Designing Organizations: Strategy, Structure, and Process at the Business Unit and Enterprise Levels, 3rd Edition

Chapter 10

Adding Value

The biggest changes in today's portfolio strategies are the explicit attempts by management to add value to their portfolios. No one wants to be accused of running a conglomerate. If you want to provoke the leadership of any company, use the “C” word when referring to their company. The financial markets want specific proof from management. Hence, we are finding the explicit articulation of corporate portfolio strategies.

This emphasis on corporate-level strategy is quite welcome. Until recently, companies were quite good at articulating their business unit strategies and quite poor at articulating the portfolio strategy for creating value with those businesses (Goold, Campbell, and Alexander, 1994). As a result, over ...