Disruptive Innovation

Disruptive innovation is not just something that is happening in many industries. It is both a threat to companies that fail to adapt and an opportunity for companies that drive the disruption.  One of the most common issues in strategic planning is a failure to...

Real Differentiation

How can you tell when your distinction is real? This question comes up often in strategic planning meetings because real differentiation is extremely important in almost all markets.  It’s also an important question because we tend towards a kind of self-delusion that...

Industry Ecosystems

“Ecosystem” is a funny word to use when talking about strategy.  Historically, the term has been used to talk about natural ecosystems.  So how can we use that understanding for a better sense of how our strategy can work? In nature, one of the key concepts we can use...

The High Margin Strategy

As you may know from Simplified Strategic Planning, we tend to counsel companies to pursue either the low cost/price strategy (think Henry Ford or Sam Walton) or one of the two specialty strategies, differentiation or niche strategies.  All three are good, but we tend...

Why We Aren’t Bold

Pursuing a competitive advantage strategy One of the biggest struggles in strategy is pushing a bold, distinctive identity for your company and brand.  This is so common that we start the strategic planning process assuming that we haven’t pushed the envelope.  We...