Some companies particularly excel at innovation. Those doing well in this regard today are typically companies that have well-thought out research labs. They can scale up at speed. Some are even disrupting product categories. To do this, the first step is to focus on customer needs based on targeted segments. For this advanced business analytics must be made use of to understand consumer needs. Such analytics is to be performed making use of multiple data points. The process of design thinking needs to be calibrated within the process. Repeated pilot projects need to be launched, with the express understanding that some of them may fail. For all such new ventures, one must know how to think and then act like venture funders. Wrongly, a lot of companies focus on being the first to market. Instead, those that manage to scale up the first, tend to succeed. Before starting off such ventures, the leaders must make sure that the company culture is conducive to such transformative efforts. Quantifiable metrics need to be identified to gauge the aspirations. The resources available need to be reallocated depending on this new disruptive system being adopted. The markets to target, must also be clearly laid out.

Source:https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/from-lab-to-leader

Uploaded Date:14 November 2018

Sports apparel brands occupy a niche space among high-profile consumer goods firms thanks to their catchy slogans, iconic brand ambassadors and a quick-fire production cycle for the new products they launch. This market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 4 percent due to the renewed interest in health and fitness to bring a total sale of US$ 190 billion by 2020. The fastest growing player within the market is the very founder of it- Adidas. The German company is now increasingly aligning its brand to technology, having hired its CEO with a background in that industry. Adidas’s corporate strategy is about focus on three key areas- speed, an open innovation and concentration on few key cities. Two speed factories were recently launched, one each in Atlanta in the USA and Ansbach in Germany to speed up the delivery process. It has tied up with celebrities such as Pharrell Williams, Alexander Wang, Kanye West and Stella McCartney as brand ambassadors. Employees meanwhile have been offered stock ownership.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Leading-a-Company-That-Wants-to-Change-Lives-through-Sports?gko=8c756&sf199889416=1

Uploaded Date:10 November 2018

Uber had for long been engaged in a three-way battle for supremacy in the taxi and ride-sharing market in Southeast Asia. Its chief rivals were Malaysia’s Grab and Indonesia’s Go-Jek. Uber was the first to launch and soon became a dominant player. But its corporate strategy was to mimic its North America operations. In stark contrast, Gran which beat Uber to launches in several countries within the region, had a more localized marketing strategy. It was proactive in dispatching coupons and rider incentives. The third to emerge, Go-Jek provided the further advantage of a variety of services as part of its bigger network. It relied on its own revenues from the other businesses rather than raise foreign seed capital as Grab did and lost most of in the initial targeting. Uber for its part soon realized the competition was stiff, so it invested enough just to remain the leader in the market, but did not go all out. It focused more on other markets worldwide. The real winner could be Softbank thanks to its investment in both Gran and Uber but all with 99 in Brazil, Didi in China and Ola in India.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/entrepreneurship/the-real-story-behind-ubers-exit-from-southeast-asia-10096

Uploaded Date:10 November 2018

Jeff Bezos founded and has developed Amazon into one of the world’s most valuable companies. The success of the company owes to a number of factors. At the very beginning, the fleet-footed startup culture was essential to the growth. But all company founders will need to resist the temptation to go on startup mode for too long. Once the company gets bigger, it will need to be scaled up. Most important is the customer-centric decision making. To maintain the levels of business innovation, companies must avoid putting in proxies or auto-pilot mode. At Amazon there is the constant move to track external trends. This helps gauging business intelligence on markets and competitors and stay ahead of the curve. Further, this data that gets tracked must be put to use in taking high-velocity impactful decisions. One must remember, that each day is different, so changes must be embraced on a constant basis.

Source:https://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2018/10/17/jeff-bezos-just-shared-his-secret-for-amazons-success-and-yours-as-well/

Uploaded Date:09 November 2018

Selecting the right people for corporate boards is a major challenge. It is not only the quality that is to be tested but also whether the candidate is the right fit for the organization within the circumstances. Some steps have been identified to ease this process. First of all, boards must proactively ensure gender quotas are met. This is because there is ample evidence to suggest that gender diversity brings positive results for the innovation and creativity levels within boards. The role of the board chair needs to be broadened beyond merely a facilitating one. Recruitment at the executive level alone does not qualify as onboarding. Due management training needs to be provided to the selected candidates so that they can understand their roles, and embrace the tasks.

Source:https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/game-changing-strategies-for-corporate-boards/

Uploaded Date:08 November 2018

The best of businesses are those that are adept at switching their corporate strategy depending on the condition. This method of migration can best be studied using cases from the animal world. Some principles exist for effective migration. First of all, just like animals’ and birds’ annual migration patterns, companies must know the time to switch. Any undue delay, may cause severe thunderstorms. Birds know where exactly to reach during these migrations. Similarly, companies must identify the targets they want to achieve. They mustn’t stop without making this complete switch to cater to the changed goal. Neither, must they stretch it too far, so it gets unrealistic. The route towards this final goal must also be prepared before the start. Animals often morph their physiology during these journeys so as not to be spotted by predators or competitors. Companies too must not reveal all their cards at once. During this period of migration, essential business operations must not get ignored, just as animals or birds do not skip food or water.

