“Don’t tell people to be innovative. Rather, encourage them to adopt behaviours that lead to strategic innovation.”
– Costas Markides
Many entrepreneurs and managers are looking for ways to innovate and grow their business. Here are some pointers:
- Don’t forget to look for ways to continue to improve the current value proposition and make the current strategy more distinctive. Introduce new technologies, features, products or services that leverage other part in the value chain and fit with the current strategy. It works, it’s needed, it’s faster and it’s less disruptive.
- Ask yourself: “What combination in my value chain is unique and can I copy to another business unit?”
- Social Value (environment, society,…) is ‘the next big thing’ in strategic thinking. And it’s much more then Corporate Social Responsability.
- Don’t focus only on the product or service. A risk, especially in an engineering environment.
- Recapture company heritage.
- Take fast action in times of crisis. What you do during the crisis determines your strategic position when it’s over.
- Think about strategy execution as a competitive advantage.
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Learn to play with the value chain/business model. Here are some of the questions you can ask yourself to develop a new business model:_Transactional versus recurring revenues_Niche market versus mass market_Capital expenditure versus partnership_Product versus service_Direct sales versus indirect sales_Scale versus scope_Personal versus automated_Disruptive versus incremental_Acquisition versus retention_Human intensive versus system intensive_One customer segment versus another_Physical versus virtual_Tailor-made versus mass production_Fixed versus variable costs_Paid versus free_Distributed versus centralised_In-sourcing versus out-sourcing_Marketing versus sales_New versus copy-paste
Good luck with your search!
