The most important change, and it's been going on for at least three decades, is the increasing "professionalization," if that's a word, of the faculty. By professionalization I mean the tendency of faculty members to have Ph.D.'s in their academic specialties, and for these specialties to be ever more narrowly defined. The higher-rated schools may have chief executives in residence or retired execs on three-year teaching fellowships, but the days when most faculty members had considerable prior experience as businessmen or women - those days are mostly over.

Most of the experts agree that strategy will have to become more "adaptive", meaning that strategies will change faster based on information from people on the corporation's front lines - dealing with customers, fending off competitors. This won't represent a new revolution, but rather the continued speeding up of the one that's been going on. Everything will move faster, and competitive advantage disappear more quickly than ever.

The most important change, and it's been going on for at least three decades, is the increasing "professionalization," if that's a word, of the faculty. By professionalization I mean the tendency of faculty members to have Ph.D.'s in their academic specialties, and for these specialties to be ever more narrowly defined. The higher-rated schools may have chief executives in residence or retired execs on three-year teaching fellowships, but the days when most faculty members had considerable prior experience as businessmen or women - those days are mostly over.

People say that ideas aren't important in business. Okay, people say, maybe an idea for a new product, but the rest is all execution, making it happen. Not so. As the strategy revolution demonstrated, ideas can be the key tools for making your business competitive.

The best discipline, maybe the only discipline that really works, is self- discipline.

People believe that management consultants are mostly useless parasites. Up until about 1980 it was consultants more than anyone else who came up with the critical concepts behind strategy. The history of strategy suggests there are lots of things consultants can do for a company that the company can't typically do for itself.

I argue that once it became clear that the most important function of the CEO was to develop and enact the corporate strategy, that often had the effect of distancing him from people below him in the organization. It also encouraged the idea that if a CEO were a great strategist for a company in one industry, he would probably be a great strategist in another industry. And that usually hasn't proved to be the case.