Open Strategy by Christian Stadler

Are you looking for smart ways to stay ahead of disruption? Execution that knocks the ball out of court?

In their new book, Christian Stadler, Julia Hautz, Kurt Matzler and Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen explore how opening your strategy will help you to generate new ideas and mobilize everyone around them.

 
Published by MIT Press: ORDER READ SAMPLE

The work on Open Strategy has been shortlisted for the prestigious Thinkers 50 award (the “Oscars of Management”)

Best Strategy Book 2021: “substantive and eloquent”

Best Strategy Book 2021: “substantive and eloquent”

Business Book of the Month: “A useful blueprint. ”

ENDORSEMENTS

Jim Whitehurst, President, IBM

“I have been a champion of open for many years. Open Strategy provides a nice blueprint to unleash the power and impact of openness in your organization—recommended reading for all leaders.”

Karim R. Lakhani, Professor, Harvard Business School

“My benchmark for an important, long-lasting book is the number of notes I take while reading. Open Strategy far exceeds my benchmark—I found something important on every page! It turns the existing strategic management paradigm on its head by showing executives the power of openness. An excellent how-to manual.”

Peter Gerstmann, CEO, Zeppelin

“Open Strategy promotes collaboration with people and organizations, a key to success in a highly complex market environment.”

Hamad Buamim, President & CEO, Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry

“Open Strategy is an invitation for executives to experiment, tackle cognitive biases and ultimately win the competition. It comes very timely, as our world is going through significant shifts that we are yet to recognize in the post-pandemic era, where leaders are looking for new ways of conducting business, identifying the strategies of becoming more resilient to the future shocks. Unlike many strategy-focused books that leave busy executives with more questions than answers, the book provides a set of practical tools and instructions on how to implement.”

Francesco Starace, CEO, Enel

“This book shows how a strategy can be shaped around openness and the importance of the deep self-awareness an organization has to build to take this journey in these turbulent times. Very insightful.”

Richard Whittington, Professor, University of Oxford

“Open strategy is more than an inspiring idea. With this book, leaders now have the practical tools to make it a value-creating reality.”

Ian Watson, CEO, Hotter Shoes

“Digitalisation forces companies to reinvent themselves at pace. How do you fully engage your workforce around a radical new strategy? Open Strategy offers a compelling answer: involve them.”

Richard D’Aveni, Professor, Tuck School of Business

“A revolutionary new way of doing strategy. Read and explore.”

Margaret Heffernan, Author of Uncharted

“If you are running an organization, this is the book you need. Old-style top-down thinking can’t capture the complexity of the present or the uncertainties of the future. This is the first strategy book I’ve read that seems to know what kind of world we are living in today.”

Des Dearlove and Stuart Crainer, Thinkers50

“The old rules of business said that strategy was the sole preserve of the boardroom. But strategy is being brought into the light. Open strategy is as game-changing as open innovation.”

Andreas Ronken, CEO, Ritter Sport

“We applied open strategy. Involving a wide range of internal people as well as external experts was one of my best decisions.”

Reinhold M. Karner, Entrepreneur, RSA Fellow

“Wow! I knew, one day, someone would come up with this game-changing and brilliant concept for an open strategy. Finally, it’s here! Chapeau! The book Open Strategy is terrific! I couldn’t stop reading and marking. It’s revolutionary and so hands-on!”

About the Book

This is a book about smart opening up strategic initiatives to involve 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 ground-breaking approach to strategy.

And in case you are wondering whether it works: 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.

You can order the book on the below-linked platforms:

Buy Open Strategy by Christian Stadler at Amazon
Buy Open Strategy from Penguin Random House
Buy Open Strategy by Christian Stadler at Waterstones
Buy Open Strategy from Bookshop.org
Buy Open Strategy by Christian Stadler at Barnes & Noble

— Are You Ready For Open Strategy? 

Ready for Open Strategy

To unleash the power of open strategy in your company, you need to be personally ready for it.

In companies where top managers have an open mindset, 50 percent of all strategic initiatives are open (compared to less than 40 percent in those with a closed mindset).

Find out whether you are ready by answering 6 questions and receiving some advice how to move forward.

Tools

The book offers you set of tools to create new ideas, formulate a detailed strategy, and mobilize your workforce around your strategy. Get a glimpse preview of four of them here.

DIT Map

open strategy tools- disruptor innivator traditionalist map

Trend Radar

open strategy tools- trend radar

Nightmare Competitor

open strategy tools- nightamare competitor challenge

Strategy Jam

open strategy tools- strategy jam

— Teaching 

Teaching Open Strategy

Interested in teaching Open Strategy?

Check out the free teaching package we created. Includes course outline, PowerPoint Slides, and a detailed description of exercises.

Articles

The book represents a convergence of ideas which the authors developed and tested themselves as well as ideas they discovered through research that started in 2014.

Here are some of the articles we published on the way.

Authors

Christian Stadler

Christian Stadler

Professor of Strategic Management, Warwick Business School

Christian is a professor of strategic management at Warwick Business School and Forbes Contributor. He has been listed by Thinkers50 as a future thinker in 2013 and has been quoted in over 7,000 media outlets including CNN, BBC, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Christian’s previous book Enduring Success: What We Can Learn from the History of Outstanding Corporations was the first one with a non-U.S. perspective on long-range success.


Julia Hautz

Julia Hautz

Professor of Strategic Management, University of Innsbruck

Julia is a professor of strategic management at the University of Innsbruck. She is one of the leading scholars on open strategy who co-edited the first special issue published by an academic journal on this topic as well as organized symposia at the main conferences.

Kurt Matzler

Kurt Matzler

Professor of Strategic Management, University of Innsbruck

Kurt is a professor of strategic management at the University of Innsbruck and a Partner at IMP Consulting, a firm specializing in open strategy. He is one of the world’s 40 most cited strategy scholars.

Kurt wrote seven other books including the Digital Disruption which helps managers to adopt to a new era and the German adoption of Innovator’s Dilemma, co-authored with the late Clayton Christensen.

Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen

Stephan Friedrich von den Eichen

Managing Partner, IMP Consulting

Stephan is the Managing Partner at IMP Consulting. As one of the first people to realize the potential of open strategy, he helped hundreds of clients to develop revolutionary new ideas. This unique approach turned IMP Consulting into an award-winning firm.

Stephan’s previous books included Digital Disruption which he co-authored with Kurt.

Contact

Should you have any questions about the book or the authors, please don’t hesitate to reach out.