce the desired modifications. In contrast, it appears that during the development of a high innovation project it is best to let marketing and R&D determine the market’s latent needs and the basic technology required to address these needs.
Marketing and R&D functions embodies knowledge and expertise that is clearly essential to the ultimate success of any NPD project and should therefore be represented on the core project team. But when a project is highly innovative, results suggest that either: such representation should not begin until the conceptual direction of the project is fairly well established, or the team’s decision processes should be managed in some way such that cooperation between operations and the other functions begin at relatively low levels but expand over the course of the project.

Limitations: One implication explains that the marketing and operational staff should cooperate more at the beginning of NPD. On the other hand, during the development, it is the marketing and R&D functions that should cooperate more. However, in all companies there are not necessarily sector functions and a structure like this. In a start-up, for example, there is indeed one person in charge of marketing, another in charge of operations and another in charge of R&D, but the problem is that, in general, during product development in a start-up, the whole team will meet at each stage of product development. Moreover, it can happen that one person takes care of the marketing functions but also some of the operational functions and therefore the structure proposed by the article cannot correspond to every company.
A second limitation is that in this article they explain why you need to cooperate between the different departments at the different stages of production and how, but that cannot be applied for big companies where for example the R&D office is in USA and marketing office in Europe.

Further references
Ebru Genç, C. Anthony Di Benedetto (2015). Cross-functional integration in the sustainable new product development process: The role of the environmental specialist, Industrial Marketing Management, 50(1), 150-161.
Shin, H., Shin, J., Yoo, S., Song, J. & Kim, A. (2015). Strategic delegation, quality competition, and new product profitability. Management Decision, 53(3), 713-729.
Hempelmann, F. & Engelen, A. (2015). Integration of Finance with Marketing and R&D in New Product Development: The Role of Project Stage. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(4), 636-654.

By: DECOTTIGNIES Gil, DELHAYE Clotilde, DELLA FAILLE Louise, DERCQ Arthur, OUAZZANI CHAHDI Karim, PELTIER Emilie, WATY Laura

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 17:35:35 +0000

The article focuses on the emergence of a new methodology, called “Lean Start-Up”. Lean start-ups are above all looking for a business model favoring experimentation and customer feedback. By placing crucial importance on the customer feedback, continuous testing, revising and readapting the products, the failure percentage decreases drastically. Perceived as beneficial in the success of new businesses, several indicators, listed in the article, show that this model is only at the beginning of its expansion.
The first key insight is the key principles of the lean management. Lean startups establish a list of hypotheses that they check and then reject or not. These hypotheses are summarized into a business model canvas which is a diagram of how the company will create value for itself and its customers. Secondly, they put in place a customer development approach to test the hypotheses to adapt and readjust. This allows more flexibility and speed in product development. Finally, lean start-ups practice “agile development” which optimizes time and resources because it is based on iterative and progressive product design. The second key insight of the article stated that the lean management is for every company. External threats are increasingly numerous and affect all companies, lean management is therefore a model that advocates continuous learning and encourages companies to rethink their entrepreneurial spirit, and helps businesses to innovate rapidly and transform business as we know it.
The implications of the lean startup methodology are divided into 3 steps. The first step is to accept using untested hypotheses which can be gathered in a business model canvas, you will hypothesize your target customer, communication plan, stakeholders and supply chain. The second step is to go out of “stealth mode” and focus on customers instead. Listening to their needs and taking their feedback into accounts allows you to adjust or pivot your offer. The last step consists of releasing a Minimum Viable Product and to test it. The idea is to leave room for potential additional features and reduce the risk of investing too much in the wrong product. The first objective is to see if there is a viable market and know if people like the offer and what are the ways of improvement according to their feedback. The idea is to adopt an “agile development” strategy through all of those steps to develop the product by making iterations.
The first limitation is the size of the sample which makes it likely to not fully reflect the willingness of the target segment because it is random and each individual feel, perceives and interprets things differently. Consequently, a sample size that is too small could have negative consequences in decisions to improve the product. The second limitation is the fact that the brand’s image could be permanently impacted as a result of testing an unfinished product (MVP) that could disappoint people, even if the product is improved afterwards because people will associate the brand with disappointment. Finally, the last limit is the time needed to arrive at the finished product that meets all the customer’s needs. Even if this approach is said to be fast, the process to arrive at the finished product can be very long as products will be improved and then re-tested and so on. Such a long process can have a negative impact on the competitivity of the firm because of long lead times.
Further references:
Bocken, N., Snihur, Y, (2020). Lean Startup and the business model: Experimenting for novelty and impact. Long Range Planning, Volume 53, Issue 4, August 2020, 101953. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024630119303887
Felin, T., Gambardella, A., Stern, S., & Zenger, T. (in press). Lean startup and the business model: experimentation revisited. Forthcoming in Long Range Planning (Open Access). Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3427084
Ghezzi, A. (2019). Digital startups and the adoption and implementation of Lean Startup Approaches: Effectuation, Bricolage and Opportunity Creation in practice. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Volume 146, September 2019, Pages 945-960. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004016251731778X
Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Viking Press, 320 p.

