Strategic Conversations

J.-C. Spender is Research Professor at Kozminski University, Warsaw. Before entering academic life he worked for Rolls-Royce, IBM as a large account manager and special products planner, in merchant banking and was involved in several Silicon Valley start-ups. He was on the faculty at various universities including the University of California, Los Angeles, and Rutgers University. In 2003, he retired as Dean of the School of Technology and Business at SUNY/FIT, and between 2007 and 2008 he served as the Fulbright-Queen's Research Chair. His current research involves theorizing firms and markets under conditions of Knightian uncertainty, with additional interests and publications about the history of management and management education, strategy, and knowledge management. Bruce A. Strong is founding partner of Cambridge Partners and Associates Inc., a multidiscipline consulting company serving the U.S. and international business communities. He is an entrepreneur (founding systems integration firm Context Integration that did more than $250 million in sales), a consultant to senior management of global organizations such as PwC, the World Bank, and State Street Financial, and a featured speaker and lecturer on knowledge and strategy. He has been written up in Fortune and Fast Company magazines for his knowledge management work, and has written both academic and business articles, including two for The Wall Street Journal.

'Strategic Conversations redirects our focus to the pent-up, under-utilized asset right in our own back yards: our people and the powerful ideas they are capable of generating. For leaders, the book provides a practical blueprint for what it will take to effectively design, motivate, and harvest this kind of employee engagement. It shows that successful strategies aren't the product of a regimented, top down process, but of passionate conversations constructed by leaders who know how to listen.' Sindri Anderson, Managing Partner, Enact Global Consulting

• Preface; 1. Introduction - what are strategic conversations?; 2. The strategic conversations imperative; 3. Strategic conversations in the wild; 4. Engaging employees in management's agenda; 5. Strategizing and the leaders' role; 6. Putting strategic conversations into practice - innovation communities; 7. Conversation trumps structure - new norms for dialog; 8. Strategic conversations across geographies, generations, and the multitude; 9. Engaging the world outside in the conversation; 10. Creating a self-reinforcing innovation platform - collateral benefits; 11. Measuring the future; 12. Epilogue - on managing; Further reading; Index.