When strategic recovery requires more than cost cutting
How turnaround strategies can rebuild competitive position by resetting the portfolio, operating priorities and sources of future growth.
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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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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.
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
Advantage is always relative
A capability creates competitive advantage only when its value, scarcity and economics remain superior to the alternatives rivals can deploy.
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.
POV
A good business can still be the wrong asset to own
Corporate strategy should ask whether the parent is the best owner, not simply whether the underlying business is attractive.
If competitors can copy the claim, the claim is not the advantage
Defensible positioning must eventually connect to capabilities, economics, assets or choices that are harder to replicate than language.
Strategic impact
Growth can hide deteriorating economics
Revenue can expand while promotions, acquisition spending and channel costs quietly reduce the value created by each additional customer.
The strongest move may change the game
Competitive strategy can create more value by altering customer choice, economics or market structure than by outperforming rivals on established terms.
What we observe
Companies often redesign the proposition but preserve the economics
We frequently see new offers forced through legacy revenue, channel and operating models that undermine their intended advantage.
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.