by Brant | Apr 21, 2021 | 21st Century Leadership, Innovation
The increased complexity and endless disruptions of the modern world brought on by the transition to the digital age means uncertainty is everywhere. All across our businesses, we face new challenges, as what used to work no longer achieves desired outcomes. The self-awareness of admitting what we don’t know is the first step toward figuring out new best practices. Fundamentally, people must act differently in the face of uncertainty. Businesses need to adopt learning strategies in order to improve, adapt, or even reinvent their execution strategies.
by Brant | Feb 23, 2021 | 21st Century Leadership, Disruption Proof, Mindset Change
Obviously, Covid-19 has brought massive uncertainty to businesses. From managing remote workers, to internal communications dominated by video platforms, to the devastation of small business buyers and consumer budgets, the ‘new normal’ would have been barely recognizable at the beginning of 2020. Make no mistake, the pandemic disrupted business.
by Brant | Sep 10, 2019 | Innovation
According to the Duke University/CFO Business Outlook survey, the longest-running and among the most respected research of financial executives, nearly half of the CFOs surveyed believe that the United States will enter a recession by the end of 2019, and 82% expect that a recession will happen by the end of 2020.
For those of you out there running your company’s innovation program, you know what that likely means. Despite the fact that mature innovation programs are constructed in such a way to protect against downturns, they are often the first programs to be cut. Worse, despite the increase in uncertainty concomitant with economic downturns, businesses forget what they learned in their innovation programs. They revert to entrenched execution behaviors, trying to squeeze blood out of the turnip.
I would like to offer a different, proactive strategy; one that demonstrates the opportunity cost of not investing in innovation far outweighs the immediate cost savings. The strategy is derived from our experience guiding clients through uncertainty.
For those of you out there running your company’s innovation program, you know what that likely means. Despite the fact that mature innovation programs are constructed in such a way to protect against downturns, they are often the first programs to be cut. Worse, despite the increase in uncertainty concomitant with economic downturns, businesses forget what they learned in their innovation programs.
by Brant | Dec 7, 2009 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Sales and Marketing Roadmap, Startup Marketing, Startups
In Andrew Chen’s recent post, “Does every startup need a Steve Jobs?”, he discusses IDEO’s “product framework for Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability.” Chen’s descriptions of business-, engineering-, and design-focused product perspectives reminded me of the work on companies’ “driving force” popularized by Michel Robert in his series of business strategy books. Understanding your “driving force” is critical to understanding what products to build and who to build them for. The driving force helps shape technology choices, importance of design, market segment, and business model as well as company culture, growth plan and exit strategy.
The basic point, is that while all companies employ technology, sell products or services, employ technology, market to specific segments and use certain distribution methods, one factor dominates (or should dominate) the others in terms of business strategy.
one component of the business is the driving force of the strategy — the company’s so-called DNA. This driving force, in turn, greatly determines the array of products, customers, industry segments, and geographic markets that management chooses to emphasize more or emphasize less
Here is a subset of driving forces Robert discusses:
