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This year's Planning Forum conference had a most timely theme: “Leading Strategic Change.” The focus on leadership and change provided a unifying thrust to the many ways strategists, both scholars and practitioners, have been trying to cope with unprecedented change in their industries and in our world.

More of Professor Gary Hamel's thought‐provoking analysis appears in his long‐awaited book written with Professor C. K. Prahalad, Competing for the Future: Breakthrough Strategies for Seizing Control of Your Industry and Creating the Markets of Tomorrow (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994). Our diligent conference reporter, Bernard C. Reimann, Professor of Management at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, is the author of Managing for Value: A Guide for Value Based Strategic Management, published by Basil Blackwell and The Planning Forum.

This second “Conference Report” in our three‐part coverage of The Strategic Management Society's annual meeting presents case studies by CEOs and other agents of change involved in transforming large enterprises. Featuring—Bob Bauman, on the newly merged SmithKline Beechham; Sir Colin Marshall, on reforming the culture at British Airways; and Henry Mintzberg on “adhocracies.”

This first Report in our two‐part coverage of The Strategic Management Society's annual meeting is devoted to three prominent conceptualizers—Richard Pascale, Gary Hamel, and C. K. Prahalad. They prescribe radical treatment for organizations seeking to transform their enterprise for success in the coming decades. (See our checklist of questions their provocative concepts should motivate managers to consider.) The second part, scheduled for the May/June issue, presents case studies by CEOs directly involved in transforming their corporations.

Some 3,500 Academy of Management members met in Las Vegas in August so it should be no surprise that a number of the sessions dealt with adopting strategic management in the gaming and hospitality industries.

Appearing at The Planning Forum's 1992 International Conference, was a “faculty” that included many of America's most respected strategic thinkers. They urged attendees to take daring steps into strategic management's wild beyond

Increasingly, managers are harried by rapidly accelerating technological changes, globalization, and new competitors. How can they cope with the mercurial environments their firms are facing today? Should they stop wasting precious time thinking strategically and instead concentrate on action? Should they forget about careful pre‐planning and use their energy to try enough different approaches so some will surely succeed? Has strategizing as we know it become obsolete in today's chaotic environment?

For five foggy days last August, over 3,000 management scholars converged on the San Francisco Hilton to hold the fiftieth annual meeting of the Academy of Management. This year's theme was “Enhancing Organizational Vision and Vitality,” and four of the featured speakers were prominent CEOs. Luckily, I was able to attend three out of their four presentations.

The 1990 International Conference of The Planning Forum held in Washington, D. C. set a new attendance record. Some 1300 senior executives exchanged war stories, business theories, and points of view while attending three days of presentations by major company CEOs, consultants to leading corporations, noted academics, and practitioners of strategic management. Many of the star presenters had the discerning Bernard C. Reimann, chairman of the Department of Management at Cleveland State University, in their audience busily taking notes. Professor Reimann regularly reports on major strategic management conferences for Planning Review.

The Planning Forum's Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. posted another attendance record. Some 1300 senior executives exchanged war stories, business theories, and points of view with each other while attending three days of presentations by major company CEOs, consultants to leading corporations, noted academics, and practitioners of strategic management.

The provocative theme of this year's Planning Forum conference was: “The New Strategic Leadership: Driving Change, Getting Results!” Leadership may be the only management concept that has received more attention lately — by business writers, as well as practitioners — than strategy. But there's little consensus on what strategic leadership is and how it should best be facilitated.

Here's more coverage of The Planning Forum's annual International Conference in Toronto by our diligent reporter, Professor Reimann. His synopses capture conference highlights and, as usual, he seasons them with his insightful commentary. This is the third part of a three‐part article that began in the September/October issue.

We continue to be intrigued by the number of managers we meet who haven't read Michael Porter's book Competitive Advantage. For them and practitioners on the corporate battlefront, we offer this synopsis of Porter's ideas from Professor Reimann's Managing for Value.

First Prize: This winner of our annual contest, in association with the Foundation for Administrative Research (FAR), describes an innovative strategy‐refinement process that uses four “filters” (tests) for picking high potential business initiatives.

Most top executives of major public corporations insist that they manage their firms in the best interests of their share‐holders. In fact, during the carefree Fifties and the go‐go Sixties most of them did indeed concentrate on earnings growth, and the stock market rewarded them accordingly. Executive compensation and bonus plans were designed to be driven by growth in earnings per share (EPS). Not surprisingly, corporate executives became more and more convinced that growth in earnings was the name of the game.

The Academy of Management held its 1988 annual convention at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, August 5–11. The setting was highly appropriate, since some of the topics presented and discussed clearly bordered on fantasy.

The Strategic Management Society attracted 450 participants to its annual conference in October in exotic, bustling Singapore to explore the theme, “Cultures and Competitive Strategies.”

Although the personal computer (PC) invasion of the corporate world may be old news by now, most organizations are just beginning to appreciate some of the benefits—and hazards—of this new technology. The new developments in personal computing — not just PCs, but other sophisticated hardware and software, and networks as well—can have subtle effects on an organization. Evidence is mounting that computer technology is helping to improve the strategic vision of its users. Not only does the computer speed up such work as word processing and budgeting, it can actually change the way managers view their world and relate to it.

You'd like to give value‐based planning a try but have been dragging your feet because you're put off by its intricacy? Or, you worry about how you can get your managers to become proficient enough in the method to be comfortable with it? If so, you certainly aren't alone. The sheer complexity of the data analyses and computations has been a major stumbling block to the acceptance of value‐based planning (VBP). So, what can you do if you're really interested in trying the VBP process in your organization?

Last year's conference focused on the some of the ways in which corporate planning experts can add value to their line organizations. The theme was so well received that the conference planners decided to offer an encore this year. Once again I will approach this review essay from the perspective of a planning executive looking for new ways to add value to his or her firm.

Strategic management gives an organization the power to “create its own future.” This was the gist of H. Igor Ansoff's message to management more than two decades ago. Yet, in spite of the obvious appeal of this idea, few, if any modern companies have been able to realize the full benefits of true strategic management.

Will strategic planning be the next crusade for the pan‐European market that is scheduled to debut in 1992? The stunning turnout for the October 17–20, 1988, Strategic Management Society Conference—900 participants from 25 countries—indicates that both European firms and exporters from around the world view the new border‐smashing European Economic Community legislation as the opening shot in a land race for new markets.

The major objective of any business organization should be to create value for its stockholders or owners. If the stock of a publicly held corporation does not provide its shareholders with a return that increases their wealth, that corporation is not meeting its most fundamental obligation.

There were a lot of eager customers at the Conference Board's annual strategic planning conference in March. Many of us had just read Walter Kiechel's Fortune article about “Smart Corporate Strategy for the 1990s” (February 29, 1988), which presents a remarkable reversal of the publication's skeptical attitude toward strategic management thinking. As a result, I felt the conference theme, selected by its organizer, Walter Schaffir, was made to order for our turbulent times. If my colleagues and I are to keep our jobs in the next decade, we really need to learn all we can about “Getting Value from Strategic Planning!”

Whether they're growing, downsizing, restructuring, or just trying to survive, today's organizations are struggling to sail through the “storms of change.” What's more, the management waters don't promise to be any smoother in the 1990s. So the stormy seas theme of this year's Planning Forum conference in San Francisco seemed most appropriate. In this review I will try to relate the insights from the sessions I attended to the theme of coping with change.