Green: Nice while it lasted?
Only the blink of an eye ago, it seems, you couldn’t open a paper or read a magazine without someone talking about how ‘green’ their businesses were and how environmentalism has become a top-line concern. With the economy in crisis, one thing we can predict is that green concerns are going to have to fight a lot harder to stay on top of the agenda. In fact, I was recently involved in planning session for a major corporate event in which the event organizers, who had planned a session on “Green Business”, were told in no uncertain terms that the session was now irrelevant and should be yanked from the agenda.
It will be interesting indeed to see which organizations stick to their green commitments as economic conditions continue to dominate the headlines.
What can we predict? Firstly, that a lot of smaller companies that went into business with a ‘green’ proposal are going to find things very tough, particularly if they are counting on a premium price for greener products. They will be hit not only by the economic troubles of their evironments but by a radical shift in people’s priorities: green may be nice, but if the choice is a green widget or a gallon of gas, it may not be affordable. Secondly, we’ll see companies continue with programs that are green but that genuinely save money or time; while those that are more expensive or inconvenient are likely to be phased out (quietly of course). Finally, we may see the beginning of an era in which items that are both not green and expensive or optional take a beating (bottled water, anyone?).
Your predictions?
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- Posted Rita McGrath on November 07, 2008
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Discovery Driven Planning: Most barriers to growth are self-inflicted
I am spending today with a very well-managed, large company, and even here the long fingers of the economic slowdown are creating even more obstacles to innovation - led growth than in more ‘normal’ times.
The issues they raised as barriers to growth include:
- The “de-risk” mode that many companies have gone into which makes anything even remotely unpredictable look dangerous
- A lack of a global mindset that leads to local optimization of investment and cuts off more promising corporate projects
- Brand conflict - when a new project isn’t a great fit for the existing brand
- Churn among the managers and leaders involved in innovation projects
- Silos within the organization
- Existing metrics and rewards that are not suitable for innovation
- Fear of cannibalization of the existing business
- Fear, in general
- Short-termism driven by quarterly results pressure
- Politics
- Existing power structures in the company
What I find absolutely fascinating about this list (and remember, this is an extremely well managed firm) is the extent to which the barriers to growth are essentialy self-inflicted. They are internal processes, systems, relationship sand politics that can get in the way of doing anything new. Existing companies tend to have accumulated lots of these sorts of barriers - but it doesn’t have to be a foregone conclusion that these will be or should be in place. Here is where adroit innovation leadership, to me, can make all the difference. This is one of the key themes in our forthcoming book Discovery Driven Growth.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on October 30, 2008
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Discovery Driven Planning: Teaching in Non-Degree Executive Education Programs
I’m just here at the Strategic Management Society’s annual conference in Cologne. It’s a meeting which aspires to bring together academics, consultants and business-people for fruitful dialogue and exchanges, although in fairness the tilt does seem to be more toward academics recently. I did participate in an interesting session on how to teach in executive education programs. I focused on issues of style (not too much lecturing, please!) and actually included some substance on real options reasoning and discovery driven planning. Anyone with an interest can download the attached .pdf. (the blog software wouldn’t allow me to upload it in .ppt.)
For now, the key takeaways from my session:
1. Too much one-way communication is ineffective
2. In design, remember the basic principle of what makes something interesting—challenge to weakly held assumptions
3. Build on executive participants’ own experiences and connect to your teaching points
4. Creative repetition (700 times)
5. Tell stories
6. Combine facts, emotions and symbols—often, one or another are left out
Feel free to write with any questions or further ideas. On to the next session!
ExecEdTeaching.SMS.10-08.08.pdf
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Discovery Driven Planning: Why I like the term ‘business model’
I rather like the term business model because in my view it suggests a change to the way that we conceive of, create, and execute strategies. In highly uncertain, complex and fast-moving environments, strategies are as much about rapid experimentation and evolutionary learning as they are about the traditional view of planning and rock-ribbed execution. Modeling, therefore, is a useful approach to figuring out a strategy, as it suggests experimentation, prototyping and a job that is never quite finished.
My colleague, Ian C. MacMillan (or Mac, as everybody calls him) with some colleagues is putting together a special issue of the journal Long Range Planning in which a bunch of well known management thinkers are putting together their best ideas on the topic of the future of business models. When I last checked in, they had some submissions from pretty heavyweight folks, among them Raffi Amit, Hank Chesborough, Yves Doz, Hiro Itami, Costas Markides, Anita McGahan, CK Prahalad, David Teece, Michael Tushman and Peter Williamson. I feel flattered to be included! The special issue should be out next year - keep an eye on the LRP web site for details as to when.
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- Posted Rita McGrath on October 08, 2008
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Discovery Driven Planning: Good new book on Innovation
It’s always a welcome moment when a new perspective on innovation is offered from the folks over at Clayton Christensen’s Innosight consulting firm. They’ve just recently published a new book, The Innovator’s Guide to Growth that looks to be a very welcome read. I’ve just ordered it and will give it a review here when I get the chance!
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- Posted Rita McGrath on October 08, 2008
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