Tag Archives: Strategic management

3 criteria your business ideas must have for them to work

idea selection in innovationThis is part three of the series on how to leave small thinking behind. In the first post, I showed you a simple technique for coming up with radical ideas. On the second part, I showed you how to evaluate ideas so they don’t fit into “me-too” territory. Here, I’ll tell you how to determine which ideas might work.

A short recap from part 1 and part 2:

In part 1 of this series I elaborated a little bit on how to shift from “me-too” thinking to “radical thinking” by taking your existing strategy and stretching it to an extreme, and scaling them back a little bit. This technique yields ideas that are impractical, super expensive and dangerous. But you can scale them back a little bit to make them doable.

In part 2, I showed you how to further filter those initial ideas by using an evaluation criteria of creativity, business, and people impact.

Great, but after you’ve developed a list of radical ideas how do you decide which ones to pursue?

For Good Strategy Not To Do Is To Be

strategy is about making decisions Why do companies insist on a one-size-fits-all template for strategy? Is it because the MBA types come in with their unimaginative frameworks that speak to unimaginative executives? I certainly think so.

The ones who are at a fault the most, McKinsey, recently published a series of articles about the Art of Strategy. What’s new about strategy in the article?

Absolutely nothing.

Strategy is hard. Innovation is harder

By now, you should know that I don’t sugarcoat it. No recipes, frameworks, or any other method with promises of a silver bullet. No BS here about how easy it is. With that said, here is another anecdote for you…

Yesterday we visited a prospect, we talked about how we could help them make some improvements in they way they collaborate with their value chain. After our meeting was done, the CEO asked me why we needed to be so thorough to make a strategy. I simply said: Strategy isn’t supposed to be easy. There is no silver bullet that applies to everyone. Whoever tells you differently is not a strategist.

No strategy is foolproof

enjoy uncertainty

Anytime I meet with Presidents, VP’s or just the business owners of a company, I come in with no expectations whatsoever. I aim to be surprised. So, last week when I met with the President of an innovative construction company in Mexico, I was surprised.

I consider this company to be innovative because they developed a unique building, the only one, in the Baja region. And like any innovator, this innovation needs more attention. That’s where I come in.

Now, let me tell why I was surprised. Usually, when you talk to businessmen about innovation, all they want to know about is the ROI. They want to know that whatever you propose, will work. “If isn’t going to work, don’t talk to me” is what I hear.

But the guy I met the other day, he was different. He literally said: Here we’re all about leading our industry. And, to achieve that, we know that some things will not work. We don’t like reacting.

Good!

Your strategy should help tell a story

be original

A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them. In contexts ranging from corporate direction to national security, strategy matters. Yet we have become so accustomed to strategy as exhortation that we hardly blink an eye when a leader spouts slogans and announces high-sounding goals, calling the mixture a “strategy.” –  Richard Rumelt

Strategy, strategy, strategy. It matters. Yet, most of the time, we get it wrong. Why? Let’s start with the basics…

One of the problems with implementing a strategy, is nobody cares about it. And the reason nobody cares, is because nobody understands it. And the reason nobody understands it, is because it isn’t clearly articulated. And a clearly articulated statement or name such as “low-cost airline”, will do wonders to help communicate your strategy.

The Best of Game-Changer October 2012

Here’s a look back at the posts you liked the most in the month of October 2012:

Don’t forget to

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What is the purpose of innovation?

innovation on purpose

This question may be similar to the question “what is innovation?“, but it isn’t.

Why innovate?

Before answering, lets consider what innovation is. Two weeks ago I argued that because innovation means different things to different groups, that you should come up with your own definition of what innovation is.

For me, innovation is ideas transformed into value. I don’t get into whether it’s radical, incremental, disruptive or any other buzzword you can come up with because it makes it more complex for those who are not in the know.