Any organization must ask three interrelated questions in order to develop its strategy: where are we, where do we want to be, and how will we get there? While the questions do not change over time, the realities and environments that companies face do. Given today's realities, how should companies answer these questions as they face the challenges of the 21st century?

In this book, leading business school educators use their academic, yet managerially-relevant, research to explore these questions. They divide the book into three sections-- Understand Your Situation, Develop Your Options, and Lead the Change--and take the reader through some of the latest thinking that helps answer these questions. All the authors have extensive international experience of working with senior managers and are well known academic researchers in their field. They present their ideas in a straightforward, lively, and purposeful way. Their goal is to inform, challenge, and provide practical advice and tools.

The book serves as a guide to a range of contemporary business challenges, such as managing uncertainty, creating new markets through innovation, energizing people, leading clever people in organizations with limited hierarchy, and introducing radical change. The central focus is on the core concerns and responsibilities of senior management-- strategy and leadership.

Clear, crisp, and to the point, this book provides an invaluable and coherent summary of some of the best current business school thinking on contemporary challenges facing organizations. It will be an ideal guide for both MBAs and practicing managers.

About the Author:
Robert Galavan, PhD is Director of the Centre for Business, Management and Innovation Studies at the National University of Ireland in Maynooth. He is an accomplished executive education teacher, business consultant and an award winning researcher in the field of strategic leadership. He was previously head of Executive Education at the Irish Management Institute and Program Director at the Trinity-IMI Graduate School of Management.

John Murray, PhD is Professor of Business Studies at the School of Business, Trinity College Dublin. His research and publications have addressed the strategic challenges associated with organizational renewal and managing in the public sector. Currently his focus is on the dynamics of global business systems. He has served as faculty member with business schools in Europe, Asia and North America and as consultant to multinational companies.

Costas Markides, PhD is Professor of Strategic and International Management and holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership at the London Business School. He has published extensively in the worlds most prestigious journals. He has published several books and his most recent, Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets was short-listed for the FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year Award.