Keynote by Eric Van den Steen
Culture versus Strategy: What Leaders Want to Know

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast, every day." Is that really true? And if so, what are the implications for strategy and for leaders steering their companies through a fast-changing environment? In this session, Harvard Business School Professor Eric Van den Steen will discuss how strategy and culture interact. Professor Van den Steen's research focuses on the fundamentals of strategy and of competitive advantage, on the role of leaders in strategy, and on the interaction between strategy and organization more broadly. He will discuss how the simple conceptualizations of strategy as "core guidance" and of culture as "shared beliefs and preferences" give powerful insight into each of these critical concepts and in how they relate. This ultimately gets to the root of the breakfast issue, suggesting better ways to deal with it and highlighting what this means for you as a leader in an era of constant change.

Eric Van den Steen is the Royal Little Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), where he teaches strategy. Professor Van den Steen's research studies the fundamentals of strategy and competitive advantage, the role of leaders in strategy, and the interaction between strategy and organization more broadly.