Part one: the venerable management guru queries the popular fascination with General Electric and Google. Smaller, duller companies - such as an Australian lawn-mowing franchise - are the bedrock of developed economies, he suggests.

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It's easy to have strategic priorities: lots of companies are drowning in them. The trick is to distil these goals into 3-5 'must-win battles', says Peter Killing, a professor at IMD, the Swiss business school. In an interview, he outlines ways of identifying what's essential.

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Kevin Eyres, LinkedIn's European managing director, explains in an interview how the online networking tool's members use the site. How many contacts are needed for it to be worthwhile? Is it a replacement for traditional face-to-face networking? What about confidentiality issues?

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Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, says in an interview that the best business leaders avoid reducing management to a series of 'either/or' choices. Instead, the likes of Procter & Gamble's AG Lafley can blend seemingly incompatible courses of action into a very effective strategy.

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