Critical to the success of every organization, strategy is not a long planning exercise or document. Strategy can be simple, fun and effective and is founded on a set of five interrelated and powerful choices that positions an organization to win.
Critical to the success of every organization, strategy is not a long planning exercise or document. Strategy can be simple, fun and effective and is founded on a set of five interrelated and powerful choices that positions an organization to win.
Integrative thinking is a form of reasoning which allows you to constructively face the tensions of opposing models. Instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, you generate a creative solution. Your solution contains elements of the individual models, but is superior to each.
Organizations need to incorporate the best of design thinking into their ways of working to unleash innovation and creativity. An organization will be able to counter-balance analytical thinking with intuitive thinking – to enable it to both exploit existing knowledge and create new knowledge.
While prevailing theory holds that stock-based compensation perfectly aligns corporate executives’ incentives with those of shareholders, it does the opposite. As a consequence, executives have done brilliantly while shareholders have become increasingly frustrated. Incentives and governance practice needs to be transformed to enable corporations to prosper in a way that better serves society.
More on Incentives & Governance
The combination of the stagnation of medium incomes and the rapid rise of high incomes is threatening the future of democratic capitalism. Its predictive future requires building a more robust knowledge, transactional and physical infrastructure for broadly shared prosperity.
For both social entrepreneurs and corporations, the key tenet of social innovation is finding ways to make the world a better place. My work focuses on building tools for social entrepreneurs to create more powerful models for creating value for society and developing models to guide corporations on a path of productive corporate citizenship.
Meet Roger
Let's Read
A New Way to Think
When More is Not Better
Creating Great Choices
The Rise (and Likely Fall) of the Talent Economy
Getting Beyond Better
Playing To win
Canada: What it is, what it can be
Fixing the Game
The Design Of Business
The Opposable Mind
The Responsibility Virus
Dia-Minds
The Future of the MBA
Rotman on Design
Let's Engage
Thought Pillars
In 2017, Roger was named the world’s #1 management thinker by Thinkers50, a biannual ranking of the most influential global business thinkers.
Roger is a trusted strategy advisor to the CEOs of companies worldwide including Procter & Gamble, Lego, Ford, BHP & Verizon
Roger Martin is a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto where he served as Dean from 1998-2013, Academic Director of the Michael Lee-Chin Family Institute for Corporate Citizenship from 2004-2019 and Institute Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute from 2013-2019. In 2013, he was named global Dean of the Year by the leading business school website, Poets & Quants.
His newest book is A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Managerial Effectiveness (Harvard Business Review Press, 2022). His previous twelve books include When More is Not Better (HBRP, 2020), Creating Great Choiceswritten with Jennifer Riel (HBRP, 2017) Getting Beyond Betterwritten with Sally Osberg (HBRP, 2015) and Playing to Win written with A.G. Lafley (HBRP, 2013), which won the award for Best Book of 2012-13 by the Thinkers50. He has written 30 Harvard Business Review articles.
Roger received his BA from Harvard College, with a concentration in Economics, in 1979 and his MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1981. He lives in South Florida with his wife, Marie-Louise Skafte.
Contact Roger through Twitter or email. Call us to book a speaking engagement or other services.
Roger is available for keynote and other speaking engagements. Advisory services and team workshops can also be booked with Roger.
Medium Posts
Strategy Choice, Risk and the Road not Taken
December 26, 2022
Striving to Follow the Golden Rule
December 19, 2022
Why 'Execution' is a Bankrupt Management Concept
December 12, 2022
The Best of Two Years of Strategy - #1
December 5, 2022
The Best of Two Years of Strategy - #2
November 28, 2022
The Best of Two Years of Strategy - #3
November 21, 2022
The Best of Two Years of Strategy - #4
November 14, 2022
The Best of Two Years of Strategy - #5
November 7, 2022
October 31, 2022
My Least Favorite Business Book of All Time
October 24, 2022
October 17, 2022
October 10, 2022
October 3, 2022
September 26, 2022
September 19, 2022
September 12, 2022
September 5, 2022
August 29, 2022
August 22, 2022
What Makes for a Great Strategist?
