When strategic recovery requires more than cost cutting
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Business strategy
Define business strategy through rigorous choices on growth, positioning, portfolios, resources and execution.
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Strategy in a world of overlapping disruptions
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Where exactly is the value supposed to appear?
Every strategic initiative should have a credible path from action to operational outcome and from that outcome to measurable economic value.
Which uncertainty is worth paying to resolve?
Early R&D should create knowledge that changes future choices, not simply advance projects because resources have already been committed.
Strategic challenges
The buyer is rarely one person
Economic users, technical evaluators, procurement and executives can value different outcomes and exercise influence at different stages.
Enterprise coherence does not require identical strategies
Different businesses can pursue distinct markets and economics while remaining aligned around a common corporate direction and contribution.
POV
If competitors can copy the claim, the claim is not the advantage
Defensible positioning must eventually connect to capabilities, economics, assets or choices that are harder to replicate than language.
On time and on budget can still be strategic failure
Perfect delivery creates little value when the initiative solves the wrong problem or the assumptions connecting it to strategy are false.
Strategic impact
Trade-offs make positioning stronger
Choosing which customers, attributes or economics not to optimise can create a more coherent and defensible basis for advantage.
Customer value and supplier value are not the same thing
A proposition can create substantial customer benefit while weak differentiation or bargaining power prevents the supplier from capturing much of it.
What we observe
Companies often redesign the proposition but preserve the economics
We frequently see new offers forced through legacy revenue, channel and operating models that undermine their intended advantage.
Projects often survive because nobody defined the kill criteria
We frequently see R&D continue through organisational momentum even after the assumptions that originally justified it have weakened.