New corporate strategies take years to develop. Two methods for facilitating the development of new strategies by executive strategy meetings are to be compared.

One method is to hold a two-day retreat in a posh hotel; the other is to hold a series of informal luncheon meetings on company premises. The following are the results of two independent random samples of firms following one of these two methods. The data are the number of months, for each company that elapsed from the time an idea was first suggested until the time it was implemented.

Hotel On-Site

17 .......... 6

11 ..........12

14 ..........13

25 ..........16

9 .......... 4

18 .......... 8

36 ..........14

19 ..........18

22 ..........10

24 .......... 5

16 .......... 7

31 ..........12

23 ..........10

Test for a difference between means, using α = 0.05.