How smart companies are opening up strategic initiatives to involve front-line employees, experts, suppliers, customers, entrepreneurs, and even competitors.Why are some of the world’s most successful companies able to stay ahead of disruption, adopting and implementing innovative strategies, while others struggle? It’s not because they hire a new CEO or expensive consultants but rather because these pioneering companies have adopted a new way of strategizing. Instead of keeping strategic deliberations within the C-Suite, they open up strategic initiatives to a diverse group of stakeholders—front-line employees, experts, suppliers, customers, entrepreneurs, and even competitors. Open Strategy presents a new philosophy, key tools, step-by-step advice, and fascinating case studies—from companies that range from Barclays to Adidas—to guide business leaders in this groundbreaking approach to strategy. The authors—business-strategy experts from both academia and management consulting—introduce tools for each of the three stages of strategy-making: idea generation, plan formulation, and implementation. These are digital tools (including strategy contests), which allow the widest participation; hybrid digital/in-person tools (including a “nightmare competitor challenge”); a workshop tool that gamifies the business model development process; and tools that help companies implement and sustain open strategy efforts.Open strategy has an astonishing track record: a survey of 200 business leaders shows that although open-strategy techniques were deployed for only 30 percent of their initiatives, those same initiatives generated 50 percent of their revenues and profits. This book offers a roadmap for this kind of success.

Foreword by Gary Hamel ixSeries Foreword xviiIntroduction: Win with Open Strategy xix1 Traditional Strategy Come Undone 12 Are You Truly Ready to Open Up? 213 Design Your Open Strategy Process 414 Tweak Your Open Strategy Initiative to Allow for Secrecy 595 Harness the Wisdom of Crowds 756 Peer into the Future 977 Disrupt Yourself before Others Do 1218 Develop Killer Business Models 1459 Use the Crowd to Choose Better Strategies 16310 Execute Better 185Epilogue 205Appendix A: Recommended Reading 211Appendix B: The IMP Story 213Notes 215Index 251