Faculty seminar series

How does a general manager operate successfully when the responsibilities of the job are often in conflict? What does it mean to choose to be a leader? Stationed at the crossroads between the corporation and the operating units, middle managers are measured on their ability to motivate others to perform. In this presentation, Professor Joseph Bower provides practical guidelines for becoming a successful manager in the middle. General managers must be strong leaders and strategists, organization builders, and performers. They must learn which battles to fight, while developing and maintaining positive working relationships. In order to expand their jobs, they must understand the limits of the territory while taking aggressive risks. Shouldered with a challenging mix of financial and process management responsibilities, the middle manager must create an environment where staff can succeed. The complete general manager is a leader who is at ease in an imperfect world; is diplomatic, energetic, self-confident, and fun. Are you ready to choose to lead?

Alphabets, Language, and Code. From the earliest cave wall paintings to the 1s and 0s of the digital revolution, Juan Enriquez examines the historical impact of data transmission on the global economy. But looking forward there is a new language -- the ATCGs of genomic code -- that will fundamentally change companies, industries, and even nations. It's not just the bio, pharma, agribusiness, and energy companies that will be affected -- it's every company.

How do seemingly benign innovations often disrupt entire industries? And why are industry leaders consistently losing out to the upstarts, even when the disruptive innovation came from the leader's own lab? Companies must understand how and why these destructive patterns occur before they can break out of them…

With numerous examples from various industries, Professor Anand illustrates Michael Porter's Five Forces framework as a structured tool for analyzing complex environments, and he reviews an augmented framework with additional forces to consider. Applying the strategy framework may allow companies not only to respond to threats but to identify opportunities to shape the environment as well.