DO YOU KNOW ME?

CORPORATE STRATEGISTS ARE NOT CELEBRITIES. They're rarely household names. But, increasingly, it's their work that is shaping America's corporations—allowing them to compete in a decade that's turning out to be far more challenging, stressful, and, nonetheless, exciting than we'd expected. In an effort to ferret out strategic planning's unsung heroes, to put titles to challenges, names to titles, and faces to names, we cast a wide net. We scoured the business press. We checked in with our advisory board as well as our regular and occasional contributors. We asked subscribers, Wall Street analysts, academics, and even the people we interviewed for other articles. In particular, we were looking for individuals whose names are not familiar, who bring unusual backgrounds to their tasks, who have recently taken on new assignments, or who, because of the company they work for, face remarkable, difficult, and unusual challenges. According to our sources, those strategists we found, whose names, titles, and challenges appear on the next four pages, share a unique capacity for visualizing where they want to be, for solving problems, and then for doing what is necessary to carry their visions through. We'll be charting their success—watch for updates in JBS as the year goes on.