Don’t Sell a Product, Sell a Whole New Way of Thinking. We all know the story. A team creates a groundbreaking new innovation only to see it mired in internal debates. When it is eventually launched in the market, there is an initial flurry of sales to early adopters, but then sales cycles become sluggish. Pilot customers are enthusiastic, but broader adoption is slow even with customer support and training. All the pieces are in place to create “disruptive innovation” and “cross the chasm,” but the results are disappointing. What’s missing? The problem is that data, information, and value propositions are not enough to sell innovative products. Mental models are how the brain makes sense of the vast amount of information to be processed every moment of every day. To understand the power of mental models, consider Dr.
Why couldn’t Semmelweis persuade people of his innovation? A few decades later, Louis Pasteur proved that germs, not humours, were the primary cause of disease. Innovators change the lens through which we see the world. A. B. How to Do Business Model Innovation for the Established Firm. This article provides a systematic framework for helping executives of large, established organizations identify opportunities for business model innovation and organize themselves to pursue these opportunities.
While also applicable to start-ups, this article focuses primarily on how to define, challenge, and revamp the business model of an existing business or organization. In nearly every industry tried and tested business models are coming under attack at an unprecedented rate:Pharmaceutical companies are searching for alternatives to the blockbuster model. Banks are looking for innovative ideas to make up for lost fees and revenues due to new regulations. A drop in advertising revenues and circulation pushes newspapers towards new sources of income.
Traditional brick and mortar bookstores are losing out to online competitors that are not encumbered by pricey real estate. What is a business model, anyway? Do you need a new business model? Business models have a limited lifespan. Get the Strategy You Need -- Now - Michael Birshan, Martin Hirt , and Kurt Strovink. By Michael Birshan, Martin Hirt and Kurt Strovink | 12:00 PM November 20, 2013 Two uncomfortable strategic truths face the vast majority of executives and companies – and probably you, too. First, you don’t have a powerful strategy. And second, you aren’t doing much about it. Though both statements may sound extreme, they are the clear implication of new McKinsey research on how companies create value and allocate resources. The widespread absence of a powerful strategy is clear from our recent study of 3,000 of the world’s largest companies, which finds that just 20 percent in that group create 90 percent of its total economic profit.
The rest of the companies, more than 2,400, simply do not have a strategy that effectively outperforms the market. A second new McKinsey study delves into the question of what executives are doing about their strategic shortfall, and concludes that most are not doing enough. Inertia is expensive. 1. There are techniques to fix that problem. 2. 3. Retool. Latest Gartner Hype Cycle. Evaluating technology options for innovation in marketing – do you know your hype cycles? If you’re involved in marketing strategy development, you will be constantly making judgements and doubtless arguing with colleagues about which digital technology innovations are most relevant to your organisation.
In this post we share some examples of Gartner’s well established Hype Cycle tools which serve to highlight the adoption of new technology tools within the marketplace. I’m noticing a lot more innovation roles in larger organisations recently. It’s great to see companies investing in understanding technology and marketing trends to try to create a roadmap for prioritising and implementing innovative digital technologies for marketing applications. The Gartner Hype Cycle model for technology innovation Gartner Hype Cycles for technology and marketing in 2013 In August 2013, Gartner followed with their Latest 2013 Hype Cycle of emerging technologies. Gartner Hype Cycle 2009. The strategic yardstick you can’t afford to ignore.
At first blush, “beating the market” might sound like an expression better suited to investing or financial management than to business strategy. When you think about it, though, overcoming the profit-depleting effects of market forces is the essence of good strategy—what separates winners from losers, headline makers from also-rans.
A focus on the presence, absence, or possibility of market-beating value creation should therefore help transform any discussion of strategy from something vague and conceptual into something specific and concrete. While there are many indicators of market-beating strategies, in our experience economic profit (EP)—what’s left over after subtracting the cost of capital from net operating profit—is highly revealing. Using this lens, individual companies can take a hard-boiled look at the effectiveness of their strategies. This article focuses on eight analyses emerging from our economic-profit exercise. Strategy is rife with inequality Exhibit 1 Enlarge Exhibit 2.
