On My Mind
The 40th Annual Conference of the Strategic Management Society was supposed to take place in London this year, but it ended up being a virtual event and it was exceptional. I attended the event in-person last year in Minneapolis, MN. Learning workshops associated with the conference were spread-out over two weeks with the main conference events taking place October 26-30, 2020. I viewed live roughly thirty presentations by scholars on their leading-edge research and also viewed live the plenary presentation each day. There were two plenary sessions that I thought were exceptional. One was on Strategy in Digital Times: How Microsoft Overcame Disruption involving three panelists: Marco Iansiti of Harvard University, Michael G. Jacobides of the London Business School, and Takeshi Numoto of the Microsoft Corporation. The second was The Anatomy of a Disruptor involving four panelists: Will Mitchell of the University of Toronto, George Stalk, Jr. of the Boston Consulting Group, Stephen Bungay of the Strategic Management Centre, and Arne Roock of Spotify. If you are interested in Strategy, then you might consider attending next year in Toronto from September 18-21, 2021.

Interesting Stories
Chess is regarded as one of the best games for developing a person’s critical thinking and strategy skills. A recent new series on Netflix called “The Queen’s Gambit” is getting a lot of attention and sparking a surge in interest in the game. The Netflix series is based on the book of the same title by Walter Tevis. The game of chess itself is a character in the series, but the fictional story is primarily about the remarkable journey of a young girl starting at age eight. The creators of the series strived to “get the chess right” by involving world class chess experts including Garry Kasparov—the former World Champion—and Bruce Pandolfini.

Company News
I presented on Advances in Strategic Planning at the Minnesota Quality Conference on November 4, 2020 – it was a virtual event. There are several upcoming public SIS events the remainder of 2020—the brochures are available on the PUBLIC SEMINARS page of this website.

Intriguing Reads
I re-read the book Writers on Strategy and Strategic Management: Theory and Practice at Enterprise, Corporate, Business and Functional Levels (2nd Edition) by J. I. Moore in preparation for the recent 40th Annual Conference of the Strategic Management Society. This is such a great book in that it introduces readers to the historic thought leaders in the Strategy field and describes their conceptual contributions. The chapters of the book are the following: The Shapers and Movers, The Consultants, The Scholars and Researchers, The Developers and Teachers, The Incrementalists, and Strategies for Decline: Endgames and Turnaround. This book is a “must read” if you are interested in increasing your familiarity with the important historic concepts and thought leaders in the Strategy field.