Designing the next business model before the current one plateaus
How companies can identify new value pools and build business models that combine differentiated customer value with scalable economics.
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Business strategy
Define business strategy through rigorous choices on growth, positioning, portfolios, resources and execution.
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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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What still deserves to be saved?
Recovery becomes possible when management distinguishes valuable businesses and capabilities from activities preserved mainly through history or optimism.
Why does this business belong in the portfolio?
Ownership should have a strategic rationale beyond history, reported revenue or the cost and inconvenience of changing the portfolio.
Strategic challenges
Scale changes the economics of customer access
As distribution expands, intermediary margins, inventory requirements and service costs can become as important as underlying product demand.
Most markets contain more claims than actual differentiation
Competitors frequently converge on similar promises because communication evolves faster than the underlying business model or capabilities.
POV
Winning every competitive battle can destroy the market
A company can gain share and still lose economically when rivalry forces pricing, investment or service levels beyond sustainable returns.
A network is not stronger because it is larger
Growth becomes destructive when new units cannibalise existing demand or require economics that operators cannot sustain.
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.
Format is a strategic variable
Store size, assortment, service model and location type can change capital intensity, customer missions and network economics.
What we observe
Large accounts can hide weak economics
We frequently see strategic importance assigned according to revenue while complexity, concessions and servicing requirements quietly erode value.
Corporate ventures often inherit too much of the parent
We frequently see new businesses constrained by processes, economics and incentives designed for an established operation rather than a venture.