Managing Strategic Growth Challenges in Established Firms (I): An Evolutionary Framework of the Strategy-Making Process
Faculty Leader: Robert Burgelman
This session presents a conceptual framework that helps explain how top management can achieve
and maintain alignment between strategy and action and the evolving external environment in order
to exploit growth opportunities. It also helps understand the rational sources of resistance to strategic change, as well as the role of strategic growth initiatives that originate at the periphery and often do not immediately seem to fit with the existing corporate strategy. In addition to a broad perspective on strategic leadership, frameworks or tools for examining the role of strategy making in corporate evolution will be discussed. Tool I: Forces Driving Firm Evolution focuses on the big picture. It helps leaders with analyzing the external and internal sources of change that create “strategic dissonance” within companies, and explains how to capitalize on it.

Sustaining Organic Growth Through Market-Focused Organizations
Faculty Leader: Hayagreeva Rao
Organic growth implies growth through existing customers and
existing markets. In turn, organic growth is possible only when organizations achieve advantage in understanding, attracting, and retaining valuable customers. How do the best organizations develop insight in understanding customers? How do the best organizations in the world build this customer focus deep into their organization’s DNA? What are the differences between customer compelled organizations and market focused organizations? This session focuses on six levers to build market focused organizations: recruitment and retention, talent development, job design, top manager modeling, information sharing and empowerment, and measurement and reward systems.