August 15, 2022
Untangling Value Proposition & Competitive Advantage
August 8, 2022
The Delusion of Single-Point Accountability
August 1, 2022
July 25, 2022
Winning the Long Game of Strategy
July 18, 2022
My Love/Hate Relationship with VUCA
July 11, 2022
July 4, 2022
A Management System for Forgiveness
June 27, 2022
June 20, 2022
June 13, 2022
How to Prevent Data Analytics from Wrecking Your Strategy
June 6, 2022
Organizational Strategy & Job Titles
May 30, 2022
May 23, 2022
Information Technology & Strategy
May 16, 2022
May 9, 2022
May 2, 2022
April 25, 2022
April 18, 2022
April 11, 2022
April 4, 2022
March 28, 2022
March 21, 2022
Understanding the True Building Blocks of Corporate Strategy
March 14, 2022
Corporate vs. Business Unit Strategy
March 7, 2022
How to Get Buy-in for Your Strategy
February 28, 2022
February 21, 2022
The Great Resignation Should be No Surprise
February 14, 2022
Are You Building a Strategy Tower of Babel
February 7, 2022
January 31, 2022
January 24, 2022
Don't Let Them Compel You to be Stupid
January 17, 2021
Strategy in High-Growth Industries
January 10, 2022
Business Strategy and/or Military Strategy?
January 3, 2022
Competing Against Big New Entrants
December 27, 2021
December 20, 2021
How to Make Your Partnerships Strategic
December 13, 2021
December 6, 2021
Singing the Data Analytics Blues
November 29, 2021
The Secret to Knitting Strategy Together Corporate-Wide
November 22, 2021
Stop Letting OKRs Masquerade as Strategy
November 15, 2021
November 8, 2021
The Role of Industry in Strategy
November 1, 2021
October 4, 2021
September 27, 2021
September 20, 2021
Strategy in the Face of Discontinuity
September 13, 2021
The Battle for the Soul of Strategy
September 6, 2021
Strategy & Boards of Directors
August 30, 2021
Should We Listen to Customers?
August 23, 2021
The Proper Role of the Chief Strategy Officer
August 16, 2021
Compelling Communication for Your Strategy
August 9, 2021
August 2, 2021
July 26, 2021
Can Your Strategy Pass its Most Important Test?
July 19, 2021
July 12, 2021
The Delusion of Revenue Forecasting
July 5, 2021
Balancing Exploration and Exploitation
June 28, 2021
June 21, 2021
It’s Time to Accept that Play for Performance Doesn’t Work
June 14, 2021
Asking Great Strategy Questions
June 7, 2021
May 31, 2021
Your Personal Playing to Win Strategy
May 24, 2021
Overcoming the Pervasive Analytical Blunder of Strategists
May 17, 2021
What is Digital Strategy, Anyway?
May 10, 2021
Strategists: Stop Obsessing about Averages
May 3, 2021
Manipulation of Quantities & Appreciation of Qualities
April 26, 2021
It’s Time to Accept that Marketing and Strategy are One Discipline
April 19, 2021
It’s Time to Toss SWOT Analysis into the Ashbin of Strategy History
April 12, 2021
Can You Be Both Cost Leader & Differentiator?
April 5, 2021
The Shift from Pre-Competitive to Competitive
March 29, 2021
Where’s the Business Model in Playing to Win?
March 22, 2021
Reliability versus Validity in Strategy
March 15, 2021
The Role of Strategy in Achieving Managerial Effectiveness
March 8, 2021
The Tragic Futility of Investing to Catch Up
March 1, 2021
February 22, 2021
Strategy vs. Planning: Complements, not Substitutes
February 15, 2021
The Two Rules that Monopolists Ignore at their Peril
February 8, 2021
Distinguishing How-to-Win from Capabilities in Your Strategy Choice
February 1, 2021
Playing to Win and Scenario Planning
January 25, 2021
My Business is Too Fast-Moving for Strategy
January 18, 2021
Is Strategy in B2B Dramatically Different than in B2C?
January 11, 2021