S06E01 Why the Best Project Often Loses

Most organizations manage two portfolios at once: the official one on the slides, and the shadow one made up of urgent fixes, hidden work, and constant interruptions. This episode explores the gap between planned priorities and lived reality.

Welcome to season 6 of Management talks with Gunnar Wettergren. This first series is a reflective podcast series about what really shapes IT project portfolios, including strategy, politics, hidden work, AI, resilience, public value, and the future of portfolio leadership.  In this first episode we ask why weaker projects survive while better ones quietly disappear? This opening episode explores the real forces behind portfolio decisions, including power, sponsorship, visibility, timing, and organizational politics.

This module helps students understand how ideas move from abstract concepts to tangible learning tools. The focus is on prototyping as a way of exploring assumptions, testing as a way of generating evidence, and iteration as a disciplined process of improvement. Students should leave the module with a clear understanding that prototypes are not unfinished failures, but purposeful instruments for learning under uncertainty.

This episode helps you understand how meaningful problems are identified in real communities. The focus is on moving beyond assumptions, abstract problem statements, and solution-first thinking. 

This episode introduces Design Thinking as a human-centered and iterative way of approaching complex problems. After this episode, students should be able to explain what Design Thinking is, why it differs from solution-first approaches, and why empathy, experimentation, and iteration are central.

In this lecture, we explore the ideas of Peter Drucker, often called the father of modern management. Drucker argued that the true purpose of business is to create a customer, and that innovation and responsibility are at the heart of management practice. We discuss his influence on concepts such as management by objectives, the rise of knowledge workers, and the ethical role of corporations in society. With examples from Intel, Apple, and Johnson & Johnson, the episode highlights how Drucker's broad and pragmatic vision continues to shape how organizations think about strategy, purpose, and responsibility in a turbulent world.

In this lecture, we explore C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel's influential concept of core competencies and their argument that firms succeed not by managing portfolios of products, but by cultivating the deep, collective capabilities that underpin innovation and growth. Using examples from Honda, Canon, Apple, and Google, we see how core competencies enable firms to enter new markets, create new products, and sustain advantage over time. The episode also considers the risks of neglecting or misidentifying competencies, the need for renewal in a fast-changing world, and the ethical implications of valuing people and knowledge as the foundations of strategy. Prahalad and Hamel remind us that while products come and go, competencies endure — and they are the true source of long-term competitive strength.

In this lecture, we explore Jay Barney's influential Resource-Based View of the firm and his argument that sustainable competitive advantage comes from unique internal resources and capabilities. We examine the VRIN framework — resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable — and see how companies from Apple to Toyota and Zara have leveraged such resources to maintain their edge. The episode also considers critiques of RBV, its extension into dynamic capabilities, and the ethical questions raised when resources such as data, culture, or natural assets are used for competitive advantage. Barney's work reminds us that strategy is not only about markets and positioning, but about what firms uniquely bring to the competition.

In this lecture, we explore Edith Penrose's groundbreaking work The Theory of the Growth of the Firm and her lasting impact on strategy. Penrose reframed the firm as a bundle of resources whose growth is shaped by managerial limits, learning, and the redeployment of capabilities. We look at how her insights anticipated the resource-based view of strategy and remain relevant for understanding both opportunities and constraints in corporate growth. Through examples from 3M to Amazon, the episode shows how Penrose's ideas help us see growth not just as expansion, but as a dynamic process rooted in resources, capacity, and responsibility.

In this lecture, we explore Igor Ansoff's enduring contribution to strategy and his famous growth framework, the Ansoff Matrix. Ansoff showed that firms have four basic paths to growth: market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. We examine how each path carries different risks and rewards, illustrated by cases from Coca-Cola and Disney to Apple and Amazon. The episode also considers critiques of the framework, its relevance in the digital age, and the ethical questions growth strategies raise. Ansoff's work remains a cornerstone of strategic management because it reminds us that growth is not random but a matter of deliberate choices about direction and risk.