Volume 3, Number 2 - Summer 2006                                      print this:

Viewpoint: Organizational Culture and Scenario Planning

Culture plays a significant role in the everyday life of organizations, yet planning practitioners still know far too little about the relationships among societal and organizational culture, organizational performance, and the attributes of effective leadership. To bridge this knowledge gap, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) Research Program at the Wharton School recently published its 10-year, cross-cultural study. DSI's Paul Schoemaker and Widener University professor Sandra Martinez review some of GLOBE's findings, and discuss ways in which GLOBE's findings might enhance the scenario planning process. More...

Strategies into Practice: Monitoring Performance and Wiring Market Signals to Strategy

Blind-sided lately by changing market conditions? So was Unlucky Financials. Failing to develop its peripheral vision, the firm drove the strategic plan straight ahead and got blind-sided by market trends already visible in the rearview mirror. And it was totally oblivious to the "weak" signals that soon flooded downstream, adversely impacting the unfortunate firm's strategy and resource position. DSI's Doug Paradis examines the sad but illustrative case of Unlucky Financials, and explains the technique that can help you to wire important market signals to your strategy. More...

Fresh Perspectives: The Bioscience Industry and Technological Convergence

In our last issue, DSI's Jim Austin and Michael Mavaddat discussed four scenarios developed for The Future of BioSciences, a report jointly published by members of the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School and DSI, and the choices bio-pharmaceutical companies will need to make over the next 10 to 15 years. Jim Austin and Michael Mavaddat build on that report to explore more deeply the the bio-driven convergence of industry and technology. More...

News from Within:

• Mistakes are not always bad things. If executed correctly, companies and managers can gain profitable insights by deliberately taking actions that challenge assumptions about how to run the company. Can you profit from making deliberate mistakes? Read more by downloading Paul Schoemaker's new Harvard Business School article here.
  
  

• Bioresearch Online recently published a feature entitled, "Bioscience Industry Gets Preview Of Potential Year 2020 Landscapes." The website, which serves as the bioresearch industry's leading BioPharm news service, highlights The Future of BioSciences: Four Scenarios for 2020 and Their Implications for Human Healthcare report and its four scenarios. To read the article, visit http://www.bioresearchonline.com/.
  
  

• DSI's Chairman and CEO Paul Schoemaker published a new book with Prof. George S. Day titled Peripheral Vison: Detecting the Weak Signals that Will Make or Break Your Company (Harvard Business School Press, June 2006). DSI is offering executive education as well as consulting on this approach, in addition to having formed a new company with partners, called StrategicRadar, that provides the underlying software and technology platform for Peripheral Vision. Read more about the book here.
  
  

• In order to support current and future growth, Decision Strategies International will be relocating to a new address starting August 1. DSI's new location will be 1 West First Ave, Conshohocken, PA 19428. DSI's phone number and fax line, however, will remain unchanged. Please update your address books and send any future correspondences to that address.
  
  

• Members of DSI are happy to announce the addition of Stephan Hagelauer and Gnana Bharathy to the company.
  
  

  • Stephan, a Senior Consultant for DSI, has interests in intangible asset monetization and the design of valuation systems. He focuses on strategy formulation and solution delivery. With varied experiences across organizations in North America and Europe, Stephan has developed strategies for the monetization of multiple intellectual assets, presented on topics ranging from real-time risk management to the disintermediation of financial service providers. He co-founded Europatrust and collaborated in the creation of FlowTrack™ and the publication of Trust in the Digital Age, Editions d'Organisations, 2005. Prior to joining DSI, Stephan worked for XRT Cerg Finance, The Patent and License Exchange (PLX), and IKON Office Solutions. He holds a Marketing degree from the Institut Franco-Américain de Management and an MBA from Central Michigan University.
    
    
  • Gnana K. Bharathy returns to the consulting world after finishing his doctoral dissertation in Systems Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, in social and information systems. His award-winning dissertation develops a knowledge engineering process for modeling human behavior. Gnana has (co)authored over fifty technical reports and over ten papers relating to such diverse topics as leader modeling, crowd behavior , consumer personality, organizational transformation, decision-making, risk analysis and risk management, as well as process and environmental issues. Gnana is a certified Project Management Professional and is a member of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (GIPENZ), the Society for Risk Analysis, and the International Council on Systems Engineering.
    
    

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