From exponential technologies to exponential innovation. We developed the Shift Index to help executives understand and take advantage of the long-term forces of change shaping the US economy. The Shift Index tracks 25 metrics across more than 40 years. These metrics fall into three areas: 1) the developments in the technological and political foundations underlying market changes, 2) the flows of capital, information, and talent changing the business landscape, and 3) the impacts of these changes on competition, volatility, and performance across industries.
Combined, these factors reflect what we call the Big Shift in the global business environment. For more information, please go to www.deloitte.com/us/shiftindex Exponential improvement in core digital technologies is fueling exponential innovation. These rapid advances have the power to disrupt industries.
Exponential innovations are rapidly moving across boundaries, causing traditional definitions to blur and blend. Unlocking the passion of the explorer Coherency in contradiction. The Evolution Of Strategy. When we think of great strategists in history, from Sun Tzu to Alexander the Great to Clausewitz, we think of master chess players, leaders who personify timeless principles and can think two or three moves ahead. Strategy has always been the sexy part of business, where boring Word documents and endless Excel spreadsheets give way to glorious PowerPoint decks.
Here drudgery ended and modern day corporate generals could sit back and formulate plans for world domination. For better or worse, those days are over. As Rita Gunther McGrath explains in her new book, The End of Competitive Advantage , strategy is now a game that looks more like World of Warcraft then the game of kings. You never win, but are always questing, gaining new skills and resources along the way and continually seeking the next challenge. The Last Thing We Need Now Is A Vision Many strategies start with a vision. Often, a vision has a shelf life. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning Emergent Strategy Bayesian Strategy. Our Self-Inflicted Complexity - Roger Martin. By Roger Martin | 8:00 AM September 6, 2013 People who make it their business to study large-scale problems (business theorists and economists among them) seem to be in broad agreement that the world is growing ever more complex — and that this trend makes their work harder. If this is true, then we should be grateful for their ongoing efforts and to a large extent let them off the hook for failing to make more progress.
But is it true? The claim can be hard to evaluate given the number of meanings that attach to the word complexity. But if we start from a solid, shared definition it becomes easier to consider. [T]hey are all designed to handle the sort of complexity in which there are many variables: detail complexity. Senge’s distinction between detail complexity (driven by the number of variables) and dynamic complexity (heightened by any subtlety between cause and effect) is not only key to explaining why some overhyped tools don’t deliver.
The question is: How do they do it? Work Is Broken; Let's Hack It. A Technique for Producing Ideas. The Golden Age Of Management Is Now. Companies Fall, Entrepreneurship Rises. By Daniel Isenberg | 12:30 PM March 18, 2013 When a whale dies, the 30-100 ton body — or “whale fall” — slowly, silently sinks to the ocean bottom where it becomes the wellspring of a complex new microcosm of seabed flora and fauna that can thrive for well over half a century. These new ecosystems with their hundreds of species from flesh-eating sharks to sulphur-metabolizing worms also include “innovative start-ups” — previously undiscovered new sea animals that have naturally selected to flourish in the unique ecosystem. There are many ways that live “corporate whales” can cultivate entrepreneurship ecosystems — as investors with capital for ventures to grow, as customers who buy innovative products, or as marketing partners to give the small dynamic firms global reach.
A similar drama is taking place in aptly-named Waterloo Canada as RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones have become overripe. In India in the late 1970s, there was a similar story. Become & Stay Great. Disrupt or Be Disrupted. Bayesian Strategy. Hannibal Smith, the fearless leader of the A-team, always loved it when a plan came together and on that campy ’80′s TV show, they always seemed to, no matter how intricate and contrived. It seems quaint now. In the real world, things rarely happen as we imagine they will. As Mike Tyson, another icon from the ’80′s, liked to say, everybody’s got a plan until they get hit and, like it or not, we all get hit, usually sooner rather than later.
When that happens, as it inevitably always does, even our best laid plans go awry. In truth, planning has never been about strategy, but control and control has always been an illusion. The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning When Alfred Sloan conceived the modern corporation at General Motors, he based it on hierarchical military organizations. Orders flowed downwards and your rank determined your responsibility. By the 1980’s, the seams started to show. Today, planning has become even less tenable. Why Our Numbers Are Always Wrong - Greg.
