Our vision is to become an internationally leading institute in the areas of strategy, business innovation, change management and leadership, by spearheading state-of-the-art applied research and bringing these insights to our clients in a practical way, driving corporate learning and organizational development.

Our more detailed vision is defined on the basis of the four key elements depicted below.

Company ambition: What performance level do we pursue?

Central to our vision of what we want to become in the next 10 years is a compelling picture of the type of results that we hope to achieve. Our top 3 performance aims are:

1. Leading content-wise: We want to be at the intellectual forefront of our field, publishing state-of-the-art applied research and developing advanced tools and methods. We want to be international thought leaders.
2. Leading agenda-wise: We want to be recognized as intellectually leading, allowing us to influence developments in our field and draw firms' attention to important improvements. We want to be international awareness leaders.
3. Leading impact-wise: Recognition in turn should help us to have a significant impact on the actual policies and behaviors of companies, and development of people. We want to be international change leaders.

Importantly, this means that it is not necessarily our ambition to become big or to reach a certain level of profitability. These are more tactical choices.

Business model: How do we create value competitively?

Part of our vision is also to develop a value creation system for customers that is superior to that of our competitors. Four key elements are:

1. Combining strategy & leadership: We take an integral approach to the topics on the CEO's agenda, from direction setting to getting people moving. We creatively blend hard and soft general management issues.
2. Combining training & consulting: To get people to learn and companies to develop, different means can be used, all the way from consulting to training. We creatively blend different facilitation methods.
3. Combining standardization & customization: We make use of tried and tested best practices while simultaneously adapting our approach to the specific client needs. We creatively blend reliability and flexibility.
4. Combining theory & practice: We devote considerable energy to staying up to date on management theory, but translate this know-how into tangible methods & tools. We creatively blend conceptual depth and situational relevance.

Organizational model: How do we create an effective team?

Part of our vision is also to build an organization capable of achieving our ambition and supporting the business model. Four key characteristics are:

1. Seniors: We do not believe in the model of one senior bringing in a busload of juniors to do the work. Clients need senior experts as facilitators. Therefore, we work largely with experienced staff. We emphasize expertise.
2. Entrepreneurial: Our people are not employees, but co-entrepreneurs, looking for new commercial opportunities and developing new knowledge. We want them to take ownership and contribute. We emphasize participation.
3. Networked: To flexibly offer customers a broad range of solutions, while staying close to our core competences in strategy and leadership, we work with many partners. We emphasize complementarity.
4. Missionary: We look for people who share our purpose and are driven by these convictions. Skills can be learned, but a sense of mission must be brought to the job. We emphasize purposefulness.

Market position: Where do we want to compete?

Our vision is also based on identifying a structural need in the market that has not been sufficiently addressed by our competitors. We have positioned ourselves vis-à-vis three main groups of competitors:

1. Training firms: Most trainers focus on teaching business skills and tools through imitative practice. We stimulate independent and creative strategic and leadership thinking. We emphasize thought, ideas & concepts.
2. Business schools: Most B-schools focus on teaching theoretical knowledge of the functional areas. We offer more applicable concepts and make the translation into actual behavior. We emphasize application, action & results.
3. Strategy consultants: Most consultants are advisors, basing their recommendations on extensive data analysis. We do not advise, nor write thick reports, but facilitate. We emphasize guidance, questioning & follow through.