#36—Martin Reeves: Employing an Imagination Cycle to Keep Your Strategy Fresh

Martin Reeves is a Managing Director and Senior Partner in BCG’s San Francisco office and Chairman of the BCG Henderson Institute, where he explores ideas from beyond the world of business, which have implications for business strategy management.

He is the co-author of The Imagination Machine: How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company's Future (HBR Press, 2021), the series Inspiring the Next Game: Strategy Ideas for Forward Looking Leaders, and arguably one of the best strategy books of all time: Your Strategy Needs a Strategy: How to Choose and Execute the Right Approach (HBR Press, 2015). He has also written numerous articles in top business journals like MIT Press and Harvard Business Review.

Martin joined BCG in London in 1989 and later moved to Tokyo, where he was responsible for BCG’s business with Western clients. His consulting career has focused on strategy – with equal emphasis on idea origination and development, and application by consulting with clients on their strategy challenges. A perennial generalist, Martin’s interest range widely.

In this podcast he shares :

“Strategy Stacks”—what they are, and why you need to start thinking about them Six steps that creativity theory shows are needed to harness imagination in yourself and in your company Why business strategy can no longer follow a one-size-fits-all model. How ecosystem-based competition differs from the company to company battles most business strategy knowledge is based on

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" So, therefore, whatever generalization we might want to make about strategy is increasingly inapplicable to the whole. Therefore we need to ask, pluralistically not what the approaches to strategy in the modern business environment, but which approach is applicable under which circumstances."

-Martin Reeves

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Episode Timeline:

00:00—Introducing Martin + The topic of today’s episode

2:05—If you really know me, you know that....

2:30—What is your definition of strategy?

3:29—What are you most known for?

4:40—Could you talk a bit about your strategy of strategies?

7:24—Do the sources of competitive advantage change in light of the rising dominance of ecosystems?

9:47—What does creativity in strategy have to do with play and imagination?

12:05—The first step of the Imagination Cycle: Seduction

12:50—The second step of the Imagination Cycle: Idea

13:44—The third step of the Imagination Cycle: Collision

14:22—The fourth step of the Imagination Cycle: Epidemic

15:40—The fifth step of the Imagination Cycle: Codification

17:10—The sixth step of the Imagination Cycle: Encore

17:50—How can people connect with you, and what are you working on next?

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Additional Resources:

Company Page: https://www.bcg.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/MartinKReeves

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martin-reeves

The Imagination Machine Book: https://theimaginationmachine.org/