Content by Matthew E. May

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Matthew E. May
Of the more than 10,000 business books that are published each year, few, if any, focus their attention on the all-but-forgotten midsized company. Armfuls of books on startups and Fortune-...
Matthew E. May's picture
Matthew E. May
A new strategy requires that some conclusions be made about the old one. The old strategy must be reframed as a choice between at least two mutually exclusive choices, from which some initial...
Matthew E. May's picture
Matthew E. May
‘If I had the key members of your executive suite all in the same room, would they all be able to articulate the essence of your business strategy clearly and consistently?” I asked the executive...
Matthew E. May's picture
Matthew E. May
Except... it’s not a bar. And it’s three economists, not one. Three economists on a road trip to Maine after an academic conference in Boston wandered into a local shoe store looking to kill some...
Matthew E. May's picture
Matthew E. May
One of my all-time favorite quotes is from UK-based urban designer Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a master of designing shared space intersections: “If we observed first, designed second, we wouldn’t...
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Matthew E. May
It’s been well over a decade since Dan Pink predicted that the macro trend of automation would change the nature of just about everything in his bestselling book A Whole New Mind (Riverside Books,...
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Matthew E. May
Your grand strategy seems airtight on paper. You’ve arrived at a winning aspiration. You’ve homed in on an open and attractive segment in which to play. You've identified the competitive advantages...
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Matthew E. May
Everyone, in any endeavor, gets stuck at some point. All of a sudden, or so it seems, things aren’t going right. Or even going anywhere. Writers get writer’s block. Athletes suffer from losing...
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Matthew E. May
The constant rapid changes in today’s business climate demands on-the-fly gear shifting for teams and business units. Few can afford to wait until next year’s three-day strategic off-site meeting, a...
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Matthew E. May
“Business and human endeavors are systems... we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system, and wonder why our deepest problems never get solved.”—Peter Senge Senge had it right. I...