Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine phần 7 doc

Invent Business Opportunities No One Else Can Imagine

126

Reframing current realities

26. How might your business be reconfi gured if its products and

services were offered electronically?

27. If your dominant market were “mature,” where would you go

for new business opportunities?

28. If you were part of a new senior management group selected

to replace incumbents just fi red by the board of directors,

what fresh ideas would you pursue?

29. If you set out to design your innovations to be hard for

the competition to copy, what would you do? What actions

would you take as far as a new business model, raising ser￾vice standards through the roof, and rethinking roles so your

employees offer unsurpassed value?

Questions as Seeds for Innovation

Although there is no way of predicting which of these 29 questions

will be most productive to investigate for your business, I have selected

three that consistently produce the greatest benefi t for my clients. Let’s

examine their application to strategic issues in order to illustrate their

power and effectiveness.

Define the nature of your business

Of all the questions on the Turock 29, the most important involves

defi ning the nature of your business. This single question (Question 4)

conditions everything a company is—the fi lter through which all other

information passes. Therefore, it effects everything the company sees

and determines eventual actions. The defi nition of the business is the

ultimate screening criteria that signals managers which opportunities to

pursue and which to reject as “not appropriate for our business.” The

business defi nition establishes the parameters for potential products, ser￾vices, customers, competitors, and methods of going to market. Given

the serious consequences, rethinking the basic business we are in should

be done every few years. Yet in most cases, the original defi nition of the

The Power of Questions

127

business was made in an implicit way, and over the years, very few estab￾lished companies give this question a second thought.

Strategic planners can brainstorm a number of possible defi nitions of

the nature of the business before settling on one. There are three basic

criteria to use in defi ning a business: by the product you are selling, by the

benefi ts that customers receive, and by the portfolio of core competencies.

For example, McDonald’s at different points in its history has defi ned itself

as being in the:

• Hamburger business. Signs tabulated the number of ham￾burgers sold chain wide (product-based defi nition).

• Fast food business. The menu was broadened to include

packaged salads, chicken, and breakfast items (product-based

defi nition).

• Franchising business. McDonald’s was one of the fi rst fran￾chise organizations to standardize operations to improve con￾sistency of service globally (core competence defi nition).

• Commercial real estate business. The company’s ability to

spot prime store locations made its products easily accessible

to customers (core competence defi nition).

• Youth entertainment business. Children’s play areas, joint

marketing with Disney, and serving Happy Meals illustrate

McDonald’s commitment to creating loyal customers while

they are young (customer benefi t defi nition).

McDonald’s isn’t alone in generating sales growth from business redef￾inition. The Chamberlain Group, the world’s largest manufacturer of

garage door openers, including the Liftmaster brand, has defi ned itself as

the “home automation business.” Consequently, its product line can be

expanded to include automated gates, awnings, and just about anything

where a motor can replace human labor.

Ukrop’s Supermarkets, a chain in Richmond, Virginia, envisions being

“a world class provider of services.” This defi nition allows it to own a chain

of in-store banks and a uniform business. Several of Ukrop’s pharmacies