While individuals, small businesses, and even government entities have seen their cash assets disappear in the face of the Great Recession, major corporations are sitting on stockpiles of cash, waiting for opportunities to put it to work. What are the implications for the economy in the months and years ahead? We’ll explain.

For the past three decades, the message from boardrooms around the world has typically been: “Simply simplify!” At the risk of sounding redundant, an increasing number of firms are recognizing that this solution is simplistic. Research shows that the best companies simplify to the extent that they continue to increase long-term value. Beyond that point, they learn to embrace and optimize complexity. What does this mean for employees, investors, suppliers, and customers? We’ll explain.

Business strategy is all about defining markets, determining the firm’s competitive positioning within the defined market, and optimizing the firm to compete most effectively from that positioning. This involves identification and accumulation of appropriate core competencies, as well as anticipation (and perhaps cultivation) of industry evolution. However, the pace of economic and competitive change in the 21st century is such that the traditional approaches to strategic analysis that consultants and firms adopted in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, no longer serve organizations well. As a result, firms have turned increasingly to borrowing and refining strategies based on a portfolio of business models proven in other industries or by other firms. We’ll examine this relatively new way of thinking about strategy, and how firms large and small are using it to achieve competitive advantage.