2017 was a year of substantial M&A (Mergers and Acquisitions) activity in the healthcare industry. A recent report brought out by business consulting giant Bain has further highlighted this in its latest report. In total, three mega-mergers took place last year. These are defined as mergers with a combined value of US$ 20 billion or more. The collective value of these three deals accounted for over a third of the entire industry’s activity. In the first of those deals, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) acquired Swiss pharmaceutical company Actelion. J&J also sold off Rectinol and Anusolto Church and Dwight. The company also sold Codman Neurosurgery to Integra Life Sciences. A common theme among the buyouts were leveraging the research and development capabilities of those acquired. Private Equity (PE) analysts meanwhile are forming an unbiased market view through business analysis involving quantifiable goals. This is helping them take more informed investment decisions. One must clearly know the objective and focus ahead towards the same. One must be transparent with those brokering the deal. Every asset must be leveraged for what it is worth.

Source:http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/global-healthcare-corporate-m-and-a-2018.aspx

Uploaded Date:22 June 2018

A lot of companies experience a gap between their lofty corporate strategy documents with the actual execution of the same. That is why a thinktank has listed out ten principles which can reduce this gap. In spite of the obvious differential, companies must for a start nonetheless aim for the stars. Brands must leverage their inherent strengths. They need to be ambidextrous to the point that they can dabble in a number of work styles. The right talent management would dictate that each person’s role within the overall strategy be well explained. The entire structure must ultimately be aligned with this overall strategy. Functional teams are just for convenience sake but must not act as silos or barriers. The aim must be to be get as digital as possible. The management team must try to keep things simple. The value chain must also be shaped accordingly. To ensure coherence, collective mastery has to be inculcated.

Source:https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/principles-strategy-through-execution

Uploaded Date:15 June 2018

Some leaders are good at agile methods so stimulate organizational transformation on those lines. This is a huge challenge for the leaders who occupy the top positions. While they were rising up the ranks, the system was completely different, so they need to engage in proactive unlearning. Not all agile behaviors may be relevant for each organization, so the leader will need to gauge the right ones. A Europe-based financial institution which recently underwent such transformation, outlined some of the traits needed. Trust and openness are the first two. Lowered ego and sense of collaboration are the next. Transparency needs to be maintained within and externally. Employees and the management need to be accountable in their actions. It is important that agile ways be dictated from the very top. The leaders need to behave as change catalysts themselves. They will need to develop talent management abilities by empowering others within their teams. New behaviors not only get accepted but are in fact celebrated.

Source:https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/agile-starts-or-stops-at-the-top.aspx?linkId=52472651

Uploaded Date:15 June 2018

People tend to view Netflix as a digital native, whereas in truth, its present business model is simply its third avatar. Netflix started off as a DVD rental, moved on to being a platform to stream movies, and is now an entertainment industry leader through its original content. It created content suing customer insights gleaned from the enormous bits of data warehousing done over the years on people’s usage patterns. Across all these three business models Netflix has dabbled in and been successful, the common thread has been its customer-first approach. Blockbuster was Netflix’s biggest rival early on, but completely folded about eight years back. A lot of companies are cursed by their early success in a different model. This is because older, legacy-businesses tend to be asset-heavy. Over time, with reduced cash flows, a lot of these heavy assets appear like liabilities. Unlike Spotify or Airbnb which were born in the digital era, and had little hesitation in adopting a modern outlook, many of the older firms have become dinosaurs. A parallel to Netflix would be Dominos who too have leapfrogged above competitors using technology-enabled customer-centric servicing.

Source:http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/reinventing-your-business-model-for-digital.aspx

Uploaded Date:15 June 2018

Under the leadership of Stanford-educated George Kurian, data warehousing giant Net App has bounced back to post healthy returns. The company’s fortunes have been turned around by the work of the ex-Oracle man. Tough decisions have been taken along the way, the most being laying off of about 1500 employees in early 2016. Cloud storage brought massive disruption to the industry Net App is in. but that was fought using some innovative techniques. Net App is also very careful about the values recruits bring to the table, especially those recruited at senior executive levels. Kurian is himself a great fan of Abraham Lincoln whose role as a leader has profoundly impacted him.

Source:https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/importance-embracing-uncertainty?utm_source=TWITTER&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Insights&Date=20180427&linkId=50713227

Uploaded Date:13 June 2018

For the last half-century, corporate strategy has been a prescription of a set of universal principles which worked well for a few top companies. Buzzwords have come and gone. But mostly they have created a wedge between those providing the said prescription and the management implementing. The 1960s and 1970s were replete with concepts such as SWOT analysis, experience curve and the growth-share matrix. The 1980s saw the emergence of the value chain strategy, total quality management, five forces model and scenario planning. In the 1990s customer loyalty, core competencies, business process reengineering and growth horizons ruled the roost. Blue ocean and BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goals) were the major developments of the 2000s. Few have lasted long enough. In spite of the lack of sustainability, management consulting firms will continue to churn out new buzzwords. Ultimately, any such strategic discussion must be able to answer five key questions. The first one is which industry must the company be in. The next should be about ways to add value to the business. Heralding the customer base must be the third. The fourth question must answer what value propositions are created for those customers. And finally, there is the matter of uniqueness of offerings.

