3.4 THE STRATEGIST IN YOU: Leaving Your Competition Far Behind

(SHORT NOTES FROM STRATEGY TOOLS:

Strategic Options at http://www.mindtools.com)

Many organizations work hard at customer research to find out what their target market wants.  Many companies that achieve industry leadership use an approach that's now called "Blue Ocean Strategy".  Blue Ocean Strategy was developed by W Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne.

No one has a foolproof vision of the future.  Scenario Analysis helps bring these fears into the open and gives a rational and professional framework for exploring them.  The act of creating scenarios forces enable to challenge assumptions about the future.  By shaping the plans and decisions based on the most likely scenarios, organizations can ensure that the decisions are sound even if circumstances change.

Game theory is an attempt to predict behavior.  It applies in situations where an individual's success in making choices depends on the choices of others.  John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern defined the foundations of game theory in 1944 with their classic book, "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior."

Value means different things to different customers.  It’s possible to provide value in many different ways.  Therefore choose the best way to deliver value.  The Value Disciplines Model describes three "value disciplines" that you can develop to give great value to your customers in different ways.  It was introduced in the early 1990s by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema.

Everyone wants to operate profitably and efficiently, with cost-effective teams, projects, and organizations.  Value-Based Management (VBM) is use to build and maximize organization’s ability to be profitable in the long term.

There are many different elements to consider, and it can be easy to overlook factors that may have a positive or negative effect on your success.  Business Motivation Model offers a practical way of sense-checking and optimizing your plan.  The Business Motivation Model was originally developed by the Business Rules Group, a non-commercial consulting firm, in the late 1990s to help people prepare business plans in an ordered, efficient, properly-organized way.

Disruptive technologies are technical innovations that have the potential to change and restructure whole industries.  They replace existing ways of doing things, and, in the process, create both threats and opportunities for existing organizations.  Many business leaders have blind spots when it comes to recognizing the impact of new technologies.  They may have spotted these technologies, but have judged them to be too niche or too risky to be worth bothering with.  Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen originally coined the term "disruptive technologies."  Later, with his colleague Professor Joseph Bower, he developed a five-step process for assessing and cultivating potentially disruptive technologies.