HBR's 10 Must Reads for CEOs (with bonus article "Your Strategy Needs a Strategy" by Martin Reeves, Claire Love, and Philipp Tillmanns)

Strategic Intent

by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad

Editor’s Note: When Gary Hamel, then a lecturer at London Business School, and C.K. Prahalad, a University of Michigan professor, first wrote “Strategic Intent,” the article signaled that a major new force had arrived in management.

Hamel and Prahalad argue that Western companies focus on trimming their ambitions to match resources and, as a result, search only for advantages they can sustain. By contrast, Japanese corporations leverage resources by accelerating the pace of organizational learning and try to attain seemingly impossible goals. These firms foster the desire to succeed among their employees and maintain it by spreading the vision of global leadership. This is how Canon sought to ...