Category: Strategy

The best social-purpose programmes are authentic, inform innovation and steer investment towards social causes.

Match your firm’s social aspirations to its growth needs to create social programmes that meet consumers’ expectations and build business value.

Traditional companies are not immune from the disruption associated with new technologies. To avoid disaster transform your core operations while growing into new business areas.

If you’re complacent, you leave yourself vulnerable to ‘industry compression’ – a form of slow but dangerous change that results in a prolonged decline in operating profits and revenues.

View uncertainty as an opportunity to gain competitive advantage.

When there is market disruption most companies focus on managing the potential negative consequences for their business, with the aim of minimising losses. But when the financial crisis hit in 2008, Hyundai took a different approach; the car manufacturer “leaned into market anxiety”.

If you want your company to continue to flourish, know when to stop growing it.

All managers should pause to consider when high growth is good for their business, and when it is bad. “What should a retailer do when growth slows? Is it doomed, or is there a way to prosper when its business matures?”

Multinational corporations have invested huge sums in emerging markets – yet returns on those investments have sometimes been disappointing.

This is often blamed on the fact that these markets are different, and companies need to adapt their products, operations and business models. But that in turn requires good market intelligence – which is harder to come by than in advanced-economy countries.

For your company to succeed you must develop a bespoke digital strategy to complement its unique selling proposition (USP).

A clear digital strategy is vital to provide direction and enable you to manage your company’s digital efforts, track their progress and, if necessary, change course.

Developing the right culture for your company can mean the difference between success or failure

Most of us want an organisational culture that “leaves employees engaged, loyal, empowered to innovate and quick to collaborate,” says Adam Gale, writing for Management Today. The problem is, culture is difficult to define and even harder to change.

The best strategy in the world will be doomed to failure unless you create the right environment for success.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” says strategist and consultant Thomas Brown, writing for Raconteur. Companies looking to succeed in a constantly evolving digital world will need to reorient their organisation in a way that supports their initiative.