Richard Rumelt

Professor emeritus at UCLA Anderson School of Management; formerly on faculty at Harvard Business School. Regarded as one of the foremost authorities on corporate strategy. Consulted with Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and the US Army Special Operations Command. Author of Good Strategy Bad Strategy (2011) and The Crux (2022). Runs a boutique practice, General Imagination, offering strategy foundries for senior leadership teams.

Episodes in this wiki

• Richard Rumelt on Good Strategy Bad Strategy — the kernel (diagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions), sources of power, bad strategy, organisational dynamics, and the foundry process.

Key positions

• Strategy is problem-solving; it is not vision, mission, or a list of goals.
• The three-element kernel is the minimum viable structure for any strategy.
• Focus — concentrating power on an addressable target — is the foundational mechanism of strategic success.
• Insight, not analysis alone, is what resolves the crux of hard problems.
• Historical knowledge (biographies, business histories) is the primary training ground for strategic thinking.