Taking Advantage of Tumultuous Times is a series of articles from Monitor offering insights into critical issues organizations face during this unprecedented period. Today’s economic uncertainties, combined with multiple, significant and disruptive forces, change the nature of industries and competition across the globe. The articles explain how business leaders can seize opportunities during these times for lasting change and growth.

Taking Advantage of Tumultuous Times: Claiming the Future
By Eamonn Kelly

This paper outlines four key global discontinuities that are driving global economic change, identifies the most significant ways in which organizations will gain competitive advantage and advocates critical, actionable and immediate responses.

Open Innovation: No Longer an Option
By Geoff Tuff and Ben Jonash

Companies need to look beyond their walls to compete in these tumultuous times. Open innovation can help businesses more reliably discover new ideas, but they need discipline to pursue the right opportunities with the right approaches.

Taking Advantage of Tumultuous Times: Mastering the Moment
By Eamonn Kelly

We are in the midst of fundamental structural shifts that will lead to dramatic discontinuities in the global economy. This paper describes the shifts and the actions we must take to survive in the short term while positioning ourselves to thrive.

Corporate Strategy in Uncertain Times
By Dan Baruchi and Max Weise

In these challenging and uncertain times, corporate leaders must incorporate uncertainty into strategic decision making. Firms should explore a range of potential future scenarios in order to uncover new opportunities and threats to their business, and respond with winning strategies.

The Innovation Imperative
By Bansi Nagji and Jeff Wordham

To innovate in a recession, companies need to seize opportunities not by retrenching, but by rebalancing: focusing on the right innovation projects and then executing those innovations more efficiently, effectively and creatively.

Shifting the Curve of Cost and Value
By Josh Lee

Directives to cut costs across-the-board do not work. Adaptive cost management helps identify the right costs to cut, aligns the organization and its spending structures so that costs do not creep back in, and protects and strengthens the organization for the long run.

Spending Smarter on Marketing in Tumultuous Times
By Jennifer Lacks Kaplan, Mark Pocharski and Victoria Levy

Facing a sharp economic downturn and fundamental shifts in the way buyers learn and make decisions, companies must adapt their mix of marketing expenditures and develop new models for customer engagement.

Defending Profitability with Proactive Price Management
By Tom Nagle, Joseph Zale and John Hogan

Successfully navigating this recession requires a proactive approach to protect and grow margins. This article identifies smart moves that will help you take advantage of opportunities to improve your competitive position.