Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine phần 3 pptx

Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine

40

Who will be your future competitors? Besides traditional competitors, this

includes entire industries that might one day constitute competition. For

instance, Microsoft and First Data Corporation produce on-line bill-paying

software, which allows consumers to pay bills with the stroke of a com￾puter key—no need to write checks provided by a local bank. Monster.com

advertises jobs on-line nationwide, threatening one of the newspaper

industry’s main revenue sources.

What will be your future products and services? Go beyond product line

extensions to invent products and services that introduce new value to

targeted markets. Which of your current customer segments are defi ning

value differently? For example, has the Internet caused them to defi ne con￾venience of service by a new standard?

How will you go to market? The we’ve-always-done-it-this-way approach

to sales and distribution should be treated as ripe for transformation.

Stockbrokers did virtually all their business by phone, until Charles Schwab

and E-Trade introduced on-line trading. Insurance policies, formerly sold

exclusively by agents calling on prospects, are now available on-line. Manu￾facturers like Nike are jostling the supply channel by building their own

retail stores and providing on-line ordering.

What core competencies will set you apart? In his book Competing for the Future,

leading strategist Gary Hamel defi ned a core competency as, “a bundle of

skills and technologies that enables a company to provide a particular ben￾efi t to customers.” For example, Cisco’s competence in managing strategic

partnerships offers a steady supply of leading-edge technology solutions

to key accounts. Starbucks’ brand management gives customers a reliable

quality assurance behind its products. Nike’s product design satisfi es the

performance requirements of athletes and provides fashion for style-con￾scious consumers. Subway International’s competence in franchise opera￾tions insures convenient access to products and consistent quality across

the chain of stores.

What will be your primary competitive advantage? The strategic consider￾ations of the fi rst six elements ultimately comprise the source of a trend￾setter’s competitive advantage—how they deliver compelling and original

value to their customers.

Job #1: Inventing the Future

41

Rather than assuming current industry conditions will remain

unchanged, imaginative future planning anticipates potential cat burglars

and capitalizes on their destabilizing impact on the marketplace. The envi￾sioned strategic position—all seven elements—represents an enormous

stretch from current reality and cannot be achieved in the short term.

Plotting backward from the ultimate long-term strategic position,

trendsetters determine a sequence of yearly foundational milestones, which

describe the gradual changes in knowledge, technology, skills, culture, orga￾nizational structure, and network of strategic alliances that comprise the

journey to the intended strategic position.

In a fi ve-year plan, for example, imaginative future planning looks at

the desired strategic position in fi ve years and breaks it down to a sequence

of milestones that build on each other. It asks the questions: To reach our

intended strategic position fi ve years from now, where do we need to be in

four years? Three years? Two? One?

Ultimately, this sequence of foundational milestones aligns today’s pri￾orities and actions with tomorrow’s envisioned strategic position.

Figure 2.1 on page 42 is an imaginative future planning tool used by my

clients to insure that they systematically examine the various elements of a

strategic position over a 10-year period. Here’s how to use it:

By comparing your company’s position fi ve years ago to where it is

today, you can diagram the historical progression of your strategy. Fill

in the seven elements of a strategic position for both the “5 years ago”

column and the “today” column. What does the comparison reveal? Is the

strategy basically incrementalism, with no substantial change in strategic

position over fi ve years? Or do glaring changes in several of the seven ele￾ments indicate a commitment to carving out a strategically advantageous

position?

The goal of strategic innovation is to reach different answers for some,

if not all, of the elements for the column labeled “3-5 years from now.”

Once the new elements are decided, write them on the chart, and compare

them to the “today” column to notice the proposed degree of change. This

comparison prevents settling for play-it-safe incrementalism.