Source:https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/six-principles-for-strategic-migrations/

Uploaded Date:08 November 2018

The world of business strategy is full of buzzwords with no actual meaning. To understand this, the MIT Sloan University actually created a Buzzword Strategy Generator which identifies such hollow terms and phrases. Instead, discussions on corporate strategy must be simple and to the point. To reiterate this point, an article has been published on the MIT Sloan Management Reviews where seven such key qualities of executable strategy have been listed. To start off, the strategic priorities must not be too many, as this only lists the ones with maximum output. Focus must be made on mid-term activities, as the long-term is difficult to predict accurately. All decisions taken must be with a view towards the future. One needs to take the hard decisions from this stage onward. Any critical vulnerabilities need to be properly listed out and solutions to the same addressed. Employees from this stage itself need the right guidance to execute the matter listed. Management training sessions could be introduced to weed out any team difficulties or technical vulnerabilities. The top team needs to be aligned towards the strategy formulated. This will ensure the least gap between the strategy and its subsequent execution.

Source:http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/how-to-create-meaningful-strategic-priorities/?utm_source=mitsloantwitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=buzz

Uploaded Date:08 November 2018

The accommodations and air travel markets are largely dominated by online players such as Expedia and Trip Advisor. But unlike them, there remains a much smaller 15% online market share in the tours and activities segment. Here, localized players are often more successful. One such example is Klook, based in Hong Kong. Klookis now planning to enter the US market post its latest capital raise. It is mainly targeting the cities New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Expedia and Trip Advisor though have little reason to fear as their models are totally different. As per business intelligence supplied by Morning star, Expedia earns more than two-thirds of its revenues from lodging activities. Trip Advisor meanwhile makes 77% of its revenues from the hotel segment alone. A total of 4.7 million restaurants are listed on the website for reviews.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2018/09/20/klook-targets-tripadvisor-expedia-in-183b-tour-industry/#40769bac3e35

Uploaded Date: 31st October 2018

Nokia’s downfall from market leader with a 40% market share to bankruptcy within a few years is one of the best-known cautionary tales about perils of business disruption. Yet, less well-known is how well Nokia reinvented itself after hitting rock-bottom in 2012. It is now a key player in the telecommunications network space. This reinvention was possible due to a shift in the company’s corporate strategy between 2012 and 2017, the period when it grew five-fold. The first thing Nokia did during this reinvention process was weed out the culture of fear that had gripped the company since long. The overtly emotional decision-making was now tweaked with added emotional safety. The mistakes of the past were acknowledged and a break was taken from the earlier strategies. The story of Nokia can be repeated in any company, but the important lesson here is to not be stoic when working with an obsolete strategy.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/strategy/how-nokia-bounced-back-with-the-help-of-the-board-10211

Uploaded Date:23 October 2018

It still remains unclear to a lot of business leaders on the right mix between acquisitions and organic growth in the corporate strategy. While addressing this question, one needs to start by understanding the target customer and finding ways to stretch this boundary. Then ways need to be found to add to the value proposition. One also needs to address how bets to commercialize the existing capabilities. Facebook for example scaled up steadily within colleges before opening it to the general public. Google keeps updating its Chrome, Maps, Home and Gmail services to generate increased demand for its search engine, that is still the core money-churner. Microsoft meanwhile grew by simply adding services or tweaking its existing ones right from the MS-DOS era. The subscription-model is now getting really popular and relevant. A lot of companies grow by adding newer markets, as We Work is doing at a rapid pace at present. Thus, strategists need to first weigh in the relative merits of organic and acquired growth.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Strategy-Talk-Whats-the-Right-Mix-of-Organic-Growth-and-Acquisitions?gko=5db3c

Uploaded Date:23 October 2018

The pricing function needs to be a crucial cog for any company’s corporate strategy. However, there is often an ambiguity regarding how exactly must pricing be fixed. Options abound between service centre, strategic partner, business unit or sales for price determination. A study was then conducted by LinkedIn to understand what would be the best recourse to this. It was then understood that there are four key components to driving the right pricing decision. These are- structure, skills & capabilities, decision rights & influence and size. After much deliberation, it clearly emerged that pricing must be the function of the strategic business partner and not the service centre or any of the other options touted. Not having a pricing centre is not an option worth considering. The CEO must have the ultimate decision-making powers on this followed by the marketing team, business units, board and finance. Sales and product management stood bottom in this ranking.

Source:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-your-pricing-function-must-act-strategic-business-amadeus-petzke/

Uploaded Date:17 October 2018