By: Chiliade Camille, Collard Mary-Lou, Defraiteur Diego, Degroote Aurélie, Muller Olivia, Puggia Rémi

Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:37:59 +0000

KEY INSIGHTS
The authors decipher the process of decision making and observe that, during this process, many people adopt the “thinking first” strategy. This strategy involves 4 steps: defining the problem, diagnosing its causes, designing possible solutions, and deciding which solution to implement. However, there are other possibilities in the decision-making process, namely the “seeing first” and the “doing first” options. The former suggests visualizing the problem before addressing it, in four steps: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The latter explores another, more practical angle, in three steps: enactment, selection, and retention. The main point of the article is that managers should be versatile, and adapt their decision-making process to the situations they face, in order to not always use the same, sometimes inefficient process.

IMPLICATIONS
The first implication of this article is that the manager should use a different process according to the problem and its situation. He shouldn’t stay focused on one way of doing things but open his horizons and try other ways to make decisions. The second implication concerns the experience effect. This strategy is based on the fact that a manager, with for example ten or twenty years of experience in a particular field, will make the company grow much faster than its competitors because the company will be able to react better to the market requirements. Regarding production cost, there will be a decrease in the unit cost of the product as the amount of sales increase. However, this decrease will not come from an economy of scale, but from the experience effect. This concept can also be an entry barrier for other companies that have reacted too late to a promising field of activity. In the case of our article, in order to allow the development of a particular project, we could advise managers to surround themselves with people with extensive knowledge in the sector. Thanks to the experience effect, the company will grow faster, and in a lot of cases generate more profit.

LIMITATIONS
A second limitation that we have discovered in this article is that the successful completion of the decision-making process rests in the first instance on one person. Indeed, even before starting the collective decision-making process, the manager must already carry out a decision-making process in order to choose which of the three ways is the most suitable for the situation he is facing. He may then misanalyze the situation, make a mistake in his assessment, and choose a way of working that is not adapted to their problem.

FURTHER INSIGHTS
Yazdani, M., Zarate, P., Edmundas, K. Z., & Turskis, Z. (2019). A combined compromise solution (CoCoSo) method for multi-criteria decision-making problems. Management Decision, 57(9), 2501-2519. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be/10.1108/MD-05-2017-0458
Frisk, J. E., & Bannister, F. (2017). Improving the use of analytics and big data by changing the decision-making culture: A design approach. Management Decision, 55(10), 2074-2088. doi:http://dx.doi.org.proxy.bib.ucl.ac.be/10.1108/MD-07-2016-0460

By: Bougria Oussama, Cortés Zambelli Jaime, Defauw Sébastien, Tsgilenge Nzembela Xavier

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 21:22:52 +0000

In this paper, the regular way to make strategic planning is criticized. It stipulates that forcing the strategic planning into an annual cycle could be a problem to executives who must make many important decisions during the year.
There is two problems explained in the article : The time problem and the timing problem.
The time problem is the fact that the company who follows a annual strategic planning process devote 8-9 weeks per year to strategy development. It could be too short to all the strategic development process and many issues cannot be resolved in a short time like this.
Timing problem is due to the fact that the managers have to take strategic decisions continuously during the year and their decisions are often motivated by an immediate need for action or reaction. Forcing the annual strategic plan will not stick with this need.

The first key insight presented in the article is that a company must take decisions out of the traditional planning process and create a different, parallel process for the development of strategies that will help executives to identify the decisions they have to make in order to create more shareholder value over time. This process will end with a set of concrete decisions that management can codify into future business plans through the existing planning process, which remains in place.

The second insight is the continuous strategy development. In this part the article develops the fact that, rather than force strategy reviews into a two-or three-month windows, it must be spread during the the year. In this way, executives will be able to focus on one issue at a time until they find a decision. In addition to that, issues as market and competitive conditions change, could be added to the agenda easily without needing an ad-hoc process.