Source:https://www.strategy-business.com/article/Why-Popular-Strategies-Always-Fade?gko=8e3c9&sf181074949=1

Uploaded Date:13 June 2018

One of the major challenges of several businesses across industries is to grow but with cost scaling and operational improvement. That is why the Fit for Growth model developed by PwC has been brought into repute as the best way for companies to develop their corporate strategy around. Even an index has been developed to fit in various brands within the scope. It entails a shift in investment from the bad to the good costs. The good costs are those which lay the groundwork with a view towards sustainable, long-term growth. The approach is proactive rather than being reactive. Several US retailers have adopted an end-to-end approach to ensure growth with transformation.

Source:https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/fitforgrowth?platform=hootsuite

Uploaded Date:07 June 2018

Companies all over the world are grappling to find an alternative to the traditional hierarchical structure, so increasingly opting for agile ones. But the transformation has not been so easy for all. One thing that all firms must recognize is that their rivals are not their peers that used to be, but perhaps a syndicate of much smaller ones working collaboratively using digital technologies. ING is an example of a company with a protracted transition period. While it obviously helps to have a proper corporate strategy in place, it needs to be agile and flexible now, to be tweakable looking at business opportunities. In a typical agile setting, the disparate members of a squad need to be huddled together, working on each other’s problems.Executives must always choose one division to make a change, and then swiftly move on to the next challenge as change agents.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/three-ways-to-make-your-organisation-agile-8921

Uploaded Date:05 June 2018

Grocery stores or chains need to act more like CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) brands to compete in the modern world. Multi-brand retailers especially in fashion have seen their margins cut short thanks to branded retailers such as Primark, H&M and Zara. Examples of grocery chains that are catering to specific needs are BIM, Trader Joe’s, Mercadona, Aldi and Lidl. In order to get to that level, grocers need to outline their corporate strategy and vision. They need to gauge customer preferences, build an extensive R&D network and develop innovations. A proper value proposition must be set out for each brand or quality tier. The company must proactively align according to the structural changes required. Scale needs to be built for each product or brand. Any existing ecosystem needs to be leveraged. For customer engagement, social media backed digital marketing is a great ploy. While organic growth is the best way forward, sometimes key partnerships and alliances can really help ride through any rough patch.

Source:https://www.bcg.com/en-in/publications/2018/why-grocers-need-to-start-operating-like-consumer-brands.aspx?linkId=52028823

Uploaded Date:01 June 2018

While Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) is on path to organizational growth, it is not the only or the best route. Organic growth is usually preferred, but few are getting it correct. This is because most organizations view both the styles as nothing less than rocket launches. Enormous time and effort goes into drafting a formal corporate strategy, and after each plan is launched, all facets within it, are micro-managed. This worked in an earlier era of incremental growth but cannot keep pace with the modern exponential changes constantly around us. That is why analyze, plan and optimize needs to be replaced by experiment, adapt and learn. The most successful of startups in the last few decades, especially in and around Silicon Valley, have had three major advantages. They’ve had fully dedicated co-founders, a board of investors that believes in growth and a team built on agile methods which proactively eliminates hindrances and builds competencies. There exist three shifts that companies need to make in order to veer towards a path of organic growth. First of all, the founder must realize he/she is not a manager, so must focus on solving the bigger picture that inspired one take up entrepreneurship in the first place. Constant experimentation and business innovation has to be encouraged. The investment must be planned like a Venture Capital which drives the entire business, and not just a banker that funds, but disappears immediately after the money is released, hoping for gains.

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/05/the-mindset-your-company-needs-to-grow-organically?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_activesubs&utm_content=signinnudge&referral=00563&deliveryName=DM6239

Uploaded Date:01 June 2018

Towards the end of the last decade, Finnish telecom giant Nokia faced several upheavals. From being the leader in the feature phone segment, and an innovator of smart-phones, it got displaced by upstarts- Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android software which powered other phones. Nokia persisted with its Symbian OS till 2011 when it shifted to Microsoft’s Windows. Neither Symbian, nor Windows phones worked, so Nokia was on the verge of being wiped out from the nascent smartphone industry. That is when the company’s top management decided to tweak its company policies to involve a greater range of emotions. As a first change, new conversational norms got defined in the organization to increase the trust factor. There was a move to reduce the emotional attachment towards the existing corporate strategy, with new options being generated. This attachment was seen as the reason for persisting with Symbian for so long in spite of its obvious deficiencies. The top management was pushed towards adopting a more data-backed approach rather than relying on their gut feelings. Business analytics was now given a primary role in organizational decision-making.

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-nokia-embraced-the-emotional-side-of-strategy?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_daily&utm_campaign=dailyalert_activesubs&utm_content=signinnudge&referral=00563&deliveryName=DM6316

Uploaded Date:01 June 2018