Bayes’ Rule Makes A Better Thinker. Success Makes Big Companies Stupid. Our Numbers Are Always Wrong. Our data driven society requires hard numbers. We take those numbers, plug them into models to create solid plans and execute those plans with ruthless efficiency. If we do it right, things are supposed to go well. The problem is that our numbers are fantasies, our models are broken and our budgets are farces. We all know it, try to make allowances for it and the game goes on because, quite frankly, it is the only one we know how to play. Somewhere along the way we became enamoured by certainty and obsessed with precision in the hopes that, if we only built better tools, we could conquer complexity. That effort has failed miserably. There is, however, another way that was abandoned long ago. The Guessing Game Sometime in the 1740’s, Thomas Bayes, a minister and amateur scholar, had a brilliant idea. His solution, was to start with a guess.
The idea was controversial even at the time of its inception. Hard Numbers, Soft Facts The Problem of Uncertainty Micromotives and Macrobehavior - Greg. Forget Industry Best Practices. I often advise companies on the implementation of technology or the rollout of marketing campaigns. Companies, especially larger ones, always want to know industry "best practices" for their problem. A standard question I get: "How do you plan to apply best practices in the work you're doing for us? " It's not always a straightforward answer. First, you have to define what "best practice" means. Who Decides What A Best Practice Is? Best practice is often preceded by the word "industry," but it's important to recognize that best practices can and should be pulled from many places--not just from your company's direct competitor or your industry.
Industry specific. Based on context. Based on the users. Once you determine the best source for your best practices, you must then determine what, if anything, you are going to do with them. The risk of merely following best practices include: Best Practices Mean Average The definition of a best practice is something tried and true. There Are No Best Practices. That’s a best practice. Look, there’s another one. We need a best practice. What’s the best practice? Let’s standardize on the best practice. Arrrgh. Enough, already, with best practices. There are no best practices, only actions that have worked for others in other situations. To me, the right practices are today’s practices. There are two choices: choose someone else’s best practices and twist, prune, and bend them to fit, or define the incremental functionality you’d like to create and lay out the activities (practices) to make it happen.
The important part – the right practices, the new activities, the novel work, whatever you call it, emerges from the need. It’s a problem hierarchy, a problem flow-down. It’s all about clarity — clearly define the starting point, clearly define the destination, and express the gaps in a single page, picture-based problem statements. And once everyone understands things clearly, the right next steps (new practices) emerge. Wait! Strategic Partners. Set Business Goals. My only goal when I first launched Formula was to ensure that I made enough money to survive the subsequent month, with little to no forward thinking or planning. Unfortunately, I think that many business owners still think that way regardless of their size, revenue or business offering. When I finally made the commitment to do some future business planning, it included many short and long-term benefits, including ensuring that my senior executives understood what we were trying to accomplish and the roles they would play in helping us get there.
Business owners should not fear setting goals or projections because there is absolutely no downside to doing so. Also, it is important to remember that goal setting doesn't have to be only about revenue. It could relate to innovation, employee retention, service offerings, or anything that is important to enhancing your business. Here are four reasons why you should be setting goals for your organization: 1. 2. 3. 4. Corporate Strategy & Operations. During countless conversations we have with executives, they discuss the biggest strategic planning challenge they face within their environments – that of strategy execution.
Aligning corporate strategy to operational execution is indeed critical, yet most organizations fail to continue the planning effort beyond the corporate planning process – into the operational layers of the organization. By doing a good job in this area, organizations can establish the necessary links from strategic goals to the business-level execution of strategy-supporting initiatives. Those links and the governance to manage overall progress at a plan-level constitute the “golden thread” required to sew corporate strategy together with operations so that strategies can be implemented successfully. How do we string the “golden thread”? All organizations are in need the golden thread that links strategy to execution initiatives and operational planning is the answer. Can we trust our people to execute?
1 . 2. 3. Fewer Customers, Faster Growth. Navigate Tough Prospects. The "True Value Test" Strategic & Corporate Five. Where to Play and How to Win. Relevant Core Competencies. Strategy Is All About Practice. Building A Fast-Growing Business.
4 Things for Successful Business. 8 Timeless Business Principles. Top 10 Influential Business Books. 4 Keys for Strategic Thinkers.