Strategy in a world of overlapping disruptions
How leaders can make sharper choices on where to compete, where to invest and what to stop when multiple structural shifts hit at once.
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Define business strategy through rigorous choices on growth, positioning, portfolios, resources and execution.
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Where does the industry actually make money?
Revenue and market share can obscure substantial differences in returns across activities, customer groups and positions in the value chain.
Who actually needs to believe your corporate story?
Corporate positioning becomes strategic when it is designed around stakeholders whose choices materially affect the company's ability to execute.
Strategic challenges
Consumer demand is organised around occasions, not averages
The same person can make very different choices depending on need, context, urgency, channel and willingness to pay.
Time changes the economics of strategic choice
Options that are attractive early in a decline can disappear as cash, customer confidence and organisational capacity deteriorate.
POV
Innovation theatre begins where strategic choice ends
A large pipeline of experiments is not evidence of innovation strength when the organisation cannot explain which future advantages it is trying to build.
Trying to appeal to everyone usually weakens the proposition
Consumer strategy becomes stronger when the business is explicit about which needs it will serve exceptionally well and which it will not.
Strategic impact
Research needs different economics from mature businesses
Demanding conventional certainty too early can eliminate important options before the technical and commercial questions are answerable.
Customer value and supplier value are not the same thing
A proposition can create substantial customer benefit while weak differentiation or bargaining power prevents the supplier from capturing much of it.
What we observe
Expansion can conceal declining network quality
We frequently see location counts rise while sales density, franchisee returns or new-unit payback gradually deteriorate.
Companies often confuse stakeholder breadth with stakeholder importance
We frequently see long stakeholder lists without clear prioritisation of which relationships can materially affect strategic outcomes.