The last key insight is the strategy reviews to produce real decisions.
Indeed, it is stated in the article that the major obstacles to decision making are disagreements among executives over past decisions, current alternatives, and even the facts presented to support strategic plans. That’s why companies must structure their strategy review sessions.

The key managerial advice that we can remember from this article is to produce a decision-focused strategic planning. In order to do so it is imperative to stop focusing too much on timing and business units.
The first step on this path is to consider plan making and decision making as two separate processes. Decisions must be taken outside of the planning frame. Indeed, executive must watch the market and ask the question “What must we do in order to increase shareholder and stakeholders’ value”. Once these questions can be answered, they are translated into executive decisions that can be integrated in a business plan. This is the case for Boeing, the BCA unit possess a ten years business plan, reviewed and updated on weekly basis. With this system they can gains great insights on their current financial state. However, it has proven itself to be inefficient for the decision-making process. That’s why a they have hired a team of strategy experts who assess the new challenges on daily basis. That way they are able to react to the market and propose new alternatives. This method has proven to greatly increase the firm efficiency and reactivity.
Another major advice is to focus on a few major key themes. Instead of spreading to much of your attention, you should concentrate your forces on large scale questions taking multiples business units in account. The problem of firms relying too much on the business-unit approach, is that the business managers will tend to fight for their own unit’s interest. The company might end up stuck in complex negotiations between the units over who deserves the most allocations. It is important to take a step back and focus more on the big picture. Instead of asking, “what can I do about this particular unit”, ask yourself how you can coordinate your different units in order to solve a problem and reach a certain goal.
Finally, you also might want to change the timing of your strategy reviews and the way conduct them. Nowadays, most business conduct their strategy reviews at the end of the second semester. We noticed that better performing firms tend to spread their reviews through the entire year. For example, the company Textron carries the reviews of 2 or 3 business units every trimester. By doing so they let times to managers to focus on way key issues at the time. Moreover this way of operating gives more flexibility to the firm to adapt to the constant changes in the market. Finally with this rolling method, different business units have more time coordinate their strategy, increasing the cooperation inside the venture. Moreover, they created a more codified way of doing these strategic reviews. Instead of losing endless time in debate about past mistakes or the validity of the data as it usually the case, they implement a methodology separated in 3 steps. The first one is presenting the date and the current state of the market. The second session will consist exploration of alternative and finally voting and decisions take place in the last session.
At the moment managers want to apply this concept must be aware of certain limitations that can occur during the implementation of the process. Lack of capabilities, change of routines and lose the focus can be dangerous for the company.

The article said with this new method companies start solving 8 problems per year instead of 2,5 on average. So, as a manager, it is necessary to have the ability to manage more information going and, therefore, being constant in the review of things that are happening in the environment. The main question is: Do I have the aptitude and discipline needed to be constant in the execution and planning? Actually, this question is not only for the manager but for the team also, Is my team good enough to manage more information and make more decisions?

Besides, the article is based on a study made to big companies. Leaving the small companies and startup out of the conclusions. The main thing is about the change of routines: while the startup is creating their routines, the big company needs to modify their own. Change the routines in a big company requires that old people or the “experts” in their field change the way to manage and if they are not able to do it -they don’t have the ability to change – this method doesn’t work.

Finally, if the manager loses the focus on innovating can be dangerous for the company. With this method, the manager solve problems that are already existing and is not looking for new ones to get out of the comfort zone. This means that the manager is focused on the short-medium term and not in the long term and it can be dangerous because maybe at some point the manager will be overwhelmed for not anticipate problems, and in the moment of action will be too late. For example, when a new building in China is available the manager will start to worry about whether to expand or not, instead of first thinking in expand and start looking for a bigger scope of opportunities not only in China but maybe in other countries.

Further References :

(Ebook) Harvard Business Review, Kahneman, D. Charan, R. (2013). “HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Making Smart Decisions”. Harvard Business Review, avalaible on https://store.hbr.org/product/hbr-s-10-must-reads-on-making-smart-decisions-with-featured-article-before-you-make-that-big-decision-by-daniel-kahneman-dan-lovallo-and-olivier-sibony/11367?sku=11367-PBK-ENG&referral=02560

(Digital Article) Graham, K. (2018). “6 Steps to Make Your Strategic Plan Really Strategic”. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/08/6-steps-to-make-your-strategic-plan-really-strategic

(Digital Article) Graham, K. (2018). “Your Strategic Plans Probably Aren’t Strategic, or Even Plans”. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2018/04/your-strategic-plans-probably-arent-strategic-or-even-plans