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Executives running major corporations face a profusion of troubling questions. In this issue of Business Strategy Review we explore two of the most important and perplexing: what skills are required of global executives now and in the future; and which are the areas of the world likely to be tomorrow’s economic hot-beds? In the cover story Nigel Andrews looks at what research at London Business School labels “global business capabilities”, the wide-ranging pot-pourri of skills required by executives. The list is long and daunting – everything from micro-economics to unyielding integrity. Only Renaissance men and women need apply. An even more daunting thought is that in interviews with executives from throughout the world few suggested trimming the list. Executives were comfortable with the extensive roster of capabilities now required of them. The inherent complexity and challenge attached to this was accepted as par for the executive course. Complexity is here to stay. The implications of global business capabilities are substantial for individual executives, corporations and for all of those involved in educating executives.
Trends
London Business School: David Lane (
[email protected]) Sereen Aley (
[email protected])
Forethought
The second fundamental question we tackle is that of the likely boom areas of the future. Kenichi Ohmae (author of “Tomorrow’s world”) has long argued that regions rather than nations are the economic dynamos of our times. Thanks to technology and the rise of trading groups such as the European Union, nation states no longer hold sway.
Classic
Contributing editors: Patrick Barwise Julian Birkinshaw Rob Goffee Chris Higson Donald Sull Len Waverman George Yip
Ohmae’s gimlet gaze into the future produces a number of surprises. Among his potential up and comers are China’s Hainan Island, Estonia and, perhaps most obscurely, Petropavlosk-Kamchatsky. Of course, predicting tomorrow’s Silicon Valley is not a precise science. It requires intuition, a finger on the economic pulse, a truly global view, as well as knowledge of the economic drivers of our time – or, what Nigel Andrews labels, global business capabilities.
Winter 2004
Business Heroes
Editor: Stuart Crainer (
[email protected])
Cover Story
Business Strategy Review
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